A remedy for ghastly colleagues

 Society, Work  No Responses »
May 272007
 

I was working for a consulting company in Rome when I met one of the most crass, self-imbued turds I have ever had the misfortune to cross. His disdain for his fellow colleagues was boundless and it was mutual, not one of us would have urinated on Jay, even if he burst into flames.

One morning, nursing a grappa-induced hangover, I decided the time was ripe to give Jay a dose of medecine. My colleagues enjoyed it, I hope you will too.

Jay,
I am leaving [company] today and would like to take this opportunity to settle some things with you.

I’m writing this slowly as I know you can’t read very fast, so pay attention.

You might have noticed that subsequent to [company]’s demise, things have been very trying for the team here in Rome. It certainly hasn’t even crossed your mind that a major portion of the grief we’ve been having is due to your crass, narcissic behaviour. For two months now you’ve been prancing around the corridors here like a bloated peacock on LSD, with hot air, vacuous promises and bovine excrement as your sole deliverables. How you could even imagine that [company] would actually take on a used-car salesman like yourself defies belief; it does however demonstrate clearly that your astonishing arrogance is matched only by your incredible stupidity. You have made an appalling image of our company and were you to have something other than dirt holding your ears apart you would be ashamed.

But I digress, I’m all for letting people fight their own battles, I have a personal axe to grind with you. You may recall that a couple of months back, when I resigned, I sent an email informing all concerned, in which I placed confidence in you to announce my resignation to the client at an opportune moment. A foolish mistake. Having made a complete botch-up of everything, you waited until we were re-negotiating the contract to make the announcement to the client at the worst possible moment. To worsen matters you did it behind everyone’s back and, spineless cockroach that you are, didn’t even admit to having done it. How you could try and sabotage so many of your own colleagues’ efforts to further your base little personal ends shows a despicable contempt. Fortunately the client saw through your miserable ploy, and we now all share a similar contempt for you. Truly, in the 25-odd years I’ve been working, you are the worst piece of scum that I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter.

Had you a less faulty gene pool, you would have learnt that the world is a small place and people that you slight often reappear later in a superior position. I sincerely hope that this will occur and given the opportunity, rest assured that I will ream you dry with neither hesitation nor remorse.

Lest you perceive anything cowardly in sending this message, fear not, I have communication skills that you couldn’t imagine in your wildest dreams. You might like to focus your cramped, porcine imagination on figuring out the extent to which I have have spitefully blind-copied this email >:-|

To avoid any ambiguity note that I write this from a purely personal stand-point; don’t bother trying to associate this email with [company], I’m reachable at the address below.

As you may well imagine, I never got a reply.

Islam isn’t all bad

 Law, Religion  No Responses »
May 262007
 

Another interesting conversation with A. the other day. He married a Maroccan woman, converted to Islam and observes muslim tradition carefully. I always enjoy our discussions; born and raised Christian, A. understands my skepticism and is remarkably candid in explaining how Islam functions.

A. is a jovial chap and can share any joke. He’s also playful and joined his buddies in the latest fad of playing poker. Of course, the fun is betting and it only works with real money. Their stakes are minimal, 5 francs (about 4 US$) for a pile of tokens which usually last the evening. Problem: gambling is forbidden to muslims. A. resolved the issue very elegantly: he pays his 5 francs like the others, but if he has winnings at the end of the evening, he puts them in a pot, which buys dinner for the group when it’s full enough. (He admitted sheepishly that he had taken it on himself not to check with the imam if this way of avoiding betting was legal.)

We worked together for several years and once took a taxi on a business ride. I paid the driver, on expenses. Walking away I noticed that A. had returned to the taxi. “A problem?” I asked, not realising that he had tried to be discreet.
A. explained that it was Zakat. Muslim law dictates that you must give a small percentage of your income (some 2.5%) to the needy. From a philosophical standpoint, this strikes me as rather an intelligent idea; if everyone were to give a little to the poor, there would be less hardship (and less likelyhood of the poor revolting). I have no way of obtaining  the figures but the apparent balance of wealth in the Middle-East suggests to me that zakat isn’t as prevalent as it should be.

This brings me to another discussion we had, where I had asked about the charia, in particular the stoning of adulterers. A.’s explanation was not quite the one I expected. In a nutshell, the reasoning he had been taught was this: The laws of Islam can only be fully applied when all of them are applied simultaneously. These laws stipulate that everyone in society must be provided for (food, clothing, lodging etc), must observe all the laws, care for his family, etc (we agreed that this description has many parallels with communism). Such a society doesn’t exist anywhere in the world, thus if all the laws are not applied, then not all the laws necessarily apply. The tricky bit is deciding what is applicable in a given situation. For example, in an extremely poor, under-developed country, perhaps the only workable method of dissuading robbers is to cut off one of their hands. In a more modern (or moderate) country, such practices would be unthinkable. Of course, if everyone had been cared for as the law mandates, then there wouldn’t be any stealing to punish and amputation would only be a theoretical threat.

A lot of this makes sense to me and the aims, at least in theory, are laudable. The difficulty I have is that nothing is black or white, just shades of grey according to who’s judging what and when. Perhaps it’s just that I’m too cartesian?

Television : The worst technology ever

 Technology  No Responses »
May 252007
 

A good portion of our lives is spent trying to make things work, be they a microwave oven, a coffee machine or, God help me, a television.

Our first television was in 1962, with two channels, BBC and ITV. It was black and white with a resolution of 405 lines. (BBC2 introduced 625 lines in 1964). There were 4 controls: on/off/channel, volume, brightness and contrast. Here we are, 45 years later, with fundamentally the same primitive technology, and the most ghastly user interface and technology produced by man.

The TV industry has been plagued by a plethora of so-called standards: the American NTSC, the British PAL, the French SECAM, and a host of variants, all mutually incompatible. The result is that viewers who want to watch programs from neighbouring countries have to buy much more expensive dual-standard televisions. Concomittantly, enormous sums have been spent trans-coding programs between standards, with consumers footing the bill.

The video industry fares no better. No sooner were video casettes invented, manufacturers developed mutually-incompatible formats (VHS, BETAMAX, VIDEO 2000), again forcing consumers to buy dual-standard players. Learning nothing from past mistakes, the DVD industry also started a standards war (which was finally settled by Lou Gerstner). But true to form, they quickly created two dual-layer recoding standards, DV- and DV+, so that the public could be confused and once again milked. An identical standards war is now in progress for the next generation, between  Sony/Panasonic’s Blu-ray Disc, Toshiba’s HD DVD and Maxell’s Holographic Versatile Disc.

Let’s take a look at some parallel technologies. Not one has made such a pigs ear of it as television:

Compact Disks (CDs) were coined barley 20 years ago. The technology was well thought-out, cheap and perfectly standardised; the proof of good design is that it hasn’t had to change since its inception.

Kitchen appliances have evolved immensely. Microwave ovens, also born in the late 70’s, have revolutionised cooking and their manufacturers have delivered carefully crafted interfaces, comprehensible even by those whose IQ doesn’t exceed their shoe-size:

The telephone (fixed, cordless and mobile GSM) is a further technology whose engineers have produced miracles. My mobile phone not only allows me to talk to anyone on the planet instantly, but also has a camera (still and video), remindes me of my appointments and displays my emails. The palm-sized package communicates over GSM, USB and Wifi (802.11b/g), has a display quality that rivals current television and costs less than half the price of a television receiver.

Television technology is pathetic and it’s getting worse. Here is the ghastly botch-up that I am compelled to use if I want to watch TV:

125 buttons just to watch a TV program? 
It patently hasn’t occurred to the half-wits who designed this rubbish that my real needs are:

  • Choose “BBC1” or “SF2” or some other acronym that I can remember easily
  • Play a DVD
  • Record a program for later viewing

None of the 125 buttons point me intuitively to meet those needs. What the hell are all those random colours and unrecognisable icons for? Why must I have three different controls? (Yes, I know that some remotes can double for their buddies, but I’ve yet to meet someone who can manage the feat). I can’t remember that BBC1 is channel 491, why the hell can’t I have an alphanumeric keyboard? A PC keyboard has less buttons.

The worst interface created by man.

P.S. We have a television, but I never watch it.

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