Category Archives: Thoughts

Thoughts

Has your fish tasted funny lately?

Just found out from a Congressional Report that the US Military disposed of chemical weapons in the oceans from World War I through 1970. The report is frank about the quantities and make-up of those chemical weapons. It’s funny (in an ironic sort of way) how at first, they dumped them fairly close to shore, then, in 1970, they dumped them 250 miles offshore.

I wonder how many of those containers have already been corroded by the sea water, and how many will continue to corrode and release their poison over the years? And I also wonder how many other countries have been doing this, and when we’ll find out about it? Finally, I can’t help wondering what other dark and poisonous secrets we’ll get to find out about as the years go by… What’s been going on since 1970?

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Thoughts

It pays to do your homework

Most political protest these days has boiled down to blanket accusations, and what’s more unfortunate is that the people that spout them are fairly clueless about the details.

A couple of weeks ago, I read about protesters who marched up to the AT&T headquarters because it collaborates with the NSA by sharing phone call data. They were disheveled, and they weren’t even on the same page. Some were talking about Net Neutrality, and all had some pretty clueless looks on their faces. I wonder, if someone had asked them of the details of both of these issues, if they could have answered cogently. I doubt it. Now I read about the Marc Jacobs store in San Francisco, which has a big sign in their window which says “Worst President Ever”. If I were to walk in and ask one of their clerks why they think that, I bet they’d be clueless, and they’d point me to the manager, who’d point me to the district office, etc. Or, they’d give me an accusatory look, to blame me for not knowing the answer already. Signs like these only serve to alienate instead of proving a point.

I believe people simply can’t get their point across unless they do their homework about what they stand for, and they’re able to express their opinion clearly and convincingly. I don’t care what your stance is on something as long as you can truly stand for it. If there’s something I don’t like, it’s parrots who spout catchphrases but can’t explain them.

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Thoughts

HP to cancel telecommuting for its IT division

In a move that stunned its IT workforce and the public, HP’s new CIO announced it will eliminate telecommuting for most of its IT folks. They’ll be forced to come to work at some 25 offices in various locations around the world. If they don’t, they’ll be out of a job without severance pay. Due to its previous policy of encouraging telecommuting, HP now has employees spread as far apart as the East coast when the job is on the West coast. If such employees want to keep their jobs, they’ll have to uproot their lives and families, which is just plain silly.

As a past IT Director with change management experience, I can say the following:

  • 180-degree turns are traumatic, and don’t turn out well. This is one such change, and it will be messy and painful. It will alienate a lot of bright folks. From a management standpoint, it’s not right. Change is best done gradually, and by co-opting people.
  • Making the bright people come into the office in order to straighten out the poor performers, as HP’s CIO hints, is yet another silly decision. Yes, I can tell you certain IT personnel should be on-site, but not everyone needs to be there. If HP’s IT workforce is peppered with poor employees, this is a recruitment/management issue, not a telecommuting issue. The decision is a non sequitur. If your tire is flat, plugging the exhaust pipe won’t solve the problem. Seems to me a much better solution would be to pair up the poor performers with good performers who live in the same area, and have them work together on issues, whether it’s at someone’s home or my IM/phone. Training would also be another solution.

Overall, I think this is a pretty rude change in policy, and not well thought out. It was done namely for the sake of shaking things up, not because a specific goal needed to be accomplished.

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Thoughts

Microsoft will drop PDF support as a standard option in Office 12

After whetting my appetite for Office 12 by talking about native support for PDF formats last year, Microsoft now disappoints once more by announcing it will drop the option. Interestingly enough, it isn’t to blame. Adobe’s up in arms about this – they’re unhappy that Microsoft will not charge extra for the option to save to PDF – which sounds hypocritical at first look. After all, the option to do so has been standard on the Mac through OS X, and is available through a slew of apps on the Internet (free, nonetheless) which let you do that very same thing on Windows.

So why has Adobe jumped up about this? I think it has to do with the following two issues:

  1. Microsoft’s market share: if saving to PDF becomes a standard option in Office, it will obliterate Adobe’s profit from Acrobat, which is its most popular software package.
  2. Microsoft wanted to include the ability to save to PDF as a fully functioning feature – in other words, hyperlinks and other special formatting would be preserved. Typically, with the free products out there, and with the Mac, when one saves to PDF, it’s essentially a print to PDF function, where special formatting and tags aren’t preserved. If you want the full-featured save to PDF function, that has usually only been available with the paid Acrobat product.

I have a feeling the months of negotiation between Adobe and Microsoft centered around these two issues, and neither wanted to budge from their position. Microsoft wanted to include the feature because it wants to dominate the market and please users, in that order, and Adobe can’t just give away a star product. I have to side with Adobe on this one.

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Thoughts

AMD plans "4×4" platform computer

In a move that’s sure to make other computer makers uncomfortable, AMD revealed it’s working on a 4×4 platform, which will pair two dual-core AMD chips with two dual-GPU graphics cards. This will be a boon to gamers, and I’m sure it will give the new Apple Power Mac successor a run for its money when it comes to graphics and video-crunching power. Engadget has the details.

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