by Peter Lloyd for IT Experts
Think of this as end-of-year house cleaning. An attempt to de-cobweb the information technology field of its most persistent and ludicrous urban legends. From a couple of myth-busting sources, here are five plus a link to more.
Take This Job and…
I’m here to defend the honor of fellow information technology professional in Germany, where prostitution is legal. She was forced to take a job a sex-industry job, the story goes, or lose her unemployment benefits. Just not true. More likely is the reaction of a German gentleman visiting the US when he saw a gaggle of female American office workers smoking just outside the front doors of a downtown office building. “What a great idea! Prostitutes at the entrance.” MORE
iPods Attract Lightning
Not true. The false alarm comes from the fact that a few people, struck by lightning, were wearing iPods at the time they were hit. They also suffered ear damage and fried headphones. Show me a lightning-strike survivor without some kind of ear damage. MORE
Hold Computer Six
Back in the pre-PC days of 1943, Thomas Watson, the father of IBM, is purported to have predicted, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” At least! Watson was a bit of a bastard but he wasn’t stupid. A Watson biography claims he once had a tree trunk hauled into the lobby of his Dayton, Ohio, headquarters one morning. According to the story, he then watched employees enter the lobby from a secret vantage point and fired anyone who did not make some attempt to have the tree removed. I’d call that stupid. In any case, no one has shown the quote source. MORE
Stamp Out Free Email
With Bill 602P the US Post Office supports legislation to charge five-cents for every email message we send or receive or some such nonsense. Naturally spammers would get better rates the same way drek-mail purveyors do. Untrue. MORE
Microsoft’s iLoo
Across the pond in the UK, folks got word back in 2003 of the impending launch of the iLoo, a portable toilet with wireless keyboard to be used as a Hotmail spot. Not true. Just another example of Microsoft promising more than it would ever deliver. MORE
To read about Y2K, Sadaam’s Playstations, Crytography, Rand’s 1954 PC, and more, see They couldn’t have done that! IT urban legends exposed.
Happy New Year!
Tags: IBM, iPod, Microsoft, myths, urban legends
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by Peter Lloyd for IT Experts, On the Job
Although it’s been posed many times, many ways, here’s a big philosophical question for information technology professionals to ponder this holiday season. Have another eggnog and ask yourself this: In our unrelenting march called progress, are we responsible for the negative effects of our work that follow in our creative wake?
Is Einstein morally or ethically responsible for Hiroshima? Before you answer yes or no, factor in the benefits of nuclear energy. Consider also that someone else would have formulated E=mc2 eventually and named it something similar—relativité or относительности.
More down to Earth, is the IT inventor liable for the downside of information technology? A handful of recent news items prompt me to raise this issue of IT moral responsibility. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Einstein, moral responsibility
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by Peter Lloyd for IT Experts, On the Job
My friend Tom Flynn always goes to work on Christmas Day as a matter of principle. At least when it falls on a work day. He’s a fierce advocate for Separation of Church and State and author of
The Trouble with Christmas.
He reminds me of another friend who doesn’t celebrate Christmas. She’s a Jehovah’s Witness.
Christmas ranks among the most important and busiest work days for many mainstream Christian clergy and their associates, of course. In similar spirit, volunteers all around the Christmas-celebrating world will serve Christmas dinner for folks who have no other place to go today.
There’s no Christmas break, naturally, for people hired to protect us: police, prison guards, soldiers, paramedics, fire fighters, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. And those who serve us: waiters, transportation workers, and this year, maybe representatives working on health care legislation. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Christmas
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by Peter Lloyd for Creative Experts, IT Experts, On the Job
We considered the general benefits of telework for information technology, creative, and marketing professionals in Telework: Working Out the Bugs, Part 1. We also asked you to “Check Your Teleworkability.” If you’ve done that and you’re ready for telework, here are two more points to ponder:
2. Understand What It Is
You, you manager, and the company need to understand what each other means by telework. First, understand upfront what the company will supply and pay for in the way of equipment and network connections. Will that include iPhones? What about office supplies like everything from paperclips to coffee filters? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: telework
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by Peter Lloyd for Creative Experts, IT Experts, On the Job
In 2006 almost all information technology professionals polled by Intermedia said they intended to go in to work—that’s commute to the office—over the year-end holidays. This year less than half declared that intention. It’s not that IT pros are getting lazy. The majority still plan to at least check in remotely on a regular basis and even to do work from home. And that represents one of the major benefits of telework. Namely that employers will get more work from employees whom they encourage to work away from the office or shop.
Network World summarizes the benefits of off-site work in “Telework programs as good as cold hard cash, survey says.” The article author Denise Dubie says, “Companies offering telework programs not only will find their employees more productive, but also happier because of the money they are able to save by working from home at least part of the time, according to a recent survey.” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: telework
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by Peter Lloyd for IT Experts, Job Hunting, Job Market Updates
Once again a few odds and ends, mostly odds, about what’s been going on in the job-search world since I’ve been blogging here at Talent-Centric. This time the emphasis is on Information Technology news that did not quite deserve a post of its own.
1. Apple’s Steve Jobs Not Time’s Person of the Year
This has been a strange year for awards. First a president waging two foreign wars wins the Nobel Peace Prize, then Ben Bernacke is named Time’s Person of the Year. But at least Steve Jobs was a finalist this year. Had Jobs won it would not be a first for people working in information technology. In 2006 You, meaning everyone providing internet content, were Person of the Year. Andrew Grove of Intel won the dubious title in 1997, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com in 1999. Pretty pathetic for an era dominated by information technology.
2. An IT Job with Growing Demand and a Cool Title
As long as the internet and information technology keep opening up new doors to information and ways to process and move it, government agencies and private enterprises will have to pay IT professionals to protect that information. To help protect the world from cybercrime you have to know your stuff, of course, but you’ll also need to jump through all sorts of security clearance hoops.
Certified Ethical Hacker: Not Your Everyday Job Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Steve Jobs
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by Peter Lloyd for IT Experts, Job Hunting
All right, I’m a man writing about employment in information technology as well as employment in the marketing and creative fields. But I am aware that whatever I read about, learn about, or experience in the world of job hunting, proves to be tougher for women. It’s more difficult for women to find work and when they do, they still earn less than men doing the same job.
Laura DiDio of E-Commerce Times advises women in her article “Breaking Out of the Pink Ghetto” to “get serious about networking.” She says the objective for women should be to “make networking an integral part of their daily routines, formalize their efforts and set specific goals.”
That’s pretty much what most of us, men and women, understand about networking. But women need to understand that networking the same way men network may not be good enough. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: women
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