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Driven to Distraction by Technology
Ant writes "CNET News.com says 'The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for the brains to get into a really creative state. The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of "In Praise of Slowness," is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.'"
because:
a) the whole business world has ground to a halt since the introduction of technology
b) businesses are becoming less effecient and so need to hire more and more people to do the same amount of work. Unemployment is now at an all-time low, down-sizing is non-existent.
c) there are more and more "journalists" and pseudo social-scientists that are making up statistics and anecdotes they cull from all the email they are addicted to.
Please sit right back and enjoy a healthy serving of shut-the-fuck-up.
Okay, so basically society as we know it is going down the crapper (again). This time the over-achievers and obsessive-compulsives are slaves to email and txt messaging. Oh the horror.
I blame the terrorists and evil-doers. Damn those evil-doers!
No sig.
Tired of battling with copyright theives and complaints from consumer groups over its pricing practices, Microsoft has elected to offer its next-generation operating system for free when Vista (formerly known as Longhorn) hits the streets in early 2006.
"In the half decade or more of development on this product we've had a lot of time to think about our business practices and the kind of company we want to be," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "For example, we learned from the Open Source community that we really needed to reconnect with our users. Letting people use Vista for free is just one step in that direction.
To offset the cost of development, the company will begin charging for security patches and bug fixes, according to executives.
Even so, the customer-centric company would only charge an average of $10 or so for each patch, a great deal for consumers according to industry watchdogs.
"I can't see any ill will behind the move at all," said consumer advocate Ralph Nader. "Honestly, it looks like Microsoft has really learned their lesson. The only way profit motive would be to release really awful software in the hopes that people feel trapped enough to pay for the fixes, but why would they do that?"