Richard Lack's Blog

Things to cross off the list

It occured to me today that there are 2 things that I really ought to have done when I had a chance.



1: Lunch at the top of the World Trade Centre

2: Take Concorde to NYC



Proof positive that sometimes you should just blow the expense and do it anyway. It doesn't look like there's much prospect of anything along the lines of concorde going into production for a very long time. The avionics industry is going backwards for the first time ever.



It's sad to see the end of the irrationally exuberant and optimistic era of our history when we'd build passenger planes that flew at twice the speed of sound, buildings that reached the clouds and lunar craft that touched down on the dark side of the moon. When did we stop striving?

Weasel Words

I came across an interesting quote this morning:



" ...'social' is a weasel word that has acquired the power to empty the nouns it qualifies of their meanings"



F.A Hayek 'Our Poisoned Language, The Fatal Conceit



...and it's true, put social in front of any verb and it becomes meaningless:



Social Justice

Social Equality

Social Housing

Social Worker

Senseless Marketing Speak

Ever visit a website and completely fail to understand what the company actually does? Or perhaps looked at someone's profile and thought "Hmmmm creative e-enablement strategies and new paradigm digital collaborative solutions provider. Gee - I don't know what one of those is but I feel certain it's just what I need right now."



Believe it or not I came a cross an Ecademist profile today for a life coach that described himself as a "Situational Leadership Guru". Not only is that patently a load of crap, but doesn't it strike you as just ever so slightly immodest. Do you think his wife knows he's a Guru?



When did we dissapear so far up our own 'faecal supply chain repositories' that we forgot to tell potential customers, or the just plain inquisitive what it is we actually do all day? I spend so much of my working life picking apart vacuous marketing speak that I have little time left to do anything else.



I think there's a valid business model here for an anti-marketing consultancy (if that's not more jargon) for corporates who've had their web presence and marketing literature completely loused up by creative copyrighter types. I could charge billions to put together the next generation of blue chip sites that cut to the chase and actually informed clients.



e.g. a website for a lifecoach would be thus:



Who am I?

A really nice guy .....at home in my underpants who once spent a year in Goa smoking dope



What do I do?

I charge you to talk to me.



What are the benefits?

You're supposed to become enlightened...or something



How does it work?

It's a lot like seeing a shrink - but without the stigma or any of the qualifications.

If it please your Honour...?

Today is a celebration of that dissapearing species, a man described in most of the papers this morning as a 'British Boffin'



I've been part of the campaign for 6 years to get Tim Berners-Lee knighted. He's an extraordinary man; who besides inventing the web and making this blog possible, has been odd among the digerati in never seeking to profit from his invention. Tim didn't file patents, incorporate start-ups or license the technology of http and html to the NASDAQ luminaries. Were it not for Tim's philanthropic vision of shared learning the world would be a very different place. It's a tribute to him that he never climbed inside the bubble which would burst so spectacularly 8 years later.



A knighthood for a man such as this, or Martin Evans, the brilliant stem cell pioneer - means so much more to me than the myriad honours doled out to the assorted showbiz has-beens for Services to Entertainment (...and Never Getting Caught Doing Coke in the Service of Panto).



Though I think it's fantastic that the Rugger team got a boot in on the honours...and still no rumours of spit roasting; I can't help feeling it premature, impatient even. They are somehow less formidable on the pitch for all their medals. I imagine Jason Robertson breaking into a fast pelt down the wing and legions of Aussie backs genuflecting and declaring sarcastically: "After you Mi' Lord"



The honours used to inspire us by lifting up the people the Establishment wanted us to become. Lately the emphasis has changed such that it's a way for Tony to show our Monarch that we'll choose our own heroes. Lollipop ladies and Milkmen. People that are demonstrably straight kind of guys. I think this often misses the point of the excercise and does a disservice to those that have bothered to go out and acheive real and inspirational greatness.

Beat the school run

As I drove my personal pollution solution to work today I became frustrated by the well-to-do kids being panzered 400 yards to prep school by Mummy. If I leave the house after 7:45am it's almost impossible to get across Tunbridge Wells in less than half an hour.



Confronted by the grille of yet another X5 skewed across a junction in my path, an idea hit me. It did so with such force that I swear I heard the "swooook doing!" of an arrow embedding itself in my bonce.



Why don't we equip all mothers with kids of school-going age with a medieval trebuchet? You know - the catapault contraptions that besieging armies used to hurl rotting mutton carcasses into castles.



At 8am every morning we'd all carefully seat Isobelle and Lawrence askance the taught sling arm and give the wooden lever a solid tug. For 20 seconds the skies over Tunbridge Wells would rain with pigtails, lunchboxes and mittens; then voila! As the whistle blew in the playground our little treasures would hopefully land somewhere in the environs of the tennis courts, paw themselves for broken limbs, and limp along to lessons.

Audacity of my bank

I got a call from Lloyds TSB customer service a few weeks back while I was in a meeting.



It went something like this:



Lloyds: "Hello Mr Lack. I notice that you have a mortgage with another provider"

Me; "I'm sorry. How do you know that and why is it any of your business in the first place?"

Lloyds: "Periodically we check your account activity in order that we can review your needs"

Me: "So you read through my bank statements"

Lloyds: "Well....errr....we DO periodically review your status as part of our ongoing customer service committments so that we can evaluate your needs"

Me: "My NEEDS are for you to mind you own business and look after my money. I'll thank you not to look through my bank statements"

Lloyds: "You were informed that we would do this when you opened your account"

Me: " That was 10 years ago and I don''t recall doing any such thing. I'm registered with the telephone, email and postal preference schemes. Why are you calling me on a prohibited number?"

Lloyds: "Can I interest you in arranging a meeting with your account manager?"

Me: "I am ending this call"



I later complained to the Head of Data Protection at Lloyds TSB that this was a gross misuse of my personal information. He apologised profusely by post within 48 hours and credited my account with £50.

www.YourParty.org

YourParty.org has been in the news a bit this week. It was set up by Dan Thompson and Rod McLaren, of 365 and Simon Morris, ex MD of of Ginger Productions.





I got involved in setting up www.yourparty.org because I was tired of electing a government every 5 years and then watching them refuse referendums, break manifesto promises and vote against the wishes of their party and their electorate. There are plenty of discussion groups about e-democracy - but we thought we'd take things a few steps further and set up a real political party with real candidates!



YourParty offers members the chance to shape policy by voting on the things that really matter in their lives. Once our members vote on these polcies then our MP's are constitutionally bound to vote in line with them. We are growing incredibly fast and are looking for volunteers among ecademy members.



Check out the site and let us know if you can help. We meet every monday at Smiths bar in Smithfield at 7pm. See you there!

People are our company's most valuable asset!

I've just read another one of those studies reporting that men are being paid 20% more than women in the workplace.



I'm not sure where I'm heading with this but I'm struck by the blindingly obvious fact that market forces are at work here. You as an employee are a commodity and have a responsibility to maintain your own fair market value in the workplace.



Where employers are concerned it's often the wheel that squeaks first that gets seen to. Has it occured to anyone that men just do a much better job at asking for a rise and making sure they don't become undervalued? I'm convinced that there's no hidden agenda in the minds of most employers. Sometimes I've noticed that the business development guys who ask for rises really are the top producers. It's that same skill that they use when negotiating with prospects. I've never yet been asked by a female employee for a rise and that makes me wonder how hard a deal she's able to drive elsewhere. Until I'm asked I'll continue to pay what I consider to be a *fair* wage - and no - that's maybe not the same as the guy across the hall.



Think I'm playing dirty? It's probably not the most inclusive or egalitarian practice but it IS reality and reality bites when you have to balance the books.



Next time you find out your male counterpart gets paid more than you. Consider that he may not be the better employee but he might very well be the better negotiator.

Help for school project

Hi all,



I got asked by a 16 year old student at a secondary school in scotland for help on her project. I found 10 mins in my day to help out quickly. Anyone else care to pitch in? I think she got hold on my e-mail address through our website







-----Original Message-----

From: stewae8 [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: 04 April 2003 14:07

To: Richard Lack

Subject: encryption





I am doing an assessment for a subject I have choosen called Information

Systems. I have been asked to answer the question : How is encryption is

linked to the Internet?



Please send me a reply whenever possible.



Yours faithfully

Emma Stewart



____________



Emma,



I'm very busy right now but here's a brief answer for you:



Encryption is a way of getting round one of the biggest problems of the internet: Security.



Imagine if you sent me a letter by post and it got to my end and I could see that somebody had torn open the envelope and peeked inside. I'd know that the postman, or my wife , or perhaps somebody else I didn't know had looked at it and read the private contents of that letter. I'd be really concerned about that and I'd want to know who'd been reading my post! In the old days this used to happen a lot and so people put red-wax seals over letters to make sure that nobody could open them without the recipient knowing..



Before encryption we had the same problem on the internet - except if you sent me an e-mail it wasn't the post office that was responsible for it. I'd be happy if they DID deliver e-mail for us because I TRUST the Post Office. Instead - your e-mail is delivered by tens of thousands of different internet service providers (ISP's). You have no idea who owns these ISP's and whether you trust them or not. Some of them are quite easy to break into and steal from. If someone takes a sneak-peak at your e-mail it would arrive in your inbox and there would be no way for you to know if it had been opened and by whom. There's no such thing as a rip or a tear in an e-mail. What makes things worse is that in most countries the government has the ability to read our e-mail by placing special equipment next to the computers that deliver our e-mails in the ISP's building. Some countries (e.g. UK and America) only do this for suspicious e-mail that they think might have come from terrorists. Other countries (e.g. China) have a policy of monitoring all e-mail going in an out of that country.



Encryption was developed by a couple of guys that went on to found a massive company called RSA Security. Here's how it works:



When you send me an encrypted e-mail it's scrambled up using a special code (called the key). There are two types of encryption key - 128bit and 256bit. Both types of code are so tough to crack that it would take even the most powerful computer many thousands of years to work out. The only other person that can come up with the code is the one whoI am sending the e-mail to. It's a bit like sending a padlock to somebody by post. The only person who can unlock the padlock is the person who you are sending it to at the other end because you gave them the same key that you have.





One final word:



Encryption is a good thing and a bad thing. It allows me to do things like pay for things securely on websites. I can send my friends and work colleagues private files and not worry about them being read. On the other hand it also allows criminals and terrorists to talk to each other without being found out by the police and the government. That's why some countries (e.g. America) have outlawed the use of encryption technology for e-mail)





So - it's all about Security and Trust. Whenever you try to solve problems involving security and trust you also have to think about privacy. Are my e-mails private? Should the government be able to read them?





I hope this helps Emma.

Please enter your 16 digit alphanumeric account number....

Ever been asked by the invariably Scottish or Welsh customer services operator for your excessively long account number before they'll let you pay your phone bill?

None of us like being treated like a number but to be referred to as a 16 digit alpha numeric number is both laughable and insulting. There a few things that incite me to ear-bleeding rage, and this is one of them.

Here's my BT account number: ND5527 1315 MO14 IN
You're welcome to it!

When I call BT and try to pay my bill they tell me that they can't accept payment without this critical piece of information. "Funny" I say "...but I just haven't found time to memorize it yet and I'm in the car right now". "Well I'm afraid you'll have to call back later when you DO have it" is their response.
"What are you worried about?" I say "Are you concerned that I might wilfully and maliciously try to pay somebody else's bill for them?"

My telephone number is a unique number - if it weren't it would be useless. Why can't they use my telephone number as my account number? How many possible variations can there be of a 16 digit alpha numeric number? It should be several hundred billion. That's a LOT of customers.

My gas and water bills are the same. 12 and 19 digits long respectively
My bank account is just 9 digits long. That's still enough permutations for every inhabitant of earth to be a Lloyds TSB customer. Coincidence? Combine it with my sort code and my eyes start to glaze over at the infinite possibilities.....

Sure - flame me and tell me I'm being unreasonable and that there are valid reasons for them to use 16 digit numbers, that it's to do with checksum digits, legacy software, process and security .

Bottom line is this - I don't care what a company calls me internally. But I go incandescant with rage when they forget their manners sufficiently to address me directly by anything other than Mr Lack. If they have a problem verifying which Mr Lack then ask me my postcode or a suitable security question.

I've really reached breaking point on this one - there are just too many numbers in my life. It's a lonely world out there and sometimes I just need the girl in the call centre to reach out to me a bit and say my name.