Karim Vaes

You’ve never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world.”

For more info, check out gapminder.org!

This week I was fed up with the recurring issues I have with my MythTV setup. We got used to the long channel changes and accepted that the remote control (actually LircD) acted up on a frequent basis. Yet after having had a lot of issues with my ATI card, I switched to nvidia. This week I did an upgrade to get Lirc more stable, which caused my video to lag… I suppose that some MythTV internal changed as updating/downgrading my nvidia drivers didn’t work.

As the WAF was completely ruined and each “downtime” caused my lifetime to shorten with a few years, I decided to go with my initial hunch to buy a dreambox. Two days later the box arrived and after a bit of googling I flashed the device with the PLI image and I was AMAZED!!! I repeat myself: AMAZED!!!

• Fast channel changes… WOW
• Very good remote control… WOW
• Easy plugin/update system… WOW
• TV & Radio channesl seperated… NICE
• Low Power Usage… YEAH
• And so SMALL!!! The remote is about the same size as the device.

It’s a linux device underneath the hood, so I can simply manage connectivity to other devices. So it instantly became a small nas server for my other media devices too… Which brings me to another point; what will I do with my old MythTV hardware?

Let’s say you could win 1 million Euro when participating with a lottery. The odds are about 1 to a billion… How much would you pay for this lottery ticket?

Now let’s say that you’re in a lottery where you have a one-out-of-a-billion chance to lose 5% of all your assets. How much would you pay for a lottery ticket which insures you against this?

What you already have is worth more to you than what you might gain. Yet the same math & currency value applies to both gaining and losing. People tend to panic when there is a risk of losing something, despite how small it may be. Every change is seen as a potential loss and not a potential win.

A trader takes several risks on a daily basis, yet (s)he knows/judges the odds of every investement. Let’s say that they have a win ratio of 8 out of 10. When they invest their money into 10 opportunities, they should anticipate that 8 winners exceed the losses made at the two failed investments.

So how do you respond to risks? Do you fear or anticipate them?

We often think that we need to provide products that people need. But actually we need to provide people with products that they want! In essence people only need food & water…

When you take a look at this picture; do you think the person needs this bike or wants this bike? What do you think he wants? You’d might say that he needs the 21 gear model made out of full carbon. Wrong, he wants the experience of riding thru the above scenario. It doesn’t matter for him if the gear shift is 0,1sec slower, or if he has 21 or 28 gears… So a sales person should relate to the experience he wants and not the product he needs for this experience! What if he would have gotten the following sales talk:

This bike weighs less then the 1 pound which is about half of other bikes. With it’s 28 gears you’ll be able to go up the hill much smoother!

What he just “sold” was the Full carbon model with 28 gears, yet the packaging was different…

About a month ago I started my own webdesign agency. So after almost 2 years of kvaes.be I’ve took the step towards entrepreneurship!

We focus on the “local” market, providing quality websites at an affordable price. It’s not “yet another high priced” bureau… The OpenSource world provides the means which enables us to provide a very interesting price.