Maszman Speaks!

Deci­sions, deci­sions. I would like to update my Linux PC but it’s maxed out hardware-wise. That means new hard­ware, but now that Apple’s OS X is matur­ing, I can get a G4 with it and still enjoy the ben­e­fits of open­source. Must. Decide. Carefully.

Some­times blog­ging has it’s downside.

I’m not cur­rently a prac­tic­ing Catholic, though not a day goes by when I don’t think about such things. So I read Relapsed Catholic, Kathy Shaidle’s weblog every day, and while it’s not got­ten me to clean up my reli­gious act, it’s cer­tainly full of inter­est­ing links about reli­gious issues that you won’t find any­where else.

There aren’t a lot of con­ser­v­a­tive voices in the blog world, at least that I know of, and while I don’t con­sider myself con­ser­v­a­tive (or lib­eral for that mat­ter), I look to those who force me to think.Which is why I rec­om­mend you read Relapsed Catholic, no mat­ter what your beliefs. It’s impor­tant to know why you believe some­thing, ques­tion­ing may not change anyrhing, but then you at least know the rea­son why.

Kathy is also a writer and com­men­ta­tor, check her site out for her books and TV appear­ances. Oh, by the way, she’s Cana­dian, if you won­der why she seems to look at the US from the out­side in.

Com­put­er­World reports that IT job growth was stag­nant in ’01 and uncer­tain in ’02, which should sur­prise no one. Given the recent spate of business’s admit­ting their results were fic­tion, I can’t for the life of me see how any­one could say the reces­sion has bot­tomed out. I think we’re still rid­ing the bad boy to the basement.

No one is per­fect. We all make mis­takes, noth­ing new about that con­cept. Cor­po­ra­tions make mis­takes (New Coke any­one?) but they don’t make them very often, or at least they used to not make them very often. One of the rea­sons that cor­po­ra­tions used to make fewer mis­takes was because there were mul­ti­ple peo­ple doing things and errors tended to get caught or at worst aver­aged in. Of course, that assumed that on the whole, peo­ple didn’t want to do bad work and didn’t want oth­ers to do it either. Ha ha, anti­quated think­ing, eh? Because now we have com­pa­nies like World­Com which announced $3.8B in account­ing errors and will be, among other things, lay­ing off 17,000 employees.

Com­pa­nies like World­Com have cre­ated a new cor­po­rate cul­ture where thiev­ery and deceit are the norm and noth­ing is more impor­tant than telling Wall Street good news. No one raises their hand and no one tries to change things. Audi­tors are hired by the account­ing firms they will be audit­ing and just con­tinue the false­hoods because no smart com­pany bites the hand that feeds it.

Ask your­self this ques­tion: “Who is look­ing out for the peo­ple (investors, employ­ees, etc.)?” You might not like the answer.

Into mobile phones and tech­nol­ogy? Check­out Howard​Chui​.com, a site full of news and reviews. I’ve added it to my book­marks, since I will be in the mar­ket to buy another, sooner or later. My boss just got a new phone, and all of a sud­den my Star­Tac looks old fash­ioned