How often does that happen…I just finish writing a post and something else comes up to support it.
I just wrote a piece about pseudo-words and up on the BBC pops a news article stating:
“Plutoed” has been chosen as word of the year for 2006 by the American Dialect Society, beating “climate canary” in a run-off vote.
If you have been “plutoed” you have been demoted or devalued, just as happened to the former planet Pluto when its status was downgraded.
Every now and then I create a post title “Word of the Day”. Most of the time it’s because I’ve come across some new word (or pseudo-word) in something I’ve read.
Sometimes these are real words that I’ve never come across.
More often they are pseudo-words, they look like real words but actually they are something that someone has invented.
Every now and then we I come across a word that I am sure is a pseudo-word only to find out it’s a real word, “burglarized” was my favourite example of this.
Dilbert summarised this phenomenon wonderfully this weekend:
Speaking as someone who is paid to think about how people collaborate I think there are many reasons why we see the use of pseudo-words.
I’m sure for some people they are an attempt to assert their thinking into a situation or organisation. It’s a demonstration of your influence within an organisation if you can invent a word, spit it out, and hove others using it. I once had a manager who invented a new phrase every week, he would use it for a week and see how long it took before it was said back to him. He would also see how obscure he could make it and see whether anyone had the balls to ask what the phrase meant.
I suspect for others that the issue is actually laziness. Rather than trying to construct a proper sentence they try to create a word for it. By creating a short-hand the concept becomes easier to communicate. The most recent example of this would be the pseudo-word “de-portalize“. Everyone within the IT architecture community knows exactly what it means, but it’s not a real word. It’s short-hand for something that those who need to understand will understand.
Once upon a time..ah no I won’t say that I’ll leave it for the 5 things that Stuart has tagged me for.
In the dim and distant past of 2006 I wrote an article on the death of the shared file server, Steve responded.
It seems I was ahead of my time and I’ve seen a few articles on the subject recently.
Yesterday the Microsoft SharePoint Team pitched in. They seem quite upbeat about the level of penetration that they are going to be able to achieve. As with all of our posts they are realistic about the places where file storage is going to carry on being used. Their list:
The challenge here is highlighted in their summary:
Collaborative file shares can be replaced with SharePoint deployments. Product distribution and database storage will continue to persist as valid scenarios. End users will need training to understand where to save their files. With most file sharing scenarios for the most common file sizes SharePoint lists will be the Microsoft recommended way of sending files inside the corporation and with collaborative SharePoint site extranet deployments, it’s the way to share with partners. Most non technical end users scenarios such as the most common HR, Sales, and Marketing teams can say goodbye to using file shares for file sharing. Some groups and divisions like IT SMS/Product Distribution, Data Warehousing (SQL), Media, and Development groups won’t be saying good bye to file servers in Windows 2003 and in code name “Longhorn” with key scenarios leveraging cheap NTFS file storage.
Analyzing your current file servers by server or share or folder may allow you to group them by purpose. Here are some examples of common classifications: Collaborative File Sharing, Historical Archive, Media Server, Dump/Desktop Backup, Source Control Servers/Databases, Personal Storage, Product Distribution, and Application Servers.
(Highlighting mine)
The challenge for most enterprises is this:
While replacement of shared file storage with SharePoint requires these things it will happen very slowly.
One of the things I’ve become more definite about as part of the “My Brain” quest has been times of quiet.
Like most people I don’t live somewhere were quiet actually exists. I rely on music to take me to the place of quiet.
For some time a couple of CD’s by Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble (Officium & Mnemosyne) have been amongst my favourites.
For Christmas I got another one to add to my collection, this time from the Jan Garbarek Group - Twelve Moons. I think I already like this as much, if not more than the other two.
I’m not going to try and describe Jan’s music, whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry did a reasonable job, but this is not music that fits neatly into any genre. I’m not even going to recommend it, I love it, but I know others find it inaccessible.
Have a listen on Amazon you might love it to.
I’ve read a few prediction for 2007 over the last couple of days and I’ve decided to make a few of my own.
Page optimized by WP Minify WordPress Plugin
