Centaur Warchief

Centaur Warchief You scored 75 Support, 12 Sneak, 57 Cheap!

All hail the Warchief! You're an absolute monster-- everyone wants to be the guy you're covering, and nobody wants to have to stand in your way. You plow through problems like a fat man through Twinkies! You might hear that you're too good at what you do-- but others should learn to hate the game, not the player. You're only playing to your strengths!

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 90% on Support You scored higher than 0% on Sneak You scored higher than 45% on Cheap

Link: The Which DoTA Hero Are You? Test written by Daem on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

ham sandwich

Spotted this silly comic at Dan's site. Haaaaaa.

M600i. Damn cool.

Staying connected has always required a certain measure of personal sacrifice: sore thumbs, neglected and not-happy-about-it dinner companions, the lines of a nice suit ruined by a Treo or Blackberry. Sony Ericsson's just-announced M600i may fix that (the last part, anyway).

Its elegant proportions and monochromatic tones (it's available in black and white) make it as much a departure from its chunky cousins as the first iPod was from the MP3s of its day. Nor has Sony skimped on function: The M600i comes loaded with gadgety goodness, including a QWERTY-style keyboard, a touch screen with handwriting recognition, and tri-band GSM/GPRS capabilities, which means you can use it everywhere but mainland China (they get their very own version, the commies). And, despite being only 15 millimeters thin and a mere four ounces light, the device sports a 2.6-inch, 262K-color screen that can handle 30-frames-per-second video.

On the downside, deals have yet to be signed with American mobile carriers, so you'll have to snag one directly from Sony Ericsson and supply your own SIM card. Sure, that means no rebate, but hey, your suit will thank you.

Available directly from Sony Ericsson this spring; MSRP has not been set, but expect to pay several hundred dollars.

— Chris Kaye

sounds familiar

In France, where are the jobs?

PARIS French unemployment, a scourge that has haunted successive governments, is on a downward trend, slipping to its lowest level in almost three years at the end of last year.

But as ministers welcomed the decline as a sign that recent labor-market measures were showing early results, economists pointed to a conundrum: Unemployment might be down, but there was little sign that jobs were being created.

"Where are the jobs?" asked Laure Maillard, an economist at Ixis CIB in Paris. "It's one thing to lower unemployment and quite another to create work - and by extension economic growth."

After peaking at 10.2 percent in May, France's jobless rate has been falling steadily every month, dropping to 9.5 percent in December.

In the second half of the year the number of registered job seekers declined by a monthly average of 24,800 people. But an average of just 300 jobs a month were created in the private sector in the third quarter, the latest for which figures were available, according to the French statistics office, Insee.

That suggests that the decline in the jobless toll is the result of a growing number of people coming off unemployment benefits as the government tightens access and, maybe more significant, of a decline in the working-age population as the first wave of baby boomers begins to retire, economists said.

Unemployment and job creation used to be two sides of the same coin, said Philippe Waechter, an economist at Natexis Asset Management in Paris. No longer. "The link between the two is in the process of weakening and that means unemployment statistics are less meaningful," Waechter said. "It is much relevant to look at job creation figures and participation rates."

On that count business surveys do not bode well. The latest quarterly survey of French executives, published on Monday, showed that companies did not plan to increase their payrolls in the coming quarter.

A number of government measures announced in recent months might have helped persuade some executives to step up hiring, giving hope in Paris that job creation climbed in the fourth quarter. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has established tax breaks for companies that recruit apprentices and subsidies for recruiting temporary staff in the nonprofit sector. He also created a new work contract for small companies that prolongs the probation period to two years from six months, effectively making it easier for employers to cut jobs.

According to Nicolas Sobczak, an economist at Goldman Sachs in Paris, the recent measures were unlikely to have made a big impact. But, he said, they could prove an important step in tearing down psychological barriers to reform in France.

"By showing people that reducing job protection in some areas does not lead to higher unemployment, they might make it easier to broaden the reforms to all companies later on," he said.

- International Herald Tribune, 1 Feb 2006.