Britain is home to 75 billionaires, up fom 68 in 2007.

Of these 40 were born abroad.  Of the top 10, only three were born in Britain.

It takes 70 million pounds to be in the richest 1,000.

Of the richest 1,000, 762 were self made.

Queen elizabeth at 320 million pounds was only number 264.

AFP: Indian tycoon stays top as Britain’s rich get richer

Indian-born steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal remains the wealthiest person in Britain, The Sunday Times newspaper’s 2008 annual Rich List said. His 27.7 billion pounds (54.9 billion dollars, 35.1 billion euros), up 8.5 billion pounds on last year, keeps him topping the pile for the fourth year running.

Apparently, it can be a good basis…. for smokers, or for employees, it is good to be aware. No, discipline is not for smoking, but for lying about it.

Whirlpool suspends 39 workers, says they lied about smoking - Yahoo! News

A Whirlpool Corp. factory in Evansville, Ind., has suspended 39 workers who signed insurance paperwork claiming they don’t use tobacco and then were seen smoking or chewing tobacco on company property. Now, some could be fired for lying, company spokeswoman Debby Castrale said.

I am in a conference, and in a hotel. This morning, I saw
somebody passing by the cleaning lady, and just give her a very loud
good morning and an appreciative word, and the cleaning lady smiled so
much!

I resolve to myself that I should ( and I am bad in this) to show more
appreciation to all who are part of our lives, especially those of our
friends and family, and also specially those that makes our lives more easier.

I constantly yearn that people higher than me in the bizworld will
give me a nod or an approving comment, and I constantly forget that
there are now also people who work with me who are also yearning for me
to give them a nod too.

I”ve heard stories of people who use fake handbags, or bring pirated DVDs being apprehended in the customs borders, and had their property seized or destroyed.

Now, apparently, you have to be careful on what you put on your notebook files as well…

Appeals court upholds search of laptop at LAX - The Daily Breeze

In a closely watched search-and-seizure case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court’s decision to toss evidence of alleged child pornography found on a traveler’s computer at Los Angeles International Airport.

Michael Timothy Arnold was a 44-year-old Orange County math teacher when he arrived July 17, 2005, at the LAX customs counter after a three-week trip in the Philippines.

Two U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers turned on his laptop, clicked on a file and found a photo of two nude women, according to the opinion.

Arnold was detained and his computer and other equipment were searched. Numerous images of alleged child pornography were found.

I gave this advice in another forum, and thought I would share it here.

“My motto has always been to be strict on yourself, but be a little bit more lax and consideration on others.”

That way, you will become more successful and happier at the same time.

This is because success is not really demanding necessarily more on others but on the yourself. Also, I see so many people who go through life having their happiness ruined by their criticism and complaint of others. Why bother?

I guess it happens in most companies, and in most countries.

Those that do well, also gets to do more. Those that do more, also earns more.

Even in the United States ( as in most countries), the affluent are increasing their wealth faster than those that are poor. And i don’t think any tax system can fix this…

In the United states, the top 1% of taxpayers now pay almost 40% of all income tax, while the top 10% of taxpapers kicked in 70% of the total income tax. Whereas the bottom 40% have, in aggregate, an effective tax rate that is negative — that means that they received more money thruogh the income tax system because of tax credits, than they paid. I would reckon this disparity is also having a similar trend in most countries.

What can be done?

I believe that instead of asking the people who have more to pay more, and decreasing the burden of those that have less, maybe the only way to fix this is to focus resources on getting more people upto speed and equipping them to earn more.

As the old trite saying goes, ” teach them how to fish, not give them fish.”

The Last Lecture | Randy Pausch

On September 18, 2007, computer science professor Randy Pausch stepped in front of an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” With slides of his CT scans beaming out to the audience, Randy told his audience about the cancer that is devouring his pancreas and that will claim his life in a matter of months. On the stage that day, Randy was youthful, energetic, handsome, often cheerfully, darkly funny. He seemed invincible. But this was a brief moment, as he himself acknowledged.

Randy’s lecture has become a phenomenon, celebrating the dreams we all strive to make realities. And now, in his book based on the now-famous lecture, Randy goes even deeper to inspire us all.

A few days ago, I talked about open source as a competitive marketing tool and business model.  You give away what you cannot sell to get market share!

One of my examples was Sun Microsystems decision to open source Java and Solaris.  Now, after acquiring mySQL, we read that Sun may be close sourcing some of its more advanced features.

Well, they own MySQL so they can do what they want, but then again, it reiterates my belief that open source is not a religion. It is a business model whose decisions are based on market economics, and financial considerations.

jcole’s weblog: MySQL to launch new features only in MySQL Enterprise

MySQL will start offering some features (specifically ones related to online backups) only in MySQL Enterprise. This represents a substantive change to their development model — previously they have been developing features in both MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise. However, with a shift to offering some features only in MySQL Enterprise, this means a shift to development of those features occurring (and thus code being tested) only in MySQL Enterprise.

We are quite elated that our free eNGy Business Cartoons e-book download reached 100 in less than 2 days! This is a new dimension on marketing that we need to constantly explore and understand better — offering something free and getting word of mouth.

Starting just right now, you can also opt to download the higher resolution full color version ( bigger file though at 10.9 megabytes).

We got a lot of feedbacks from the cover, and we are publishing it here on the blog as well. i think people were enthralled at the little poem ( is it qualified to be called one?) we composed for the back cover.

but I am serious in sending a message with the back cover - this shows various employees of the same company pushing in different directions — that mean the company is in paralysis and hardly moving because their efforts negate each other!  This a serious problem in many companies!

And of course, the Boss has other things in his minds other than growing the company and taking care of his employees.

“Free Open Source Software Is Costing Vendors $60 Billion,” New Standish Group International Study Finds

“Open Source software is raising havoc throughout
the software market. It is the ultimate in disruptive technology, and
while to it is only 6% of estimated trillion dollars IT budgeted annually,
it represents a real loss of $60 billion in annual revenues to software
companies,” said Jim Johnson, Chairman, The Standish Group International,
Boston, MA