Season’s Greetings
Published on 22 Dec 2006 at 11:24 am by John |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Humor.
I really enjoyed this: The Night Before I do so hope it’s original. Happy Holidays to all! — John
I Still Don’t Get VoIP
Published on 13 Oct 2006 at 10:51 am by Oliver |
Comments Off |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Design, Interface, and Usability, Business and Corporation Related, Networking Technology, Information Technology, Branding and Values.
In which your correspondent observes a number of VoIP deployments, yet fails to notice a change.
In his unceasing struggles to earn his daily pint, your correspondent spends a fair amount of time on the premises of his clients. I should add that these clients represent the best and brightest of Silicon Valley, and a finer and more honorable collection of people can’t be found this side of a Nobel Prize committee. Many of these clients have replaced those tiresome, semi-proprietary office phone systems with new VoIP phones. Oddly, the new VoIP phones look the same as those tiresome older phones. They have the usual 12-key pad that we all understand, and the usual several-more buttons about whose function we’re never quite sure.
Ahh, but surely these new phones are easier to use. Dial-by-name, of course. Er, no? Quaint. I still have to enter the numerical address of the endpoint I wish to call? A bit like sending email to Eudora_client@192.168.81.103.
Reduced infrastructure, though. Well, once we pulled the extra cat-5 and installed the PoE gear. Then it was a snap to plug the phones in. We did rip out that funky old PABX, though. It was replaced with a funky new Dell server to run the VoIP software.
Yes, but the improved reliability of the converged infrastructure! We’re replaced SS7 - it’s been around for years; it must be out of fashion. We’ll use SIP now. It has a wee bit of field experience, though it’s a newbie compared to SS7.
Well, there is one unarguable difference. VoIP is digital. Err, well, so was the old stuff. But VoIP has longer packets that the old, 1-byte TDM packets. That’s a difference sure to appeal to any user.
Cost savings, no doubt. We fired the poorly-paid guy who maintained the old phone system, and replaced him with a highly-paid MCSE-certified IT professional. Happily, he brings to telephone system support the same level of cheerful help he brings to desktop PC support.
After considerable research (most of a bottle of Laphroig) I have identified one clear advantage to VoIP - it’s helped the sales performance of a number of VoIP vendors. Clearly a solution was needed to the problem of getting corporations to replace their fully functional phone systems.
Johna Till Johnson, as perspicacious a prognosticator as any, (and cute to boot) comments on Vonage’s business belly-flop here: ( http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2006/092506-eye-johnson.html )
Perhaps Vonage’s difficulties stem from the fact that, when all is said and done, it’s no cheaper to run a consumer phone company with variable-length packets than it is to run one with fixed-length packets.
Your correspondent awaits a Skype-like client for VoIP. No phone numbers, please, I wish to call humans, not station instruments.
If ISDN was Innovations Subscribers Don’t Need, perhaps VOIP is Very Overrated unImproved Phone.
In Defense of Pretexting
Published on 18 Sep 2006 at 10:25 am by Oliver |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, One Corporation Under God, Business and Corporation Related, Legal, Law, and Courts, Government: Federal, State and Local, Main Stream Media.
The recent media blitz regarding HP’s Board of Directors misses something. In the Brave New Sarbanes-Oxley World, Boards of Directors are strictly charged with overseeing the ethics of the businesses they govern. Legally, it is their most important duty.
One HP board member was consistently violating his ethical obligations, by divulging confidential to outsiders. This was also a violation of his specific and acknowledged duties as defined by the non-disclosure agreement he signed when joining the board.
HP’s board chair, Patricia Dunn, set a legal team to work on finding out who the leaker was. Good for her! She has been maligned, unfairly, for being a very methodical, cross-the-Ts and dot-the-Is sort of person. In a non-executive board member, especially the board chair, this is good. Would that Enron had had a person who said, "Hey! What’s this loose thread? What happens if I pull on it?"
Ms Dunn’s efforts paid off; the leaker was found and forced off the board. One only hopes some sort of prosecution or civil suit follows. But a great hue and cry has been raised over the fact that a private detective used pretexting to obtain phone records that fingered the guilty party.
I see no foul here. The police routinely look at call-detail records for leads, and use them as evidence. The courts have ruled that private investigators have _greater_ powers than the cops. They don’t need warrants, for example. Pretexting phone records does not seem to shred the Constitution. For one thing, the phone system is a quasi-public entity…..
In the end, a rich and powerful man who thought himself above the law, and abused the trust placed in him, has been caught. This is a good thing. The media’s howls are, well, predictable. Too many journalists wish to wrap themselves in a flag-trimmed copy of the First Amendment, but journalists should not be above the law. Why not? Because, in the Age of Internet, we are all journalists.
Everything Old is New Again
Published on 17 Jul 2006 at 9:08 pm by Oliver |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Technopolitical, Pure Geek, Information Technology, Economics and the Economy.
As a poor starving scholar back in the days of steam-powered computers and kerosene-fired televisions, I spent my few precious coins on dark beer and ‘Electronics’ magazine, the then-premier trade publication in the industry. Among the more interesting articles were those proclaiming the imminent demise of some then-dominant technology. One such article did not believe CRTs would survive the Carter administration. Later articles in the same vein predicted the end of disk drives as we know them. Oh, and the gasoline engine was doomed, as well.
But perhaps the most perennial favorite prognostication was the death of Moore’s Law. One of the first such articles appeared in the early eighties, long enough ago that the authors felt they needed to spend several paragraphs explaining Moore’s Law, before burying it.
They were wrong.
Every few years since, someone has buried Moore’s Law. There was a prediction that it wouldn’t work below one micron. We’re below one-tenth of a micron now. Optical lithography was a barrier. Whoops, there’s deep UV. Interconnects weren’t dense enough. Oh, we have seven, eight, nine-layer metal.
Today, the funeral directors are mumbling about leakage currents, but we haven’t fully exploited strained silicon, SiGe, or SoS. Lithography faces challenges; it may indeed finally be time for X-ray litho to take off.
Moore himself made the only modification his law has needed. He added the corollary that, with each generation, the device density would double, but the capital cost of the fab would, too.
There is a serious point here. Current technology does not stand still, and evolutionary development almost always trumps revolutionary development. There are disruptive technologies, but they come along about one-tenth as often as they are proclaimed. It’s a good reason to bet on the internal combustion engine, and against hydrogen, electric, etc.
I wish Dr. Moore a long and happy life. I sincerely hope he lives to an extra-ordinary old age. He will not, however, live long enough to see the end of Moore’s Law. Rumors of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Mrs Ken Lay, Enron, and Gitmo
Published on 17 Jul 2006 at 8:23 pm by Oliver |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Business and Corporation Related, Legal, Law, and Courts, Government: Federal, State and Local, Humor.
Your correspondent was privileged to be invited to a social event in San Francisco this recent week-end. The guests were drawn from among the literary and artistic best of the City, as bright and forward-thinking a bunch as one could hope to find. Great issues were discussed, but laughter and humor abounded as well.
The interesting circumstances of Ken Lay’s death came up. There was genuine concern that his death meant that the government would get no more money out of Mr Lay, and that Mrs Lay would receive, and keep, the proceeds of his life insurance policy.
Sure that others were better-informed on this manner than I, I inquired as to the crime Mrs Lay had committed, that would require her to disgorge ill-gotten gains. None, I was told. She has been charged with no crime, much less convicted. Why, I inquired, should she forfeit her life-insurance benefit? Was she to be destitute as a widow?
Apparently, she is guilty of being a bit shallow, and guilty of being rich. Still, it seems an odd juxtaposition that caring, concerned, and progressive-thinking people are in anguish over the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, but baying for the blood of a person who has committed no crime.
Executive Decision [Humor]
Published on 17 Jul 2006 at 8:00 am by Paul |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, One Corporation Under God, And Stock Options For All, Business and Corporation Related, Pure Geek, Information Technology, Humor.
An engineer was walking with a senior technical consultant to take a proposal to the CIO for approval, and upon seeing the exhorbitant fees, wondered aloud if he could ever become a consultant.
"Well, let’s find out." said the consultant. "What equipment would you use to connect a 1980 IBM mainframe supporting 1,000 users and a tin can?"
The engineer knit his brow and thought about the problem for a moment. He paused next to the hardwall offices and started gnawing on a nail. Finally he threw up his hands in exasperation. "I give up, what?"
"A standard RJ-45 cable." said the senior consultant.
"An RJ-45 cable!" exclaimed the engineer. "You can’t connect an ancient mainframe and a tin can with an RJ-45 cable! The tin can doesn’t even have circuitry!"
"So replace it with an electronic desk phone."
"A desk phone isn’t digital!"
"So plug it into a Voice-over-IP analog telephone adapter."
"But mainframes that old can’t even do networking!"
"So replace the mainframe and applications with Linux on a 486 PC running Telnet"
"But Linux doesn’t support IP telephony!"
"So put Asterix software on it."
The engineer waggled a finger at the consultant, convinced he had him at last. "Yeah, but you need a special crossover cable to connect two host devices together– a standard one won’t work!"
"Right," said the consultant smartly as they arrived at the CIO’s office. "I just threw that in to make sure you were competent with the basic technology."
The CIO, overhearing the conversation, looked up from his desk chuckling and said, "No, no, no– all that’s the hard way. What you do is tell the CEO that you need $100,000 for the equipment to connect the two devices together."
"All that equipment doesn’t cost anywhere near $100,000!!!" exclaimed the engineer and the consultant in unison.
"No, it doesn’t," smirked the CIO. "You’ll be told to use a $4.95 tube of super glue instead."
[Paul]
Review: The Rant Zone
Published on 24 Jun 2006 at 11:15 am by John |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Main Stream Media.
I strongly suspect there are TV writers and producers working today who weren’t yet born when I last watched television on regular basis. Still, somewhere along the line I caught several of Dennis Miller’s rants. Maybe he was doing them that long ago, or maybe I saw them on the omnipresent continental breakfast TV in some hotel… I really thought his stuff was great, and while I remember at least one I didn’t like, I don’t expect to like everything (on the contrary) and besides, anyone can have an off day… So, when I saw The Rant Zone, I picked it up with high hopes. Unfortunately I was disappointed.
I can’t tell whether he’s changed or I have, but the contents of this book are not up to the standard I remember. While Miller has always been refreshingly plain spoken, in The Rant Zone his writing is more vulgar than it needs to be to make his point, and it gives the impression that when he can’t think of something smart to say he fills the space with something crude. Really, the crudeness is fine when it’s in the service of making some point, but too often in these rants it seems to only serve the purpose of filling space or angling for a cheap laugh.
I’m inclined to believe that this work really is weak, and that it’s not just changing taste on my part, because of the way a few of the rants, and a few paragraphs of others, stand out from the rest. They sound like the Dennis Miller I remember: plain speaking, honest, rueful, intelligent, unflinching, and sarcastic. If you want to pick out the good ones, the book might be worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed "Is he gone yet?", "Good Bye, Cool, Cool World," and "Twelve Million Angry Men." With the exception of the very last rant, the book is over once he starts talking sports, if I’d known I’d have quit reading right there. I think I’ll pick up the older, The Rants. Maybe that will answer the question of whether he’s changed or I have…
Cargo Cult Enviro-Science
Published on 22 Jun 2006 at 2:07 pm by Ringo |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Thanks for Playing, Brain Trust.
Okay, at the outset, let me make this clear: I’m not convinced one way or the other about the role of human activity in global warming. Intuition tells me there’s probably something in it, but that’s a slim reed. Call me "sympathetic but not quite convinced." Then, of course, what to do about it, if, when, by whom, through what mechanism, is another question again.
Having said that, this from ABC (which I picked up from CoyoteBlog) is absurd. I know it’s almost too easy, a big fat slow moving target, but I just couldn’t resist. Here’s what I sent them:
With temperatures today nearing 95 degrees under a blazing sun, I’m suffering from the heat and so is everyone around me. I’ve been closely observing the weather conditions for the last six months, and I’m absolutely certain that while there may be some variance from day to day, the trend has been inexorably upward. Six months ago, I hardly ever saw an insect, now they’re everywhere. I think I’ve noticed the plants growing faster, and even the grass looks greener. Maybe carbon dioxide is good for them? Perhaps most ominous of all is that the days actually seem to be getting longer. That blistering sun scorches us longer every day. Just last month the sun was going down by about 8:30, now it’s still beating down on us after 9pm. At this rate in another 5 or 6 months it won’t set at all… Imagine what that will do to nocturnal creatures!
Do journalists get *any* education or training whatsoever in science?
Fuel Inefficient Cars…
Published on 16 Jun 2006 at 10:39 pm by John |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Winners and Losers, Pure Geek.
I can’t resist this, just for a little Friday fun, a few very fuel inefficient cars courtesy of cnn.
I actually tried to buy a 1970 Olds 442 convertible about 20 years ago. I think the guy who had it turned down my $1500 because he kind of liked the old heap, and besides, he figured he could get $2000 if he held out. Now the cars in that article are mint condition show room stuff, but I hope that guy held on to it and can sell it now for enough to pay off his house.
Smart Brain Storming
Published on 15 Jun 2006 at 8:52 am by John |
No Comments |
Trackback
Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Business and Corporation Related.
This story about brainstorming (which I noticed through Boing Boing) is pretty interesting at least for the questions it raises if not for the ones it answers…
It seems to me that much of what’s being criticised here is poor corporate culture and poor brainstorming practice rather than the brainstorming itself. I’ve seen this done well and I’ve seen it done poorly and in both cases the quality of the brainstorming is an outgrowth of the health of the corporate culture. In some especially egregious cases, it’s a matter of "cargo cult brainstorming" in which the process is pro forma and the participants are going through the motions.
One of the problems with brainstorming as a corporate practice hovers in the background of this article. It is noticeable in this quote for example:
"If you stand back and think about (brainstorming), it’s plainly inefficient," says Prof. Perkins…
Brainstorming is akin to the practices of venture capitalists. The idea is that many ideas are tried and discarded, which *is* very inefficient, but it is done in an effort to pick up the few percent which have very large pay-offs. In order to do this successfully a company must have a culture in which those participating can realistically expect to participate without fear of consequences of dead ends and with some share in the successes of good ideas. Many managers (or peers for that matter) simply cannot stomache the "waste" asssociated with so many bad ideas hitting the floor. This leads to several problems. In some cases dead end ideas begin to be punished either institutionally or socially (it takes remarkably little eye rolling to chill the process). In other cases, people will attempt to stem the flow of "waste" by rushing into a bad idea, or by tenaciously defending one. The latter case is very like the tendency to defend sunk costs. "We can’t quit now, we have too much invested."
The trick to this, in my opinion, is to learn some lessons from VCs, miners, and casino operators.
From VCs, invest a little in anything with any plausible merit whatsoever, but have a plan for cutting off the losers and letting the winners run. Also, be sure to provide support and oversight for your investment. (Also, be aware of the overall business climate and your own resource levels, so that you can be more experimental when appropriate and more conservative when appropriate.)
From miners, learn to tolerate dross and tailings. Understand that they cannot be eliminated; they are intrinsic to the process. Instead, put your efforts into building more and more efficient systems for separation and disposal.
From casino operators, learn that you are going to lose sometimes. Imagine the disaster their business would be if they insisted on winning every time. Instead of eliminating any loss ever, play the odds, win in the long run.
In all three cases, bias your results by recruiting especially lucrative prospects: The high-roller, the most promising geology, or the serial entreprenuer. At the same time, be mindful that finding value in unlikely places is especially profitable, and that a consistent small payoff accumulates over time. To take up the mining analogy; if you want to find a gold nugget the size of a baseball you’ll have to look where no one else is looking, but fortunes have been made mining gravel and other low value materials too.
In summary, brainstorming is too good an idea to throw away, but like many business practices, it takes effort, thought, and investment to be effective.
