pupwhines

response

2011-03-05T19:21:00.000-08:00

I work in IT and have for almost 5 decades. One of the intellectual exercises we perform when "something has gone wrong" or as we sterilely say an "incident", is called "root cause analysis". That exercise is not beloved of most because one has to ask hard questions and often get hard answers, unpopular questions and unpopular answers.

In the case of the current federal, state and local government budget crises, trying to do that, in almost all cases, causes a political outcry. So it is avoided. It was certainly avoided in your editorial "State of the Unions." To your credit you did mention "get long-term entitlement costs under control."

The problem far exceeds that.

The scandalous financial crises over the years have laid bare the unsustainable nature of government policy at all levels going back decades. The state workers feel like victims - they are. But then so are and will be present and future citizens of the state and the nation - our children and grandchildren. It is difficult to name any public (or more than a few private) policies that are sustainable. As I write this, the price of gasoline is soaring. Nobody's budget for fuel costs going forward is adequate. That will ripple through the world economy.

Until realistic analysis of the future costs and available resources are made, the most endangered species is humanity. The root cause is a failure to understand and act on the insight of Gn 1:28a - God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it."

One can only fill what is finite. What is finite has limits. When you get to the limit, that is all there is. When you get near the limit, the scramble for the diminishing amount left is not pretty.

stimulus: State of the Unions

2011-03-05T19:10:00.000-08:00

The newly elected Republican governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, wants to balance his state's budget by slashing the wages and benefits of state employees and eliminating most of their collective-bargaining rights for good measure.

This deeply cynical attack on workers' rights brought tens of thousands of protesters to the Capitol in Madison and induced the Democrats in the Wisconsin senate to flee the state, thus denying Republicans a quorum and stymieing the governor's plans, at least temporarily. These tactics are not likely to stop Walker's legislation in the long run, however, and its passage will be a blow both to economic justice and to good government.

Few knowledgeable people doubt that the medical and pension benefits of most unionized state employees need to be renegotiated if the states are to balance their budgets and get long-term entitlement costs under control, a fact already conceded by Wisconsin's unions. For decades, too many governors have signed off on generous benefit packages for state workers, leaving their successors to figure out how to pay for it all. But to suggest, as Walker and a number of other Republican governors have, that the current fiscal problems in the states have been caused by the unions is scapegoating. The states have been plunged into the red by the ongoing effects of the recession, which was caused not by unions but by the financial skullduggery of bankers (see Charles R. Morris, "The Two Economies"). The worst recession since the Depression dramatically reduced tax revenues while simultaneously increasing the need for social services. Stimulus money from Washington helped the states balance their budgets over the past few years, but Republicans in Congress have put an end to such "bailouts." A combination of higher taxes and government belt-tightening is now needed--in other words, shared sacrifice, not political pandering. Illinois and Connecticut are trying to implement such fiscally responsible policies. Governor Walker has chosen the low road, exploiting the economic fears of voters by demonizing public employees. (Or most public employees: his legislation shamelessly exempts the unions that supported his candidacy, such as firefighter and police unions.)

The right of workers to unionize and bargain with employers for a living wage and decent medical, disability, and retirement benefits is a long-standing principle of Catholic social teaching, enunciated in unambiguous terms in encyclicals issued by nearly every pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI. Wisconsin's Catholic bishops and other religious leaders have voiced their opposition to Walker's proposal and their support for the unions and the rights of workers to collective bargaining. Economic justice, not economic growth, is the cornerstone of the church's social teaching. It condemns the social and material damage done when employees and their families are treated as voiceless underlings or disposable parts. It understands unions to be vital mediating institutions between the state or corporation and the otherwise isolated individual, who would be ineffective if she or he acted alone. The defense of the rights of workers is also one of the important ways in which the church supports and strengthens democratic institutions and government. Unions, like churches, civic and voluntary organizations, professional and business groups, families, and a host of other associations, are essential in creating the "social solidarity" we need in order to recognize what actions best promote the common good. It's true, of course, that unions sometimes abuse their power, and when they do they must be held accountable. But, without them, who holds employers accountable?

In the 1950s, a third of all American workers were union members. Today that number is less than 12 percent. Public employees now account for more than 50 percent of all unionized workers. As union membership has declined, so have all working- and middle-class incomes. At the same time, the concentration of wealth among the top 1 percent of earners has reached levels not seen since the 1920s. As Peter Steinfels points out in his review of Winner-Take-All Politics ("The Great Reversal"), "our democracy has become the most economically unequal nation in the advanced world." This did not happen by accident. Over the past three decades, business and corporate interests have spent billions to limit taxation, constrain the reach of government, delegitimize unions, and attack any effort to distribute the nation's wealth more equitably. Institutions that used to look out for the welfare of the average American worker have disappeared or looked the other way--and that includes the Democratic Party. Is it any wonder that the average citizen is so alienated from government or that the nation's politics have become so bitter and confrontational?

For democracy to work, citizens must organize to defend their legitimate interests. For the market to work--for everyone--workers must have a say in the decisions that affect them and their families. That is what unions are for. The weaker the bargaining power of unions, the fainter the voice of the people becomes.

- the Editors cw2011Mar11

fine dining

2011-01-31T20:29:00.000-08:00

e e cummings wrote "there is some sh.t I will not eat."

salarymen do not have that option

SME-sense

2010-11-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

As a person who this summer left the ranks of support for projects, I have a constant and urgent need for SME (subject matter expert) information. In general, I have received a lot of help from a lot of people to come close to succeeding. I'm not a newbie - I'm in my 50th yr of IT.

In that short time since I rotated, it appears to me that we are succeeding on the ability of team members to get their jobs done in spite of the system. There is a lot of information stored between team members ears and much information stored on servers. There is no knowledgebase that pulls it all together. Text search as a technology is, if I remember rightly, about about 5 decades old. Without information organization - a publishing event - one is constantly searching for what which someone else just searched for.

Silos of information have high local optimization of information storage, retrieval and usage. When tearing them down, there needs to be a replacement for the local community.

Going back to the movie Roots, when Alex Hailey found his ancestor in the memory of a local "library" resource, he wrote down the bits and pieces he wanted. Unless others did the same, it was lost when the resource died. Recording the memory would make it serially reusable. Publishing it, in the true sense, requires it to be organized - a rewarding task that only pays off other than in the short term.

border whining

2010-09-29T20:29:00.001-07:00

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/28/mexican-lawmakers-say-worsening-mexico-violence-returning-criminals/?test=latestnews

back to a mother load - ISO9000

2010-09-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

flaming hoops and the Third Axle Alternative

on modesty

2010-08-20T19:55:00.000-07:00

The most important conversations, briefings, meeting, and lectures you will ever have will be those you hold with yourself in the privacy of your own mind. - Denis Waitley

fine whine from Adams, not Sam

2010-08-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

I am willing you should call this the Age of Frivolity, as you do,
and would not object if you had named it the Age of Folly, Vice, Frenzy,
Brutality, Daemons, Bonaparte, Tom Paine, or the Age of the Burning Brand from
the Bottomless Pit, or anything but the Age of Reason. I know not whether any
man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs or the
last thirty years than Tom Paine. There can no severer satyr on the age. For
such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf,
never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind,
to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine. -
John Adams comment on the title of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason
[tell us how you really feel, John]

attitude

2010-07-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

notice the close reasoning

the counter argument

In any computer language, scripting or not, statements mimic human speech to the extent that they have a label (a noun), a command name (verb) and arguments (predicates).

In that computer application know as TSO (Time sharing option) which IBM has offered on its mainframes that use the operating systems OS/MVT, SVS (aka OS/VS1), MVS (aka OS/VS2) and now zOS since the middle 1970s, LOGIN is a command at the READY prompt which signons off the current userid and prepares to allow a new access session.

Take a deep breath, hold it, let it out slowly, and get over it.

Calvin and Hobbes pov

Somos el cuerpo de Cristo

2010-07-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

U.S. Catholic has helped Latinos claim their rightful place in the church. Part of a series on U.S. Catholic's 75th anniversary.

There's been a "three-stage Hispanic Awakening," Father Virgilio Elizondo told U.S. Catholic magazine in an October 1981 interview. In the first stage, this country's leading Latino theologian explained, Hispanics were just not accepted. They "were kept out, and they were told that even though they may have been in the present-day United States long before the U.S. immigrated to them, they don't belong here."

In the second stage, Elizondo said, "our people wanted . . . to forget Spanish, change their names, change their religion. Even though some people pretty well succeeded in Americanization, they were still not fully accepted. No matter how well they made it, they were still considered ‘the other,' and that was the beginning of the third stage.

"Now we realize the images of U.S. pluralism: E pluribus unum. We know that we can be fully American without losing our heritage, our religion, or our language. We can continue using our language as the most concrete and deep way of expressing our being."

At the time of the interview, Elizondo was president of San Antonio's Mexican American Cultural Center, the country's premier training ground for Hispanic ministry, which he had founded nine years earlier. In 1983 he would publish his groundbreaking book Galilean Journey: The Mexican American Promise (Orbis), in which he developed his theology of mestizaje, using the Hispanic mingling of cultures, ethnicities, and races as its core theme.

Responding to the resentment that other American Catholics expressed then--and continue to express today--about Hispanics keeping their language and cultural identity, Elizondo explained, "Difference doesn't mean inequality. We want to participate in the way of life of the United States, but we do not want to have to be apologetic about who we are or why we do things the way that we do them."

The growing importance of Hispanics in the U.S. Catholic Church has come as no big surprise to the publishers of this magazine, the Claretians. Since first arriving in San Antonio in 1902, the Claretian Missionaries have been dedicated to ministering to the spiritual and social needs of Hispanic Catholics in the United States.

In 1989 they combined their expertises in Hispanic ministry and in publishing to launch the Hispanic Ministry Resource Center. Under the leadership of its director, Carmen Aguinaco, this branch of Claretian Publications has been a pioneer in producing original, culturally appropriate bilingual publications and products for the Hispanic Catholic market.

Aguinaco, who today serves as the president of the National Catholic Council for Hispanic Ministry, also assists U.S. Catholic as a contributing editor, helping the magazine cover developments in Hispanic ministry as well as include Hispanic voices.

Though usually soft-spoken, Aguinaco minces no words when it comes to Hispanic concerns. In a July 2000 Sounding Board article she called non-Hispanic Catholics to repent of their attitude of "tolerance" toward their Hispanic brothers and sisters in faith: "Tolerance is almost like saying: ‘I don't understand your values or your culture. I don't like you, but, because I am a big person . . . I will tolerate you.' It is condescending and annoying to people on the receiving end. And by encouraging complacency . . . it breeds indifference. It leaves the dominant culture as dominant and only grudgingly makes room for the different."

When it comes to the church, Aguinaco argued, the concept of mere tolerance is preposterous. "Could a heart ever ‘tolerate' a leg? Or a finger tolerate a liver? . . . There are no aliens or guests in the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ was not originally Anglo-with Italians, Hispanics, Asians, or African Americans later transplanted to be rejected or accepted by the host organism. They belong there."

- Meinrad Scherer-Emunds is the executive editor of U.S. Catholic. This article is the sixth in a series to celebrate the 75th anniversary of USCatholic, appearing in the June 2010 issue (Vol. 75, No. 6, page 51). original

as lovely as a tree

2010-06-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

It has happened again. This time the other next-door neighbor is cutting down trees. "trimming" consisted of removing all branches from the lower 80% of the tree.

The only good thing I can say is that the tree leans toward their property. I wonder how long it takes for a tree to die under these circumstances.

Preaching to bishops

2010-03-18T09:18:00.001-07:00

Preaching to bishops, is like farting at skunks. You'll win some battles, but lose the war. - a long-dead churchman q.Thomas Lynch Commonweal ©2010Jan15 CXXXVII.1

post-racial

2010-02-12T20:38:00.000-08:00

say what?

Chris Matthews

2010-01-28T17:55:00.001-08:00

stimulus

http://www.bvblackspin.com/2010/01/28/chris-matthews-msnbc-i-forgot-obama-was-black-for-an-hour/?icid=mainhtmlws-main-ndl1link3http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bvblackspin.com%2F2010%2F01%2F28%2Fchris-matthews-msnbc-i-forgot-obama-was-black-for-an-hour%2F

response

Dear Dr Watkins

I don't own a TV so I see CM only on the TV in the breakroom at work. Personally I would prefer a real news channel like Bloomberg than msnbc.

And no one has ever called me a liberal.

But I think I want to defend CM. Like many whites he is ill at ease when discussing race. Since blacks, like whites, are a very diverse group, it is difficult to know what to say at times that will not offend. He was projecting the joy he felt at the possibility of a post-racial nation onto his political persona.

At my workplace, we have a mix of races and nationalities. At my office, the highest ranking person was a black woman until she retired after having a stroke. The next level down, a white male retired early, leaving another white male and a black male.

During the campaign, there was some felt but not well articulated tension between the races. Since the election, none is evident.

As a white male, I can tell you it is not appreciated when race is always brought to the table. There are issues that are non-racial.

Dr K

the votes are in

2010-01-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/12/30/the-top-15-winners-and-losers-of-2009/

resurrection?

2010-01-16T10:28:00.001-08:00

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/16/the-popes-newspaper-goes-pop/

the new compassion

2010-01-16T10:19:00.000-08:00

kicking someone while their down

outrageous

2010-01-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/investing/the-401-k-sucker-punch/19310100/

best of the worst media 2009

2010-01-05T19:59:00.000-08:00

or is it worst of the worst

historic flu pandemic death rates

2009-12-15T18:39:00.000-08:00

1918 ~ 1/40

1957/8 ~ 1/500

1967/8 ~ 1/500

2009 US ~ 1/2000
UK ~ 1/4000

source

yet another blaming the victim

2009-12-10T20:03:00.001-08:00

http://www.parentdish.com/2009/12/09/christians-to-blame-for-secular-christmas/?icid=mainhtmlws-main-ndl3link4http%3A%2F%2Fwww.parentdish.com%2F2009%2F12%2F09%2Fchristians-to-blame-for-secular-christmas%2F

you don't have to agree with everything this woman has to say, but

2009-11-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

most of it is good and she says it well.

my reply

Well written Ms Goldstein. I do not agree with some of the asides, but the thrust is appropriate.

The bottom line is his child and that child's inheritance from his father. Which is better: to have money or self-respect and dignity?

The root value is: it is better to teach your child values than to give gold.

Or are "values" a dirty word?

illiterates and the intellectally deficient

2009-11-12T19:34:00.000-08:00

oh my God, this reads like someone overheard small talk between illiterates and the intellectally deficient on the east wing of the psychiatric ward!! Fortunately for all US citizen the SSA systems work magnitudes better than the above link. - a senior IT person

if you are lucky you learn something new everyday

2009-11-10T20:04:00.001-08:00

down in the valley

if I had paid attention to Fr Rooks during logic class

2009-11-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

I would know the name of this logical fallacy.

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer
is:Because the animals are like us.Ask the experimenters why it is morally
OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is:Because the animals are not
like us.Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. -
Charles R. Magel, professor of philosophy

In the first case, the similiarity is physiological and chemical. In the second case, the difference is on the level of consciousness. The argument is intellectual dishonesty using bait-and-switch tactics. Clever but no cigar!

a public service message from the Kat

2009-11-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

sing a new song unto the Lord

2009-11-05T18:33:00.000-08:00

I am just getting around to the August issue and have been pondering the articles on liturgy.

It seems to me "reverence" is a code word for "quiet."

I am registered in what I think is the largest parish in my diocese 6000 families (give or take), 2/3 Spanish speaking. I have been in multi-lingual / multi-cultural parishes before. Most non-US and non-European liturgies are quite lively. Emotion is on the surface. I have heard criticism of that and "reverence" is one of the words in the conversation. Are we afraid of the "otherness" that goes beyond mere language and into culture?

While I dislike music with excessive percussion, I find all music styles appropriate for worship. As the choir director in the parish I sing at says, "as long as it is good music."

The article by Ted Rosean appears to be dismissive of diversity of worship styles. I surprised that in IL he has not experienced the various Byzantine liturgical styles. While I lived in Pittsburgh, the Byzantine archeparch lived just down Perrysville Ave. The Roman Rite bishop lived on the other side of the Allegheny River.

Our church has wonderfully diverse history from Jesus to the present. Would that we would not disown any of it.

coming attraction - another culture war

2009-10-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/slavishly-literal-translation-missal-criticized

after reading the article, search for the word Joseph as in St Joseph Missal.

my reply to that post (which was suppressed) was roughly:

roflmao

I would buy such a book as described for my children and grandchildren. We could call it the Bl. Angelo Giuseppe Roncali Missal.

Or maybe try one of those new churches that use the Book of Common Prayer. They take liturgy VERY seriously.

further thoughts

Nothing can stop this steamroller except Ruah - the Spirit of God. Oremus!

pax Christi resurrexit (probably wrong ending) vobiscum

have a cow man!

2009-10-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.uscatholic.org/blog/2009/10/simpsons-vs-donohue-whos-gone-too-far

so if the music were really music

2009-10-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

how could it be used to torture people?

comment on work

2009-10-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot. - Scott Adams q.PhilGlowatz@VERIZON.NET uga2009Oct14

Why is it that excellence in education scares some people?

2009-10-12T17:02:00.000-07:00

Not frustration with you! Rather, frustration with the powers-that-be here at the middle school where I work. For over a year, I've shared my love for A.Word.A.Day with my students and I have had much positive feedback regarding the words, the clever and creative weekly themes, and the downright interesting, thought-provoking word choices. But a single parent has complained and now I find myself in a morass of having to justify what I do in the class, provide documentation that shows there is, indeed, value to what we do in class, to ultimately prove that our attempts to "control" language via ANY vocabulary program will always be imperfect because the evolution of communication is ongoing and, in the end, best experienced rather than caged. Sigh. It seems that there's no incentive to think outside boundaries or to innovate. It appears that people want something simple, quick, and cut and dried. Well, whatever may be, I will continue to anticipate the words with eagerness. I guess I must accept that at times, my views are "antipodal" to those of others.

Ironically, the parent's complaint is based on the argument that the words are not usable for the kids, that they're not grade appropriate, which I know is something similar that you all at Wordsmith.org have experience with. Also, that the use of the Wordsmith.org material is from a website "not approved", by the district, and that it is not entirely in line with the school curriculum. And the entirely laughable notion that the kids may be exposed to "inappropriate material"! I thought that the basis of ANY language arts curriculum is an exploration of language and the interesting patterns that we notice along the way. Is there anyone in this world who is 100% fluent with any language?

Really, if this is examined closely, this incident is not about vocabulary, or curriculum or any of the other stated things. Rather, it's about authority and power. It's about people whose self-esteem and confidence level are based solely on how high they can make people jump. Sad.

The kids and I discussed "Beau Brummell" the other day and they created visual representations of the word.
Update:
Having had a one and a half hour meeting with our school's language arts supervisor, a meeting replete with many, many examples of students' work that clearly demonstrates an active interaction with the vocabulary words from Wordsmith.org, I was told that administration in the building, "will not approve your vocabulary program". I am flabbergasted at such a statement given that administration has no clue as to what my vocabulary program entails, nor have they shown the least bit of interest in finding out in the past 1+ years that I've been running my program. So, I am writing to you for advice. I need to know a really terrific word that is synonymous with, "manufactured", since it seems that the so-called leaders of the school are devoted, lock, stock, and barrel to such an approach. I am stunned that such obtuseness has become so prevalent and in my 17 years as an educator I am speechless regarding the state of middle school education in my neck of the woods. - James Eng q.wordsmith.org

If you agree ths is outrageous, spread the word and send the guy some encouragement.

I was a good boy

2009-09-26T18:52:00.000-07:00

I bought a reading light for my bed. It was a fluorescent. In small print in the instructions was a warning that if the bulb had a symbol Hg, the bulb contained mercury and need special disposal.

Wait a minute! Mercury is a toxic poison. If I break the bulb in my house I might as well call hazmat because mercury is a liquid that can get into rugs and in the cracks of wood floors. Just how is this better for the environment.

Office Slogans That Inspire

2009-09-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
Never quit until you have another job. [wise words]
Work harder slaves!
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
If you can read this, you're not working!
Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away!
Go the extra mile...it makes your boss look like an incompetent slacker. [roflmao - so true]
Pride, commitment, teamwork - words we use to get you to work for free.

Succeed in spite of management. [wise words]
Work: It isn't just for sleeping anymore.
There are two kinds of people in life: people who like their jobs, and people who don't work here anymore.

- Bill Stebbins uga2009Sep11

putting lipstick on a cobra

2009-08-05T17:44:00.001-07:00

http://www.newsmax.com//insidecover/talibam_field_manual/2009/07/30/241800.html

roflmao - math/statistical humor

2009-07-28T18:36:00.000-07:00

http://www.xkcd.com/605/

M$ dissed

2009-07-28T18:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.xkcd.com/612/

Blue Dogs & health care reform

2009-07-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

not friends of this pup

sick puppies

2009-07-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

Love in 2-D

doing science as competitive sport

2009-07-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21angier.html?_r=2

the state of the world education

2009-07-27T18:34:00.001-07:00

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47693

a view to a gift

2009-07-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

the windup and the pitch

the pup swings

Those offended by this gift might want to comment on the presence on the grounds of the GA capitol of a statue of Thomas E Watson, the man who lead the charge to lynch Leo Frank. For context, TEW is quoted as saying "in the South, we have to lynch [the Negro] occasionally, and flog him, now and then, to keep him from blaspheming the Almighty, by his conduct, on account of his smell and his color." (Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Law School in the ajc, date unknown)
While studying science, one of the principles we lived by was that the answer doesn't matter if you ask the wrong question. If we ask "to what use might this land be put?", I would suggest a center that studies bigotry and violence and their effect on society. A gallery with visuals might create a space wherein that which we abhor, but which has and does happen, might have light shed on it to dispel the darkness. We may not be able to eliminate darkness, but that does not mean it is not helpful, good even, to light one candle.

lies, damned lies and the facts

2009-07-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/08/sarah-barracuda-palin-and-the-piranhas-of-the-press/?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link4http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicsdaily.com%2F2009%2F07%2F08%2Fsarah-barracuda-palin-and-the-piranhas-of-the-press%2F

splain this to me Lucy!

2009-07-07T19:06:00.000-07:00

cutting tax incentives for employer-provided insurance is intended to
discourage unnecessary use of medical services - Eugene Steuerle, vice
president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a non-profit federal budget
watchdog group q.http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3wUXb42NPX0

it's not just a subprime mess

2009-07-07T18:58:00.001-07:00

http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/mortgage_loans/2009/07/07/232687.html

M$ changed out

2009-07-06T19:35:00.000-07:00

http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform

honorary whiteboard membership

2009-07-02T21:52:00.000-07:00

andrew would love this

and possibly this

the sky is falling, the sky is falling, said big pig

2009-07-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

elephant afraid of mouse who roars

whiteboard #9

2009-07-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

the last of the first series is from me - it's a graphic and will require imagination - the letters NFC in bold and surrounded by a red circle with a red slash through it - the letters stand for the phrase No Clue - it means down with people who have no clue such as this guy

previous

whiteboard #8

2009-06-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

I'm a nobody
Nobody's perfect
Therefore I'm perfect

next

previous

whiteboard #7

2009-06-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

This is not Burger King, Fedex or the Library of Congress. So we don't do it your way, we don't deliver it overnight, and we don't know everything.

what's especially interesting about this entry is that the person whose whiteboard this is on is in a service group that delivers electronically reports overnight. as for knowing everything, we are in IT after all! :-)

next

previous

whiteboard #6

2009-06-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

next

previous

Too Many Failures with Faster, Better, Cheaper

2009-06-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

NASA Report

whiteboard #5

2009-06-26T18:34:00.000-07:00

When in doubt, take the batteries out.

next

previous

whiteboard #4

2009-06-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

When you make your mark on the world, watch out for guys with erasers.

next

previous

Sic

2009-06-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Setting aside Coulter's tongue-in-cheek, rhetorical gamesmanship, the likening of Tiller's murder to a late-term abortion is an interesting tact. - David Knowles

There should be an award for being able to use the word "tact" in the same sentence as Ann Coulter without using a negative. On the other hand, what word did the writer mean? tack? tactic?

Oh heck this is the inet. What need have we of good anything. Gresham rules!

whiteboard #3

2009-06-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

Puns are for groan men only.

next

previous

whiteboard #2

2009-06-18T19:04:00.000-07:00

Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

next

previous

new series - whiteboard

2009-06-17T22:41:00.001-07:00

In the cube next to mine is a white board on which the locals write whatever comes to mind. Amazingly, things are seldom erased - even by management:

Some men are discovered, others are found out.

pigs

2009-05-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

The carelessness of some people is very annoying. Take recycling. I have worked w/recycling Al cans at both church and work. Why do people throw trash in the recycling containers?

Now the green committee at work has placed cardboard boxes in the break rooms for recycling plastic containers. No rollout. Just shazam! Result -- people put garbage in the containers.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing right!

That'll do, Pig!

obscure computer humor

2009-04-23T19:43:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a while back.

Background:

DUQN is Duquesne Systems, a former software vendor (I once worked for them - good company w/good people working on good mainframe software products)

Morino is Morino Associates, a former software vendor

Legent is a former software vendor formed by the merger of those two

Goal a former software vendor bought by Legent

dwarf is one of many small former software vendors bought by Legent

CA is Compter Associates, a software vendor that bought Legent

the math of it all expressed as computer code:

DUQN + Morino = Legent + excitement due to culture clash + 0*progress + bad management

Do i=1 to n

Legent + dwarf = Legent + little result

Enddo

Legent + Goal = Legent + silly t-shirt + lost benefits + layoff(s) + semi-chaos + more bad management

Legent + CA + financial fraud = CA + large job loss + nice severance + lousy service + pissed off (American English) customers + no indictments (statute of limitations ran out too soon)

(c) 2007 DataStructuresHouston

for gatito

2009-03-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

Cat Got Your Fish?

good bile

2009-03-22T20:00:00.001-07:00

Toxic R Us

a Katrina moment for MrO

2009-03-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?

new fraud in case you are unsatisfied

2009-03-22T19:47:00.001-07:00

Red Flags That Muni Investors Can’t See

followup

2009-03-22T19:20:00.000-07:00

I just had my laptop memory upgraded by the Geek Squad @ Best Buy. Purchase of the year. Should have had it done sooner.

The kid who was the team leader looks geek, talks geek. But he is a college graduate w/degree in accounting. Has had interviews but no job offers. He is now taking a masters (MBA?).

I asked him why he was working for GS and he said he needed a job. Engaged to be married. Bummer dude. I told him to stay in IT until something opens up.

Wish I had had a job like that when I was in college. Well, ok, I was in IT, called EAM back then.

previous post

Symbionese Liberation Parolee

2009-03-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

rich and liberal gets her out of jail and out of CA

those who forget history are doomed to relive it

2009-02-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

Business Schools Rocked by Economic Crisis

Sarah Palin

2009-02-15T19:48:00.000-08:00

Why does the Democratic party attack th governor of AK and why are they so successful in using her as a fund raising point of darkness?

First she is a woman and a Republican. Teh Democrats think they are the party of and for women and resent any poaching in their preserve. This is a mirror image of the Democrat response to the existance of a black Republican, or even a Republican who is a person of color. How dare the Republican Party try to be as broad as the Democratic Party?

Second she is a woman and a mother. She has a career. She is successful. How dare she! The tisking directed at her daughter's pregnancy was criticism of mothering skills. Assuming this is fair game, when has this ever been done against the Democrats? Was Rose Kennedy criticised for the philandering of one son or the questionable lack of taking responsibility by another?

Third and least evident but most important is the First Gentleman of AK. No one has talked much about the fact that he is a blue-collar worker -- and a union member. A successful career woman with a blue-collar husband -- outrageous. That is not a model the Party of Women want to catch on. Next thing you know there will be Republican candidates who are blue collar workers -- or horror of horrors -- union members. Not only will union members be voting for Republican candidates which is bad enough, the candidate will be one of them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a life-long Republican and white collar worker with advanced degrees. My children are a Sgt in the Infantry, and a techer of disadvantaged children with two children of her own. Their spouses are a white collar government worker with two children of her own, and a former blue collar worker in construction now doing whatever can be done to run a construction site without having a degree.

shocked, simply shocked

2009-01-12T20:29:00.000-08:00

all God's children

why does fruit start to rot while still hard?

2008-12-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

In this case large, dark plums.

And why does fruit no start to rot from the inside out?

particularly pears

Election Loophole Allows Non Citizens to Vote

2008-11-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

And in Chicago this is news how? The dead have traditionally voted. I suspect both Mayor Daleys still vote. The current one and his father.

I would be interested in seeeing a definition of excessive recycling

2008-11-22T08:22:00.001-08:00

WORLD WIDE WORDS ISSUE 611 Saturday 1 November 2008

2. Turns of Phrase: Carborexia
------------------------------
To exhibit "carborexia" is to have an extreme "dark green" attitude to environmental issues. This can show itself in several ways, such as excessive recycling, but in particular it refers to an obsessive desire to reduce one's personal carbon footprint. The term first appeared in an article in the NYTimes on Oct17. The adjective is "carborexic".

richard the (apparently) dark green pup
Kennesaw GA

and I thought that smell was from the beans at lunch

2008-07-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

All substances are either growing or decaying at any one point in time. Human beings are no exception. If we are not growing, then we are decaying. - Thomas D. Willhite _Quotes_

[typical oversimplification - complex organisms have parts that are doing both - we are all in some sense "dying"]

Dear Al Gore:

2008-07-17T20:48:00.000-07:00

[context]

Who is your science advisor? Whoever they are, if anyone is, I hope you are not paying them. They are not worth it. But with your wealth that may not be an issue.

By the numbers.

1) Wind - a good thing. I was on the coast of OR last week and the wind was constant. Wind is good for OR. Except the noise pollution. Low frequency. Penetrating. Carries a long way. One reason wind farms are in out of the way places. Like offshore. And in deserts.

Then there is the visual pollution. I personally find them beautiful. Not everyone does. People sue their neighbors when they install a wind turbine.

2) Sun - a good thing. Active (photovoltaic) or passive (various) solar is a good thing -- if you have sun. Many places have lots of clouds lots of the time. Pittsburgh in the winter.

btw do you know how much pollution is made making photovoltaic devices?

3) Water - a good thing. Not evenly distributed either in space or time. Heaven knows GA is way too dry right now. And the ecologists would like to tear down dams to return rivers to their natural state. Al -- you're from TN. Can you spell snail darter? Little rascal shut down the Tellico dam.

So what we need is a reliable base line plant that just keeps on producing when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine and its way too dry.

4) Nuclear - a good thing. If you remember to build plants with engineering and not emotion. How do you get the most expensive, least safe plant? Build them like the US has -- unique plans for each plant. For once the French are very smart. Get a set plans. Build every plant according to the same plans. Each one is cheaper than the last one. Ask Henry Ford about it.

5) Coal - a good thing if you have enough water to cleanup the air pollution they produce. And if you make sure you plant trees to offset the CO₂. Lots of trees. Not grass - trees.

6) Trees - yes trees - we can now make ethanol from cellulose! Nuff said. And see numbers 5 and 7 for bonus.

7) Conservation - a kilowatt saved is a kilowatt earned. See Ben Franklin. Plant trees to shade houses. Shutters to cool houses. Insulation. Sweaters in winter and shorts in summer. Fans in summer. Better house design. Brick on inside not outside. Don't cool/heat rooms not used. Cars that don't suck gas. Mine gets 25-30 m/g-- double previous van.

8) Oil - a bad thing. Not enough. Save it for energy needs that can't use the above. If you think $4/gallon is too high wait a year. But be sitting down. This is the beginning of the end.

9) Gas - a bad thing for boiler fuel. We need it for chemical feedstock. Think plastics.

Fine whine list.

pov

2008-06-25T20:59:00.000-07:00

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from ...

... magic. - Arthur C. Clarke
... a rigged demo. - button q.John McKown ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Anatomy of a runaway IT project

2008-06-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

Anatomy of a runaway IT project

on computer software licencing

2008-04-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

BOFH: Licensing model

KJR themes in the news

2008-04-08T09:41:00.000-07:00

4/7/2008

Favorite themes from Keep the Joint Running in the news:

Zero Tolerance Policies: The use of process is the difference between effective management and bureaucracy. Effective managers keep the goal paramount. Processes guide action, help the organization learn, and are ignored whenever they don't fit the situation.

For bureaucrats, the process is the point. Following the steps is all that matters, never mind the outcome.

In another example of zero tolerance being a synonym for bureaucracy, we have a six-year-old boy who swatted a schoolmate on the bottom.

The principal, citing the school's zero tolerance policy for sexual touching, called the police. They, unlike the principal, showed good sense and dropped the matter. Sadly they did not show more good sense by arresting the principle on general principles.

Internal customers also made the news. Well, not exactly. Misuse of the word "customer" is what made the news.

Customers are properly defined as the people who make buying decisions. Many business consultants define it, incorrectly, as those whose inboxes receive the contents of your outbox.

That use of "customer" is an analogy, and as the Economist points out, "Being an analogy ... is not the same thing as being the same thing."

This particular analogy caused serious flight delays over the past couple of weeks. A story brought to my attention by sharp-eyed subscriber J. MacKenzie (Airline Safety Alarms Unheeded Washington Post 2008Apr4), reports that FAA inspectors were told the airlines are ... yes, that's right ... their customers.

More than told. When they tried to enforce the safety rules their supervisors sided with the carriers, threatening the inspectors (according to testimony before the House Transportation Committee).

The good news is, the FAA's top safety inspector isn't giving the usual "few bad apples" speech. He's acknowledging a systemic problem. That's an excellent first step in accomplishing a useful result.

The FAA episode reinforces the importance of industry regulation -- a concept that has become unfashionable over the past few decades.

Industry regulation is needed when the results of pure, unfettered competition are not in the public interest. It fell out of fashion because its downsides -- added expense, extra steps, lots and lots of paperwork, and entanglement in government bureaucracies --received excessive emphasis, while propagandists explained away its obvious successes (one example: The Cuyahoga River is no longer flammable).

Speaking of deregulation mania having resulted in even more inconvenience than the regulations themselves, the tipping-domino-like state of the world economy is also in the news. In one of the most insightful articles yet written on the subject (Chaos on Wall Street Fortune 2008Mar31), Allan Sloan dissects both the situation and what we can and should do about it.

Most past downturns were caused by a weak economy dragging down the markets. This one is different: Weak markets are dragging down the economy. The last time this happened? 1929.

As Sloan convincingly demonstrates, you can't create a mess like this with just one mistake. It took several. One was, clearly, a too-weak regulatory environment.

Following the Great Depression came minimum capital ratio regulations for banks -- basically, how much cash they must have to cover their risks. And only banks, even though brokerages and other financial institutions are now allowed to act in bank-like ways.

The result: The bank-like entities don't even know their risks. Many of their "assets" are portfolios of portfolios of portfolios of loans, packaged as investment vehicles.

It's the financial equivalent of spaghetti code. It works until it stops working, and once it does it's very hard to repair.

What possible relevance does all of this have for a working CIO with a job to do? Quite a lot, as it happens.

The importance of eschewing (gesundheit!) zero-tolerance policies is, I hope, clear. Policy is a poor substitute for clear principles and good judgment, and should be reserved for situations where everyone must be treated exactly the same, always, rather than being treated fairly and well.
Treating those who use IT's services with respect, without pretending they're customers, is a key to the ongoing success of most 21st century CIOs. Those who work together in a business should collaborate as peers, not serve each other as suppliers and customers.
Recent KJRs have emphasized the desirability of deregulating PCs. As with business deregulation, PC deregulation has a number of benefits.

Also as with business deregulation, once a good thing starts to be too much of a good thing, it can become a bad thing.

Balance matters.

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

y

2008-04-08T09:40:00.000-07:00

3/31/2008

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

x

2008-04-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

3/24/2008

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Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

I belong to a prayer group

2008-04-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

Over the 8 weeks it has met, the number attending has dwindled by 1/2 for various reasons. I said tonight that we should call everyone who has ever attended or expressed interest to attend, and invite them next. Consensus was that we tried a couple of times and that is enough.

Well it isn't. The "new evangelization" is not a half-hearted try.

And while I'm on my high horse, having the group meet in upscale restaurants in the vicinity of the church is neither a good group maintenance practice nor even Christian. When Christ fed the people he neither charged nor met where people could not afford to meet.

and now something completely different

2008-03-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

This guy whines, but oh what a whine

a guy who likes the previous guy

To lock or not to lock - it's a deeper question than you thought

2008-03-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

3/17/2008

I had a plan.

Last week's column listed three factors to take into account in deciding how far you should open up or lock down desktop PCs: The company's size, how heavily it is regulated, and the role of the individual employee. Bigger, more heavily regulated companies tend to need more tightly controlled PCs. The same is true of employee roles that are more regimented and less flexible.

I'd planned to continue this week with three more factors. One was going to be company strategy. Specifically, companies that sell strongly commoditized products -- products whose only differentiation is price -- have to focus heavily on cost control, meaning lockdown makes sense.

So much for planning: On reflection, I don't buy it.

I don't care if your company manufactures cinder blocks, or buys and sells lentils. It doesn't matter if the product itself is a commodity. Any company that wants to enjoy continued success needs to be on a constant lookout for new and better ways of getting things done.

There are two ways to go about finding these improvements. One is top-down planning. The other is bottom-up initiative. Since the business case for opening up PCs is built on the importance of bottom-up initiative, this is a subject we need to explore in depth.

Top-down planning has the advantage over bottom-up initiative when it comes to engineering elegance. Since the only way to optimize the whole is to sub-optimize the parts, business leaders should engineer the corporation from the top down, according to a carefully rendered program of progressive decomposition -- from core process to sub-processes to sub-sub-processes to activities to tasks to procedures, all carefully orchestrated and controlled.

It's the organization as machine. The gears mesh, the shafts turn, the subassemblies integrate, and everything hums. IT locks down the desktops because any variation from the grand design can only optimize a part at the expense of the whole.

Now imagine you're an employee who performs actual, for example, work. You know how the work gets done because you do it every day. You see an opportunity -- a way to do it better.

Which is too bad, because better people than you have already designed the whole company. There's no room for bottom-up initiative. How could there be? Change anywhere could unbalance the whole machine.

Sure sounds convincing, doesn't it? Well, no, it doesn't. Company processes aren't as carefully engineered as all that. They aren't perfectly optimized from a global, top-down perspective.

The situation is messier than that.

In a typical company, core processes ... the processes that form the heart of the business ... are well-engineered and well supported by the company's enterprise systems. It's hard to escape this conclusion because by definition, a company's core processes are what give it a competitive advantage. That being the case, they will have received the most attention, brainpower, and investment.

Move away from the core processes and you typically find solutions that are more ad hoc in nature. That makes sense. Company leaders should invest more time and attention in competitive differentiators than in business responsibilities that support business responsibilities that support business responsibilities that support competitive differentiators.

So we'd expect to find more opportunities for bottom-up innovation in non-core areas of responsibility than in core processes. This logic dictates a policy that locks down most rigidly the PCs of employees who play primary roles in core and near-core business functions and processes. The PCs of employees whose responsibilities are farther away from the core would be more open.

This makes for a neat, tidy little business paradigm, not too different from Geoffrey Moore's "Keep the core and outsource the rest."

Don't trust tidy little business paradigms. Too often they are on the wrong side of the line that separates the simple from the simplistic.

Here's one of the nasty little conundrums (conundra?) that get in the way. Imagine your company's core and supporting processes really are carefully engineered and perfectly balanced. If that's the case, then in addition to perfect optimization, the company will have achieved perfect stagnation and stasis.

Look at any large organization that's optimized from the top down and you'll find it almost has to discourage front-line innovation. How do you innovate in a world where, when Manufacturing sneezes, Marketing has to say "gesundheit"?

The price to be paid for tight integration is rigidity, and a powerful resistance to change. Today's efficiency almost guarantees tomorrow's obsolescence.

On the other hand, advocating inefficiency and poor business integration just doesn't sit very well.

Do you still think desktop policy is a simple matter?

Think again.

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Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

Deciding how far to open the portal door

2008-03-17T15:35:00.000-07:00

3/10/2008

What is it about vitamins?

When I was a kid they were chewable. Then I grew up and they were small, coated, and easily swallowed.

Now they make me feel like Mr. Ed: They're the size of horse pills, and if (when) they get stuck on the way down I taste alfalfa, or maybe straw.

Speaking of things that are hard to swallow, correspondent Mark Sowash made me aware that, since at least last October, Gartner has been predicting increased employee ownership of PCs (Ready or not, here comes user PC choice Computerworld 10/15/2007).

There is, of course, a difference between prediction and advocacy. Still, fair's fair -- Gartner got there first (ouch!) and I agree (the horror!).

The Computerworld article describes a 250-employee consulting company that's giving employee PC ownership a try.

It isn't going to be a free-for-all. The company is establishing standards for all PCs that connect to the corporate network, especially for security. It will scan devices for compliance before they connect. It's moving its enterprise applications to web-based access to keep enterprise data in the data center.

Sounds well-thought-out and workable to me.

Following last week's column on this subject (Getting to 21st century IT Keep the Joint Running 3/3/2008) I added two posts on Advice Line, the question-and-answer blog I do for InfoWorld (Can virtualization resolve the IT/end-user disconnect? 2/29/2008 and Getting to 21st century IT - User-owned PCs? 3/4/2008), asking for comments. The response was enthusiastic, perceptive, argumentative at times, and in all respects worthwhile.

I was struck by something: The positions taken were generally rooted in a hidden assumption about the nature of the workplace and employee. Those advocating employee ownership, for example, tended to be travelers or knowledge workers who are expected to creatively solve problems for their employers. Many of those who rejected the idea (and the idea of significantly loosened controls) support production workers with well-defined responsibilities that are entirely supported by the company's enterprise applications.

The more I think about the subject the more I'm convinced the right answer isn't yes or no. It's "it depends." This is, in retrospect, obvious. It's also woefully incomplete, because the moment you say the words, you have to then explain what "it" depends on.

We'll start the ball rolling this week with three factors: size, role, and regulation.

Size: Small companies tend to succeed through individual initiative, employing generalists who understand a broad swath of what the company does. Most "business process" happens inside one employee's head.

As companies grow they gain economies of scale. To get them, they have to standardize what was idiosyncratic, whether the subject is business process, HR policy or PC configurations. Employee roles specialize, and what used to happen in one person's head now happens through defined workflows.

It's a sad trade-off: With success comes increasing bureaucracy, because the alternative is having costs increase as fast as revenue, or even faster.

Role: Some jobs are defined by their lack of clear definition. While the desired outcome might be clear, the means for achieving it is not. The list might include sales, marketing, consulting, IT developer (yes, IT developer) and varying kinds of analyst.

If you can't predict what someone will have to do to get the job done it seems futile to lock down a specific toolkit and say, "that's all you need."

Other jobs are rigidly defined and narrowly focused. Call center agents come to mind. While they might, and often are called on to be flexible in how they converse with callers, when the time comes to pull data out of the company's systems and put new data in, you want every agent to use the exact same tools in the exact same way.

Regulation: Some businesses are more highly regulated than others. This is neither bad nor good (I remember the pre-environmental-regulation United States and like what we have now much better). It's a fact.

Another fact: Regulators care about compliance and only compliance. If compliance means a reduced ability to innovate, too bad. HIPAA regulators care about protecting patient data. The impact on creativity elsewhere in the company isn't their concern.

The Big Finish: The smaller the company, the broader and fuzzier the role, and the less regulated the industry, the more likely it is you can open things up.

The really tough challenge is figuring out what you can do, if you're big and highly regulated, to provide as much empowerment as possible. After all, the people who run big companies rarely want to preside over bureaucracies.

They just need an alternative.

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

stupid user tricks

2008-03-06T14:18:00.000-08:00

pogue.blogs.nytimes.com

Getting to 21st century IT

2008-03-04T07:53:00.001-08:00

3/3/2008

When is a computer not a computer?

Answer: When it's a portal to an entire universe, as I pointed out last week with perhaps-excessive lyricism. Lyrical or not, quite a few correspondents agreed with the column's core arguments:

When using their home computers, end-users experience a vast array of possibilities, but at the office they operate in a very constrained space; and
Increasingly, "work/life balance" is giving way to "live your life wherever you are."

Many, misreading last week's column as advocacy of a free-for-all in business computing, were horrified.

My point was something different: This, like it or not, is the situation. IT needs to figure out how to adapt, instead of establishing policies and procedures predicated on a world that no longer exists.

Look, for example, at an increasingly common class of employee -- the traveler. Few among us still entertain the notion that this is a cushy, glamorous existence. Travel delays, increasingly cramped airline seating, the need to schlep one's office and wardrobe along, and the rigors of threat levels eternally Orange combine to make business travel an annoying lifestyle at best.

Add to this the typical corporate no-personal-use computing policy. In practical terms it means no ability to answer personal e-mail for days at a time; no right to use the Internet for non-business purposes, even after business hours; no right to download music and add it to an MP3 player to help pass the time during the next cross-country flight.

In many companies, it appears corporate IT expects travelers to bring two laptops along -- one personal, the other corporate. Very nice.

Here's one more, related point: Many IT end-user support organizations are trapped in the "Whiteout-on-a-screen" mentality while many of the alleged Whiteout users routinely participate in (for example) on-line gaming environments with sophisticated interfaces they nonchalantly figure out on their own, without thinking much of it.

This is the challenge. The question is what to do about it.

Correspondent Richard Resnick provided the most extreme suggestion: No corporate-owned PCs at all. Let employees buy their own -- whatever they think they need to do their jobs. It's Nicholas Carr's vision in reverse: Only central IT remains. Employees take over ownership of the periphery, including responsibility for their own PC support.

It's an intriguing alternative, and one not easily envisioned. Certainly, the nature of the protections IT would institute would be very different given the change in boundary. I leave the specifics as an exercise for the reader.

Another correspondent, Will Pearce, provided a less radical alternative: Virtualize. Give end-users two virtual machines.

IT has valid concerns about having to support systems on which end-users have installed unapproved software, so one virtual machine would be buttoned-down, corporate, protected, fully supported, and strongly connected.

End-users and business managers, on the other hand, frequently discover useful software tools that are not on IT's list of supported applications. Enter the Sandbox -- a place end-users can install and use business-focused applications IT doesn't and doesn't need to support. If they work without creating conflicts with other applications, more power to everyone, and IT might even add them to the supported list.

If they don't ... it's the Sandbox. All the user has to do is switch over to the corporate virtual machine to continue working. All IT has to do is to restore the standard Sandbox virtual machine.

I'd add a third virtual machine as well. It would be open, personal, still reasonably protected ... but unsupported beyond restoring the virtual machine, and kept outside the corporate firewall. Travelers and other employees in the growing population of those who donate personal time to their employers would be able to use their personal virtual machine to take care of personal business without impinging on corporate IT.

Even if you ignore the issues discussed this week and last, virtualization would appear to provide an easier-to-administer alternative to maintaining standard images for restoring hashed-up systems. It certainly seems like a workable technological core for handling the challenges discussed last week and here.

End-user ownership of the periphery is a fascinating long-shot. Virtualization is a promising but unproven possibility. Entirely different alternatives might prove superior for supporting the 21st century workforce.

Underneath the specific solutions is the contrast between two corporate attitudes. One considers employees a necessary evil -- unavoidable, but suspect; untrustworthy entities from which the corporation must be protected. The other recognizes employees as the source of all success.

IT's response to the 21st century workforce depends on which sort of employee companies think they have.

So, as it happens, does every company's long-term financial success.

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

The portal

2008-02-26T08:58:00.000-08:00

2/25/2008

In 1980, a 3278 green-screen terminal cost (as I recall) about $6,000, not including the mainframe it attached to.

Along came the PC. It cost half that, and was self-sufficient.

IT tried to keep them out. They put too much power in the hands of ignorant users and you couldn't do serious computing on them anyway. Yes, the IT authorities made both arguments, simultaneously, and didn't even blush.

PCs leaked in despite IT's opinion. Distributed computing leaked in too. The economics made them unavoidable. Various pundits claim otherwise, but they are comparing the costs of PCs and distributed computing with the competition-deflated costs of mainframe computing, not the pre-PC high-margin early-1980s price tag.

Fast-forward to now. You can buy a 150 gigabyte drive for less than $100. For another hundred bucks you can buy a USB external disk to back it up.

For 150 backed-up gigabytes, IT would charge $1,500 per year.

From my backup drive I can restore any file in five minutes. IT would take more than a day. Self-service? Forget it.

In 1980, IT completely locked down the 3278 terminal, by definition. IT now locks down the PC, not by definition but by choice. Meanwhile, at home, people install whatever they please, and in spite of what the doomsayers tell you, few run into insurmountable problems. Those who do sheepishly ask their teen-aged children to help them. Their teenagers give them the same eyeball rolls they get from the Help Desk staff at work, but much better service.

Nothing in this comparison is fair. Fair has nothing to do with it. My PC at home beckons, saying "Yes, you can do that too." My PC at work says, "No you can't." Your end-users experience that contrast every working day.

Preaching to them that "it's a business computer, to be used only for business purposes," isn't persuasive, because they know something we in IT often ignore: It isn't really a computer.

Oh, technically that's what it is, but technically doesn't matter. The PC is a portal to a universe of possibilities. While the word "cyberspace" has fallen out of use, the idea of cyberspace is alive, well, and built into the perception of everyone who looks at a screen while manipulating a keyboard and mouse.

It might be time ... past time ... for IT to look at its job in a new way.

Try this on for size: Imagine you ran IT as if it embraced this PC-as-portal perspective. As if IT's job was to manage one corner of that universe of possibilities.

What would you do differently?

Let's take it a step further. Let's look, not just at the PC but about work as a whole from the employee's point of view. That shouldn't be too hard. We in IT are employees too, when we aren't busy being IT professionals.

From the employee's point of view the job is, in addition to being a way to earn a living, a place for: social interaction; developing the self-esteem that comes from creating value and achieving important things; structuring time and staying occupied; exercising their brains and keeping them from becoming stale.

Few employees draw a hard boundary around their work life, keeping it psychologically distinct and independent of the rest of their life. They are the same people in the office as out of the office.

We in IT are stuck in a 1950s industrial view of the workplace. Much of the workforce is post-industrial in perspective. They don't "achieve work/life balance." They just live their lives, wherever they happen to be at the moment -- sometimes in the office, sometimes out of it.

In the office they research reports, create presentations, check their investment portfolios, answer business e-mail, answer personal e-mail, make business phone calls, answer personal phone calls.

Out of the office they think about the reports, edit the presentations, check their investment portfolios, answer business e-mail, answer personal e-mail, make business phone calls, and answer personal phone calls.

Employees live a significant part of their lives in the universe of possibilities they reach through their PCs, their Blackberries, the Treos, their iPhones.

The economic gap between self-sufficient computing and central IT that drove the PC revolution is back. The existential gulf separating IT's perception of work from the employee perception of work is new, and wider. We in IT had better figure it out, or business users will figure it out without us.

Because for us, a PC is an expensive, hard-to-support business resource. But for them it's a portal to an entire universe they can buy at Costco for a few hundred bucks.

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

Capability Maturity Model revisited

2008-02-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

2/18/2008

I wrote harsh words about the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) (The connection between leadership and process in IT Keep the Joint Running 1/14/2008).

Nobody wrote to disagree. Not exactly. Hillel Glazer, an SEI insider, politely informed me that I was hopelessly out of date: SEI abandoned CMM in 2001 in favor of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). He agreed to an interview to explain the situation. Mike Konrad, one of CMMI's authors, reviewed Hillel's answers and wrote me independently to endorse them.

Bob: SEI describes CMMI as a general-purpose process framework that can be used to create just about any sort of business process -- not just software methodologies. Do we need yet another process methodology, given that we already have: Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma, Theory of Constraints, and Reengineering?

Hillel: To be more precise, "CMMI-DEV" is not for creating business processes or for creating (developing) products, but for improving the business processes of product and service development. CMMI assumes a given organization already has business processes and desires to improve them. What happens all too often is organizations are compelled to use CMMI but start out not having/knowing their processes and so CMMI becomes both how they define their processes as well as how they improve them. It's a fundamental -- and widely held -- misunderstanding of CMMI.

Bob: In his 2005 interview, Capers Jones was openly dismissive of Agile and similar adaptive, iterative methodologies. With CMMI, has SEI softened its stance?

Hillel: Capers Jones is not a reviewer or contributor to CMMI, and I wouldn't say SEI folks and Capers Jones see eye to eye on many things.

When CMMI was being written, reviewers were criticizing SEI for making it so "waterfall" centric. The authors were genuinely dumbfounded as to what it is in the model that gave that "anti-iteration" connotation. CMMI is 100% agnostic as to the product development life cycle an organization chooses to use, and always has been. Also, the SEI has created a team-oriented development method called "Team Software Process" (TSP) which has been demonstrated as being very agile-oriented.

Bob: Does any of this really matter to bread-and-butter IT shops? Most companies don't develop -- they integrate and configure purchased applications. The packaged methodologies, waterfall or iterative, weren't designed for this world. Does CMMI offer something useful for it, or is it also intended for new development?

Hillel: Right now, ITIL probably provides more value than CMMI to pure-play IT shops. However, stay tuned, there's another CMMI in the works for "services" organizations that goes beyond a static library of management and service workflows and offers a continuous improvement mechanism to companies providing services -- IT or otherwise.

Bob: I've recommended culture change as the first step in implementing a more process-driven approach in any organization -- to create a "culture of process" -- and to make sure process owners are fully educated in process management. Do you agree? If not, how do you recommend starting down the CMMI path?

Hillel: I completely agree. When working with companies that do need a culture shift, the first thing I get them to internalize are the CMMI's "generic practices" which provide the process acculturation so many organizations lack.

In many cases, no matter how much power they've been given, you can't start with the CIO, you must start with the CEO. The CEO needs to see the business value of being process-oriented. Otherwise, the CIO will be placed in an untenable position at the business level.

Bob: Anything else?

Hillel: What's most often misunderstood about this is that "CMMI is a model, not a standard." CMMI contains no processes or procedures of its own, and is not a thing that can be complied with. It's a fundamental shift in expectation and experience of most CMMI users -- who are used to complying with standards. Wrapping one's head around and being able to apply a model takes a whole different set of aptitudes than complying with a standard.

We hear "just tell me what to do" all the time. Combine that with the impatience (read: short attention span) and lack of process culture among too many executives -- a topic you regularly rail against -- and you have a recipe for process disaster.

Bob: Last question: Do you agree Keep the Joint Running is the most insightful commentary in the IT industry? Or would you rather have me twist your responses in creative ways that make you appear to be the biggest schlemiel in the trade?

Hillel: LOL!

Bob: Don't say I didn't warn you ...

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

sometimes the good are great

2008-02-15T08:39:00.000-08:00

Dilbert on virtualization

Carr-toonish engineering

2008-02-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

2/11/2008

If someone does something that's patently ridiculous, but manages to draw enough attention that it generates a lot of discussion, has that person performed a valuable service or just wasted our time?

But enough about Paris Hilton, Kiefer Sutherland and Lindsay Lohan. In our own industry we can ask a similar question about Nicholas Carr, who, as mentioned last week, has predicted that the "technical aspect of IT" (which in Carr's world is IT infrastructure management) will move to the Internet, which will become the CPU-cycle-provisioning equivalent of an electrical power plant.

With the technical part gone, handling the non-technical remainder (I bet you didn't know application design, development and integration are non-technical undertakings) won't require a separate in-house IT organization any more. Instead, they will become a mixture of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications and business-department-developed code that runs on the utility computing infrastructure.

Sometimes, fault-finding isn't the best way to evaluate a new idea. A superior alternative is to be helpful and positive -- to figure out how to make it work (for a historical example, see Inhaling network computers KJR, 1/13/1997.)

What will be required for IT to go away?

First of all, let's assume Carr isn't simply "predicting" the success of IT infrastructure outsourcing, as I contended last week -- that he's serious about utility computing in the electrical generation sense.

In the deregulated electrical power industry, generation companies pump 60-cycle current onto the grid, metering how much they provide. End-customers draw electricity off the grid. Their local provider acts as a broker, buying current from the low-cost provider and metering consumption.

This is, by the way, how you can buy wind-generated electricity if you prefer. You don't really get the exact electrons pushed onto the grid by a wind farm. You simply instruct your broker to buy enough of them to satisfy your consumption. The rest is just balancing the books.

For utility computing to work, we would need a similar metering and billing infrastructure. We'd need a lot more, too. For example:

Web 3.0: We will need a grid computing architecture that runs applications wherever CPU cycles happen to be cheapest (with suitable metering and billing -- see above).
Virtualization: This will have to be perfect, so that the CPU cycles you buy can run your applications no matter what operating system they were written for.
Quality of Service: Different applications need different levels of performance. Buyers will need a way to specify how fast their cycles have to be, and without the help of those pesky engineers who would be housed in an IT department if it hadn't been disbanded.
AI-based data design: With professional, centralized IT evaporated into the business, which will be building whatever custom applications remain, there will no longer be an organizational home for data designers. The only alternative is technology smart enough to handle this little engineering chore.
Automated, self-tuning pre-fetch: Last week's column demonstrated the impact of latency in the communications channel on linked SaaS-supplied systems -- the speed of light slows table joins to a crawl.
This is fixable, so long as systems are smart enough to automatically pre-fetch records prior to needing them. Every SaaS vendor will have to provide this facility automatically, since businesses will no longer employ engineers able to manually performance-tune system linkages.
New security paradigm: Sorry about the use of "paradigm." It fits here. You'll be running all of your applications on public infrastructure, on the wrong side of the firewall (which -- good news! -- you'll no longer need). Think it will be hard for someone with ingenuity to plant a Trojan that monitors the cycles and siphons off every business secret you no longer have?
AI-based data warehouse design: Let's assume for the sake of argument that the Carr-envisioned future happens as he predicts. You will still want to mine all of your data, in spite of it being schmeared out across the SaaS landscape.
I see two choices. The first, almost unimaginable, is an efficient, distributed, virtual data warehouse, reminiscent of the sea shell collection Steven Wright keeps scattered on beaches all over the world.
The alternative is the same data warehouse technology we've grown accustomed to. Except we don't have IT anymore, so we'll need an AI design technology to pull it together for us, performance optimized and ready for analysis.

Look far enough into the future and all of this is possible. Heck -- look far enough and broadcast power is possible.

Now, look ahead just far enough that you're at the end of any useful business planning horizon. You'll reach a very different conclusion.

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Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

Electile dysfunction

2008-02-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

None of the candidates raise my interest. - ap's whiteboard

Carr-ied away

2008-02-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

2/4/2008

Nicholas Carr has a new theory -- that internal IT is reaching the end of the line, because information technology will follow the same commoditization curve that electrical utilities followed a century ago.

Okay, it isn't really a new theory, although from the attention Carr is getting for his new book, which should have been titled The Joys of Griddish but instead is called The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (W. W. Norton, 2008), you'd think he had come up with it all by himself.

Carr, you'll recall, previously theorized that IT doesn't matter (We ain't there quite yet Keep the Joint Running 6/16/2003). His reasoning: Every business has access to the same information technology, so IT can't provide a sustainable strategic advantage.

That his old theory was fatally flawed is easily demonstrated: Every business has access to the same everything as every other business -- the same technology, ideas, people, processes, capital, real estate, and silly articles published in the Harvard Business Review because their authors were once on its editorial staff.

Were we to accept Carr's past logic and apply it equally to all subjects, we would despairingly conclude that nothing matters. Now, not content with turning us all into depressed nihilists, Carr has discovered (and we should be pleased for him) the Internet and the possibility of outsourcing all of the computing cycles of every business to it.

What Carr has visionarily discovered, while tossing in terms like grid and utility computing to prove he is Fully Buzzword Compliant, is IT infrastructure outsourcing, a mere three decades after it began. Meanwhile, many very large corporations that outsourced their IT infrastructure have found that economies of scale reach a point of diminishing returns -- enterprises reach a size where running their own data center costs less and provides more value than contracting with an outsourcer.

But never mind this little quibble. After all, many businesses aren't that big and data center outsourcing does make sense for them. It's nothing new and makes no difference. It's business as usual right now, and companies still need an IT organization, because ...

Applications and the information they process are where the IT rubber meets the business road. Computer programs are not indistinguishable from one another. The information in the data repositories they control is unique, valuable, and (assuming corporations are careful about information security) private.

Carr hasn't entirely ignored this reality in "his" theory of utility computing. He merely waves it off as trivial -- something easily solved through a combination of Software as a Service (SaaS, which if you've been asleep for awhile means hosted solutions) and ... here's an exact quote ... "the ability to write your own code but use utility suppliers to run it and to store it. Companies will continue to have the ability to write proprietary code and to run it as a service to get the efficiencies and the flexibility it provides."

With unparalleled perspicuity, Carr has figured out that companies can write their own code and then run it in an outsourced data center. Hokey smokes!

Carr's New Insight is that responsibility for applications will move "into the business" which is why IT will eventually go away. He endorses the notion that businesses can easily integrate disparate SaaS-provided applications and databases across the Internet using a few easy-to-use interfaces.

What nonsense. Most internal IT organizations long ago changed their focus. They seldom develop. Mostly they configure and integrate purchased applications.

Nothing about this is easy. Integrating multiple applications and their databases takes complex engineering, not facile hand-waving. Moving responsibility "into the business" means nothing more than managing multiple, smaller, poorly cooperating IT departments instead of single, larger centralized ones. Ho hum.

Nor can integrating multiple SaaS systems work in a high-volume production environment. That's because of a concept network engineers but not self-appointed "experts" understand: latency.

Imagine a financial services company. Customer management is SaaS in California. loan operations is SaaS in Massachusetts. You have to update 10 million customer accounts every day with interest computations. The minimum latency imposed by the laws of physics on an ordinary two-table join adds more than 45 hours to this little batch run.

Well-integrated computing environments come from serious engineering. Phrases like utility computing and grid might obscure this fact behind a fog of vagueness. They don't eliminate it.

I have my own vision for the future of IT. In it, only people who have written code, designed databases, administered servers or engineered networks at some time in their careers will get to write about IT's past, present and future.

The rest can include themselves out.

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar

2008-02-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams. - Mary Ellen Kelly q.TFTD-L@TAMU.EDU
dan-galvin@oldschool.tamu.edu

a man after my own heart

2008-02-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/onefootinthegrave/index.shtml

a note from the boss on the current company reorganization

2008-01-30T08:35:00.000-08:00

A man in a hot air balloon, realizing he was lost, reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended further and shouted to the lady

Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am.

The woman below replied,

You're in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.

You must be in IT,

said the balloonist. Replied the woman,

Actually I am, How did you know?

Answered the balloonist,

Well, everything you have told me is technically correct but I've no idea what to make of your information and the fact is I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip.

The woman below responded,

You must be in Management.

Replied the balloonist,

I am, but how did you know?

Said the woman,

Well, you don't know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my f****** fault.

Run, IT, run ... but not as a business

2008-01-29T07:54:00.000-08:00

1/28/2008

Nitpicking is fun, but pragmatism pays the bills.

Last week's column, which deconstructed the notion that CIOs should run IT as a business, was fun, but it might have been more self-indulgent than useful.

The column, if you missed it, listed eleven definitions of "business" and demonstrated that none of them makes sense as a basis for running an IT department. But running IT like a business doesn't require you to define it as one, Louis Sullivan's dictum that "form follows function" notwithstanding.

After you've finished singing, dancing and playing the tuba, running IT like a business means negotiating "service level agreements" (SLAs) for what you do and instituting a system of charge-backs to the rest of the business to pay for it.

Negotiated SLAs are contracts between IT and the departments IT serves, and are just plain silly.

Contracts are how businesses manage relationships with their customers, so if you are to run IT as a business, this is what you must do.

Which brings up the question, what happens if you fail to live up to one of your negotiated SLAs? In business, this would result in financial penalties, withheld payments, binding arbitration, or lawsuits.

Just how stupid would a business look if Manufacturing took IT to court for failing to live up to an SLA? This isn't an easy question to answer because "stupid" isn't easily quantified, nor is there a unit of measure for it. If stupid was electricity and we measured it in volts, I'm pretty sure this would reach Taser levels.

Charge-backs, in contrast to SLAs, do have one thing going for them -- they vastly simplify IT governance. If, for example, Marketing wants to re-plumb the company website with a content management system (CMS), you have no worries. Marketing signs up for the cost and charge-backs give you the budget you need. You hire staff, engage contractors or bring in a systems integrator and everybody is happy.

Not really. What really happens is that your staff based its CMS recommendation on what would integrate best with the rest of your technical architecture, scale without major reconfiguration, and allow granular administration to avoid opening interesting holes in your information security.

The Marketing Director, being a prudent steward of her departmental budget, obtains three competitive bids. All are lower than your estimate.

Of course they are. Because your staff failed to run IT like a business. They are running IT like a department, responsible for managing the company's information assets. And so you lose the Marketing Department's business to a competitor.

It isn't the Marketing Director's fault. IT isn't alone in this nonsense. If IT is to be run as a business, so is every other shared service department in the enterprise, Marketing included. Marketing doesn't want to lose the Dental Accessories business unit's account to an outside agency, so it has to keep its costs as low as possible.

And the race to the bottom continues.

CEOs who organize the enterprise so its shared services departments act as independent businesses have forgotten a basic engineering principle ... that optimizing the parts sub-optimizes the whole and vice versa ("Optimizing the organization Keep the Joint Running 10/27/2003).

Specifically, the company's shared services organizations, when run as businesses, lose their authority to preserve the integrity of essential resources. In the case of IT it's the information architecture. In the case of Marketing it's the corporate image and the meaning of the brand. In the case of Human Resources it's the policies that protect employees from bad managers while allowing managers to deal with non-performing employees without the risk of ending up in court.

And so on.

No question, the idea is seductive. CEOs, for understandable reasons, are likely to have a strong faith in the power of markets to regulate themselves efficiently without the need for outside controls or guidance. That being the case, turning the enterprise into a marketplace sure seems easier than the hard work of instituting the governance processes, difficult choices and consensus building that are otherwise required. As is so often the case, trying to avoid hard work doesn't lead to brilliant results.

Marketplaces don't require all of this because they don't have a purpose. They are simply spaces where entities that do have purpose interact in complex ways.

Companies have a purpose. Marketplaces don't. Turning a company into a marketplace misses this essential difference.

In the end, running IT as a business ... and the enterprise as a marketplace ... is an attempt to avoid the need for governance processes, difficult choices and consensus building.

Another name for these activities is leadership. Done right it's hard work.

-----------------

Copyright and other stuff -- The great KJR link point

Running IT like a whatchamacallit

2008-01-22T10:53:00.001-08:00

1/21/2008

CIOs are, according to many in the business punditocracy, supposed to run IT as a business. Yet in spite of all of the ink smeared on crushed trees advocating this thought process (not to mention the miniscule magnetic domains that have given up their freedom to store it) I've yet to see anyone define what they mean by "business."

It might seem too obvious to bother with. We all know what a business is, don't we?

That's the problem with this sort of thing: We all do know what a business is, only we don't all know what one is in the same way. Depending on the situation and who is doing the talking, businesses can be:

Non-human, amoral organisms that have an existence independent of the people who make them up, and which, like any other organisms, consider self-perpetuation their first and most important goal.
Mission-driven entities that exist to provide goods and services that have value to someone.
Product generators that exist to deliver items for which customers will pay more money than was needed to provide them.
Profit generators that exist to deliver a stream of money to their actively-involved owners.
Ecologies -- environments in which individuals compete, and sometimes collaborate to obtain resources.
Assemblages of processes that connect to transform inputs into outputs.
Places of employment that exchange work assignments for money and non-cash compensation.
Social fabrics that provide a space for people to interact and form connections.
Personal "force multipliers" that increase an individual's ability to achieve goals.
Opportunities for investment, to deliver a lump of cash to a passively involved shareholder.
Commodities to be bought, sold, aggregated or dispersed for profit.

And more. This isn't a complete list by any means. Nor are the items on the list alternatives on a multiple-choice test. Many can be simultaneously true.

When a CIO is supposed to run IT as a business, which definitions are supposed to be part of the formula?

Certainly not Definition #1. If you work in IT you might like it, as it makes Definition #7 a more enduring possibility. But even ignoring the pundits who also recommend disbanding internal IT in favor of outsourcing, self-perpetuation isn't something you can sell to a board of directors.

Which also means you can scratch Definition #7 off the list.

Definition #2 is a certainty. In its simplest form, IT's mission is to provide working information technology to the business. This, or something like it, is IT's mission whether you run it as a business, a department, or a hobby, so scratch Definition #2 off the list as well. The same logic applies to Definitions #6, #8 and #9.

Definition #3 is a distinct possibility. Never mind a mission. A Definition #3 IT business would deliver products and services to internal customers in exchange for money, through the magic of transfer pricing (the practice formerly known as charge-backs).

Except that it doesn't work that way. When companies engage in transfer pricing they put controls in place to make sure internal departments break even exactly. If they didn't, the business as a whole would be an ecology (Definition #5, as are most companies that engage in transfer pricing anyway). Scratch this one off, too, and Definition #4 for the same reason.

Definition #5 is a good representation of a marketplace as well as a jungle, and in fact, marketplaces are near-perfect parallels to ecologies. It's bad enough when a CEO turns a whole enterprise into an ecology. Another description of this sort of environment is "political quagmire." One presumes "run IT as a political quagmire" isn't what the pundits have in mind.

Definitions #10 and #11 make no sense either. It might be fun to sell shares in IT to various business executives and might even lead to beneficial results, in much the way the Green Bay Packers benefit from having 125,000 fans as the shareholders who collectively own the team.

Somehow I just don't see it working very well in practice.

So there you have it. Eleven different definitions of "business" and not one of them makes any sense for IT. Which leads to a question: If IT isn't a business by any reasonable definition of the term, what might it mean to run it like one?

I'm left without an answer, and with only one possible conclusion -- that I don't know what the pundits are talking about.

I suspect that's something they and I have in common.

-----------------

yet another very fine whine

2008-01-20T18:54:00.000-08:00

The Greatest African American

why Johnny's daddy don't have a job

2008-01-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

the allegation

the truth