(PHB) Attack of the corporate weasel words

Attack of the Corporate Weasel Words

"Does it bother you that churches have a Mission Statement touting their Core Values? That even the CIA has a Vision? In his book Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language and in this Newsweek interview, Australian author Don Watson argues it's time to protest the mind-numbing business jargon that infests our schools, churches and political speech. Examples that people have sent to him can be found on Watson's website."

Another doozy from the Newsweek article (page 2):

"Just as the skill and processes are not compartmentalized in the creation process, the evaluation of outcomes will occur against a background of understanding that separation of outcomes into discrete components is subordinate to the evaluation of the total process as a comprehensive outcome."

And finally, if you can't beat them, join them!

(USA) travelling in the "land of the free"

57-yr old grandmother and principal of a middle school is put on a ter orist watchlist for carrying a sandwich knife

komo news | 'This Is Not Right'

"This is not the way my country should be treating me," she said. My concern is that if that's the way they're treating American citizens I would hate to think how they're treating other people. It's crazy."

As someone who has a few friends and relatives still stuck in the time warp of thinking the US is "the place to be", I do get a little worried. Not always -- only when I think about it :-(

(FOSS) Nokia announces open source based browser

Cool!

Nokia develops a new browser for Series 60 by using open source software

If you consider that more mobile devices are being shipped than PCs, and mobile devices are quickly taking over many PC roles, and Nokia is (at least one of) the biggest brands in this space, this is awesome news...

Many sites which do not currently work without the accursed IE may be forced by market pressure to be more standards-compliant, because high-end customers with high-end Nokia devices using a standards-compliant browser will be unable to access them, and will complain! (Well the clueless ones will complain to Nokia first, but hopefully there will be enough clueful ones to set the balance right :-)

(FOSS) Cool -- IBM backs Firefox!!!

This should get a few more people to switch, once I email this to a few critical people :-)

IBM backs Firefox in-house | CNET News.com

(malware,WTF,security) Insecure? Cripple it!!

Background: nmap is an open source tool for port scanning -- detecting open ports, determine which services are running, etc. nmap needs an O/S feature called "raw sockets" to work, and MS has disabled raw sockets on XP recently, claiming it is needed for security.

Nmap Hackers: Microsoft Tightens the Noose on Raw Sockets

Of course Microsoft claims this change is necessary for security. That is funny, since all of the other major platforms Nmap supports (e.g. Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD) offer raw sockets and yet they haven't become the wasp nest of spambots, worms, and spyware that infest so many Windows boxes.

Read the whole article for more fun stuff from the fertile minds at MS.

"Fertile" in the sense of "filled with fertiliser" ;-)

(funny) Naked Street!

http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/nls_ebiznaked050426/

"Recently I came across the phrase 'Naked Street' and followed the link purely out of scientific curiosity"

Yeah, right!

(criminal) No ethics? No surprise...!

Good business plan: get on an international committee (in this case the IPv6 committee), steal ideas, patent them, then -- when the technology starts to become a standard -- tell large users you have a patent on it.

Microsoft criticised for IP address configuration patent - ZDNet UK News

These include documents from the IPv6 committee of the IETF, known as RFCs. The Microsoft employees named as the inventors of the patent were on the IPv6 committee, according to Ravicher.

(MBA) Brain Drain -- version 2.0

A long time ago, people used to go to the US for a few simple reasons: better lifestyle, more prestige, and more money to be made. This used to be called "brain drain".

(PHB) Are you a scary boss?

Are You a Scary Boss? - Computerworld Short and simple article.

(WTF,funny) at the end of the day...

The Most Annoying Workplace Clichés - LANGUAGE - CIO Magazine Feb 15,2005

Of course, at the end of the day, no one who uses these phrases visits my blog anyway, so this is just an inside joke :-)