Around.com

People who got somewhat of a buzz reading the above may enjoy James Gleick's new book @ http://around.com

No technology is perfect, it's always a process. And effectively every computer-related technology has undiscovered bugs. https://around.com/ariane.html ""The board wishes to point out," they added, with the magnificent blandness of many official accident reports, "that software is an expression of a highly detailed design and does not fail in the same sense as a mechanical system." (...) (...) really important software has a reliability of 99.9999999 percent. At least, until it doesn't. " The statistics is against that generous number of nines.

This discussion reminds me of the failure of the first Ariane 5 launch. The flight-termination system was activate erroneously, and the payload was not insured. Ouch. http://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet87/cavall87.htm https://around.com/ariane.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_%28spacecraft%29

"We give everyone a pair of noise cancelling headphones as a way of shutting out the office noise." Can't you just rent a 1950s vintage office building somewhere cheap and give your people the option? C.F. Claude Shannon (who stayed in a city centre building when his employer moved to the suburbs)[1]. I agree with others that the OA is confusing several issues (office layout and corporate goofiness). [1] http://around.com/where-are-they-now-bell-labs/

This is an article about competition. How long has it been since Microsoft defeated a competitor? Here is an explanation from a journalist on why Microsoft isn't included in this article: http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/30/the-squid-and-the-jellyfish-why-nokia… And here is one from about five years ago from Paul Graham on seeing Microsoft as no longer relevant: http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html It is fascinating to see how much Microsoft used to be feared: "'Can you name anybody that's happy about being in the same industry with Microsoft?' Mitchell Kapor asks." -- http://www.around.com/microsoft.html

on Shannon Laboratory (from https://around.com/where-are-they-now-bell-labs/): [quote]AT&T was always oblivious to Shannon’s role as the father of modern communications, and (with its usual tin ear), couldn’t figure out how to benefit from its own history. Back when Lucent split from AT&T and was granted most of Bell Labs (along with bragging rights for the invention of the transistor), I was busy trying to convince AT&T that a services company required an R&D capability. The original divestiture plan did not anticipate a basic research component—only a development lab. Long story, but eventually we managed to slide over around 10% of the scientists into the new AT&T Labs. However, we couldn’t slide over its long history, mostly rooted in the physical sciences. We had the people, but lacked a well defined “brand.” By odd coincidence, I proposed if Bell Labs was granted computing in the divorce, we should own communications—and claim Shannon as our direct forebear. AT&T HQ was ambivalent—they were unaware of Shannon’s seminal discoveries, and couldn’t imagine how claiming paternity of the communications revolution could benefit a long distance phone company. But we were given permission to name a lab building after Shannon. Fortunately, one of the lab’s directors (Ron Graham) was a mathematician and juggler and knew Shannon’s widow, and received permission. But they still barely leverage this connection. Momentum is sometimes more powerful than entropy.[/quote]