Category: Commentary

Fraser Speirs, developer of FlickrExport writes short piece on “your value” in a company.

One of the most interesting things I find, when going between my various circles in Britain and America, is the differing values placed on the time and productivity of people. Google is, of course, famous for their provision of services at work to their staff.
Investing in the happiness, comfort and productivity of people seems to be a rare attitude in Britain. I’m sure it’s not universal in the US either, but it does appear to be a little more common.

The issue was whether it was better to spend £2000 on a business class flight or £500 on an economy flight with the idea that the former would have you arriving better rested and ready to perform. Daniel Jalkut responds in the comments with:

A good compromise – instead of spending $4000 more on a plane ticket, would have been to pad your trip with two extra travel days. For an extra $1000 you could stay in a very nice hotel for two nights, and eat at fine restaurants. Even get a massage, if it would help.

When I was working for BIGCORP#1, I had the opportunity to fly business class all the time and stay in swanky hotels. I had, however, the choice to fly economy and stay in B&Bs for a fraction of the price with the thought that it would make the travel budget stretch further and, of course, help towards the bottom line of the company. I also refused every attempt to send me to Canada for a week or two simply to “see how they do things over there” because to my mind I had a fast network connection and could speak to these people in several different ways as well as read all of their PPT and Visio documents. Would a “press the flesh”-style meeting helped? Certainly in terms of consolidating cross-Atlantic relationships but it wouldn’t have helped my job any. Hindsight tells me I wasted my time and should have availed of every opportunity. My manager at the time only suggested these trips because he’d have an excuse to go with me…

When working under my own brief, for my own companies, I fly economy and stay in cheap hotels. My reasoning is simple – money is not infinite, unless you work for Google. Will I feel significantly refreshed if I travelled business class? I don’t think so. Will it seriously impact my performance? I don’t think so.

Now, when BIGCORP#2 asks me to travel, I put it off. I don’t feel I need to travel in order to do what I need to do. If something can be done remotely then I’d rather do that. Part of it is due to not wanting to travel overnights or on weekends because of my family commitments and part of it is simply not wanting to waste time or money. I spent the best part of a week doing a meet and greet in Frankfurt a few years back and with the exception of the hardware install I did at the same time, it was a waste of time and money. But, I got to see Frankfurt in the evenings (it’s a Ghost Town…) and sleep in a nice hotel. But the entire week of work was spent trying to hotdesk somewhere where there were no hotdesk facilities, having to find food in a building where I didn’t know the exits well, negotiate the building with my admittedly poor German and, to top it all, amuse myself while my “hosts” busied themselves with their daily work.

Think of this from the point of view of a Bedouin worker. What things do you want if you were truly migratory? Would you need the big double bed of the swish hotel? What about the processed meal of the Business Class airline seat? Do you need the peanuts and free drinks of the business class lounge?

My advice: Travel cheap, travel lots. Bring some computer games

Microsoft’s UK MD, Gordon Frazer, is quoted on the BBC news site as looking ahead to a time when computers do a better job of understanding what we want and when we want it.

He takes Ken Olsen to task for saying “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”. This was in 1977. In 1977 there was no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home. Computers were only really useful when attached to larger computers in big organisations.

Compare this to:

Bill Gates, BusinessWeek, 26th November 1984

The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC.

and

Douglas Adams

The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.

I think it’s frankly ironic that we have Microsoft telling us how the future is going to be when I see them becoming more and more irrelevant every day. This isn’t to say they are irrelevant now but for the last decade they have utterly dominated (and I mean that with every negative connotation) the IT industry. My comment therefore may only show them going from 90% dominance to 75% dominance but the end result is the same.

I still don’t know anyone who raves about Vista on their home machines. I know a few people who use it but they’re all the sort who have for the last decade been bleeding Microsoft blue and flying the Redmond flag. No surprise there then. It’s the normal people. Seems everyone is happy with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Sure – Vista is flying out the doors as people buy new PCs but the rate of adoption is truly uninspiring. I usually have a few people who beg me to come round and help them with their PCs. None of them, none of my family and friends, have even bought new PCs with Vista.

And the chance of them buying it off the shelf? Zero percent.

Jeff Zaslow writes on the Wall Street Journal:

Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they’ve now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children’s hands in public.
…
Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. “Being male,” he explains, “I am guilty until proven innocent.

It’s true that more men than women have been convicted of sexual abuse, but it’s just as disturbing to know that children who die of violent physical abuse are more likely to be victims of female perpetrators.

Add to this the following stories:

Police believe Kate McCann accidentally killed her daughter Madeleine, a family spokesman says.

A couple have been jailed for nine years for abusing a 17-month-old boy who was sliced with a knife and burned with cigarettes.

Yup, that’s what this articleB instructs you to do.

This is a major security flaw, but it is used nowadays by tech support if something happened and your computer crashed, or something got messed up with your password.

Major security flaw? Ever used a UNIX based system before?

Booting in single-user mode gives you root access. You can do anything on the system – and you suggest we run setup assistant again to weasel an Admin account? This account would be plainly visible in the Accounts pane.

There’s much more sleekit opportunities for skullduggery if you have the machine in single-user mode!