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cyberbarf EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE
MARCH, 2013 IN THIS ISSUE:
CYBERLOAFING BRUISED APPLE DRIVER'S SEAT iTOONS TIME WHETHER REPORT NEW REAL NEWS KOMIX! SHOW HACK!
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cyberbarf CYBERLOAFING TRENDS A recent article from a St. Louis television station called a media stir, when it overstated that between 60 to 80 percent of an employee's time is wasted on non-work related internet uses. It was later corrected to cite a study which concluded that between 60 to 80 percent of an employee's work Internet time is not job related. It quoted a study entitled The Effects of Sanctions and Stigmas on Cyberloafing, published in the May 2012 edition of Computers in Human Behavior, a professional journal. The immediate problem with the report is that if true, it would mean that really no one actually “works” at work anymore. It would mean the American economy would grind to a standstill. Even when one just tries to fathom the worker waste on the Internet, which just about every business in the land uses in one form or another, 60 to 80 percent of employee Internet activities during the work day are not work related seems unbelievably high. If 60 to 80 percent of a person's Internet time at work is unrelated to that person's job duties, there would be an immediate fall off in that person's productivity that his or her manager(s) would realize on a daily basis. But what is “cyberloafing?” The term was apparently coined in a 1995 New York newspaper article to identify worker distraction leading to non-work related surfing at their employer's computer terminals. The types of loafing seems unlimited: from sending/reading personal emails, posting to social media, chatting with friends or general surfing web pages. The concept is that instead of a worker doing his appointed task to make a report, sales call, etc., that person is otherwise disengaged from using his time to directly benefit his employer. An employee owes his employer a degree of loyalty. An employer expects and employee to put in his or her skills and labor throughout the work day for the tasks assigned to them. That is the foundation of the social contract: labor in exchange for compensation. There are set times where employees have personal time away from business: mandated lunch and rest breaks which on average equal an hour of each work day. No one would argue that cyberloafing during one's break time would be unacceptable work behavior. The initial thought was that employees who cyberloaf at work are either bored or lazy. Of course, that is a generalization. However, people are creatures of habit. Internet addiction is a real problem for some web surfers. With the Internet now so accessible anywhere, from a desktop computer to one's own phone, there is a growing temptation to “cheat” the system and get paid for not working. In 2001, Business Wire published an article which stated that approximately five (5) percent of employees at work engage in inappropriate office web usage, including personal cyberloafing to working for a second employer. In 2002, Vivien Lim published an article in The Journal of Organizational Behavior which found self-described cyberloafers were not lazy or bored at work on their personal sidetracks, but openly defiant against an employer, manager or corporate policy. As a result of the perception of employee misuse of corporate property (computers and web access), employers have started putting in strict employment policies governing worker behavior. New email policies, download protocols, additional passkeys and spyware (monitoring of employee's computer usage including URLs) have been implemented to crack down unproductive employee behavior. This has resulted in some tension between managers and workers. Workers don't like to be spied upon, as software can track all their keystrokes. Managers do not want potential liability for inappropriate emails coming from their web servers or unlawfully downloaded software traced to their office machines. In 2008, PC World tried to quantify this behavior. It cited surveys that found anywhere from 50 minutes a day to 10 hours a week, employees admitted to personal emailing, instant messaging, reading web sites, viewing videos, or generally surfing the web. It also reported that there were some benefits to allow employees some cyberloafing time. Some people viewed it as a stress release; it made the job more interesting and manageable. A happy or content employee is a better worker. The range of acceptable cyberloafing during a work day was around an hour to an hour fifteen minutes. If one counts lunch and break time as an hour of time during the work day, the acceptable range appears to be around one-quarter hour per day or 1.25 hours per week. Some people believe that personal Internet browsing may have positive effects on workers doing their jobs. If a worker takes an extra “break” each day, his supervisors may not even know or care, so long as the employer's work is completed competently and on time. But employers have found a more disturbing trend. Employees are less loyal to the company. Two generations ago, workers after school or military service found permanent employment which usually lasted for their entire work life. Workers expected to stay at one company until retirement. Today, no recent graduate has any expectations of working for one employer. This leads to perception of not going to do extra work in order to get a promotion. Workers see easier opportunities moving from company to company to get increased benefits of a promotion. Further, many employers find that newly hired employees have less drive than previous generation. New young workers are more apt to do the bare minimum in order to get by; which leads to more distractions and cyberloafing possibilities. This would cause tension between managers and employees, which sets off the cycle of distrust. Unless an employer completed shuts off Internet access to its employees (like China's internal world wide web firewall), there will be cyberloafing by employees. People are now so attached to their personal electronic devices that it is now almost an involuntarily reaction (like breathing) to to make personal texts, check messages and review personal social media pages 24/7. The Internet has now been hard wired into our culture.
cyberbarf BRUISED APPLE MARKETS Apple stock has been crushed from its $705 high last year. It trades in the $440-$455 range. Wall Street “analysts” bemoan that in their opinion has lost its way, lost its edge, lost its innovation to strong competitors and lost its darling status in the investment community. They believe that Apple as a company has turned into a dull, utility type stock.
It is almost laughable that these traders are driving the stock price lower and lower based upon their speculative demands that Apple Do this and Do that (especially in the area of new product development.) When Apple does not announce a groundbreaking television set, analysts scream that the Apple has no products and cream the stock price lower. Anyone listening to these opinionated traders may not realize that Apple does not take product development device from outsiders, especially overblown writers. The naysayers have their own agenda which is totally different than Tim Cook's future vision of Apple. The comparisons of doom in the headlines rarely meet with the reality of truth. When writers proclaim that Apple is losing market share to rivals who have “shipped” more products than Apple in a quarter, it may be a dubious white lie. Many companies report shipments to its retail distributors as sales, but in fact those shipments remain unsold in inventory. Apple reports actual sales, and is easily confirmed by carriers such as AT&T and Verizon who continually report record sales and activations in the smart phone sector. It gets so bad when the headlines proclaim Blackberry sold out of its phones in the UK. But digging into the guts of the story, most retailers only had 15 phones to sell on the opening weekend. It is a pitiful small sales number compared to the last 5 million unit Apple launch. In today's stock market, truth is a more valuable commodity than gold. The average person can get caught up in the misleading headlines about Apple's direction as traders take them on a rollercoaster chart ride. This is the post-Jobs era at Apple, and some people will try to leverage that depression for their own gain. And push Apple outside of its own product cycle comfort zone to launch products quicker and quicker with no significant upgrades (which would be used as further fuel on the doom pyre.) So it is stock buyer beware. Apple stock has been caught up in the washing machine cycles of white-wash, speculative angst and unfair spin. The stock market does not act rationally. Adding to the large swings are institutional and computer trades triggered by technical chart points. It will be a bumpy ride for Apple shareholders for the next year no matter actual news comes out.
cyberbarf DRIVER'S SEAT RANT It happens at least three times a day. Once going to work in commuter traffic, once around noon during errands, and once on the way home from work. It is the annoying texting driver syndrome. It is turning into an aggravating exercise in civil restraint to sit behind some soccer mom in an SUV in a long turn lane cue when she does not realize the turn arrow turned green. And then, you miss a chance to get through the intersection. Then there is the one where you are sitting at a stop and in your rear view mirror you see the bumper of a large vehicle about to ram you. You look closer just as it barely stops, to see the driver hunched over his lap thumbing his smartphone. What the hell is going on? In five years, orthopedic surgeons will have bumper crop of curvature of the spine cases. But again, what is so important that one has to leave the concentration of operating a dangerous two ton machine on public roads to type in a ten letter response with a happy face icon? The answer is a simple nothing. Traffic fatalities caused by texting is on an alarming increase; even the telephone carriers are running public service advertisements to warn against the dangers of texting and driving. Some believe that texting while driving is the equivalent of driving while intoxicated: any distraction or impairment to a driver's reaction time leads to serious and often fatal consequences. It is just rude. It is like trying to have an in-person conversation with someone who is bent over texting another person. Hello? That is not multitasking - - - it is inconsiderate. We live in a digitial culture of rude, obnoxious, self-serving, narcissistic technorati who have hidden behind the anonymous internet barriers to lose all real social skills. If one's self worth is now measured solely by how many tweets, posts, texts or shout outs in a day, then we are doomed - - - especially if we are sitting in rush hour traffic. |
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cyberbarf.com EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE iToons
TIME THEORY Researchers are trying to construct an experiment to prove a hypothesis that would create an elemental time machine. Scientists are going to bend laser light into a vortex while confined in a chamber. The concept is that light that circulates in that pattern will bend time to create a loop. Our understanding of Time is linear. Ancient man knew that there was a cycle of day and night. They knew that this cycle repeated itself on a daily basis. More advanced ancient civilizations coordinated these daily cycles to the movement of stars to find key solar and lunar events like the equinox or solstice. Despite the cycle aspect of human observation, the progression of time was still a linear concept. One day led to the next day. One day made the people or crops one day older. In early industrialized society, the time as a unit of measure was first set to the local noon day sun. Time Zones followed the path of the noon sun from east to west in hourly intervals. The east-west movement again formulated the basis of linear time. Bending light in a confined space is thought to break a barrier of space-time so that it would roll back onto itself. It is like taking a piece of paper, then rolling it into a tube. The interior surface represents linear time on a flat surface; but it changes when it is rolled up upon itself. Why is there an obsession with time? Our culture is all based on time, or the lack of it. People are now so connected by the communication devices and social media that they spend more time in front of a screen than face to face. Phrases like "time is fleeting" or "there's no time like the present" are representations of linear, finite time as a resource. It is something that can never be reclaimed or recaptured, except in science fiction novels. Humans are obsessed with the notion of time and time travel because humans are mortal. We are aware of our mortality. Our intellect thinks that there must be a way to change that life cycle into immortality. That drive created inventions to prolong human existence, security, protection and basic needs. That drive created the foundation for all medical science, with its mission to preserve and prolong life. That is why early practitioners had almost god-like reverence as high priests and shaman. They challenged what was considered natural law. Like most experiments challenging the hidden building blocks of the universe, the time travel experiments may yield nothing significant. But it does continue on the philosophic notions of human time.
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cyberbarf THE WHETHER REPORT |
cyberbarf STATUS |
| Question: Whether the decline in cable subscribers will continue with the acceleration of streaming video on mobile devices? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
| Question: Whether Japan's massive devaluation of the yen bolster that nation's electronic firms sales of high technology and computer game consoles? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
| Question: Whether the U.S. Congress will authorize unwarranted searches of electronic messages such as emails and cellular communications? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
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