Clap your hands say yeah right

As mentioned in previous posts I claimed that the BBC production Dragons’ Den has its merits. To anyone who might be interested I just found out that Swedish TV8 is sending a repeat transmission of the two seasons starting yesterday … and weekly every monday at 22:00.

As described on the TV8 webbpage (in swedish):

Dragon’s den
Brittisk realityserie från 2005. I den här realityserien får entreprenörer, uppfinnare och visionärer chansen att förvandla sina affärssdrömmar till verklighet. Det handlar dock inte om någon välgörenhet. För att få den hjälp de behöver måste deltagarna nämligen genomlida “dragon’s den” där en fem man stark expertpanel ger tummen upp eller tummen ner för deras företagsplan. Det står stora pengar på spel och för att lyckas måste de vara både övertygande och kreativa. Må bäste idékläckare vinna!

I was once again persuaded to start using firefox by a friend at work. I have tried it before and every time been really disappointed. This time also – after two days I had found so many bugs and strange things I decided to throw it out again. Do people use this? If so, why? I admit that tabbed surfing is nice, but in all other aspects the functionality exists and is tighter in IE.

This is what I found (bugs and bad usability) in only 2 days (which might indicate what the Firefox-pile is made of):

• Load a complex page and see it blink like a Christmas tree as long as it loads. You don’t even have to scroll the page to see this. Enough to trigger your epilepsy. Try www.engadget.com for instance.
• When printing out it cut of the page in the middle of the last line of text even in the simplest free-flowing-text pages, i.e. FF is worse than IE on this point … something I thought would be impossible.
• Click a link… before that page loads, click another link. Wait a while. Click the back-button. This will take you to the first clicked page.
• Sometimes when marking text that is located within table cells the cell gets marked (a blue box). After that no more text-marking will be possible on the entire page. I have found no way to get out of this state but reloading the page.
• When editing the current URL in the address field some keys sometimes stop working. For instance: Two times the end- and backspace keys have stopped working while the del-key still was ok.
• The drag and drop in Manage Bookmarks is very broken. Don’t expect that the thing you are dragging will end where you drop it. Don’t expect that the rest of folder and bookmarks stays the same after the drop. Did anyone test this before release?
• There is no way to hide the history-suggestion-dropdown while writing url:s.
• When marking text for print, the print dialog does not default to “marked text”.
• When editing text-areas and you click with the mouse to set the cursor at a new position it sometimes stops blinking, sometimes it stops in the “off”-mode which makes it rather hard to see.

Only two days.

It is quite obvious to me: Sony Ericsson does not seem to be able to deliver. They are promoting new phones in a steady rate and the “soon coming”-list is growing and growing … but actual releases are rare. Take a look yourself.

Now wait a month and return to that page … the list of “soon coming” hasn’t decreased I can asure you. If anything, quite the opposite.

The thing that puzzles me the most is that Sony Ericsson does not seem to understand that this really pisses the customers of. On a more general plane they are really making the customers postpone their cellphone purchases: Potential customers who have been waiting for phone X which just did arrive will see that a much better phone is just 2 months away (at least that is what the SE-web says) why they rather wait some more. A lot of potential customers (or owner of still working but not so good SE-phones) are just hanging in the “well I wait some more“-loop.

In short: It would be way better for the brand Sony Ericsson if they only promoted phones not more than 2 weeks (at most) away. Take a look at Apple to get a sense of what I am talking about.

I have been waiting for the Sony Ericsson P990i for almost half a year now. It is postponed time after time. Now rumours says it won’t be in stores until October. Woohoo. And you know what. This means I will find something else. Maybe something not as good as the the P990i. But at least it got me out of the “well I guess I’ll have to wait some more”-loop.

Gah!

…or as some guy by name of Claes put it eloquently.

A friend of mine gave me a mathematical problem some weeks ago. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to solve it fully.

The problem:
Let S(N) = 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + … + 1/N
Show that S(N) never is an integer for all N > 1.

So far I can only prove that S(N) can’t be an integer for all N:s that are prime, and for all N:s containing any prime factor more than once … but for N:s that are a product of a number of distinct primes my current approach isn’t really useful. I am stuck. Need to find something better.

Well, give it a try if you have some commuting time to kill.

To my surprise I really found the reality show (yes, a reality show, which is why I am a bit surprised) Dragons’ Den produced (actually over-produced) by BBC really interesting. The concept is simple but effective: Entrepreneurs looking for funding and in change offering an equity share meet a board of 5 investors. They get some minutes (as in very few) to present their sometimes brilliant but more often crazy ideas. Only very few succeed. Only the ones with a decent presentation accompanied with a clever and potentially lucrative idea.

Swedish TV8 just showed the last episode of season 2. The format could easily be copied and I heard that is exactly what is about to happen in the American production American Inventor. Looking forward to it … and another DD-season as well.