This week's troll cup goes to... A.T. Kearney! Their study tells us that IT is the brake for trust's growth. Woah! And their nostrum is... outsourcing and offshoring, right!!! Go figure, I never thought that it was that easy to get back into the headlines. And every press fool quotes this crap without further comments. Unbelievable.

When you were a boy in your teenage days (and maybe later on), you might have had a kind of "quality measurement" for girls. A "10" would have been the absolute eye-catcher with all attributes that made your imagination work, whereas lesser gradings were reserved for the "normal" girls.
Now this system becomes scientific! Scientists from Oz developed a system that does the measurement for you. No need anymore to leave the computer and meet the girls: just scan through your image sources and watch the attractive ladies you're never going to meet! Gee.

John Backus, co-inventor of Fortran and the famous Backus-Naur Form died last saturday. Honoured by IEEE and ACM, he was one of my early computer science heros. Σ*, yeah!

Remember the old days - if you're more than, say 10 years in IT business? Perhaps you've been starting in the 60s and been wearing a white frock. Or, some years later, you've been inventing the first mini computer or writing one-of-a-kind software. Or you experienced the home computer era in the 80s and had one of these fabulous 8 bit machines that taught you Basic, Forth, or Assembler. Maybe you bought a 16 bit computer and felt mighty when rendering your first computer graphics or playing with your synthesizer. Or you started in the 90s and realized that computers have to be connected to unleash their power and that the Internet was going to change the way you are experiencing the world and all the information distributed there.
It was exciting. It was new. It was fun. You've been a pioneer and, mostly, you've been one of a few. You could make things possible because you knew more about these geeky things than anyone else in your company, your circle of friends, or your family.
What did change since then? Where has the fun gone?
I've written in this post about the dwindling attractiveness of IT (or, more precisely, computer and information science and the jobs related to these the industry has to offer). Obviously, the problems already start in school. Sometimes I'm listening to young people lamenting their IT courses and complaining about their teachers. But I don't think it's the teachers but the curriculum. IT is a school subject like any other and there's nothing special about it because today computers are everywhere and writing short programs or learning how to write letters with Word is quite boring. This kind of teaching won't make the next Turing.
Later in the job, many IT people experience the firefighter syndrome: instead of developing new systems and being creative, all work is about fixing bugs, resetting passwords, installing service packs and make the machines work. Since there is no next big thing waiting behind the corner, nowaday's IT jobs mean caring about the standards. The software market is widely saturated and you may get tools for virtually every kind of problem. Great if you're needing and using tools. Lame if you want to develop someting new. Sometimes revenants of past eras are tumbling through the market (the newest one is Web2.0), but neither the jobs nor the people keep their promises because the is nothing substantially new you might find. But chasing trends is no fun and soon you'll just get older and younger people will take over.
So, how does the fun come back? I don't have the nostrum. Sometimes it's a nifty little tool you might have developed and you're publishing on your web site. People's reaction on tools the have searched for is often satisfying for a developer. Maybe you want to share your knowledge with other people: so get vocal and write about it. If your gainful occupation is just for earning money, make the most of your talents during your spare time. You are defining the deadlines, your plans and goals and reaching them is always rewarding. (Source)

No, it's not the Doc having fun while waiting for spring but the European Commission found that the IT sector had a shortfall of 300,000 IT professionals across Europe by 2010. Dropping by 3% from 1998, there were only 22% female graduates in 2006 (USA: 28%). Possible reasons would be the "geek" stigma of IT jobs and women who left work for having children. Very interesting is the discovery of women preferring management courses over technical courses (that are mostly taken by men). I think they got it. IT is getting uncool. (Source)

The other day, at the administration console:
Sometimes I wished, I could do it this way.

That's the question asked by Australia's magazine The Age. Australia's and other English-spoken countries' universities experience a decreasing number of IT students. What's the reason for this phenomenon, especially if one considers our daily life that becomes more and more digital, filled with communication gadgets and computer power nobody would have imagined a few decades ago?
There's a multitude of reasons. First, computer science is subject to pig cycles like any other discipline. This wasn't the case 20 years ago when I started studying, where the future was bright and a lot of lies were told ("big money", "move the world") . Additionally, nobody in the job market is interested in computer science but IT jobs. Science doesn't make rich in money, so most people are interested in practical knowledge to get their job done.
A noticable cooling in Germany's job market happened during the mid-90s, after that the Internet was about to come and I got my first 'real' job. Before that almost every major company was off-shoring its developments and at a job fair I've been told that they hadn't any jobs because their developing staff was now residing in India.
Since then, ups and downs in that IT job market are a commonplace and job training changed significantly. IT's no longer rocket science but the supplier of everyday's technology and a lot of yesterday's old glamour is gone forever.
Society has changed, too. Though our administration launches success stories about our recovering and growing economy, the job market itself has changed drastically. Staying with the same company for the greatest part of your life becomes unlikely and once you're losing your job chances are high that you'll experience a real crash of your life style, especially if you're depending on unemployment benefits. Getting poor in Germany has become a real threat for employees, and the strength of one's company doesn't mean that her job is secure. There is no sign of resistance in the working class, so people seem to have accepted this situation.
And then there's the prestige. Especially in Germany, technical jobs never were that reputable. As long as they stayed with the academic community and were a matter of just a few people, computer and information science were considered as something sophisticated and boring. With every step of vulgarisation the reputation of IT was decreasing and to do IT wasn't special anymore. To become a lawyer or a consultant has always been more prestigious, these jobs are usually well-paid and promise high social status - as opposed to IT jobs, where employees often are service-oriented computer nerds and nothing else.
It's been a great loss of reputation that computer science experienced in the last twenty years. IT early left academia and became a business service. For the elite of a society becoming a servant isn't an option, so IT became the playground of social climbers. In a society that is affected by strong mechanisms of social distance service jobs don't promise enough reputation, thus less and less people want to do IT.

The label attached to that pot with a Cyrtomium Falcatum rhizome told me this fern would be hardy. There was just one small frond developing and the whole plant looked pitiable. I cultivated it like a tropical plant and kept it in my fern shelf through a whole year. That was quite successful and the plant became a vigorous grower.

Germany's employers, confronted with wage claims of 6.5%, returned, these demands were "not contemporary". D'oh. I guess they are right.

I'll see them further first! Germany's private TV broadcaster RTL disposed one of its better TV shows ("Bones") without noticing the public. Any trace of it is lost on RTL's web site as if it had never existed. Instead, they show old "CSI" episodes. I'm not opposed to CSI, but to interrupt a new TV show the cold way and to rehash the old stuff without further notice isn't okay. I'm pissed.

Japanese people are different. Those living in Düsseldorf, too. It's early spring today, the Doc walks around the corner and is listening to the birds' twitter. I'm living in one of Düsseldorf's quieter districts, so everyone is full of peace and happiness. But not this mother with her two children who are wearing masks to protect them from - well, what? Maybe she has read about the flu raging through the city but today it's all sunshine and warmth. At least mommy's son moved his mask over his chin and was breathing fresh air.

Lots of excitement these days in German blogtown: whether it's okay to join PR campaigns, to have commercials on one's web site (or blog), or to keep it straight and avoid any commercial purposes.
Just a few thoughts: in the US, where all blogs are originally from, by all means it's been usual to blog for or against something. Websites and blogs dedicated to presidential candidates ("Democratic Girl") are common. It's not easy to say when a blogger keeps authentic and when she's just doing her job, advertizing for this and that. Perhaps this is founded in the opinion making nature of blogs: it's all opinion and that's why we love - or hate - other's blogs and web sites. But when is one opinion more justified than another? What if somebody is paid for having an opinion?
When you start reading a blog and you stick with it for a while you'll get to know the author, his commentators, his friends and foes. The blog becomes part of your daily life and you're becoming part of the blog if you start writing comments. When does this get disturbed? It's not the link to amazon, nor ebay. It's not even the banner, nor the popup (though this can be annoying, but you can do something against this). You'll feel betrayed if you think the author's trying to fool you - then she's losing her credibility.
To fool her readers could hardly be a blogger's target. She'll get response from her commenters and correct the course or she'll ignore the critics and go down. After all, if some of the more-or-less famous bloggers decide to go commercial then this is not an evil thing per se. People's reactions will show if it was a good decision and if the author has lost credibility or has not. If a blogger tries to fool me she has lost me forever. (Yes, it's an emotional thing.)

BTW: mabuse.de always has refused to do advertizing for anything other than for mabuse.de. No, it didn't make us rich (in money). But if we would bother you with pop-ups, banners and all that nasty stuff, we wouldn't get richer, would we?

It's been a matter of time. A platform that has been recently recovered by big companies and their public relations agencies now attracts jurists' attention. Minors visiting virtual brothels might become a serious problem for SL maintainers if the site owners don't offer protective measurements. Accoring German law, this would mean distribution of pornography to minors and this is actionable. Additionally, having sex with avatars that appear like animals, or children, would be a crime as well. Even if an avatar looks like an animal (though being a complete fantasy character) would be harmful if it would have, say, testicles and it is using them. This is a rich field of activity for prosecutors and you better watch your avatars - if you're playing SL in Germany! (Source: Interview (German) with jurist St. Mathé from Hamburg)

It's been a matter of time. A platform that has been recently recovered by big companies and their public relations agencies now attracts jurists' attention. Minors visiting virtual brothels might become a serious problem for SL maintainers if the site owners don't offer protective measurements. Accoring German law, this would mean distribution of pornography to minors and this is actionable. Additionally, having sex with avatars that appear like animals, or children, would be a crime as well. Even if an avatar looks like an animal (though being a complete fantasy character) would be harmful if it would have, say, testicles and it is using them. This is a rich field of activity for prosecutors and you better watch your avatars - if you're playing SL in Germany! (Source: Interview (German) with jurist St. Mathé from Hamburg)