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Fatal Attractions: technology, judgement, and the big four

Ever since Arthur Andersen's destruction in the aftermath of the Enron debacle, people have been wondering when the remaining big four accounting firms will become the big two or three, and why.Since 1980 six of the then top ten firms worldwide have disappeared - four of them through mergers, one...

Tags: Unanswered questions, IT Retardants, Enterprise Policy

Blog posts 2007-07-20

Sharpening that personal productivity axe

As many of you will remember we had an extensive discussion here last week about my belief that externally imposed work processes ultimately lead to standardised ways of thinking about those work processes. Kind of a Nixonian thing: grab them by their work processes, and pretty soon their hearts and...

Tags: What users care about, Unanswered questions, Enterprise Policy, Apple

Blog posts 2007-07-19

Captain Cyborg and the Problem of Evil

(This is a re-run, from Dec 16/05.)While looking at a problem related to archiving thousands of project proposals and reports for a large IT consulting firm I was struck by the ease with which these could be classified into two strongly differentiated groups: those based on clerical or other worker...

Tags: Unanswered questions, Government, General

Blog posts 2007-07-04

Things we need to learn more about

Things we need to learn more aboutIf you were asked to list the top five things you think are important for IT but which you don't understand and for which there's no obvious research base you can tap into, what would they be? Here's my list: 1 - the impact...

Tags: General, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2007-05-16

Failing to cross the great divide

Last weeks series on the tendency of political and technological groups to barricade themselves among their friends drew this example - by "defconvegas" in reply to "Mactels carbon footprint" I wonder who came up with ACP and ACPI ACP...

Tags: General, Media bias/incompetence, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2007-05-15

MacTel's carbon footprint

Heres the "Future" paragraph from an open letter, signed by Steve Jobs and posted on Apples site on May 2nd, discussing steps Apple has taken, or is taking, to develop and hold a green advantage over competitors including HP and Dell....

Tags: Unanswered questions, Media bias/incompetence, General

Blog posts 2007-05-10

Linux is not Windows Lite

Remember the title of the article I cited yesterday: Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista: The Battle For Your Desktop? Theres a pair of assumptions embedded in there that tell us a lot about whats holding Linux back. The surface assumption is that ...

Tags: Unanswered questions, Linux, General

Blog posts 2007-05-09

The great divide

A few weeks ago, Serdar Yegulalp wrote a long article for Information week under the title Ubuntu Linux Vs. Windows Vista: The Battle For Your Desktop. Heres the teaser: Is Linux finally ready to...

Tags: Unanswered questions, General

Blog posts 2007-05-08

Fear and loathing in the Internet echo chamber

Ever since Leon Festinger first formulated his theory of cognitive dissonance people have, usually reluctantly, accepted the reality that we seek out information confirming our beliefs while actively avoiding contrary information. The obvious lesson for people who are aware of this is...

Tags: Unanswered questions, General

Blog posts 2007-05-07

Failing to cross the great divide

Last weeks series on the tendency of political and technological groups to barricade themselves among their friends drew this example - by "defconvegas" in reply to "Mactels carbon footprint" I wonder who came up with ACP and ACPI ...

Tags: General, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2007-05-00

On re-inventing the internet

Last week a story by Anick Jesdanun made the rounds of, according to google, 211 nominally separate news sources under the general title Reinventing the Internet. The opening paragraphs; quoted here from the Kansas City Star: Although it has taken...

Tags: General, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2007-04-18

A stray thought about the missing Ux86

In a conversation last week, ZDnets senior editor, David Berlind, asked me what would constitute an exciting development for x86 - and I didnt have a thought to offer. But that was then, and now? consider that nobody makes and sells an x86...

Tags: Unanswered questions, General

Blog posts 2007-04-17

Raising a doubt

The whole Wintel industry has a security problem you never hear about - in fact, one reason neither Microsoft nor Intel has ever seriously attacked the PC security problem may be that the continuing public uproar over their visible failures both sells product and obscures ...

Tags: Unanswered questions, General, Enterprise Policy

Blog posts 2007-04-13

Intel's 80 core CPU that isn't

Heres a bit from the EETimes report: Intels researchers have produced an 80-core chip that uses less energy than a quad-core processor and has teraflop performance capabilities. Researchers have built the prototype to study how best to make that many cores communicate with each other. Theyre...

Tags: General, Hardware, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2007-02-21

I need your help in doing a simple experiment - and yes, Ill report the results here. The purpose of the thing is to see whether there are grounds for believing that a more controlled experiment would reveal systemic differences in information comprehension and retention depending on whether...

Tags: General, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2006-11-16

The PDA of my desiring

Ive been looking for a car phone to replace the antique I have because the phone companies claim that it wont work properly with their networks. As it happens that isnt true; what theyre really concerned about is bringing all of their installed base to the same technology as a...

Tags: General, Unanswered questions, IM

Blog posts 2006-11-10

Computers in Education

Ive been trying to understand what role computers could play in education - and Ive come up with a couple of answers Id like to try out on you. There seem to be two main functions that are applicable across almost all educational levels - the exceptions being pre-kindergarten...

Tags: General, Unanswered questions

Blog posts 2006-11-09

Unanswered questions: Bill Gates, programmer?

Unanswered questions: Bill Gates, programmer?Unanswered questions.....With the way you are trying to justify your comments it sems there is a little bit of Gates envy around!! Isn't opportunism the essence of capitalism? and arent those people who make the opportunities considered to be great businessmen?Winners write historyI have no first...

Tags: Development tools, Blogging, Desktops, Bill Gates, UnAnswered Questions, programming

Discussion threads 2006-07-17

Additional Resources

Dear Microsoft: What's the deal with Windows 7 upgrades?

Location?38.921473?N 77.066946?WYep, same here ...... stonewalled at every turn. With you ...... I can see, because you've been pulling on Microsoft's scab lately. But in Ed's case, I don't know why they would treat him like that.^o^Message has been deleted..Believe it or not ...... it makes little difference. The...

Tags: upgrade media, reverse engineering, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows

Discussion threads 2009-10-27

Alex, Android, and Google Editions - a match made in Mountainview?

As good as it sounds, I still do not want another device, and I still want to be able to read my books on ANY computer.RE: Alex, Android, and Google Editions - a match made in Mountainview?Very similar to the Barnes & Noble e-reader leaked last week, which is an...

Tags: MountainView, Google Inc.

Discussion threads 2009-10-19