Technology – Page 111

Y2K2

It’s time to rant and rave. It’s time for all of us to rant and rave, because everything about the quagmire our so-called leaders have plunged us into was entirely foreseeable and entirely preventable.

Yes, that’s right. The subject this week is the change in daylight savings time, and how completely idiotic it is. Oh, sorry, I have to apologize — I’m being unfair to the idiots of the world.

If you didn’t know this is happening, WAKE UP!!! YOU HAVE TO CHANGE ALL OF YOUR SYSTEMS!!! NOW!!! Congress (or the Senate, or both … who really cares?) instituted this change in response to rising oil prices, figuring it would actually save daylight or something.

Okay. I’m not being entirely fair. The change in daylight savings time is projected to reduce oil consumption — probably by about three barrels a day (1,008 pints). Well worth the effort.

(This is a rant. Don’t expect actual facts. Were I to present actual facts I’d tell you that the additional four weeks of daylight savings time is expected to reduce U.S. oil consumption by about 0.12% each day, or a whopping 0.009% of our annual bill for petroleum. Remarkably, even Gartner doesn’t seem to have published an estimate of the cost for compliance.)

This situation proves once again that the collective IQ of a group is inversely and linearly proportional to the number of members. We have 535 senators and congressional representatives. If we assume the average member has an IQ of 120 then the group IQ measures somewhere close to … well, to 120/535, which is close enough to nothing as makes no difference.

The current fiasco is clearly a case of someone in Congress (authors: Rep. Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan) saying, “Sure, it’s posturing, but it’s harmless posturing.” Very similar to the legendary executive “view from 100,000 feet,” where all things are easy because the details are too small to see.

Here’s my suggestion. Instead of handling calendrical issues piecemeal, Congress might as well do everything at once, in … call it the Consolidated Calendar Reform Act of 2007:

Rather than continuing to push the start of Daylight Savings time earlier and the finish later, declare that noon occurs at 1 pm from now on and be done with it.

Let’s get government out of the Christmas controversy by leaving the definition of the Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanza seasons to whichever religions have jurisdiction. Instead, Congress will do something useful by placing legal limits on the holiday shopping season, by making it official and declaring its boundaries. I suggest it start no earlier than June 1st and end December 30th.
Violators will be sentenced to a year and a day in a jail cell, forced to listen to the Muzak version of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus for the duration of their punishment.

Why stop there? The Gregorian calendar is a peculiar artifact. Change the year from its current nonsensical pattern (thirty days has September, and Sept, which means seven, prefixes month nine) to a more rational version.
The Triskadecacalendar would have 13 months of 28 days each, plus New Years Day, which wouldn’t be in any month at all. This would have the salutary effect of allowing no possibility of fiscal quarter reporting, eliminating this artificial distraction from actually running a business.

And finally, from now on, once elected to office, all Presidents of the United States will have their official birthday moved to President’s Day. After all, if Washington and Lincoln aren’t allowed to celebrate their own birthdays, why should the current officeholder be allowed to do so?While we’re at it, the law will mandate that Microsoft finally fix Outlook so that President’s Day (and all other holidays and full-day events) doesn’t move around to other dates when your computer changes time zones.

Here’s a question to ponder: Big business has formidable lobbyists in Washington DC. They live on K Street. Where we voters get a voice in our government once every two years; business lobbyists get a voice in our government over lunch every day, and often more … previously on luxurious excursions they paid for, now on luxurious excursions paid for by political action committees, to which they contribute funds in quantities large enough to offset the costs of the excursions.

They have access and they have influence. So where were they when Congress was passing this very expensive distraction to our ability to take care of business strategy and tactics?

Various bits and pieces

Ongoing issues, discussions, and brick-a-brak:

Some facts: Earth’s radius = 3,950 miles. One mile = 63,360 inches. Surface area of a sphere = 4*pi*radius^2. Atmospheric pressure at ground level = ~14.5 pounds per square inch.

Estimates (from various Googled sources): Human oil consumption per year = 30,660,000,000 barrels. One barrel = 252 pints. A pint’s a pound the world around. Human coal combustion per year: 6,500,000,000 tons. Oil and coal = mostly carbon. Carbon’s atomic weight = 12. Carbon dioxide’s atomic weight = 44. Atmospheric CO2 concentration = 380 parts per million.

With these facts, any middle school student should be able to compute the weight of the atmosphere and how much CO2 humans add to it annually (38 billion tons = 6.66 parts per million = 1.8%).

The connection to everyday business situations: As with global warming, every business decision (whether to replace an aging system, for example) depends in part on who has the burden of proof. Usually, those who recommend action bear it, as “do nothing” is the default decision, but that’s just habit. For global warming, I’d say the arithmetic places it squarely on the other side.

Choose carefully in your business decisions.

Holiday card follow-up: To disapprove or not to disapprove, that was the question I asked. Several readers suggested that disapproval is quite appropriate. Using my Tiger Woods/Britney Spears example to illustrate, they contended it makes sense to choose carefully who you emulate.

Personally, I don’t think you should ever choose who to emulate. Few people are entirely admirable in every aspect of their character and behavior, so we’re all better off figuring out what we admire about someone and emulating that. Figuring out who we admire and emulating everything about them is worse than a bad idea. It’s creepy.

Something not to emulate: my spelling. The correct version is “Britney.” Sorry, ma’am.

A really bad trend: Using compliance as an excuse. “The auditors require it.” “We might get sued.” “Sarbanes/Oxley won’t allow it.”

First of all, if it’s a good idea, Sarbanes/Oxley almost certainly does allow it. It simply requires that you document it to death. Likewise your auditors. As for getting sued, yes, you might. While you’re more likely to get sued if you do something you shouldn’t, American jurisprudence allows anyone to sue anyone else, for almost no reason at all.

If you allow the risk of being prosecuted for breaking the law to stop you, you might ask why you think breaking the law is a good idea in the first place. But if someone allows the risk of some bottom-feeder suing them to stop them from making prudent business decisions, shame on them. Businesses shouldn’t put anyone this timid in charge of anything important.

Our ongoing obsession with metrics: When setting goals, many consultants advocate the SMART formulation from Paul J. Meyer’s “Attitude Is Everything.” SMART stands for “Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Tangible.”

So here’s a question: If you choose to be SMART, will you ever decide that customer satisfaction matters? After all, it isn’t specific, is exceptionally difficult to measure, and is largely intangible.

For most businesses, it’s also the single most important determinant of success.

From the Department of Contractual Stupidity and Sleaziness: Here’s some standard boilerplate you’ll find in huge numbers of privacy policies:

“[Company name] may modify this Agreement’s terms and conditions at any time without notice. Continued use of the Services and the Site after a change in this Agreement, a change in the Privacy Policy, or after implementation of any other new policy constitutes acceptance of such change or policy.”

Don’t they know how slimy this makes them look? Especially since many of these websites provide no way to contact a human being.

In the same category, my new digital camera, an otherwise fine piece of equipment, allows me to install the accompanying software on only a single computer. The question: Why on earth do they care? The software is only useful with the camera.

A final PowerPoint question: We’re all agreed the world has seen lots of bad PowerPoint. Three questions remain. The first is whether this is just another example of Sturgeon’s Law (90 percent of everything is crud). The second is whether the bad presentations that made use of PowerPoint would have been even worse without it.

I suspect the answers are yes and yes. Many who aren’t professional presenters still have to present from time to time. What matters isn’t whether PowerPoint makes their presentations good. It’s whether it makes them better than they’d have been otherwise. So the third question is what we should consider to be the default assumption.