Fry Up: Shakespearean dysfunction

Don’t be a noob

Shakespearean dysfunction
There are days when working at the coalface of tech media is like being the third sister in King Lear. The good sister that told the truth and was disinherited while her bad sisters told lies and were written into their father's will. And then later one of bad sisters tried to pluck out her father’s best friend’s eyes.

But you know all about King Lear because Fry Up readers remember the fifth form (when there was a fifth form) and you studied Shakespeare and moaned about it because the language was difficult, but the teacher said ‘get over it’ and so you did (ed – clearly some lingering issues, please return to ICT).

Anyway Fry Up paid enough attention in fifth form English to take inspiration from the Bard for this week’s look at ICT, which had more than a whiff of Shakespearean dysfunction about it*.

*Hat tip to Galen Gruman who used the term “Shakespearean dysfunction” in a recent op-ed on HP. (Today's announcement that HP in New Zealand has dropped its plans for a $60 million datacentre in Tuakau only adds to the current HP-theme of abandoned strategies).

“Now is the winter of our discontent” from The Tragedy of King Richard the Third

The most enduring tragedy in New Zealand ICT has got to be Telecom. And what a long winter of discontent it’s been – for the users of their services.

Goodness but their executives pay themselves a lot of money to run a company that is so dysfunctional it sent its shareholders a 540-page document pleading with them to be split it in two.

Of course we know it’s about participating in the Ultra Fast Broadband, and Rural Broadband Initiative and scooping up more taxpayer dough. But how are the shareholders going to learn about this in a document that is so enormous it dwarfs Fry Up’s collected Shakspeare (1903, Avon Edition)?

Despite risks, independent report recommends Telecom demerger
Telecom's pricey paper use shocks
Telecom's former general counsel anointed as its new chair

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark from Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

If a large New Zealand company was Europe then in Shakespeare-speak the IT department would be Denmark. The advent of social media and the device wars sparked by Apple’s iPhone have caught IT departments by surprise and by all accounts they appear to be struggling.

Quick to see there is a buck to be made, IT vendors are touting new solutions as a (no doubt costly) fix to the problem of enabling new technology while at the same time dealing with costly legacy systems.

Exactly who in the ‘C-suite’ (fancy talk for the CEO, CFO, CIO and/or C I DONT KNOW) should be taking responsibility for this? At Fry Up we suspect that employees don’t care - they probably just want to work in 2011 with 21st century devices.

Boss and workers at odds over new tech

Finance community embraces social media

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet from Romeo and Juliet

According to a survey for the Domain Name Commission, most of us favour ‘.nz’ over ‘.com’ but apparently a large number would like to ditch the ‘.co’.

This is proof once again that at heart we are a socialist nation.

We'll stick with .nz but can we drop the .co?


What’s the time Mr Fountain?
A very cool waterfall that tells the time.*

*Hat tip to Garth Biggs, via Twitter


Don’t be a noob
Apparently if you only found out today that ‘noob’ is slang for ‘newbie’ you are in fact a ‘noob’ and are therefore disqualified from using the term.

Just so you know.

IT ratchets up social media involvement