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Friday, 16 August 2002 |
Here is another great article by Charles Haddad for BusinessWeek Online where he writes about whether Microsoft Office is really as necessary to have as most people believe it is.
Very timely, when Microsoft is whingeing about how it has failed to meet its sales projections for the Mac OS X version of Office. Some people out there do grasp that you do not actually need it, and can get along just fine without it on their computers.
10:54:23 AM 
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I had a meeting yesterday with 4 guys, 2 of whom evidently do not understand the nature of the world we now live in and the way the Internet has changed how business is conducted within cities, between cities and across the globe.
They were trying to be devil’s advocates, but they just succeeded in making themselves look silly. I don’t think one of these guys has ever used a computer, much less email and the Web, in his life. Certainly he came across as very dismissive of it all.
I had to really watch my step, especially as I have had previous meetings with the other sceptic there, who had tried to reduce to shreds the reality that people can effectively telecommute, or work with clients around the world. He does not believe it can be done, and that it is a big lie.
I have been doing it since 1995. So have my two brothers. So have many people who work in various areas of high tech.
It is amazing what people can convince themselves does not exist.
10:48:57 AM
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Dedication, or lust, for mediocrity. Now there is something I know well.
Charles Haddad writes in for BusinessWeek Online that:
“Microsoft has long been the big grizzly of the software industry, lacerating any competitors who dared to cross its path. But now it has become ensnared in a trap of its own making. And in its efforts to escape, it may end up gnawing off its own foot. That could create the first real opportunity in 15 years for Apple to take share in the corporate market.
Microsoft’s trap was to let itself get hooked on mediocrity.”
This is an excellent article with plenty of insight and facts.
10:36:21 AM
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Sometime early this year, unbeknownst to me, my accountant in Sydney suddenly got tired of it all and sold her business to a competitor in the same street.
She had always talked about going off and doing something arty. She was one of the few accountants in Sydney known to be sympathetic to people in the arts, and all their problems in a society that still regards creativity with suspicion. Good on her.
However, on selling the business neither she nor the guy she sold it to ever bothered to inform her clients. My enquiries went unanswered and unredirected. Eventually I received a letter from the new guy about a matter in progress, that failed to mention the business had been sold. I had to deduce that. The new guy could never be bothered to take my phone calls, or return them, and certainly seems to have never bothered to read or answer my emails.
I began to smell the stench of cowboy.
I was right.
The new guy, whom I will refer to as scumbag from now on, finally answered one of my many interstate phone calls, and he told me the size of the return I would be getting from my long overdue tax return, we discussed the fee, and he lied to me that he would put the tax return in the mail that day so I could sign it and return it for processing. Of course it never turned up, and my phone calls and emails to the scumbag continued to be unanswered.
In the end I got a referral to a Perth-based accountant, told him the story, asked him to take over from the scumbag as my accountant, and he began a long, frustrating process of tryng to contact the scumbag and get him (it?) to officially hand over my account, and send me my tax return form.
My new accountant just phoned to tell me he has finally received the official handover from the scumbag, and that the scumbag has decided to charge me double the fee we originally negotiated. My new, real, accountant advises me to just pay up and get it out of the hands of the scumbag as fast as possible. Of course, once I pay the scumbag’s fee there is no guarantee that he will be bothered to send me my tax return cheque.
Now that this shit is finally almost over, and now that my new accountant is allowed to set up my file and begin work on my behalf, I have to get him to do my current tax return. I hope that all goes well.
9:29:44 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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