At first, I tried to tackle the problem by using a Wiki. This worked pretty well for a period: I could categorise my data, relate the data with an academic paper so I could build my library and create meeting minutes notes. However, it proved difficult (if not impossible) to have all this data offline and searchable. Not be able to use Mac OS X’s Spotlight is simply put: painful.

So I tried to move to document-oriented notes taken on Pages, but it wasn’t practical: no way to associate that with PDF papers. I also tried Papers, but then again it was not exactly what I was looking for. It was possible to add tags & notes on Papers, but what happens with the rest of the data I needed to keep in a library?

After some Googling around, I stumbled across Evernote. To sum-up it gives you 3 amazing features:

• Store anything: From PDFs to Images, Text, Webpages, Voice clips. ANYTHING
• Search on anything: Even on hard-written notes (apparently they run some OCR on the server-side, pretty neat). Spotlight works too!
• Organization: Organize everything into notebooks, tag them. Every word is indexed
• Available anywhere: On my iPhone, on my Mac, online and the best thing is that everything is in Sync. No more worries how to synchronise data or how to backup them efficiently

Its pretty easy to organise everything the way you have them in your mind. A few tips if you’re wondering how exactly I’m using Evernote for research:

• Notebooks for different tasks: I differentiate different tasks or projects and I group them on a notebook together. For example: I have a notebook for my PhD-related reading, a different one for a side-project and a different one for a topic I am reading on (e.g. Systems).
• When reading a new academic Paper, I just click the Safari’s link, and the PDF is magically copied into Evernote with its URL source. After reading the paper, and I want to append any notes on it (like a summary or crucial points) I just append them on the top. Of course, I always tag the paper: “Paper”, “Autonomic Management”, “Policies”. So when I want to get all papers on Autonomic Management it is easy as 2 clicks. Extremely handy!
• If I have a task or project notebook, I always have a principal Note marked as “To-do”. It lists all the pending tasks that need to be completed, per project readily available

If someone from Evernote reads this (thanks for a great product!), I have a wishlist:

• Collaborative notes!
• Ability to draw or take notes on PDFs and/or Images. This would be really handy
• Reminders or notifications attached somehow on notes (or the ability to sync with iCal do add a reminder)

And the BEST of ALL is that its Free!

Before I start complaining, I should note that this post does not wish to defame the work done by all journalists in Cyprus — there are some who believe in what they are doing and the quality of their work is superb. This post is only meant to criticise the black sheep in that community, that expose the ugly side of Cypriot media. In the first revision of the post I also included links to various newspapers demonstrating the behaviour I will talk about, however, since my goal is not to accuse but to stimulate your thoughts I decided to leave them out.

First, there are noumerous examples of news articles that instead of exposing the facts, and just the facts, authors include their own personal opinion in them. Of course, everyone is entitled to his opinion, but when it comes to reporting facts and news your opinion, dear journalist, is irrelevant. Facts are facts, your opinion is your opinion, please don’t mess it up! If you want to express your opinion, please do so in a different article, marking it: MY OPINION. Some of us care to read just facts, I don’t need your commenting on them, I can figure out whats going on by myself. Additionally, mocking people and criticising their job, when you’re just in front of a computer typing an article doesn’t make you a hero, it makes you a jerk. In foreign press, when you want to criticise someone else, you first must be ready to face the consequences and any further judgement upon your work and second you must know what you are talking about. If you are no expert, please shut up, and stop talking. If you want to report just the news, go ahead, thats fine, but KEEP YOUR OPINION TO YOURSELF.

Then I move on to statistics. There are plenty of articles out there that cite “scientific research” and “trusted sources”. There are articles warning us of “health risks”, “human behaviour” and so on. But they almost never cite their sources, or they never give clear statistics figures. Sometimes their statistics numbers don’t add up, where is the missing percentage dear journalist? Your dog ate it? They also never tell us how many people were chosen to participate, how many finished the survey and why the rest of them did not participate or never completed the survey. Not reporting part of their project is concealing the truth, and a concealed truth is not a “partial truth”, there is no such thing, its a LIE. Of course, the real issue is that the majority of your readers can’t read through the numbers, or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but then again does this gives you the right to mess up with the numbers?

Continuing with the citation problem. You can’t tell us that “an american research said X”, you must tell us exactly WHICH american research. Was that research peer-reviewed via a journal or a publication, or you, my dear expert journalist, thought it was legit and it made its way into the news? This is how misleading facts are spread around via “legitimate” channels. The media must expose their source of information when it comes to scientific studies and warnings in order to stop spreading inaccuracies and avoid starting a general panic over illegitimate data.

Journalists and media ghouls must be really conscious on the amount of exposure a subject takes. We’ve all seen how manipulative the media can be, they can take a small incident and transform it into the issue of the century with overexposure, publishing the same thing over and over again in order to cause a general panic or expose someone they do not really like. Unfortunately Cyprus is small, and everyone is influenced by the political parties. For me, it is a blasphemy for a media house to be owned by a political party. It is outrageous when owners of media houses to say publicly that they elected a specific president because they exposed the “right news“. What are the right news, and who are you to judge that?

I sincerely hope that now that Cyprus is walking out of the shadows of the past, now that over 60% of our youth goes to Universities that this situation is going to improve. I hope that now that people are educated will start complaining more about the declining quality of the media in Cyprus and start demanding quality press, like the rest of our Europe neighbours have.

Burnout, a psychological response to “long-term exhaustion and diminished interest”, was first defined by an American Psychoanalyst Herbert Freudenberger. He defines burnout as “a demon born of the society and times we live in and our on going struggle to invest our lives with meaning. [...] (It) is not a condition that gets better by being ignored. Nor it is any kind of disgrace. On the contrary, it’s a problem born of good intentions.” [1].

Burnout goes through phases, but I am not going to write those here — its not the point. You can read about them here. The point of this article is to set targets on how to recover.

First step is to identify that something is going wrong. In my case I was able to identify it myself: nothing had the attraction it used to have. And what I mean by that: I was bored of everything: my research, my work, my life. I became more indifferent to some situations that I used to care greatly. Personal time was getting less and less with reducing sleep hours.

Then I tried to stop. However, stopping isn’t that easy: dependencies, responsibilities and promises. So I tried elaborating the issues I was facing at work with my employer, which understood the problem and things are starting to improve slowly on the work front. Being an engineer is extremely hard: you are expected to be on-call 24/7, you are expected to answer emails at 10PM at night, expected to check the status of the whole network. However, this sucks all your available mental power. I can not remember when I last had a holiday without having to answer a phone or check work-related emails. I can not remember a weekend passing without having to spend X hours catching up with email. I am taking a step back from that. No more email-answering on off-hours time, no more support or discussions on non-critical or work related issues when my work hours are over. And holidays are holidays.

Third step is to introduce boundaries and expectations. If everyone expected 110% from you up until now, let them know that you are not going to do that anymore. The days of 9-to-5 work hours are long gone and the boundaries between home and work are blurring. Especially when the office is “downstairs” or in the other room, in cases like myself. Unfortunately, I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t get a medal of honour for replying to email in the wee-hours, nor you become a better person if you check your Twitter every 1 minute. Setting sufficient boundaries between work and home has not only become a requirement in our ultra-connected and online world, but we must fight for it. Please understand people, its not all about the money, its about your mental health and happiness. Our lives are too short to be wasted like this.

As a creative type (yes, programmers, engineers and researchers are creative types. No balls no opinion, thank you), I find myself working more efficiently early in the morning, when everything is silent. The following words from Ernest Hemingway found a place in my heart when I read them:

“When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and you know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.“

I am trying to slowly move all my creative work earlier in the day, so I can be as fresh and energetic as possible when I am doing it. Even to the small percentage I’ve accomplished that I found that the work I produce during these hours is much better and I find myself to be more productive. Having the rest of the “business day” for 2nd class problems is a must, and free up that precious hour with creativity instead of dealing with instant messages and email.

This brings me to focus. Unfortunately, everything is instant nowadays: instant emails, instant chats, twitter, Facebook, phone calls. I tried closing my IM while working, and my productivity increased dramatically. And no, I am not chatting with friends, I am constantly interrupted by work-related questions and requests for hand-holding. Try to focus on stuff you are good and love doing, and leaving behind, if possible, what is soul draining: If you are a network engineer, focus on building scalable great networks not explain what is an IP to a client, if you are a developer, focus on building great web applications.

Balance via a process. A process guarantees to put your work into a timeline. It focuses more on getting things done than worrying what’s next. It is also important to let others know about this process, to understand how you work. When feeling overloaded and imbalanced: stop, decompress, communicate and focus.

A life should mean just that: life. You have your work-hours to be consumed by work.

[1] “Burn-Out: The High Cost of High Achievement.” Dr. Herbert J. Freudenberger with Geraldine Richelson, 0-385-15664-2, 1980

Yesterday Apple announced their latest creation: the iPad. It is a revolutionary multi-touch tablet, running the 75-Million-users-famous iPhone OS. However, the press was not so welcoming with the announcement, and this makes me wonder why. I do not want to sound like an Apple fan-boy now, but I want to take a look at the facts before judging the device too cruelly.

First, lets take a good look at the specs, and see what Apple has achieved here:

• Size: 242.8mm X 189.7mm X 13.4 X — Incredibly thin. Try comparing this with equivalent Tablet offerings or netbooks.
• Display: 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology. IPS means greater viewing angle and the LED means more vibrant colours and brighter display at lower energy costs. We all know what multi-touch is, right?
• CPU: 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed System on a Chip Processor. Another breakthrough: when a company designs the software for its own processor, you can expect marvels when it comes to performance, optimisation and energy savings. How fast this is, and how it compares with Intel Atom it waits to be seen.
• Storage: 16-64GB SSD Drives. By far exceeding in capacity the equivalent offerings in the netbook area. SSD comes expensive tho.
• Connectivity: WiFi (802.11n), Bluetooth (2.1+EDR), and 3G (optional). Digital Compass and Assisted GPS (only on 3G models).

All of the above are packed in a very slick, thin, light, aluminium package. Don’t even get me started how bulky and ugly the existing tablets or netbooks are. Its also backed with iPhone OS, which has made miracles on the phone marked and revolutionised the cell-phone industry. Take a moment and think what was before the iPhone. Nothing exciting eh? The iPhone platform revolutionised mobile User Interfaces, and even with its shortcomings as a device, it is still the best you can get in terms of mobile web browser, media player and the vast library of applications.

Now, imagine having almost twice as much the processing power of the iPhone in a 9.7 inch tablet. Imagine the possibilities with multi-touch applications. When developers get the hang of the new Software Development Kit, I promise you that we are going to see some AMAZING applications. Also, lets not forget the price: 499$ for the 16GB wifi model.

Of course, Apple demos of the new iPad weren’t so polished. To me, iPad now is something like the 1st gen iPhone when it was introduced. A brand new platform seeking for acceptance, so it can give it a push for later. If you recall, the 1st gen iPhone had no 3G connectivity, no AppStore, no iTunes store, no nothing. Just the stock applications. Now Apple made a head-start with these applications, but the OS is still lacking behind: no multi-tasking support, the welcome screen seems kinda, no flash support empty and so on. But lets not forget that we are talking about a device that has not yet seen the face of the earth, we’ve just seen it on a demo. And I am positive that Apple is going to push an OS upgrade for these devices to make as much from it as possible.

However, the press was really harsh to device. It reminds me the post we saw on Slashdot a few years ago: Apple Releases lame iPod. Aw really? What is the dominant portable music platform now, eh Slashdot, with 250m units sold? Apple is the victim of the rumours that are created around “expected” devices. Their mysticism around new product in these cases comes like a boomerang, as people start speculating about new product announces and they expect something extraordinary. Well, reality check people: Apple is a company like any other. They can not build the perfect product, but they do their best to get one thats innovative enough out there. This does not mean that every thing thats being distributed as a rumour must be a part of the final product — so guys, please, do not get disappointed if “teleport support” has not made into the iPad. This is plain stupid.

What I really like about Apple is that normally they don’t get a product out that doesn’t just works. However, this means that sometimes they drop out features that 10-15% of the users out there might find useful, such as generic USB support or an OLED display. Also, lets not forget that Apple is a company, not the messiah, and they want to make money. Of course they are going to release an OLED version later on, or one with a Camera: but not before they make some money and cover some R&D costs before they do that.

To sum up, I think the problem here is that the rumours were transformed into a real product, even before the product was announced by Apple — hence, many of the reporters were disappointed by the fact much of the rumours did not make it into the real product. If you take the device and compare it with the rest of offerings in the same space, you will then see the amount of technology and innovation that they put in. Well, OK, yes its a large iPhone, but then again its much more.

I am sure that iPad will be a great success, and it will, in fact, revolutionise the way we interact with computers, not instantly, but it will sure have a great impact. For now, I’ll have to be patient another 60-90 days to get my hands on it!

It literally contains millions of tracks from almost every artist you can think of. Once you select a track it plays almost instantaneously at high-quality (premium users get an even better streaming service at 320kbps where available). You can also create multiple playlists which, if you are a premium member you can take offline (i.e. listen to even if Internet service is unavailable — handy if you’re travelling or on the mobile).

It also has a really nice artist info page, containing all available to Spotify discography, plus a short biography. It has also an artist radio: it composes a radio station with music alike to the artist you picked (like last.fm or Pandora). It also has a more generic radio feature, where you pick the genre plus the year range of the music you’d like to listen to. Pretty neat.

Now a little about the company: apparently the record labels own 18%+ of the company, so I guess thats one of the major reasons of the huge library that is available via Spotify. This seems to be a step forward, as record labels are realising they can’t fight piracy; instead change their methods of selling (or in this case renting) music. Why the record labels did not support such models earlier?! If this succeeds could send piracy into extinction.

Of course, all of these come at a price tag: £9.99/month. However, for all of the music of the world readily available LEGALLY I do not mind paying that, but for those of you that don’t like that there is also a free service (lower music quality plus no offline playlist support) if you manage to get an invite.

First of all, when someone in Cyprus decides to start a business, they just do it (like the Nike motto). No market study, no business plan, no budgeting, no sales analysis and prediction. Nothing. You just go write a company in the registry and off you go. Of course, they don’t even hire expert people required to run these new business, they just assume that the people they already have onboard are suitable to run it — without any training whatsoever. “Ok lets just work for today, and tomorrow we’ll see”.

If you have lots of money to burn, and your idea is somewhat good enough, the business may have a partial success. It will start growing rapidly, in paces that you will not really control — since there is no business plan or structure within the company. Of course the management will go hire new “key” people, sufficiently ignoring the people who were already there. These new hot-shots (because in Cyprus whatever you say, you are) will try to enforce something they’ve learned in a business in a completely different sector (lets say they hired a new Sales manager in a Technology business who previously worked in dealing cars) in this new startup. Of course, as you’d expect, it will not work.

As the lack of clear vision still persists, you will commonly hear contradictory announcements throughout the year: “We will take over the market” and the next day “We are in negotiations for being sold”. Of course this not only destroys the morale of the people working for the company, it also pushes them to pursue other ventures, therefore they’ll start loosing employees. Someone with a business background will know that if an employee is good enough (i.e.: he/she does the work he/she is supposed to be doing), you don’t risk driving him away, as the replacement might not come as soon as you need it and on top of that you’ll have the extra cost of training. Keeping a good employee is a must. Well, not in Cypriot businesses. In their minds this will get translated into this: “No worries, we’ll hire someone new with half the salary! He’ll learn the business in no time!”.

If of course your business is souvlakia-making (barbecuing), this would be very easy and straight forward (although I am sure, every trade has its secrets). However, if you are in a business that requires expertise, training and know-how, this is not easy at all. Getting someone up to speed especially in dynamic, pressuring and understaffed environment is extremely difficult. Not anyone can handle this. And if you happen to become an expert in a field, instead of being a company-asset, you magically become a liability. Why? Because you want a raise, your salary is high, and your managers say that your job is relatively easy: Hey, you just type a few commands here and there, why should we pay you?

When a new employee is hired (if you manage to justify it, because you just type some commands in a terminal), there is no training. The management expects you to train the newbie and transfer all the knowledge you gathered the past X years working in the company, or from the numerous manuals you’ve read in a weeks time. Dude, first of all, I AM NOT A TEACHER, and secondly HOW ON EARTH you expect that to happen in a week? Working for the company is already hard, but you get on new duties that involve teaching and training as well, because the management can not spare any money for training — Why pay for that when we have a manual?

In the progress of getting a business plan, at the end of the year they ask the department heads to submit a budget. They don’t give them any information or targets, just the command “submit budget”. A simple question pops in your head instantly: “How am I going to prepare a budget if I do not know what I am budgeting for?”. Questions like “What’s your expected growth?”, “What are your targets of the year?” and “How much is the budget?” do not matter in Cyprus. You just have to prepare a budget, and if the management disapproves it, its your fault: why did you put so much stuff on it anyway? Budgeting in the real business world means projecting expected sales — How much money am I expecting to make in 2010? How much new customers will I take on? And from there, in a waterfall model, should fall into supporting departments: how much money you need to support this growth? But of course, what do I know, I am not a manager!

If you take a look at an organisational chart of a Cypriot company, half of the people will have the word “manager” in it. Everyone in Cyprus is a manager of some sort, even if there is no one left to do the real work. Everyone is an expert in something, and they don’t really consult their fellow coworkers because there is a growing envy between them: who is going to talk first to the Managing Director with a cool idea, because he has all the money and power and we must be friends with him. Of course, the issue with money & power is a society one, it just gets reflected in the company, but it is always funny to see people running around other people like faithful dogs.

Every request someone has in a Cypriot company is a high-priority one: if someone is dying but somebody else broke his hand, you should stop treating the dying man and go treat the one with the hand. Especially if the one commanded you to it is a manager, it overwrites all your existing work and priorities. And of course, you can’t say no, because then you’ll be under-utilised and ineffective. Naturally, this keeps happening even if a department ends up with 50 pending issues but nothing closed because of this priority and focus shifting, enforced by the all-knowing managers of the company.

After finishing this post, I think I understand why over 50% of the Cypriot population works for the government, they are fed up with all of the above!

I’ve heard comments criticizing Christian Orthodox religion for their burring customs. They bury their dead, instead of cremating them and they have yearly memorial services to honor their dead. Some, of course, do not follow this and its completely understandable. Its a free country, you can believe and follow whatever you want. No one is forcing you to bury your dead, or honor their memory. However, you can not criticize or discriminate others who choose to follow this, keep your criticisms to yourself.

A man’s grave has been violated. For his family, this is a terrible incident, it goes against their belief system, and this creates great sorrow. Out of respect to their grieve, defamatory comments, accusations and stupid remarks on religion should be thrown around like an outcry for attention. Even if the grave of Adolf Hitler was robbed, the same respect should be paid: respect to one another is what makes us humane.

Unfortunately in Cyprus everyone believes should follow their opinion, even if they are no experts on anything. It is a different thing to have an opinion and express it in a civil matter and another one to try to force to anyone. They even take it a step further: if your beliefs are different than mine, it is OK to make humiliating, discriminating comments about them, with no respect whatsoever. Hate and discriminatory speech is also illegal in Europe, last time I checked.

This way of thinking is unfortunately advertised by the media, the political parties and in school. It is everywhere. Everyone is entitled to their opinion as long as they all have the same, or else they get slapped. Either with improper comments, rejection in social life, tagging etc.

The foundation of a democratic and free society is respect. You must respect ones opinion and beliefs, even if they are completely wrong in your opinion. You also need facts, evidence, a cool head and the ability to accept when you are wrong and not.

Disclaimer: The author of this post does not take any political standing with regards to the above mentioned politicians. Instead, he is trying with a gentle way to point out mutual respect.

Well, you are wrong.

First of all, the majority of these countries are constantly under war. Genocides, coups, civil wars, tyrants, rapes, hunger, diseases. The first logical question that pops in my mind when I see war in these countries is one: these guys don’t have food to eat, where do they find the resources to buy or manufacture weapons? Of course, you’ll say that the tyrants ruling these countries have access to valuable resources, such as gold and diamonds, and trade these for weapons.

Fair enough, but instead trying to stop the war in these countries, why don’t you just get those weapon dealers? Getting the knife out a child’s hands will stop it from harming itself. Why we do not do that instead?

Then, moving on to the next question. Where all these huge pile of money we are donating going? I mean, people has been donating actively for the past 40 years towards the development of these countries. The answer is quite simple: you buy them a plate of food and a pill today, but they need these and tomorrow. So your donation help 10 people live through the day. But what happens the next day? They need these resources again, because they have no means of growing their own food. They have no resources of buying the medicine themselves. So, even you can’t just throw at them 1 billion dollars for food and auto-magically they’ll start growing food of their own. You’ll need to constantly throw billions to keep them fed.

Instead of buying them food, why don’t we show them how to grow it? If they have water issues, why don’t we build them water desalination units? Why don’t we build them a city with that 1 Billion dollars and let these people live in it? Oh, but the tyrants aren’t going to let that happen, are they? Of course the won’t. UNTIL YOU START EDUCATING THEM. Until you get the guns out of their hands. Until you stop the weapon dealers of selling them bullets. Until you stop accepting blood diamonds. It is logically and fundamentally easier to catch and stop 100 gun dealers that are selling bullets to all fractions in Africa, than convince a tyrant to stop killing people. Why don’t we do that first, and then focus spending 1/3 of our salary on feeding them?

And then, there’s another truth that the G8 governments know really well: if African countries were as developed as we are the global warming would be accelerated, oil would be up 50 years earlier and food would not be enough for 10 billion people. Earth will have no resources to support our exponential growth. So, to summarize, our economies are grown in expense and thanks to Africa. It is to our interest that people die by the hundreds every day in Africa, so we can use the resources that normally would go to them for us.

Lets face it, earth’s resources are allocated unequally. The problem is not the tyrants, nor their unfortunate luck. The problem is that governments want Africa to stay like that. Why face resource exhaust issues in 100 years, when we just leave Africa die off? The real issue is that we are going to face these issues anyway, we are just postponing them. Why don’t we start developing technologies that will help make this world a better place? Why don’t we stop spending our resources on weapons and 500$ bags and open our eyes to see the real pressing issues?

But maybe I am just a conspiracy theorist, not a technocrat.

Mac Mini is actually a good candidate for a personal server. It is fast, silent, and power-efficient (just 110W, according to Apple). I currently run MySQL/Apache/PHP (AMP Server). It currently hosts my blog and a private wiki/blog/calendar as a database of organizing all my PhD-related information.

Aw, it also keeps automatic backups, thanks to Time Machine.

I ordered the new Magic Mouse as soon as they announced it. I was longing to replace my broken Mighty Mouse (the wheel got too dirty it stopped working, and yes I tried the paper cleaning). It arrived yesterday in a cute little box (with batteries included!).

The normal pairing procedure worked out of the box, nothing fancy here (that’s what I love about Apple), and a new “Mouse” icon appears in your System Preferences panel. The big difference with the rest of the mouse out there is that there are no buttons. The whole mouse is a big touch surface. This might sound confusing, but its not a first with apple (Mighty mouse also had touch left/right click).

First of all, I liked the footprint of the mouse, its small and relatively thin, so you can carry it around easily. I have really big hands, yet it fits alright in my palm. The right/left click works as you expect: you click the left-side its left-click, you click the right-side its right click. Now, here comes the fun part: scrolling! When you keep your finger in the mouse surface and move it around, its scrolls 360 degrees with you. It replaces that small ball the Mighty mouse had (which was good, but a pain in the ass as it got dirty), with much bigger space to move your finger. The whole movement comes really natural, and you get used to it right away. No learning curve at all.

I also liked the “two-fingers swipe” gesture. It gets handy when you are navigating through a multipage document and again its really comfortable to use, as your two fingers are always only mouse, as I again used to for expose (show desktop). However, I believe that therer are a lot of possibilities and options on what you can do with a multitouch mouse, so I guess Apple might introduce new gestures later on (eg. keep two fingers pressed for a second for expose or something), or even do a twirl for refreshing a page in a browser. The possibilities are endless. I really hope that Apple opens up the API for this mouse, so developers can create gestures for their applications or listen to events generated by the mouse.

Overall, I am really pleased with it. It fits well with my Apple wireless keyboard. The only negative point is the price: 55 GBP for a mouse is a lot.