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Friday, January 27, 2023
The Relevance of Queer Theory in Black History Education
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
What Should we Do with all These VARs?
Why would a proven model some 3 decades old, not hold up to supporting MpS?
Because no matter how many nifty tools or vendor partners come calling, no matter how 'easy' an MpS program looks from the outside, Managed Print Services is not a bolt-on proposition.
Sound familiar? Remember the 50% to the MpSr's who failed?
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Reflections of The Industry
John the Baptist, incorporating elements from the Island of Misfit Toys, set in a 1960s science fiction and splatter art style. |
Monday, September 19, 2011
Photizo in May, Preo/SNi in June, World Expo July, rained out Xerox in August, Muratec/Vegas, SuppliesNetwork/HP Seattle in September, OPS Elite October
I spent 2 days and 5 nights in Vegas last week, for my very first Muratec dealer conference.
It was awful nice being invited, on account, I just signed up 30 days ago and haven't sold a single box.
The venue could be called small and intimate relative to the bigger shows, like Photizo, or the other OEM's - I liked it.
A little bit of background.
When I first got into selling technology, there was IBM PS/2's and Compaq desktops; the MicroChannel versus EISA architecture - #1 and #2. The Compaq folks were more willing, more attentive, and more fun - their events rocked.
IBM? Unless you're Mike Stramaglio, how much fun can you have in a pinstripe suit at 12:30 AM?
When I served time in IKON, there was Canon at #1 with Ricoh a very close #2. Again, the Ricoh folks, tried harder, worked with us, and were a hell of a lot more fun, especially in Vegas, at the Wynn.(Jus sayin, I've seen them in action)
Just like Compaq, Ricoh knew their place as well, at number 2. They knew. They didn't pretend to be the largest or most installed. They didn't have big laser beams and fog machines at the national conference.
Point is this, #2 always tries harder - so wouldn't an admitted "third tier" player try even harder?
The answer, Yes.
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Live Free or Die vs. United in Diversity: The US Leads the Way in the New Way of Work
- US offices are at 40-60% of pre-pandemic levels, varying by city and month, while European and Middle Eastern offices have a return-to-office rate of 70-90%, and Asia's rates range from 80-110%.
- Living arrangements, commutes, and the labor market contribute to the difference in return-to-office habits.
- The divergence in return-to-office habits has a direct impact on how quickly US metro areas rebound from the pandemic's economic shock.
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Greg Walters, Inc./DOTC & All Associates Reignite Relationship
Plotting the Data-Based Course Into a World Without...
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Seven Deadly Sins… The Qualifications of a Copier Salesman…
Friday, April 17, 2009
E.P.A. Clears the Way for Regulation of Warming Gases - Bad News for Trees
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: April 17, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday formally declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants that threaten public health and welfare, setting in motion a process that for the first time in the United States will regulate the gases blamed for global warming.
---- Because Trees breath Co2 -----
The E.P.A. said the science supporting its so-called endangerment finding was “compelling and overwhelming.” The ruling triggers a 60-day comment period before any proposed regulations governing emissions of greenhouse gases are published.
Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said: “This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President Obama’s call for a low-carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation.”
She said that combatting the emissions that create greenhouse gases would help create millions of new jobs and lessen the nation’s dependence on foreign oil by fostering a more fuel-efficient transportation industry.
As the E.P.A. begins the process of regulating these climate-altering substances under the Clean Air Act, Congress is engaged in writing wide-ranging energy and climate change legislation that could pre-empt any action taken by the agency. President Obama and Ms. Jackson have repeatedly said that they much prefer that Congress address global warming rather than have the E.P.A tackle it through administrative action.
The United States has come under fierce international criticism for trailing other industrialized nations in moving to regulate carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants. With this move, and the parallel action by Congress toward a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases, the American government can now point to concrete progress as nations begin to write a new international climate change treaty.
However, the E.P.A.’s announcement on Friday did not include any specific targets for reducing greenhouse gases or new requirements for energy efficiency in vehicles, power plants or industry. Those would emerge after a period of comment and rule-making or in any legislation approved by Congress.
Two years ago this month, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., ordered the agency to determine whether greenhouse gases harm the environment and public health and, if not, to explain why. Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that they do, but top officials of the George W. Bush administration suppressed the finding and took no action.
In his first days in office, Mr. Obama promised to review the case and act quickly if the finding were justified. Friday’s announcement is the fruit of that review. The E.P.A. action was approved after two weeks of scrutiny by the White House Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory affairs arm.
According to the E.P.A. announcement, the proposed finding was based on rigorous scientific analysis of six gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride — that have been widely studied by scientists around the world. Their studies showed that concentrations of these gases are at unprecedented levels as a result of human activity, the agency said, and these high levels are very likely responsible for the increase in average temperatures and other changes in the earth’s climate.
Among the ill effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and the other gases, the agency found, were increased drought, more heavy downpours and flooding, more frequent and intense heat waves and wildfires, a steeper rise in sea levels, more intense storms and harm to water resources, agriculture, wildlife and ecosystems.
Environmental advocates applauded a decision that they had sought for years.
“At long last, the E.P.A. has officially recognized that carbon pollution is harmful to our health and to the climate,” said David Doniger, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council and one of the lawyers in the Supreme Court case. “The heat-trapping pollution from our cars and power plants leads to killer heat waves, stronger hurricanes, higher smog levels, and many other direct and indirect threats to human health.”
“With this step,” he added, “Administrator Lisa Jackson and the Obama administration have gone a long way to restore respect for both science and law. The era of defying science and the Supreme Court has ended.”
Auto companies, utilities and other emitters have long dreaded this day but reacted with caution because the regulatory process has just begun and they hope to address their concerns in the legislation now before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Roger Martella, general counsel at E.P.A. during the Bush administration, said the finding marks the official start of an era of controlling carbon emissions in the United States.
“The proposal, once finalized, will give E.P.A. far more responsibility than addressing climate change,” Mr. Martella said. “It effectively will assign E.P.A. broad authority over the use and control of energy, in turn authorizing it to regulate virtually every sector of the economy.”
The E.P.A. said that it was not immediately proposing any new rules and reiterated the administration’s stance that a legislative solution is far preferable.
“Today’s proposed finding does not include any proposed regulations,” the agency statement said. “Before taking any steps to reduce greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, E.P.A. would conduct an appropriate process and consider stakeholder input.
“Notwithstanding this required regulatory process, both President Obama and Administrator Jackson have repeatedly indicated their preference for comprehensive legislation to address this issue and create the framework for a clean energy economy.”
--------
DOTC - how long until they try to regulate the CO2 emissions of output devices?
Thursday, December 28, 2023
Expeditionary Ai
What came before skyscrapers, cities, and villages?
Settlers.
Before them, Pioneers.
And before all of them, The Explorers (hat tip to West). The Crazy Ones seeking funding, believing the world was different than the current narrative, without charts, KPIs, or benchmarks.
Sure, committees stacked with academics and business folks attempted to corral and regulate every excursion, attempting to either exact profit or spread the word of God.
The great explorers played the game, securing funds, ships, and crews, only to break out over the horizon, beyond the eyes and control of the establishment; away from stifling hierarchies and dogma.
You are the Magellan, de Gama, Cabot, Cook, Drake, and Pizarro of the time; This New World lies between our ears.
And you owe it to the next generations of Pioneers and Settlers to boldly go. To blaze trails that become roads, highways and flightpaths for your kids children to travel to unimaginable places.
Fight the norms.
Rebel against the group-think.
Go your Own Way.
See the Whole of the Moon.
AI ἀναρχία
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
Take The Snowflake Test. My Answers.
This has been floating around LI for months now.
I like the idea and love that he's been able to create a huge buzz, promoting this simple questionnaire.
Enjoy.
Monday, December 26, 2016
Is the Internet the Garden of Eden or God?
What once was,
The internet is molded in our likeness...
The internet flows with falsehoods...
The internet is nebulas a formless ghost of the past, present, and future...
In the beginning, there was darkness -
...and then there was light...
Connecting the world's computers offered us access to just about any 'fact' we could imagine - in theory, anyone could connect with the source of research, witness news as it happened, or form an opinion based on available information.
In the days before 'shells', the internet was free-form - we connected at the prompt, bumping around in Mirc rooms, and searching with tools like InfoSeek, AltaVista and WebCrawler. Bulletin boards offered asynchronous, yet informative, relationships.
Then came Prodigy, Compuserve, Delphi, and finally, America On-Line. These communities helped technological neophytes engage in the bold, new world. Overnight, the sparsely populated playground of nerds flooded with teenager angst and desperate housewives: "Cyber-sex" and "troll" hit the lexicon.
It was great.
From oil changes to Russian political history, if you have a question, the answer was out there on the 'net. Raw. Unedited and sometimes, difficult to find. It was a treasure hunt.
Move forward 20 years and there are 60 trillion webpages using an index 95 of petabytes - nearly twice the size of data mankind created, ever. But what in the world can 60 trillion web pages tell us?
The internet is full of gossip...
The internet is full of dogma...
The internet is filtered...
Generations of adults have grown up with the internet and google. But now the raunchy and raucous cyber-land is settled and gentrified. Today, proper search engines find what the "collective" wants, not necessarily what we, individually, are searching. Indeed, even when the "powers that be" utilize "my" unique internet wonderings as my personal baseline, I want what I want right now, not 30 days back.
I am reminded of the time I took a few inner cities (Los Angeles) kids for an off-road trip in the San Bernardino mountains.
Every year, a group of young city-dwellers would venture "up the hill" for an all-volunteer-sponsored trail ride in the forest. It was our chance to show off the woods and their opportunity to get out of the concrete jungle.
The little girl in my truck was wide-eyed. It was her first time in the mountains. Her head on a swivel, she innocently asked, "Where do all those trees come from?"
"What do you mean?" I responded.
"Who planted all those trees!?"
I was stunned.
Every tree, bush, or swath of grass this little girl had ever seen was designed, planned, and planted - her environment was completely man-made.
And that's the point - I fear the internet has an overcrowded and hollow wonderland between what we know, and what we strive to understand. Seductive in design, the results are not organic.
She lived in somebody else's world.
So it is with the newly connected, brave new world. The masses do not question the virtual until they have the eyes to see the real. The internet is Westworld - fooling us into believing somebody else's vision of reality.
We have willingly removed the distinction between 'virtual reality' and 'reality'. All of our things will be digitally connected. Someday, we will all be connected through the 'interwebs'.
Is google, God? |
The escape, if there is one, resides in the 'old ways'. The way of the printed, read, and repeated word. Searching for answers in the real world, along the Path.
Storytelling.
Don't get me wrong, the internet is a wild and entertaining place.
It's a shame we'll need to be connected via technology only to discover we've been connected all along.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Seven Deadly Sins...Copier Salesman
This post first appeared on DOTC, January 2009 and is the DOCT book. This is a truncated version, get the rest, in the book.
Never mind that he is hundreds of miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, he lives on a boat, sells "big-iron" copiers...and has a blog. Introducing Pirate Mike.
I received a "hit" today from one of my internet-search-spiders-thingies, and read the resulting post while waiting for the Rover to be washed - it was 86 degrees and sunny - as I scrolled along the post I literally laughed out loud.
Wednesday, April 12, 2023
Unseen Connections: The Intricate Webs of AI, Gender, and Remote Work
Friday, June 17, 2011
Summertime in America: Let's Run in the Hills of Carolina. Do kids still play Cowboys and Indians?
I guess red tipped plastic toy guns and football games with no scoreboards are the theme of these new generations. Here's your empty trophy.
What a disservice we perform.
How we have destroyed imagination, reference for toil, discovery and wonder.
Wii !!!
Thursday, August 25, 2011
"Dear Steve, I've never owned a Mac, or an iPhone and I don't have an iPad..."
So Steve, thank you for my Droid X.
Thank you for seeing I really only wanted three or four songs from an album.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
The Age of AI: Are We Facing Enlightenment or Extinction?
Friday, August 5, 2022
Week 15 - July 15
Walt's Spin
Monday, November 16, 2009
Canon to Buy Océ, Biggest Printer Maker in Europe
Interesting...
How in the world does something like this happen? Pennies on the dollar or Euro, I guess.
The press release reads as though Canon is "...driven by the undeniable fact that scale is increasingly important..."
I guess size DOES matter.
Get ready for more - numbers are down for all, times are tough, and perhaps this is the beginning of a consolidation avalanche.
Press Release:
Full press release content here. New York Times article, here.
Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Heat Above - Greta Van Fleet and Office Technology
Friday, July 21, 2023
The Future of AI in the Workplace: Opportunities and Challenges
- AI is transforming workplace ethics, with people more likely to instruct AI to use deception in negotiations, underscoring the need for research into AI's ethical implications.
- AI has the potential to augment the intelligence of older workers, enabling them to leverage their extensive experience and knowledge more effectively.
- Generative AI can significantly boost productivity, particularly for low-skilled workers, potentially narrowing the productivity gap between different skill levels.