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Scalable Enterprise Buzzword Solutions
prostoalex writes "Need a scalable enterprise solution? You're in luck, as those three buzzwords have become so prominent in the technology industry, that they can describe pretty much anything, according to Associated Press. The article later goes on to blame Microsoft and Apple for 'dumbing down' the product descriptions in order to appeal to non-tech-savvy audiences. 'High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive', the AP article states."
Apple would never do that, not with Xserves*
* Do not eat Xserve.
Solutions replaced products long ago - at least 5 years, anyway. Were you in a hole in 1999 during the dot com IPO craze?
Dilbert-inspired: The Buzzword Generator
Yet Another Buzzword Generator
And there are many, many more buzzword generators out there, implemented using open-architected dynamic algorithms by organic radical policies...
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Damn them.
Hey, at least most of the buzzwords can't get trademarked or patented, so we can feel free to apply the dynamic and scalable application envyronment moniker to our open source SOLUTIONS without being sued... er... litigated against.
Why doesn't anyone use my favorite buzzword anymore, "Blast Processing". It's Action Packed!
Why am I not rapping? I am rapping with you in a way.
I call it being specific. Does it matter to you if a power supply is called a power cube or a consumer energy solution? Seriously though, the ones that provide "solutions" are selling custom products and appropriate services, so it would be difficult to explicitly state what it is that they sell, while the consumer market is uber-specific. MS would not sell you a "solution," at least not in the same sense that it would sell a giant multinational a data management solution. Or something like that.
A blog like any other.
Ryan Donovan, a Hewlett-Packard Co. public relations director, concedes that terms like "data migration" and "optimizes agility" - both of which are found in the company's press materials - might confuse average readers. But the company uses those phrases in documents intended for technology experts and executives, he says.
You are being assimilated.
was the world's first "solutions" company. The big-iron dinosaurs -- the DECs, the Amdahls, the Univacs -- were all talking about "solutions" long before Microsoft and Apple.
All in all, a stupid article from a moron too lazy to do any research.
try here http://www.artifex.org/~myang/fun/bingo.html or here http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/johnnymoped/funcorner/ funcornerpageswithnorealpurpose/funcorner_buzzword .html
This COO we had loved the word 'leverage', sure enough, after 4 or 5 months since he has been in the company we were 'leveraging' everything, the web, the infrastructure, resourses. You name it - we could 'leverage' it. Then he sold the company to a competitor, which left 50% of employees on the street and moved on to a new adventure. I guess he 'leveraged' us after all. But that is a different story.
The article later goes on to blame Microsoft and Apple for 'dumbing down' the product descriptions in order to appeal to non-tech-savvy audiences. 'High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive'
It's about flexibility. Well, I started by using OS X simply because it was a more productive OS environment than IRIX, Solaris, Windows or yes, Linux. I could use one environment to run specific scientific code, run Office and Photoshop along with serving up webpages and other high end tasks including cluster computing all in one environment that allowed me to replace an SGI, and a Windows machine with one OS X box. The fact that I could also use iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD etc....etc....etc....allows me to also use them at home and suggest OS X running Macintosh systems for my family who knows very little about computers. If Apple can do that and market to both the high end and the low end with one solution, more power to them.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is the work of IBM and the rest of the "services" oriented consultants. KPMG, Anderson, etc. A group of highly paid morons.
But in the long run, services is actually the driving force in computing. Products are fine, but upon those products is a whole ecology of companies providing support, enhancement, and integration of those products, tailored for each individual company.
In fact, this is what makes Open Source software so attractive. It sure as hell isn't good to be the company developing the software, but it is really good to be a service provider using that software. No longer do you need to pay for the software, you only need to pay for support.
I guess this could be a double edged sword for customers, though. It seems that there would be an incentive to keep OSS as obtuse and inscrutable as possible to maximize support income. This obviously wouldn't happen with a commercial product that has to prove its worth by being easier to use and generally better than the equivalent OSS package, just to compete.
Nice to see an article that thinks outside the box into new paradigms and synergies.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
When I hear these buzz words I immediately assume that whatever the hell they are selling is not as good as the words may lead you to think. They're saying something but they are hiding something. Damned weasels.
Give me benchmarks! Give me comparisons!
How about a link to a site that doesn't suck?
An interview Frank Lingua of Dissembling Associates
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
To sell anything, you have to pitch the product to the person with the signing power. If your target customers are six year old girls you paint it pink and sparkly. If your target customer is a CEO/CIO + board of directors then you dress it up with buzzwords and phrases. Technical details are stuff these folk don't understand add confusion.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The Cluetrain Manifest
I have to "interface" with the AdExecs on a regular basis at work, and they are so god damn annoying. Always sitting around "doing lunch" whilst creating "PowerPoints" to present to the upper-echelons of management, showing how they have "factored-in" their latest and greatest "thinking outside-of-the-box".
Makes me so enraged I want to throw up and shoot them at the same time. Grrr.
I guess what really pisses me off is the fact that they get paid to do the same basic job I do. Bullshit the bosses ;)
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Ryan Donovan, a Hewlett-Packard Co. public relations director, concedes that terms like "data migration" and "optimizes agility" - both of which are found in the company's press materials - might confuse average readers. But the company uses those phrases in documents intended for technology experts and executives, he says.
To exactly which technology experts is he referring? Sure as hell not me.
Advertisers and corporate relations departments produce bullshit... film at 11.
'High-tech companies don't release products anymore, they provide solutions. And those solutions don't simply run a program or play a song. Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive'
OR, those solutions route phone calls, let you manage and share your calendar or take a picture of your license plate when you run a red light.
Those buzzwords do have definitions. Its the simpletons in Marketing and PR who try to decsribe shit without understanding what the shit does or how it will be used.
I've often wondered if the vague descriptions served a another purpose, which is to throw off your potential competition by not telling anyone what you do... Maybe thats why those companies usually have no customers...
After reading the article, I'd say he's basically bashing new jargon because he doesn't see a need for it.
... uh... blah.
I would say most of what he sites is pretty silly, but "Scalable?"
I can't think of a better word to describe something as highly functional as scalable, even if sometimes it applies to things it really shouldn't matter for.
But we'll take for instance a simple peer to peer file sharing network. Some file sharing networks simply don't scale well to thousands of users, or hundreds of thousands but work really well for a few dozen. So knowing weather or not something like this is scalable enough to demonstrate to a small office, then deploy company wide. Knowing something like that REALLY WILL save you some heartache later one.
Or how about rendering engines? Some scale DOWN as well as up. A good scalalbe engine means software will drop features on low end hardware, and take advantage of more on newer hardware.
Some jargon is useful.
But others are just annoying. I still hate the term "BLOG". We already has sufficient terms to describe most post and forum sites, but the term BLOG implies a specific type and now sites that aren't really blogs are being called blogs by the internet newcomers who don't know any better.
So
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Here are some candidate definitions offered by the c2.com crowd:
* Complex business logic
* Access to relational databases
* Distributed computing, generally using some sort of remote procedure call or remote method invocation protocol
* Distributed transactions
* Data exchange between heterogeneous systems
* Message-oriented middleware
* Directory and naming services
* Interpersonal communication (e-mail, chat, shared documents, video-conferencing)
* Security
* Web-browser-based client interfaces
* Integration with legacy systems
* Integration with the systems of other businesses/organizations
* Centralized administration and maintenance
* Something that costs boat-loads of money (and is considered to be worth it by its sponsors)
* Something that wastes boat-loads of money
* Slow developer velocity to near zero with 3-minute start-up times
* Give BEA and IBM Global Services reasons to exist
* Applications that have reach across multiple functional areas in a company
And my favorites:
Definition: "An application whereby more than 10 people get fired if it fails."
Variation: "An application whereby the total annual salaries of those fired for failure is greater than $600,000."
Table-ized A.I.
He longs to see the demise of "scalable," for instance, which is tech lingo for something that can get bigger.
While other things discussed in the article are just plain silly, scalability is a real feature of software. It should be discussed in marketing material, and customers should ask about it if its not. I guess the inability to discern between buzzwords and features extends, beyond marketers and purchasers, to the writer of the article.
... find out if a sales guy pushing a "solution" actually has only vapor or something real to offer.
Just ask him what his "solution" solves for your business.
Sometimes buzzwords actually work in the customers favor.
I know not many of you RTFA, but is it just me, or is it really poorly written? I mean, how many paragraphs does the dude need in it. Maybe he needs a scalable language assimilation solution.
This post is -1, Offtopic.
Here is what we do:
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That guy is a whiney bitch. His examples are totally bogus.
Enterprise = Anything dealing with corporations
Scalable = Anything that can support growth
Blog = Web Log. Its a fucking diary.
I was expecting to see shit like "Synergy", but "Data Migration"?!? How the hell can you be in the IT industry and not understand Data Migration?
What a douche bag!
Look at their market. Most people want the computer to be an appliance. They don't care how many "jigga-bops" it has. The PC market started out as catering to geeks, but in order to get the rest of the people to buy their products, they had to sell it on terms they could understand.
How many people care how many gallons their washing machine uses? A better selling point would be that it can wash 16 towels at one time.
There are people that like screwing around with technology, and those that just want to use it.
Every software is scalable. The question to ask is not wether the software is scalable or not, but to what point it is. Because every software is scalable to a point, and every marketer adds it in their product description, it is a buzzword.
perception is reality
"The marketing people are so bad at hyping their products that, with all my experience, I'll have to read and reread and reread just to figure out what this thing does," says Freedman, founder of The Computer Language Company Inc. in Point Pleasant, Pa.
I don't even bother with marketing materials any more. I google for "$PRODUCT problem resolved" or somesuch.
My personal opinion is that marketers should be legally liable for making false or even potetially misleading statements. I implemented a BI/Broker (A Business Intelligence package, if you'll excuse the oxymoron) install, all the while knowing that the thing was essentially worthless without us puting in the intelligence that the thing needed. A simple spreadsheet would have done the same, with less hardware/software/programing. It was OMG Cool to the buzz-word compliant people though, since the marketing weenies did such a good job of hood winking senior management. In the end, the company used 1/4 of the systems functionality, and the rest was done by spreadsheet. Go figure.
Really, I wonder how 'scaleable' the marketers personal wallets are, after I've spent my employers money of a product that only does half the job I thought it would, and I can recover costs because they lied.
Marketing is lies, more lies and damned lies in a pretty package so you'll put your money and reputation on the line. The whole premise is to extract money from your companies shareholders and give it to thier shareholders. Remember that the next time a sales weenie takes you out for lunch.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
It's "It just works" campaign attracts people, but when people realize that it doesn't "just work", it requires study and practice, and yes, you might have to fix it from time to time...
It frustrates people, and it makes people feel like morons. Which they're not, just inexperienced.
Buzzword Translation
-------- -----------
Adaptable Product not yet coded.
Scalable Not scalable.
Best-of-Breed As good as other vaporware.
Zero-maintenance Zero-utility.
Open Works with anything - just not with your systems.
AC was clearly stating that he makes a "Fine Profit" from his scalable enterprise solutions! His subject line was meant to invoke jealousy of his success! Silly mods! :-p
A Win/Win Proposition for Leveraging Strategic Community Synergies
It is a well-known fact that at the current point in time unprecedented opportunities for leveraging win/win strategies arise through emergent social-dynamics synergies heralding revolutionary technology breakthroughs in world-wide media applications.
This post presents to the Slashdot community a proposal for an exciting new roadmap that delineates a win/win strategy integrating unique potentials for reaping the benefits of emergent synergistic effects arising from a major paradigm shift in focus group dynamics and from leveraging cost/benefit appraisals in the resulting market-share contribution matrix.
I think we can all agree that innovative win/win strategies to facilitate the on-going paradigm shifts in market model convergence scenario implementations spearheding cutting-edge technology utilization are paramount to the success of a comprehensive assessment of the emergent Slashdot win/win market penetration focus group convergence synergy potential.
This revolutionary proposal comprises a visionary win/win scenario for leveraging factors that consume all resources, in other words, resource hogs. The new strategy implements enhanced information flows wherein the resultant rise in information flow constitutes a major asset in the win/win strategy for enhancing countermeasures against this particular type of resource-consuming factor, in that the resultant friction will wash them away.
This unique win/win/win scenario comprises state-of-the-art paradigm shifts in community-building strategies for leveraging burgeoning cutting-edge visions of innovative synergized implementation models that underscore the win/win/win/win potentials of a comprehensive market-share focus to facilitate the sustainable spearheading of integrated emergent convergence-orientated industry exposures utilizing win/win/win/win/win propositions for heralding the introduction of unprecedented new win/win/win/win/win/win technology cost/benefit appraisals in order to enhance your browsing experience.
(If you read this post very carefully, you'll notice that if you remove all the buzzwords, what remains is hogwash. Literally.)
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Somewhere there's a product that will Grow Bleeding-edge Eyeballs!
"XML Enterprise Object Network Services 101 with UML in Seven Days for Dummies Super-Bible Unleashed"
I read it and am now all cleared up. It even removed nasal congestion under 2 minutes and left my nose smelling minty clean with a mild scent of fresh lemon.
Table-ized A.I.
I thought that the big sell these days - especially with the growth in outsourcing - is to sell "outcomes".
You don't provide ERP Solutions (an input), you provide cost effective timely financial reporting (an outcome).
You don't provide Printing Solutions (the service consumed), you provide Flexible High Reliability Content Production (the outcome).
You don't sell mobile phone solutions, you sell happier existences....
And besides, its much easier to sell the outcome, rather than the input. The magic is to convince people that the outcome will be achieved given the input.
Boris.
Providing and selling services are completely okay with me, too, as long as it's possible to figure out what those services actually are. Where I have the problem is when the marketing lingo that's describing the product or service is so abstract and general that it's impossible to figure out what on earth the product or service actually does.
For many tech companies these days, it's downright impossible to figure out what they actually do from their marketing material. It's just full of buzz-words that mean absolutely nothing. Instead of saying they'll build software to suit your needs, they promote themselves as having cohesive teams who'll provide scalable solutions to assist in optimising the dynamic agility of your business. Huh?
I can't understand how someone looking for software to be built, or for someone to out-source their payroll system to, or whatever else, could possible figure out to contact to a company that uses that type of marketing. This is one of the reasons that I really don't like working in tech, because there's so much focus on spouting rubbish instead of getting to the point... whether that point be that a company will build products, or provide a service. Apparently it works, though, because these buzzword businesses seem to be thriving.
I think this is the point of the article.
Check out their web page for the Xserve. It's their enterprise product and it's also their most technical page. It has little of their standard marketing flare and is loaded with tech specs.
I guess that all buzzword and no product stuff is why Apple recently announced Mac mini, iPod shuffle, iLife and iWork.
I guess they also are not selling big honking displays or yet another version of their iMac.
What do you have to do to lose the buzzword moniker, reinvent an entire industry?
It seems like a lot of this marketing babble does more harm than good. Many times, I've been asked to do research on pre-existing 'solutions', and have passed on companies becuase I couldn't really tell what they were offering. The entire point of using a pre-existing solution is to save manpower. If I have to schedule a 3 hour teleconference just to find out if your product serves my industry, I just might not bother.
I've got your slashdot buzzwords right here in one handy, easy to remember phrase:
In Soviet Russia, all your base are imagining an ad-hoc beowulf cluster of old korean overlords welcoming YOU!
Thank you.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
My pet peeve is that, when things go wrong, they're "issues". "Your car has a tree issue" has become the kind of BS we hear every day. They're PROBLEMS. It's OK to have problems - otherwise, who's going to buy your solutions?
--
make install -not war
"Today the PC is often still considered just a tool, but together we need to make it a lot more than that. We need to make it a path to experiences,"
Replace "the PC is" with "drugs are."
I have gas, but my car uses petrol.
Yes Apple. Apple is a marketing company. They buy their "solutions" off the shelf and re-package it and promote it. Sorry, fanboy, but Apple and Microsoft are two peas in a pod.
The guy actually has a thesaurus (yes, I know Office has one too) propped open on his desk to find better words than the ones we plainspoken people use. Here's some great examples of him:
-actionable
-repeatable
-iteratively
-resonate
and my personal favorite "theater of the real"
This guy is way out there
The scalability of your washing machine is astounding. Can we get together over lunch and discuss the possibility of getting a washing machine solution here that scales as well?
I'm new to speaking Buzzword Bullshit. I swear that I'm going to end up killing my manager, though he is a good English to marketing translator.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive
Yeah, Bill Gates always struck me as the Fabio of the software world. He should have been on the cover of the software boxes.
Try The Buzzword Compliant Dictionary. Sadly, Bullfighter is no longer available.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Well, your ideas sound proactive. But I think you can combine your synergy with that of a pencil and just flick it at your manager's head.
I read his book a few months ago. He talks of the death of public language, how it has been pervaded by words and phrases that have no real power or truth - dead language.
To quote from the following article Fighting the Death Sentence
"To provide outcome-related research and consultancy services that address real-world issues" - shrieks of laughter. The university's "approach to quality management is underpinned by a strong commitment to continuous improvement and a whole-of-organisation framework" - uproar in the room. The university in question was RMIT but it could have been any of them. Go to your website and read the language, Watson urged guests at a recent Deans of Education dinner. That made people laugh even more. They worked at universities; they knew what he was talking about. Some of them probably even wrote this stuff. It was a surreal moment. But to Watson the joke has a sting. It is funny and it is awful. A terrible thing is happening to the language, he believes, and at the end of the day, in a globalised world, it is not a positive communications outcome. In other words, there is a pox upon our public speech.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Whomever dreamt up "Solution" in the IT world should be shot.
(I don't think it was Microsoft or Apple).
I had a client who wanted to send invoices out as PDF documents via Email. They have a system in place already that generates Invoice forms on laser printers and wanted it duplicated and produced as PDF/email. (a timeline of yesterday of course).
So, I call up the company that wrote the Forms software they were already using as their new version supported creation of PDF documents as well as emailing them. Should be easy right? Wrong.
Couldn't buy the software, instead the company wanted to provide a "Solution", the salesperson wouldn't even give an idea of the price for the 'solutions', but demanded we wade through a web demo with him for an afternoon before it was to be discussed.
So, after having a little back and forth phone tag / negotiations we said forget it and I found a nice piece of software which could convert PCL to PDF and supported PDF Encryption / Access restrictions.
Dropped the program onto the server, spent an afternoon making adjustments to the process to add email support and presto; PDF Documents via Email.
Ever notice how the most medicore companies with the least to offer potential customers are the worst abusers of marketing-speak? Marketing speak is a sign that the company or its products have nothing unique or particularly compelling about them. In many cases, it also means that the marketing people in the company have little or no technology background and are simply unable to articulate any sort of benefit, because they don't understand their target audience or their product.
I find that the level of marketing-speak is a great way to separate the bad potential employers from the more interesting ones. Unfortunately the world I work in (Java, especially server-side stuff) is particularly rife with companies that use copious amounts of marketing-speak. (speaking of which - anyone hiring in the PNW or BC?).
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs promoted the "experience" of using an Apple computer way back in 1984 - before many people could see why they'd want one of the pricey, clunky boxes in their homes.
Because you like the experience? Right?
Read the article before you get your apple fanboy buddies to mod you up.
We've been making fun of this for years. My pet peeve of the moment is the over-use of slightly ambiguous statements followed by "from a this-or-that perspective".
Example: Instead of saying "What is your schedule?" I get: "What is your timeline, from a scheduling perspective?"
Or, instead of "How is the project going?", I get: "How are things going, from a project perspective?"
I swear to God that the people I work with can't form a sentence without this. It drives me nuts. That, and people who say "processees". Fucking ignorant.
I did try, but when the blood start to dripping from my ear, I gave up.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
The difference is simple. A given product or service might have a 10-20% profit margin, but labeling it a "solution" allows a 70-90% margin, not to mention a couple man-weeks of billable hours for "integration".
For those of you who want a job in marketing, read my book on "Straight-Faced Inanity -- Taming the Sharks in the Global Jungle" (when it comes out).
Instead, they enable experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive
Sounds kind of like a goatse experience.
That didn't even make me feel better.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Unfortunately those don't sell.
Marketers on the other hand begin with their job title, "I'm a human to product relationship consultant, my work load is scalable while energising each new solution. etc etc"
We know that people buy stuff of spam. I saw a $2 pan being sold as a custom $10 fondue set. MS tells us that employees are incapable of using anything other than MS Windows. Apple tells us that you are a square if you don't use Macs. IBM promises massive profits if you use the complete solution. Sun says that IBM is ripping everyone off. It is game and learning to play it is part of our brand of capitalism.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I have found that this company offers excellent, dynamic e-solutions for today's market.
It's not just the high tech companies who do it either. Today, I bought a jar of pickles. An it had a sticker saying how they were "Fat Free". One of these days they'll sell us water bottles, with stickers saying how it is "fat free" "no choleterol" "No trans fats" "no carbs" and charging a premium for it.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
A company that doesn't let potential customers know about its products will usually die quickly. This is a fundamental business truth that is often obscured by the obnoxious and sometimes deliberately misleading actions of marketers. Think of the number of great applications, for example, that don't do well in the market because the people behind the apps didn't have effective marketing.
If your company can make good products that match the expectations you set with your marketing, then you're good to go. The problem is that so many companies don't understand that if you overpromise and underdeliver, people will wise up. It may take years, but eventually they'll grow suspicious of your exorbitant promises.
What is really sad is the scenario you outlined, in which the people who can best judge the effectiveness of a product are kept out of the decisionmaking part of the purchase process. That sounds like an internal management problem, in that the managers at your company aren't listening to the people in the trenches who will actually be working with it.
In my experience, scumbag marketers and salespeople are only successful when the people at the buying end suffer from overdeveloped credulity.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Does anybody know what .Net was supposed to be, in plain English? I know it was some kind of framework that enhanced innovation and complimented content delivery services or something, but I never heard a real expalnation that made any sense.
This story is definitely one for the ages. The links provided in the comments are just AWESOME. I'm posting this comment so that I can easily access it in the future.
:o)
A round of applause for all the participants. To prostoalex, I hope this goes down on your permanent record...
Here.
I don't know if the people using synergy actually know what it means, but I'm sick of people on Slashdot treating it as if it's a word without meaning. When two things are synergistic, it means that they produce greater results working together than the combination would seperately. For example, there's a synergy between zinc and vitamin E. If you take either one alone, you won't get the benefit you would if you take both together.
Pentagon Spurned Plan to Initiate Enemy Homosexuality
Sun Jan 16, 2005 5:00 PM ET
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military rejected a 1994 proposal to develop an "aphrodisiac" to spur homosexual activity among enemy troops but is hard at work on other less-than-lethal weapons, defense officials said on Sunday.
The idea of fostering homosexuality among the enemy figured in a declassified six-year, $7.5 million request from a laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for funding of non-lethal chemical weapon research.
The proposal, disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request, called for developing chemicals affecting human behavior "so that discipline and morale in enemy units is adversely affected."
"One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior," said the document, obtained by the Sunshine Project. The watchdog group posted the partly blacked-out, three-page document on its Web site.
Lt. Col. Barry Venable of the Army, a Defense Department spokesman, said: "This suggestion arose essentially from a brainstorming session, and it was rejected out of hand."
The Air Force Research Laboratory also suggested using chemicals that could be sprayed on enemy positions to attract stinging and biting bugs, rodents and larger animals.
Another idea involved creating "severe and lasting halitosis" to help sniff out fighters trying to blend with civilians.
The U.S. military remains committed to developing less-than-lethal weapons that pass stringent legal reviews and are consistent with international treaties, said Captain Dan McSweeny of the Marine Corps, a spokesman for the Pentagon unit spearheading their introduction.
"We feel it's very important to offer our deployed service members and their commanders a greater range of options in dealing with increasingly complex operational environments," said McSweeny, of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate.
For someone on the selling side, it's more profitable to sell value-based 'solutions' rather than technology where he has to compete on price.
For someone on the buying side, getting a "solution" may be more expensive, or it may be cheaper if one doesn't want to be ones own integrator and support department. You are basically paying for reduced hassle. The trick is quantifying the value of your own hassle, and the liklihood the 'solution' will have its own hassles, and their cost. Different people will evalutate these things differently.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
what the fuck is this world coming to. burn it to the ground now!!!!!!!
I know of small busines CEOs/CIOs that look for specifics. Those that try to sell buzzwords don't get the sale, and salespersons with hardware/software knowledge have a decent chance. Often, though, the small-business IT staff will have found the optimum product(s) to solve the problem and already have the purchase order ready to sign as soon as the problem is diagnosed. That is true adaptability and flexibility in my humble opinion.
I also know of people who would make Dilbert's PHB look like a genius. I've seen one business with a division that was losing to a competitor in many areas, with their IT lag seriously hurting their situation. That business did not realize that their IT was causing a problem with customers, even though it was painfully obvious.
I have also met IT sales staff people who were reprimanded for giving specifics (such as cables, switches, routers, hubs, NICs, CDs, and licenses,) instead of using the term "solution" when presenting the cost estimate to the CIOs of companies who were interested in their product.
I think too many people have sat through too many marketing classes without learning anything, and this is the result. Sales people are instructed to sell a solution to a problem instead of the actual product, and a lot of CEOs and a few CIOs know they have a problem without knowing the cause, and just want a solution. Consequently, solutions have a higher margin than products, even if the product is exactly the same as the solution.
Or, I could be wrong, and PHBs are only a figment of Mr. Adam's imagination.
I rarely even bother reading any product/service information that comes from the producer of that product or service, since it is so often full of non-information and spin that it practically useless. Thankfully, the web tends to be a good source of info, than, when taken with a grain of salt and compiled from various places, can lead to much more informed decisions than buzzword-laden marketing materials.
Many of the folks selling solutions are selling the same products to everyone, and calling the combination of items included "the solution". For instance, if they are going to sell you a network solution, it is probably going to contain a combination of NICs, switches/routers/hubs, appropriate cables, and associated software. When you write the purchase order/contract, it will more than likely state that the provider will include a specific number of specific items at specific cost, payable at a specific date, possibly with a discount for paying early. Others who purchase "solutions" from the same company with just get a different combination of NICs, switches/routers/hubs, appropriate cables, and associated software, much like everyone who shops at Tom Thumb Grocery will get a different combination of food in their cart. Of course, Tom Thumb Grocery does not refer to themselves as a "hunger solution."
I know there are some companies, such as this one that guarantees uptime instead of selling products, for example, that actually take the solutions approach. I believe they are an exception rather than the rule, however.
I can't think of a better word to describe something as highly functional as scalable...
The problem is that "scalable" could be visualized as a 15-foot bulls-eye only five feet away from the developers, and they still miss.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Is there nothing that they won't do to keep themselves in the press?
/.
Apple: Stop suing college students and stop paying trolls to plug you on
If you let marketing promise things, you will get sued, because that's probably not what engineering built.
;)
Look at the iPod shuffle, marketing thought it was edible, before the webmaster caught it
So, let marketing spew their BS, just unspecific buzzword BS, and everyone is happy except the customer.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I think you were confused here michael. I don't even think the Enterprise in the title is the Starship that all the nerds care about.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What does this product describe?
The [solution] de-mystifies the high-tech world and gives you a competitive edge.
Really? What's meant, exactly, by "giving a competitive edge"? That's from Freedman's own site, promoting his own book.
Really, some hyperbole is to be expected. Yes, I get annoyed too, when I'm looking at a product manual that touts a "solution" but it doesn't mention the "problem"; but most company brochures shouldn't be a thesis, in, say, RAID theory or IPSec. For that, you need to read a manual or a spec, and that takes more than the 3 pages allocated to a brochure.
--
$tar -xvf
The missing words being "GNAA" and "sodomy". The same speil from a "real" company would actually be interesting to link to. Or read at an office party.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
huh?
------ Free Mac Mini! Better than an iPod! h
It's not the words. The words are good. It's how they are used, misunderstood, and misused.
Fortunately, I mostly deal with people who admit they don't know much of what's out there -- it's silly to claim you do since there's so much tech out there it's just not possible.
The people who cover up what they do/do not know in an attempt to look "smart" are a big problem. These people either think they know it all or don't want anyone to know that they don't. They don't listen. They aren't curious. They get angry or dismissive or just talk right past you as if "we're all in agreement". Meanwhile, they don't know what you're talking about -- and don't want you to know it. The worst ones are actively ignorant -- pushing bad opinions around and acting on them unilaterally.
These folks never ask questions like "What is that?", "How does it work?", "What's it like?", or "Can you give me an example?". If you ask them these types of questions, they will look at you strange. It's like middleschool all over again.
Had a guy the other day tell me "Good! You're using an all Microsoft solution!" when I mentioned that the web site was developed using Coldfusion. Having delt with this guy a few dozen times, I knew it was useless to correct him. While it's true that you can run Coldfusion on Windows, in this case it wasn't running under Windows...let alone CF being a Macromedia product not a Microsoft one.
Unfortunately, I have to deal with this guy because he has his claws in the small business I'm helping out. Part of his stupidity might be from the panic I feel talking to him; he knows I could take his business away. That I don't care to doesn't seem to matter to him -- I *could do it*. You can bet I'm going to limit my exposure to him.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I like to think I need to "Optimize my Form Factor". Others think I just need to eat more salads.
"(If you read this post very carefully, you'll notice that if you remove all the buzzwords, what remains is hogwash. Literally.)"
Shit. Glad you told me. I was going to send you money for your idea.
er... wouldn't it be "hogswash"?
for a minute there, i lost myself...
One thing that bugs me is "vertical" and "horizontal".
Dictionary.com:
"Economics. Relating to or involving all stages from production to sale: vertical integration."
To be honest, I don't understand why that word was chosen.
I HATE "blog". Somehow, it strikes me as a very clumsy word, even for the English language, which is a clumsy amalgamation of too many source languages.
Check out how many car ads have semi-naked women running around in them, drooling at the sight of a man behind the steering wheel. Now, I'm the last person to object to semi-naked women, and under the right circumstances, I could probably take the drooling, but just what does this have to do with the product?
Right, nothing. Pure marketing. I'm sure the time will come when computers will be marketed with sex, too, but until then, keep in mind that we've still got it good.
It seems that most of these products being advertised are the big business equivalent of covering your server in go-faster stripes...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
"experiences, optimize agility or make people's passions come alive"
Sounds pretty much like sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.
Caffine dissolved in water.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
A recent addition to the buzzword lexicon is "synchronized". That refers to Detroit-type assembly lines, where assembly steps really are synchronized and there's a fixed cycle time. The people using the term today probably mean something else, but it's not clear what it is.
A simple google search shows this to be a mock company with a biggoted name. This is an esspecially inapropriate reference given the holiday weekend we are celebrating.
I mean, what a corporate robot doubleplusgood duckspeaker! I recall reading an interview in I believe it was PC World or some other lame pc mag, and I was fascinated by her unnatural and highly euphemistic responses.
Learning to speak like that must be like learning a new language.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
I think you've missed the definition of the word 'literally'. You haven't used the word hogwash anywhere else in that piece, than in your explanatory conclusion. Therefore, you should say 'essentially nothing' or some such, instead of 'literally hogwash'.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I hate when bugs are called "issues." Bugs are nasty and should have a nasty name. Renaming them is like trying to hide the problem instead of fixing it.
And you wonder why most people can't stand Apple fanboys.
I thought this was going to be a way to be rid of the buzzword 'synergy'.
You forgot Natalie Portman, insensitive clod!
"blog" - Supposed to be short for Web Log - why wasn't WOG choosen just as easily?
Blog annoys me, but what REALLY annoys me is the untech savvy trying to tell me what a BLOG is, when they didn't even know it was supposed to be short for "Web Log".
My web-server logs traffic. That's a web-log, too. Why isn't it a blog? Because the word "Blog" is stupid, that's why.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
If it's a pre-existing problem that the customer has, or a problem with a competitor's product, then it's a Problem and you can play that up all you want, because you're claiming to offer the solution.
However, if it's a problem with *your* product, then you call it an Issue, because you're a Solution provider by definition, not a Problem provider.
Unfortunately, in all but the simplest or freshest situations, it's all but impossible to disclaim all responsibility for a given Problem, so it's safer just to call them all Issues.
So ... uh... blah. ... jargon is useful.
Agreed.
Until the terms are overused and misused so much they become without meaning.
One of my "favorites" is supported. I've seen something claimed to be supported where the "support" was to turn the feature off.
I suspect that "blog" does have a specific meaning, somewhat similar to jog, actually. A blog is part of a fad whereas the other terms will retain their meanings after the fad has passed into oblivion.
We've mother-henned this idea and it's ready to hatch.
Let's throw this log on the fire and watch it spit back.
If we run this one up the right flagpole, everyone will salute.
Orwell said it much better than i ever could. Read the essay at http://eserver.org/langs/politics-english-language .txt
Changing the way a problem is viewed is much easier and cheaper than fixing it. Welcome to the modern world.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I remember a slogan from Microsoft's leaflet.
(some MS product) makes your work interesting.
Note: Not more efficient. Not easier. Not faster. Not higher quality. Not less tiring.
Exactly: "interesting". As in "WTF? Who would expect that option THERE?!" "Uh.... Not quite what I wanted, but interesting nevertheless". "And what does the picture on THAT icon mean?" "Maybe THIS option will do what I want? No? Maybe this one then?"
It was really interesting to follow an official Microsoft's troubleshooting guide on some problem, some 60 steps like "open this, click that, select this, scroll down to that, doubleclick this, rightclick that and pick option n, then press button X" only to realize around step 40 that there's no button X where it was supposed to be according to the guide.
Not really efficient. Rather annoying. Completely futile. But interesting nevertheless.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
No wireless. Less buzzwords than IBM. Lame.
Now why do they expect the homosexual behaviour will happen between enemy soldiers, and i.e. every enemy platoon won't be assigned one or two american POWs to satisfy the urges of the soldiers?
Oh, yes, this would work as a great "morale booster" for our boys. Just imagine "They sprayed them tonight from the plane. Under NO circumstances let them catch you alive, or else..."
"Just ask your local web engineer."
Spiderman's on the payroll?
Compression artifacts. Don't use JPEG for text. Really. Don't.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
As you say, some people only look for the techinical information and everything else techs look for, and alot more sales go to those likely to be induced by buzzwords. The point is Use both, just like microsoft and apple and the rest, say Complete Enterprise Solution, and then describe in technical detail, what that solution is.
It's not that they are focusing purely on these buzzwords, they are just using them for what they are worth.
Granted, overuse can easily cause amiguity in what that title means, but from a business standpoint, it's what works.
"This jealousy has to stop right here and now."
Don't you get the feeling that people simply don't get along? IT hating managers. Mangers hating coders. Managers hating other managers. Mangers hating higher-ups. CEO's hating other CEOs. And customers hating the whole thing. Governments hating other governments. And when FTL is invented. It'll be planets hating other planets. Makes you wonder how come we don't all go on an orgy of destruction, and simply wipe ourselves out (assuming nature doesn't beat us to it). Ignorance is bliss, till the bill comes due.
Enterprise: Price +100%
Professional: Price +80%
Solution: Price based on predicted profit, not cost
Robust: Price +40%
Scalable: Price +30%
Synchronous: Price +5%
Asynchronous: Price +10%
Crossplatform: Price +40%
Groundbreaking: Price +150% for next 3 months.
Cutting-edge: Price +50% for next 6 months.
Modern: Price +30% for next 3 years
Obsolete: Price will only keep raising from now on.
Mission-critical: Price +300%, you can sue us for screw-up.
Safety: Price +500%, you can sue us if you survive.
Strategical: Price +100%, you can sue us for too long tongue.
Aggressive: Price +30%
Creative: Price +20%
Exciting: Price +20%
Confidence: Price +40%, you can believe you can sue us.
Secure: Price +50%, you can sue the insurance company.
Award-winning: Price +40%, we have friends up there.
Consulting: Price -10%, you do all the work.
Support: Price +20%, manual included.
Analysis: Price +30%, you're likely to believe what we say.
Feel: Price +40%.
e-*: Price +40%, uses MSIE.
Research: Price +10% for every month it takes.
Design: Price +20%, can be shown on parties.
Report: Price +30%, you get the paperwork we don't need anymore.
Success: Price +30%, you're a sucker.
Global: Price +40%, our boss has a villa in Italy.
Targetted: Price -10%, efficiency -80%.
Economy: Price -20%, quality -95%
Intelligent: Price +70%
Cost-efficient: Price +40% in hidden costs.
Competitive: Price +30%, all spent on nuking the competition to hell.
Unique: Price +90%
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
(If you read this post very carefully, you'll notice that if you remove all the buzzwords, what remains is hogwash. Literally.)
If the glove don't fit, you must acquit.
Lawyers and marketiers deserve the same slow boat to the deepest circle of hell, in my opinion.
Oh, wait... unless I need one to get me out of trouble or swindle some other fool out of a whole bunch of money on my behalf. In that case, they should get a handsome reward and deserve a holiday in their favorite place of leisure.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
It's not about dumbing things down for the geeks, it's about dumbing things down for the MBA's in the board room (you've seen the FedEx commercial??). They don't know a widget from a gizmo or a packet from a frame. Having techincal sounding words they can say and sort of understand makes them feel important. They are generally excluded from our circle and this makes them feel like they are "in" (even though we all know they'll NEVER be "in").
All you have to do is either price it be below their signature limit or make it sound good enough that the next guy up the chain, who has sufficient purchasing authority, will sign the PO.
When stuff like this actually starts making it to slashdot, we're doomed.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Very few managers of technology companies have the technical understanding they need to do their jobs well.
In Soviet Russia, all your base are imagining an ad-hoc beowulf cluster of old korean overlords welcoming YOU, insensitive clods!
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Wow! Your thinking outside the box just brought us into a whole new paradigm!
So is it OK to use those buzz words or better yet one of the generators on your resume'?
Someone hates these cans.
It sorta makes me wonder how did those upper management types start wanting buzzwords to start with. But more importantly, this hurts this industry in pretty perverse ways, not just in the obvious "so the biggest liar gets the sale."
For example time after time again, we run into the perverse problem that PHBs don't just prefer bullshit bingo to technical specs. They think that technical specs _are_ pretentious bullshit buzzwords.
For example, if I say that a program is based on MDB (Message Driven Beans) and SOAP, it really means "it complies with the EJB specs, the whole book that that spec is, especially the part about messaging. Which also tells you that you need a J2EE application server to run it. And you have this other SOAP spec that tells you _exactly_ the message format _and_ how to parse it, in case your engineers need it."
I.e., there's a lot of technical information condensed into those two words. (MDB and SOAP.) I _could_ copy and paste the whole specs, or just use those abbreviations to tell people where to look for all the technical details.
But try telling "based on EJB and SOAP" to a management or marketting PHB, and they won't even think "bah, I don't have time for technical details." They won't even hear that as technical detail. They'll hear "based on pretentious made-up buzzword 1 and pretentious made-up buzzword 2".
Somewhere deep down in their psyche, they just "know" that we do nothing all day long but think up buzzwords to intimidate them with.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The second big problem I'm seeing is: how the heck did we get to the point where CEOs/CIOs buy bullshit that sounds cool without asking someone who knows?
I mean, for example, let's take everyone's favourite comparison between computers and cars. So let's say a company, (A) produces cars, and (B) wants to make its own brand-new intranet system.
And here's the funny part:
(A) to make cars they actually trust the engineers what should go into that car. If the engineers say they need this and that gear or screw, that's what the company buys. I should hope the CEO doesn't come and say "nope, we just got this cool deal on ship propellers, so you have to use that in the cars from now on."
(B) to make the software, they proceed to thoroughly ignore and avoid the engineers, buy some bullshit from the biggest liar, and then blame the engineers and admins if it doesn't work.
It's dunno, like they're affraid to ask. It's like they'd get "STUPID" tattooed on their forehead if they ever asked a technical question, or accepted a recommendation from their own IT department.
In practice, most of us would actually respect them more.
I mean, dunno about others, but I don't expect a manager to be a Ph.D. in computers. But I do expect him to be good at his job: management. Which also includes delegating. Whatever he doesn't personally know, or isn't in his job description, his job is to find someone else who knows or can do that. That's what management is all about.
By contrast someone who just buys crap based on bullshit buzzwords rather than ever asking, is for me a sad clown. He just showed that he's incompetent at doing his own job: management.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I know that I pass a company on the M25 (a big, circular car park around London) that has this as the only writing on it's building:
"Sericol: More than ink... solutions."
And I have deliberately avoided actually bothering to look them up and find out what problem it is that they have a solution to.
I'm guessing that they do something like printing but for all I know, they could sell pens or inkjet cartridges or even process squid.
I have no idea and the fact that it's emblazoned in ten-foot-high letters clearly visible along the busiest road in Britian doesn't help a jot because of their vague "management-ese", as I like to call it.
In fact, to me, it's anti-advertising. If you can't be bothered to state clearly what you do, I don't want you or your products/services. If you wrap even your company HQ in nonsense-words, then how can I even begin to trust you to sell me something without bending the truth?
Yeah, "blog" sucks. And so does "scalable" and every other buzzword out there. In fact, even "buzzword" sucks. BTW, "blog" sucks less than "scalable".
Dude, you are teh r0x0r!!!
/me worships
Synergy basically means that two groups are similar but not actually in the same market. AOL and Time Warner might have had some synergys, much like NBC and Microsoft might, but that's not a good reason to merge. You should merge if you're in the same market. Or you're desperately trying to get into eachother's markets for valid reasons. But if your union would produce "synergies," then stay the heck away from merging. Just having synergies means you should stay as two separate suppliers lest you get sucked into something completely outside of each of your fields.
The ______ Agenda
I just thought of a little analogy that would help people to get the point. Saying "My software is scalable" is like saying "The earthquake yesterday had a Richter scale". Of course it had a richter scale goddammit, every single earthquake does. Tell me WHAT scale it had, not if it had one or not.
A word processor is somehow scalable because you can write whatever you want in it.
The word "Scalable" is a *very* important way to evaluate the quality of a software. However, it is now a buzzword because the marketers denatured it.
perception is reality
...when I was setting up SPF for my mail server. I wanted to investigate all possible options. So I looked into spf, and found some tech docs and info on that. Did the same thing for domainkeys. Then it came to Microsoft's SenderID or whatever they're calling it. I get the distinct feeling it's now fused with SPF, or works much like SPF. But you couldn't glean that from their docs on it. To sum it up, paraphrase and change some words, it went something like this:
"This product is so cool. And I mean not just cool, but amazingly cool. The coolness of this product will impress your friends. When you ask yourself, how cool can I possibly be, we have the coolness answer. Don't let your coolness slip away. Our cool is here now and you can be cool too, and feel cool for year to come with the coolness that lasts."
FLR
Nothing personal, but I hate the system that created you. More to the point, those idiots you "do lunch" with.
Business and technical decisions are taken by people _completely_ unqualified, based purely on "oh, I know that guy. We played golf. Let's buy whatever he's selling." Or on "but the nice salesperson said it would solve all the problems, including cancer, AIDS and world hunger." Or here _literally_, and in that manager's own words, a broken product got bought "because it had the nicer powerpoint presentation." (To make it even more surrealistic, a product noone needed.)
And I've been on the receiving end of that fuck-up entirely too often. Completely dysfunctional "solutions" are bought like that. And then we engineers and admins have to make a completely broken product work. And if it still doesn't, then it obviously has to be our fault. Because the nice salesperson told the PHB that it works, and surely the nice salesperson couldn't have possibly lied to the customer. It must be those mean engineers that sabotage it.
And even _if_ the problem does eventually get to be acknowledged by the PHB, the next result is more lunches done, more colourful powerpoint foils are presented, and the PHB buys an even more broken v2.0 of the same product. (Or, don't laugh, some PHBs here are looking forward to version 6.0 of a totally broken product.) Surely now all problems are fixed. Because the nice salesperson said so.
So I can't say I hate you, as such. Where there's a demand, someone creates the supply. I.e., if some PHBs actually want to be lied to and scammed, yep, the system also produced the marketting people who do that. Perfectly normal economics there.
What I would however like to see fixed is the system.
For starters, I'd like to see some serious liability in this industry. Because this hiding behind an EULA that says "whatever happened, it's your problem, not ours" is just legalizing bigger and bigger marketting frauds. So I'd like to see people and companies facing a billion sized lawsuit if they mis-represented a product as doing what it really doesn't.
Also, while I guess one can't outlaw bullshit buzzwords as such, I'd like to see it legally mandatory to clarify (A) exactly what it means, and (B) exactly on what case studies it had that effect.
E.g., "synergy"? Ok. Between what and what? On what cases did you notice that synergistic effect? And how big was it?
E.g., "lower TCO"? Fine. On what use case? Compared to what? (Most of this crap would only lower TCO compared to carving that data by hand on stone blocks, like in the Flintstones.) And how much lower was the TCO, then? Does that include the cost of the uber-expensive consultants to make it work, or?
E.g., "scalable"? Good. Scalable in which way? And in which way is that better than just the plain-old using a cluster and load-balancer?
Etc.
Then maybe we'll see _some_ (minimal) honesty in advertising in our lifetimes. And then we nerds wouldn't have to be disgusted by the whole marketting bullshit.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Back in 1946, George Orwell was complaining about standards of "modern English" in Politics and the English Language. Get used to it - bullshit was here before us and it'll still be here when we're gone.
companies made of rubber inc.:scalable enterprise solutions
throw your hard disk out of the window inc.:comprehensive data migration solutions
There is an important difference: Problems are challenges to be solved. Issues get logged in issue-tracking to be forgotten forever.
...sarcasm? I knew you could.
A big problem with buzzwords is that they annihilate any legitimate use of the word in question. I think it was General Electric's CEO who started the 'Solution' thing by stating that GE does not manufacture electric drills, but manufactures solutions to create holes. This has become a cliché, but it's true nonetheless. It actually means that companies should focus on problems that need to be solved instead of creating products just because they can. Dumb people then take that and turn everything into a 'solution' without thinking about the problems to be solved. I am completely in favour of explaining things in non-technical terminology as much as possible. Making people understand stuff is important, I think. Some people don't want to be taught, however, and others don't know how to simplify. It has no use explaining to a car buyer how ingenious the expensive new fuel pump is if you leave out the facts that it saves fuel, costs less in maintenance and is therefore cheaper in the long run. Some engineers tend to forget that and focus on the technicalities of a product.
I just started writing this and immediately heard the question, "Did you get a corporate key id?" being said behind me. Management terms and buzz words are actually the exact opposite to Okham's Razor. They over convolute everything they touch and no one has any clue to what is 'REALLY' going on.
It's a form of hiding the fact you only have very basic knowledge by obfuscation. It sucks and is a pain in the rear. I work in a large multinational which uses standard buzzwords and then munges them into local buzzwords which get read by managers and then become projects, which get read by higher managers and are synergised into departments and eventually evangualised into policy by the gods higher up.
So to sftp a document you go through about ten layers of acronyms and regulations, fill out countless forms which were spawn from buzzwords, gape at pointless UML diagrams to find server names and finally discover that you have another department to go through in order to utilise your box's tcp-ip stack.
It's bogus and they really should all be shot. I particularly hate Java and windows developers because they feed on this enterprise bs - which has very little to do with calling-it-what-it-is, as opposed to calling it what a bunch of tossers have happend to standardise upon.
Further I hate standards set by buzzword spewing pillocks. They don't make sense to anyone and when you finally extract the sense that they actually contain you hit on a very abstract text which does not specify anything in any technical detail suited to your working it into your actual software implementation.
When I write in Java, I speak in English. When I build a web service I kick people who start talking about SOA's. There's no passion anymore, just lots of nonsensical blabbering, made to look really meaningful, trendy and fashionable.
It's all bs. You have software. You have interfaces. That's it.
If anything all the BS costs more in its imposition of unnecessary abstraction whereever some enterprise-prick thinks that he can describe something using some exciting sounding methaphore or TLA.
Shove it up your bottoms, get off the writers back and go read a computer science textbook.
The "dunno what all those buzzwords mean, but we must have as many of them as possible" kind of mentality. Or as I like to call it: BDA (Buzzword Driven Architecture.)
They don't know what EJBs are (as illustrated by your example where they didn't know the difference between EJB and J2EE as a whole), but they've read in some IT-for-retards magazine that Sun says EJBs are great. So they must have some.
And for that matter, XML. And XSLT. (Just writing the data or using a template is soo 1990. Nowadays you _must_ have a small XSLT program which produces the output.) And SOAP. (Every internal call must be SOAP, you know. Just plain-old calling a C++ or Java method is soo outdated.) And have a scalable enterprise messaging framework. (Why just read stuff from a database, when you could send a SOAP message to an MDB to read it, and wait for the asynchronous response?)
And I've seen more perverse use of buzzwords which aren't even technical terms, but end up being wanted in the project anyway. E.g., "scalable". So you get a client explicitly wanting EJBs in their small web-app, because Sun said it's a scalable architecture. Uh, as opposed to what? As opposed to just using a load-balancer and a cluster, which also scales linearly?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against EJB, XML, XSLT, JMS or SOAP as such. They have their uses. But like any tool, they're good for one class of problems. Just like you've said, there are plenty of problems which don't need EJB.
That is, until the client comes with a long list of buzzwords they absolutely must have...
Though to be entirely honest, _both_ sides are equally guilty in this. There are clueless PHBs who demand buzzwords, yes, but equally there are dishonest programmers using real projects just as a playground to get new buzzwords for their resume. A lot of projects which are just a sad collection of buzzwords, not because the boss wanted to have them, but because someone wanted those buzzwords on his resume.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You've got a little bit of shit left on your nose.
But no, in all fairness we can all understand you wanting to justify your lifestyle decision. Sorry, purchase.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
a good sales person is supposed to sell a solution to a problem rather than just a product.
The problem is that selling has become scientific and professional to the extreme.
You'd think that selling was designed to deliver the information about the products to the people who actually needed the products, the customers who have carefully and rationally assessed their needs and done their homework.
Not anymore. No one has time, no one person has all the expertise. And the customers are a bunch of human beings full of emotional hot buttons that can be pushed.
It's more profitable to sell more, to generate a mythical reality for the customer that makes buying the product an indispensible need, as much as mating or gathering food. And that mythical reality can be quite independent of the customer's actual need for the product based on rational analysis. If deception sells, then deception will flourish. The side effect is what we see - a lot of jaded, skeptical customers.
Given its prevalence in modern culture, I think it's high time that high school students are taught exactly how marketing works, half because it's a necessary skill these days, and half because it's necessary to inure them against the ploys that they are subject to on a daily basis.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I wouldn't buy anything from someone who thinks an all Microsoft solution is a good thing.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Technical decisions are so much easier without any technicial people involved. (Dilbert)
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
The dude spoke in nothing but buzzwords. I kid you not. He'd say shit like "We're going to activate (name) in this capacity" instead of saying "Oi, Bob! Take some phone calls, eh!"
5 minutes with this turkey made my head want to explode. If I hear him say "We need to interface offline" ever again, I'm going on a tri-state killing spree.
Excessive use of buzzwords should be grounds for justifiable homocide.
I honestly don't think I would even necessarily qualify "scalable" as jargon. Yes, it is most certainly a buzzword, in the sense that it is a word marketing people just love to throw into their literature because it's hot, even if it's not appropriate. However, as its meaning in the technical world exactly matching the most commonly used English definition for the word, tagging it as technobabble seems a little unfair.
So maybe we're seeing the birth of a new language, "Sales". Or maybe "Bullshit".
If you're planning on reading the book, beware that it looked to me as a futurist essay thinly disguised as a novel about a guy and his cryogenically frozen wife.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
But saying just "scalable" is saying nothing. Pretty much everything scales to some degree. What matters is how well it scales.
Also, what's wrong with using the verb "scale"?
Just had to think of a joke an IBM(!)/Lotus instructor told me during some course:
Q: How can we solve the drug problem?
A: Leaglize drug selling, let IBM do all the markerting.
I can't think of a better word to describe something as highly functional as scalable
Sure, if the word was used properly it would be extremely useful. However, when it's used improperly so often, the word gets diluted, and you start to expect that it's used improperly. I think much of BS-speak starts as a clever and correct use of a word, but then the hordes of PR folk get ahold of it.
... on basic algebra? If
Profit = Your Problem - Our Solution,
then
Your Problem = Profit + Our Solution,
and
Our Solution = Your Problem - Profit.
I use hibernate as an example because it actually does do very good stuff, but their front page promises a lot of the classic "comparators without comparisons". I suppose that they do this to "compete", but even good OSS projects do this crap, it has become so universal.
Powerful (than...????)
ultra-high performance (compared to...???)
elegantly (uhhh....what does that mean?)
other favorites from other projects: seamless, lightweight (farking EVERYTHING is lightweight these days), flexible. And those are the pseudotechnical words that I can see actually meaning something if used properly.
Hibernate is a powerful, ultra-high performance object/relational persistence and query service for Java. Hibernate lets you develop persistent classes following common Java idiom - including association, inheritance, polymorphism, composition and the Java collections framework. The Hibernate Query Language, designed as a "minimal" object-oriented extension to SQL, provides an elegant bridge between the object and relational worlds. Hibernate also allows you to express queries using native SQL or Java-based Criteria and Example queries. Hibernate is now the most popular object/relational mapping solution for Java.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Grandparent's Note - My Joke = You have no sense of humour
You can't handle the truth.
I think much of BS-speak starts as a clever and correct use of a word, but then the hordes of PR folk get ahold of it.
Based on my divergent degrees in and careers in both the black art of PR and the grey art of ISP network engineering, I say, "You're pretty much correct."
While practicing my former career, I used words "creatively, energetically, and dynamically."
In my current career, I use them "correctly". I sleep quite a bit better now.
Some years ago, I read an interesting comment on IBM's success. It started with describing the typical presentation, in which the prospective customer asks "How does your product work?" The typical response to this is to dive into technical explanations of how the product works.
IBM, in contrast, taught their salesmen to respond to "How does it work" with "Just fine."
This is, of course, what your typical manager with puchasing authority really wants to hear.
Those other presentations are for the customers' engineers. But engineers are usually not the ones making purchase decisions. If you want to get a signed-off purchase order, you have to sell to the people who make the purchase decision. You have to size them up and talk in a language they understand. If you want to sell to engineering firms, go ahead and polish up your explanations of technical details. If you want to sell to the other 99.99% of companies, IBM's approach is more successful.
Sorry; that's how the business world works. And yes, it does lead to the well-known phenomenon of workers trying to use a broken product that the boss ordered. In our current business world, that's a problem that really doesn't have a solution (to use a currently-common warning buzzword).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
...but if I had it would have been for the phrase "a company" which while possibly correct in a non-obvious technical sense is quite misleading. I wanted to see a real company run that text with more G-rated text in the blanks, and was sadly disappointed.
Also, you're incorrect about the verbiage since "Nigger" is obscene in its own way, even when used by people without a melanin deficiency but sporting a chip on their collective shoulder.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing