Suits, suits, suites
Jun. 20th, 2002 06:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkI have an extraordinarily busy day today, but based on the high performance of the last two days, I can meet the challenge and feed it raisin bran.
I've been spending my wee hours reading a few news items. As with everything in life, I'm filled with snap reactions. I'm not in the Microsoft hater or the Microsoft lover camp. I tend to see monolithic huge corporations as forces of nature, beyond my likes or dislikes. When they get out of hand, trim 'em back like kudzu. They'll grow back, but there's something about the thrill of the weedeater cutting leaves. This week two Microsoft items catch my eye. In one, MS announces that it will cease supporting Java in upcoming years, which looks for all the world like flexing a little corporate muscle to the detriment of the consumer. In another item,
MS declined to follow a judge's request that it "rank" in order of least distasteful the laundry list of potential remedies for its anti-trust behavior. I'm a big admirer of solid lawyers, and MS has some awfully good ones. But I'm just a simpleton, who imagines that when a judge asks one to do something, one just does it.
I don't mean to beat on MS, which is just one more company
filled with one more set of people with one more set of attitudes derived from one more decade of our profit-making culture. I use MS products, and value their innovation.
But corporate news lately indicates to me that folks just.don't.get.it. Like all these corporate failures laced with cooked books. Corporate CEOs and outsider auditors seem to think that if they can argue that they took a cutting-edge interpretation at the furthest reaches of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, then mistating earnings and the balance sheet must be defensible. Even poor Arthur Andersen, with the well-played but unsuccessful defense "hey, look, only one group of us in our Houston office shredded documents to escape justice, don't blame *us*". I was particularly intrigued by the testimony to the effect that "hey, we wouldn't shred to avoid a subpena, we shred to avoid civil lawsuits learning about our notes". Diogenes is striding through the dark halls of the accounting profession, and the lantern barely glows for all the ink of financial accounting standards board rules.
People wonder why our financial markets have suffered so, but systemic change still looks a long shot to me.
The poor woman who set the forest fire intrigues me.
Let's build a shrine to dysfunction and set it on fire.
If the allegations are true (and it sounds like the only issue is whether she stupidly burned an estranged spouse letter or whether she actually intended to set it), then
I hope this lost soul gets the help she needs. But all that fire!
But I've got errands to run before work, work to do,
and great music to which to listen.scottm burned his little album of music onto a compact disk for me,
so that I am no longer cassette-bound. What great music!
I was born to listen to four track simple roots rock done by
homerecorders singing idiosyncratically. I must get this CD duplicated and pass it out or ebay it or something.
I miss the days, to change the subject slightly, when I could see the dBs and Guadalcanal Diary and the True Believers several times a year. I used to love seeing the dBs play "She's got Soul" ('but I don't know, every girl I know has got a lot of soul') or Guadalcanal Diary play
"Watusi Rodeo" or the True Believers playing "Ringing the Bell". I guess I'm just a sucker for a clever lyric over a guitar, drum, bass array. Those days are gone, though, and my boom box usually has synth music on...or, nowscottm.
I am mailing out 2 kazoos, an 8 track, and a corruplast card. Now that is real achievement....
I've been spending my wee hours reading a few news items. As with everything in life, I'm filled with snap reactions. I'm not in the Microsoft hater or the Microsoft lover camp. I tend to see monolithic huge corporations as forces of nature, beyond my likes or dislikes. When they get out of hand, trim 'em back like kudzu. They'll grow back, but there's something about the thrill of the weedeater cutting leaves. This week two Microsoft items catch my eye. In one, MS announces that it will cease supporting Java in upcoming years, which looks for all the world like flexing a little corporate muscle to the detriment of the consumer. In another item,
MS declined to follow a judge's request that it "rank" in order of least distasteful the laundry list of potential remedies for its anti-trust behavior. I'm a big admirer of solid lawyers, and MS has some awfully good ones. But I'm just a simpleton, who imagines that when a judge asks one to do something, one just does it.
I don't mean to beat on MS, which is just one more company
filled with one more set of people with one more set of attitudes derived from one more decade of our profit-making culture. I use MS products, and value their innovation.
But corporate news lately indicates to me that folks just.don't.get.it. Like all these corporate failures laced with cooked books. Corporate CEOs and outsider auditors seem to think that if they can argue that they took a cutting-edge interpretation at the furthest reaches of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, then mistating earnings and the balance sheet must be defensible. Even poor Arthur Andersen, with the well-played but unsuccessful defense "hey, look, only one group of us in our Houston office shredded documents to escape justice, don't blame *us*". I was particularly intrigued by the testimony to the effect that "hey, we wouldn't shred to avoid a subpena, we shred to avoid civil lawsuits learning about our notes". Diogenes is striding through the dark halls of the accounting profession, and the lantern barely glows for all the ink of financial accounting standards board rules.
People wonder why our financial markets have suffered so, but systemic change still looks a long shot to me.
The poor woman who set the forest fire intrigues me.
Let's build a shrine to dysfunction and set it on fire.
If the allegations are true (and it sounds like the only issue is whether she stupidly burned an estranged spouse letter or whether she actually intended to set it), then
I hope this lost soul gets the help she needs. But all that fire!
But I've got errands to run before work, work to do,
and great music to which to listen.
scottm burned his little album of music onto a compact disk for me,so that I am no longer cassette-bound. What great music!
I was born to listen to four track simple roots rock done by
homerecorders singing idiosyncratically. I must get this CD duplicated and pass it out or ebay it or something.
I miss the days, to change the subject slightly, when I could see the dBs and Guadalcanal Diary and the True Believers several times a year. I used to love seeing the dBs play "She's got Soul" ('but I don't know, every girl I know has got a lot of soul') or Guadalcanal Diary play
"Watusi Rodeo" or the True Believers playing "Ringing the Bell". I guess I'm just a sucker for a clever lyric over a guitar, drum, bass array. Those days are gone, though, and my boom box usually has synth music on...or, now
scottm.I am mailing out 2 kazoos, an 8 track, and a corruplast card. Now that is real achievement....
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no subject
Date: 2002-06-20 05:53 am (UTC)MS
Date: 2002-06-20 07:20 am (UTC)Regardless of the legalities--antitrust is just a complex mess--MS should be a more responsble market player, and just play nice on stuff like browsers.
Re: MS
Date: 2002-06-20 07:54 am (UTC)