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Accenture recently proposed a blockchain editing tool. Sure seems like immutable isn't what it used to be. It's only a matter of time before blockchain is easier edited than the actual books

Damn, I laughed when I read that article. Of course, the financial industry "needs" to get in there and massage the data.

Accenture recently proposed a blockchain editing tool. Sure seems like immutable isn't what it used to be.

It's only a matter of time before blockchain is easier edited than the actual books

Return rates on electronics are between 11 and 20% and rising (2011). So this is really high, but it's part of a broader trend.

"most physicians think you should only be able to add information to them, not get access to all of the contents. "

Nope. What it said was that most of them believed you should not be able to UPDATE your medical records. The first paragraph also says 'access', but look at the questions that were asked and the graph. It's about updates, not reading them.

http://newsroom.accenture.com/news/most-us-doctors-believe-patients-should-update-electronic-health-record-but-not-have-full-access-to-it-according-to-accenture-eight-country-survey.htm

Funny HP shares system is probably technology that they sold off to Accenture, then PRA solutions(AKA Navitaire), back in 2001 http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=3662 This technology is and was based on hp3000 mainframe technology but it is very solid. In my opinion moving off of an old mainframe technology does not always buy you what you think it does. However it does keep money out of the hands of companies like Microsoft whose private dealings has been trying to get reservation companies to move away from mainframes and Unix based systems for over 10 years now. The problem is that with Microsoft if there is a problem you call them up and they fix it but they don't tell you how to prevent the problem in the future. However this does allow you to hire more, cheaper, engineers and programmers to run your wares. Unix systems required a higher caliber of programmer and engineer team because you didn't have the support, other than a company like IBM. HP Shares system is an old reservations technology as well so as far as moving from old to new they are moving from old to old(but that competitors have had a lot of good luck with). HP has a new system call HP Agilaire Passenger Service Solution which I hope is not Microsoft based but most likely is. Most likely HP plans to roll all of their airlines off of Shares and on to their new system which probably uses off the shelf technology blade and VM technology rather than mainframes.

Here's a press release about the Symbian deal.

Still, it's nice of these broken companies to move themselves to the end of the phone book.

They don't all do that though.

Andersen Consulting. Fucked up ENRON. Moved up slightly in the alphabet to Accenture.

A much-maligned tobacco company became Altria.

ValuJet. Rebranded as AirTran.

GMAC banking just rebranded itself as Ally Bank.

W

Oh, it's correct, and you can find this out for yourself from company's website See also this on Arthur Andersen. The Enron debacle dealt with Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm. Arthur Andersen had a consulting arm at the time, but that organization had no connection with Andersen Consulting ==> Accenture. Andersen Consulting was originally Arthur Andersens MICD division, which split legally from Arthur Andersen in 1988 (I was with the company at the time).

After Andersen Consulting spun off, it grew rapidly. During that same time, profits at all accounting firms including Arthur Andersen, were flat, so the accounting firms, including Arthur, developed consulting practices to try and increase revenues and margins. Arthur formed Arther Andersen Business Consulting, which grew rapidly. I was hired into, and quickly left that organization. It is completely distinct legally and operationally from Andersen Consulting/Accenture, and ultimately ended up competing with Accenture for some work.

Andersen Consulting changed their name to Accenture largely because of confusion in the marketplace between Arthur Andersen's consulting practice and their own. Arthur's Consulting practice was a highly fragmented and locally managed business - each office ran their own show. Andersen Consulting/Accenture is a much more centrally managed company. The fragmented nature of Arthur's practice allowed a situation to develop where the Dallas office had some rogue partners, who ignored the company Quality Assurance function in order to grow the Enron business, with the results that we are all familiar with. I left Arthur Andersen after a year, in 1998, because I could see the foundations for this disaster.

Accenture has a long history of tarnished projects, and a not so publicized long history of successful projects. However, Accenture had no connection with the Enron debacle, which was not a systems project failure, but rather a failure of the accounting audit/oversight/attest function, where Arthur Andersen signed off on the bogus partnerships which Enron used to hide liabilities. At the end of the Enron debacle, Arthur Andersen was dissassembled and is no more, as a result of their role. Accenture lives still today.

I had no idea http://www.accenture.com/ had robotics researchers. When I was working there, developing anything new was to be avoided if at all possible.

A poll a while back found 1/4 of americans approve of insurance fraud

http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=_dy n%5Cdynamicpressrelease_577.xml

So yeah, not a bad assumption to make.

There's a chain of gas stations & convenience stores in Portugal that has been using biometric payment services since March 2004. More details here or here here.

Many consulting and defense firms have been hiring tech workers non-stop for a long time now. Especially in the D.C. Metro area.

For another example of a multi-touch technology (one not based on total internal reflection, however), see http://wall.accenture.com/ . We've been working with multi-touch screens 10-12 feet wide for a couple years now.

One of the challenges with multi-touch technology is the question of where to put the cameras (or other detectors). If the cameras are in-plane -- if they look directly across the field of interaction -- then there are ambiguity problems as you try to interpret multiple occlusions (fingers) as definite x,y points.

If the cameras are behind the screen plane (as seems to be the case with the NYU work, and also with Microsoft's multi-touch system exhibited at SIGGRAPH last year), then ambiguity is easier to deal with, but you can *only* work with projected or freestanding screens. This is a serious limitation in practical applications. Most of the durable, day-to-day screen technologies are enclosed in some way.

This isn't entirely unique as the other commenters ahve said. Another example is something called Interactive Wall by Accenture.

Accenture has developed and has been showcasing their Interactive Wall for a few years now. A detailed article entitled "Supporting Collaborative Touch Interaction with High Resolution Wall Displays" on how it works can be found here.

If you're really interested Accenture hosts "road shows" where you can take a peek at this an a lot of other things the Accenture Labs have developed.

This isn't entirely unique as the other commenters ahve said. Another example is something called Interactive Wall by Accenture.

Accenture has developed and has been showcasing their Interactive Wall for a few years now. A detailed article entitled "Supporting Collaborative Touch Interaction with High Resolution Wall Displays" on how it works can be found here.

If you're really interested Accenture hosts "road shows" where you can take a peek at this an a lot of other things the Accenture Labs have developed.

Do you have an idea how much it costs to maintain their army of consultants and developers? These http://www.bearingpoint.com/guys, these http://www.accenture.com/guys, these http://www.eds.com/guys and last but not least your little ant army of Indians http://www.wipro.com/. Remember that they travel a lot, have to stay in hotels, eat, etc. This is not cheap. Viva la Outsourcing! Don't work there, but know someone who does. And it's chaotic. Thank God I don't have Bellsouth DSL.

Well, like so many things, this crap is marketed to yuppies with more money than brains. This guy, being an IT consultant for a bank or somesuch (probably employed by Ass Enter), fits the bill.

Does this look obliterated to you?

Arthur Andersen were at the heart of the biggest scandal in corporate America in recent years, and ... it walked away with nothing more than a name change.

The vast majority of its employees had continuing jobs and never felt a rumble.

Using Accentures implementation as an example doesn't say much about DCE/RPCs robustness. It has been plagued by problems as Computer Weekly reports.

Many of you talk a good game of prior art, providing oodles of weblinks that supposedly prove your searching brilliance and the Patent Office's ineptitude. However, after looking over the "prior art" references cited in this thread, I fail to see any that would actually fully read on Xybernaut's claimed subject matter.

For instance, both the Nomadic Radio and Smart Cow Collar lack a display controller, and from all appearances also lack any computer components enclosed in the collar that can movably extend outside the collar adjacent to the user's face.

Simply mentioning that the Gumstix computer is small enough to fit under a collar doesn't remotely cover the myriad of claimed limitations in Xybernaut's patent.

This Hewlett-Packard paper merely states, "A collar mounted near-field transceiver allows connection to head-mounted peripherals." Again, nothing about a display controller (or any other computer components) movably extending from inside to outside the collar.

The Invisible Computer talks optimistically about a future when, "Computers will be in your collar, so you can whisper when you talk with them and hear without bothering others." The specific operational structure of Xybernaut's claimed invention is not here either.

Levi's Industrial Clothing apparently comes, "Armed with a remote, [so] you can switch between [an MP3] player and [a mobile] phone, while earphones and microphones are concealed in the jacket collar." No mention of display control. No mention of collar component extension.

This 'Enter the Cyborg' article further describes Levi's Industrial Clothing as having, "a microphone hidden in the collar, and retractable earphones [that] extend out from the shoulders for listening to both music and phone calls." So we have computer component extension -- but from the shoulders, not from the collar. And still, mind you, no display controller enclosed in the collar.

This Carnegie Mellon University paper reveals, "The general areas we have found to be the most unobtrusive for wearable objects are: (a) collar area..." Okay, great. But yet again, no display controller and no collar extension.

The closest prior art comes from Accenture's Personal Awareness Assistant. However, the earliest mention of the Personal Awareness Assistant on Accenture's website appears to be January 2002. And Xybernaut's invention was filed on January 2, 2001. Besides that, saying Accenture's mini digital camera constitutes a "display controller" would be a bit of a stretch. Regardless, Accenture also fails to say anything about "input/output connectors" or "peripheral ports" -- as claimed by Xybernaut. So another dead end here.

Now you may well make the argument that Xybernaut's invention is an obvious variant (where "obviousness" is completely subjective and easily disputable) of the above prior art. But that position is dramatically different from declaring Xybernaut's invention not to be novel. For Xybernaut's invention not to be novel, you would have to find a piece of prior art dated before 2001 that contains each and every limitation recited in claims 1, 11, 20, or 22 (a

Many of you talk a good game of prior art, providing oodles of weblinks that supposedly prove your searching brilliance and the Patent Office's ineptitude. However, after looking over the "prior art" references cited in this thread, I fail to see any that would actually fully read on Xybernaut's claimed subject matter.

For instance, both the Nomadic Radio and Smart Cow Collar lack a display controller, and from all appearances also lack any computer components enclosed in the collar that can movably extend outside the collar adjacent to the user's face.

Simply mentioning that the Gumstix computer is small enough to fit under a collar doesn't remotely cover the myriad of claimed limitations in Xybernaut's patent.

This Hewlett-Packard paper merely states, "A collar mounted near-field transceiver allows connection to head-mounted peripherals." Again, nothing about a display controller (or any other computer components) movably extending from inside to outside the collar.

The Invisible Computer talks optimistically about a future when, "Computers will be in your collar, so you can whisper when you talk with them and hear without bothering others." The specific operational structure of Xybernaut's claimed invention is not here either.

Levi's Industrial Clothing apparently comes, "Armed with a remote, [so] you can switch between [an MP3] player and [a mobile] phone, while earphones and microphones are concealed in the jacket collar." No mention of display control. No mention of collar component extension.

This 'Enter the Cyborg' article further describes Levi's Industrial Clothing as having, "a microphone hidden in the collar, and retractable earphones [that] extend out from the shoulders for listening to both music and phone calls." So we have computer component extension -- but from the shoulders, not from the collar. And still, mind you, no display controller enclosed in the collar.

This Carnegie Mellon University paper reveals, "The general areas we have found to be the most unobtrusive for wearable objects are: (a) collar area..." Okay, great. But yet again, no display controller and no collar extension.

The closest prior art comes from Accenture's Personal Awareness Assistant. However, the earliest mention of the Personal Awareness Assistant on Accenture's website appears to be January 2002. And Xybernaut's invention was filed on January 2, 2001. Besides that, saying Accenture's mini digital camera constitutes a "display controller" would be a bit of a stretch. Regardless, Accenture also fails to say anything about "input/output connectors" or "peripheral ports" -- as claimed by Xybernaut. So another dead end here.

Now you may well make the argument that Xybernaut's invention is an obvious variant (where "obviousness" is completely subjective and easily disputable) of the above prior art. But that position is dramatically different from declaring Xybernaut's invention not to be novel. For Xybernaut's invention not to be novel, you would have to find a piece of prior art dated before 2001 that contains each and every limitation recited in claims 1, 11, 20, or 22 (a

If I pay one of my specialists extra because I think he outperforms the rest, I have to pay all specialists extra. Equal rights stuff. This effectively means that you basically can't reward people individually. You are always rewarding a group of people. Effectively this leads to job-titles you only find in Dilbert, because this gives you the possibility to reward individuals who care, work overtime when needed or just perform in an extraordinary way (like not laughing at a customer when he says that his core business runs on windows and such...).

If not for the other things, this wouldnt be half bad if it were executed properly and if you didnt have the runaround you described(Retitling) - then I'd not mind seeing this in the States. This would make people think twice about hiring someone.

And the best of them .... as an employer I have to pay the salary of my workers if they get ill. And that is no problem. But I also have to keep on paying them, even if they can't work because of own decisions. And that can last two complete years. So, if one of those guys crashes his car with 200 km/h during holidays, I end up paying for his treatment, including two years of salary.... think about Skiing, Bungeejumping, etc... awww.

Well, this one you deserve, since this one gives the right benefits to the right side(keeps you from going evil). Especially with all those Enron/WorldCom scandals, those executive parachutes would be shot down by the workers who got shafted before the creditors get a bite.

It just makes you (and us) outsource everything to places where the law is a bit more normal.

I guess youlike slave labor and/or like working for them. No thanks, I'll choose saner companies (yes, that I stands for International, but they dont pride themselves in it)service over some company who gloats about sends off work to these bozos. And if no job is god given, it's going to take a real axe to the board room to stop the insanity you suggest. Yes, a real axe, and yes, Virginia, heads will roll, with careers following suit.

There are several commonly available tools (hardware, not programs) that allow you to see EVERY write there has every been to a disk.

This technology isn't NSA-level stuff anymore. It's not even particularly expensive anymore.

It's in common use in larger companies for internal investigations (porn rings, espionage, general illegalness). Really.

The numbers are out there if you take the time to look. I only have old ones, 'cause I don't do this stuff any more. But Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) used to do periodic TCO analyses of Windows vs. MacOS in Fortune 500 environments. IIRC the difference was about $5000/yr/desk for Windows, $2000/yr/desk for MacOS.

Mac user productivity was higher (the machines just worked, were easier to use with more consistent UI, and didn't go 'blue') but mainly support was much cheaper (less upkeep, much less helpdesk, much less reloading of OS, much less backend work on the server & network infrastructure to keep the workstations going.

I haven't kept up so I don't know if they still do the analysis. I was unable to find an old reference on their website, sorry. You'll just have to take my word, or look it up at ZDNet or something. But as several people here have noted, a typical large mac installation seems to require about 1/5 as many people as a large MS installation.

I personally know at least one consultant who shifted from Macs to Windows for exactly the reason Cringely stated. He found that his Windows clients needed him a lot more => he made more money, and was glad to do it.

In my one stint at a $n billion company they spent over $5 million in support, plus unknown lost time, dealing with one virus event (Nimda?). With about 20,000 PCs that works out to $250/pc just for the one event. If you add 2 hours of lost time per person (over 1/2 professionals), that's another $200 in loaded costs. They banned Outlook Express from the company after that incident.

I also note that a couple of years ago when some big virus/worm came round, all of the Big Five (or however many they are now) accounting firms used Unix servers except KPMG. KPMG was down - the entire company as I recall - for a couple of days, while the others continued operating with a few limps here and there. That probably cost almost as much in lost time as their entire hardware infrastructure's capital cost.

People tend to forget that a single onsite support visit of two hours will cost as much as the entire PC, and a single helpdesk call costs from $20-30 minimum, up to hundreds of $. (I used to worry about the cost of my time setting up open source software, but found that it took just as long, usually longer setting up Oracle & iPlanet.)

has Mozilla been invaded by refugees from Arthur Andersen?

In reality, this kind of talk is great when you're trying to sell change to someone, but when you've giving your product away you don't need to worry about your customer!

The potential for misuse of this technology is immense, as you may already suspect, and the most intriguing finding is that all products sold worldwide can be uniquely tagged. It's the perfect tracking device. Mind you, you can embed an RFID tag on bank notes.

However, they are stuck with a technical problem which is delaying widespread usage, because RFID tags work fine when one tag is passed at a time through a reader but it simply does not operate properly if you try to pass multiple items at once.

Every one agrees that this kind of technology is a menace to civil liberties so, WHY such researchers insist on doing such kind of research?

Accenture has also teamed with Microsoft... I guess you get the picture.

The potential for misuse of this technology is immense, as you may already suspect, and the most intriguing finding is that all products sold worldwide can be uniquely tagged. It's the perfect tracking device. Mind you, you can embed an RFID tag on bank notes.

However, they are stuck with a technical problem which is delaying widespread usage, because RFID tags work fine when one tag is passed at a time through a reader but it simply does not operate properly if you try to pass multiple items at once.

Every one agrees that this kind of technology is a menace to civil liberties so, WHY such researchers insist on doing such kind of research?

Accenture has also teamed with Microsoft... I guess you get the picture.

The potential for misuse of this technology is immense, as you may already suspect, and the most intriguing finding is that all products sold worldwide can be uniquely tagged. It's the perfect tracking device. Mind you, you can embed an RFID tag on bank notes.

However, they are stuck with a technical problem which is delaying widespread usage, because RFID tags work fine when one tag is passed at a time through a reader but it simply does not operate properly if you try to pass multiple items at once.

Every one agrees that this kind of technology is a menace to civil liberties so, WHY such researchers insist on doing such kind of research?

Accenture has also teamed with Microsoft... I guess you get the picture.

The potential for misuse of this technology is immense, as you may already suspect, and the most intriguing finding is that all products sold worldwide can be uniquely tagged. It's the perfect tracking device. Mind you, you can embed an RFID tag on bank notes.

However, they are stuck with a technical problem which is delaying widespread usage, because RFID tags work fine when one tag is passed at a time through a reader but it simply does not operate properly if you try to pass multiple items at once.

Every one agrees that this kind of technology is a menace to civil liberties so, WHY such researchers insist on doing such kind of research?

Accenture has also teamed with Microsoft... I guess you get the picture.

If you're arguing that no bank mergers occurred in the 1980's, history and I politely disagree with you.

I never said that banking deregulation or any other form of financial divestiture occured in the 80's. But the FACT, Sparky, is that all kinds of financial institutions went nuts with mergers and acquisitions, especially following the S&L scandals of the late 1980's.

I don't know if you're intending to troll, so do you have a point to make, or did you just want to raise my ire?

In my experience, working at a consultancy will give you the opportunity to work in many places. The bad side of this is that you don't get to choose them. Where I work we sign documents saying we will go where we are told. That's fantastic for young people who don't mind being told they are going to be leaving for Hong Kong next week for 6 months, but not so good if you want to be able to go wherever you want.

I would go as far to say that most consultancies (ex-Big5 variety) will give you less freedom to go where you want when you want.

If you don't like tech journo, you could review books. A friend of mine does that for Wrox, just sends back changes he would make. He loves it, esepcially when I rang him recently and he told me he was in Bali. On holidays? Kind of... he was still working but was earning at the same time.

The Thus rebranding was in some ways rather good (ie it's a real word, rather than something made up and wanky like Avaya or Accenture, and it's short and difficult to spell).

Of course, their full name is 'letitbethus', which loses both of those qualities, and in either case, their name is only pronounceable in English and Greek, thereby limiting its usefulness in attacking European markets.

and this post gets modded down as redundant:

Accenture was originally part of the Arthur Andersen LLC conglomerate, as Andersen Consulting. Notice the consulting, not accounting. In January 2001 they renamed themselves to Accenture and began public trade.

That all doesn't mean that it's off the hook, however.

Even if I will get an auto -1, I will actually make a proper comment today. Ok, how do these guys survive? Hell, I couldn't miss even 3 days of work, or take more vacation days than were allotted to me, cause all my finances would suffer without pay.

Its the same thing that puzzles me about people that appear on TV shows like SURVIVOR, MTV's REAL WORLD or ROAD RULES, Big Brother, etc etc, WTF happens to your bills those months you are away? Either they have rich spouses or rich parents. I just don't get it, I couldn't leave my life for survivor or real world even if I wanted to. Its the same thing when my coworkers go out to lunch during the workweek and see a mall packed with cars..wtf you fucks..don't you have a job to go to????

I will give you a prime example of how this culture has invaded our academic instituions as well. When I was a senior I was recruited by a company, hell I don't care, I will post their name on here, the company was Accenture. Screw those guys by the way, I was being interviewed by a fat bald guy who kept asking me what "EXTRACURRICULAR" stuff I had done. I kept avoiding the subject and shifting it towards coursework, then at the end, when I had realized this was a company I did not even want to work for, I just let the guy have it...

"Earth to Corporate Clone...I did not have time or the money to go study in England or Spain or wherever the fuck (yes I did use the word fuck) these prissy little daddy's girls you interviewed before me did. I had to stay in college get my coursework done and work as a bartender to support myself or I would starve and my parent's don't give my a crumb of money. My scholarship pays half my tution, I borrow the rest and there is not much left over". I don't have time to take part in Campus activities, I don't have time to discuss world peace in Forums organized, I am not a member..of any Campus group, because sir, I am mixing drinks till 2 am and then going to class at 8am.

Fuck that company. Extracurricular activity is over-rated.

Needless to say, I did not get a follow up interview call, but damn did that feel good. He could not utter a word, he pretty much looked at the floor the whole time.

Accenture -- formerly Andersen Consulting -- reckon this will happen by 2007. It's worth a read... especially the links at the bottom talking about cultural pollution (not necessarily in a negative sense!)

They're not often wrong.

The figures reckon that one billion people in China will be connecting to the Web by the year 2007. It sounds a it optomistic to me, and what exactly does "connecting to the web" mean. Someone who owns a PC and is connected... or just someone who uses a CyberCafe? I wonder if in China "people per IP" would be much higher than in Europe or America.

Accenture -- formerly Andersen Consulting -- reckon this will happen by 2007. It's worth a read... especially the links at the bottom talking about cultural pollution (not necessarily in a negative sense!)

They're not often wrong.

The figures reckon that one billion people in China will be connecting to the Web by the year 2007. It sounds a it optomistic to me, and what exactly does "connecting to the web" mean. Someone who owns a PC and is connected... or just someone who uses a CyberCafe? I wonder if in China "people per IP" would be much higher than in Europe or America.

No, some commercial outfits say similar things. For instance Andersen Consulting, sorry, Accenture has this bizarre mentality of artificially inflating number of bugs in their pre-shipping bug tracking db, because the quality of their product will be judged by the ratio(bugs_found_after_release / bugs_found_and_fixed_before_release). The intended way of keeping this small is to make a quality product with almost no bugs left after release. However, another way of keeping this ratio low is by inflating the denominator, i.e. making sure many bugs are logged before release. Every trivial item will be logged, and preferably multiple times (for instance rather than saying "error messages have many spelling errors", each individual typo will be logged as a separate bug...). So, not all commercial entities consider a huge number of bugs to be a bad thing; in some circumstances it's actually quite the contrary!

Now, back to the issue at hand: in this particular case (Mozilla), you have to consider the difference between bugs and reported bugs. If a product is so buggy that nobody uses it, obviously no bugs will be reported. Mozilla is now entering a phase where many more people start to actually use it, and to use it more thoroughly, so surely, more bugs will be found and reported.

That's right, you get to help out others while doing little, if any of the work yourself. No pagers, some travel, and usually the pay and benifits are outstanding.

Check out the big companys: Accenture and/or Deloit and Touche.