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Owellian Inc.

It seems that a big-brother mentality is increasingly prevalent in our corporate culture. While this is not something new, the advent of technology makes it much easier to implement.

Fortunately, new technology can be even more easily defeated or otherwise confounded with other new technology. For example, I’m aware of a company that has instituted strict guidelines regarding web surfing, there are many sites can no longer be accessed without threat of monitoring (for example, here, here and here).

This can be foiled with a clever HTTP proxy client and some Python script, but I’m not going to elaborate on that here. What is more important, however, is that excessive web surfing should be addressed as an employee productivity issue. If your employees are busy surfing the web recreationally, then you are clearly not giving them enough work to do.

Instead of restricting access to the web, it should remain unfettered and those who continue to abuse the system will be subject to a headcount reduction. In fact, the surfing “metric” can be used to gauge the thruput of your organization. When the metric is high output will be lower, when the metric is low then output will be higher. If you can coincide major corporate undertakings with the peaks of high output, your company will continue to outshine your competition.

Shopping with Gandalf

The next generation of product management for Wal*Mart is going to rely heavily on the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification). Each item has an RFID tag attached to it, which makes it possible to track inventory anywhere in the store.

Read Shopping with Gandalf >>

State of the Union

President Bush gave a State of the Union speech that could easily be misconstrued as rhetoric from a re-election campaign pulpit.

Unfortunately, by focusing on platform issues and defending his military actions, the President failed to demonstrate a clear vision of leadership. It seems evident he is overly concerned that his military engagement in Iraq is unsatisfactory and likely unwarranted, and consequently the crucial domestic issues (civil rights, economic recovery and health care) are ignored.

As a result of the PATRIOT Act, our telephones and electronic communications were made susceptible to roving wiretaps. While there are provisions of the act that help law enforcement, it is unacceptable that our civil liberties and right to privacy can be so violated. President Bush would strongly like to see the PATRIOT Act renewed before it expires in 2005, but Americans should ask themselves how safe they feel with a law that allows us to detain over 600 “unlawful combatants” at Guantanamo Bay without any legal recourse. While President Bush is taking action here, he is ignoring our civil liberties in the process.

It is encouraging that Bush wants to keep taxes low by returning a portion of our taxed money, it is incongruous that we can do this while a 4 percent increase in discretionary spending is allowed. Coming from a year with more than a 12% increase in overall discretionary spending, Bush better be very clear on how he plans to reign in this spending frenzy. Our financial solvency is important, but we can’t do this while we continue to fund pork and make significant increases for domestic programs. His budget will be an important milestone, but since he has been unable to restrain discretionary spending on any of his previous budgets it seems unlikely that it will have any standing significance.

Health care is being ignored almost entirely by the President, he spent his time congratulating Congress for passing legislation in this area and provided no leadership.

Finally, his concern about the sanctity of marriage is not something to consider as an amendment for the constitution. It is not an inalienable right that marriage must be a union between a man and a woman, while it is acceptable that laws can be passed in this regard it is totally unacceptable that this should be proposed for amendment.

Tower Records Meets Chapter 11

Rumor has it that Tower Records is considering bankruptcy.

This is the end of a significant era in the music industry, and it seems ironic that a cottage industry is born on the demise of the mass-produced commercial establishment. Was it the online peer to peer music sharing that killed big-business music conglomerates?

It’s easier to find your favorite tracks online, download them to your computer and create an audio disc suitable for your home stereo or car. Popular songs from the radio are almost always highlighted as a top download, and you don’t have to worry about overly restrictive copy protections. The fact of the matter is, a modern compact disc may not play in all of your CD devices. There are plenty of new releases that have been manufactured to reject a CDROM drive from reading the disc, why would a consumer want to invest in a media that won’t work everywhere?

So the record industry is responsible for its own demise. With the imminent bankruptcy of Tower Records, the commercial music establishment should start planning for a new means of profiteering.