Life Worth Living

Vendor Abuse

My boss tells me a story of a man at a trade show. He lost it. On the noisy tradeshow floor he pulled up a chair, stood on it and shouted at the top of his voice "I'm PROUD to be a vendor." He received a loud round of applause and some whooping cheers.

The man was no doubt driven onto that chair by vendor abuse.

So what is vendor abuse? This blog explains it quite well...

Simply put...a potential customer treats a supplier of technology like dirt.

The consequences for the people involved in the suppliers company are often dramatic. Tons of work for no reason is quite normal. Weekend work and holiday work (I've now missed every Easter break since I joined my current company). There is probably no real deal behind any of these, its quite common customers think they can gather information by getting you to fill in 100s of pages of questions  - just to gather information for them. Abuse in other words.

Its demoralising too, even depressing. Naturally a sales enquiry for a million or more is treated with excitement.  Teams pull together, people create demos, often in their own time, long late nights of developing just the right slide set, travel, meetings and so on. timescales are often too tight, hence all the late night work. Then, if lucky, you face the customer. They nod politely for a couple of hours during your presentation, then four weeks tell you- you lost, thank you.

Sometimes its a plain - thankyou, we are not taking your calls. Other times the thank you is missing.

No information is ever given, no true comments. Often clear excuses are used - either so vague to be impossibly unhelpful or so trivial that its unbelieveable that this was the reason - more of an excuse).

I've had colleagues leave this side of the industry due to the abuse and switch sides just to be treated with a tiny amount of respect again.

Today I'm tired and depressed. Vendor abuse has got the better of me for the first time. A potential client has supplied trivial excuses to my employer as to why we lost the last bid some of which  point right at the people involved. Fine, we all screw up - its hard but we do. Only, the reasons are so trivial (imagine things like "Your presenter did not speak Swahili" or "We did not like the colour of your tie") that they are both obviously excuses  and a direct attempt to undermine the people involved.

With a night of little sleep, I turn to my blogotherapy to dump this off my mind.

If you are in the game of abusing your vendors and a joke and a sly smile to your colleagues, listen up.

"I am PROUD to be a vendor."

Without me and others like me, you would have no technology and NO BUSINESS.

Asking the Internet is a bad Idea

Never ask the Internet anything you need an answer for. Let me illustrate:

Question: "How does Google make money?"

Answers:

First!!!!!!!!!

the firsty, nothing to contribute, he hangs out refreshing his browser for a buzz

www.google.com

The knowledge snob. He posts a link that may or may not answer your question but he wont condescend to actual human greetings. He clearly knows way more than you as he knows a url. Maybe two.

Have you tried Googling it :-)

The joker. No useful information but he thinks his humour will compensate.

Buy Google t-shirts here!

The spammer. May not be human. Keywords are fun.

Google ... er...dunno really :-) but I read somewhere they make donuts sorta like the Os in their name like. I think they sell them and thats how they makes money. But I'm not sure, let me know if you find out.

The talker. Nothing to add but doesn't know that.

Yo, wiv am dey wot! See? Like down mac and dey sorta sells dat, dig biatch?

The hood speaker. Knows nothing. Tries to be cool to cover it up.

Google has caused many problems for ordinary people in China and you should have nothing to do with them.

The no-brain-moralist. Always has some half baked reason why you dont even want to know the answer/

If you want to know how google makes money - go to my blog here.

The blog promoter. His blog may or may not address the question but he doesnt care you are one more hit.

Adverts.

Minimalist. The information is correct but never complete.

What do you mean by makes money exactly?

The evasive. Knows little, tries ot make sure you look like you dont know anything either.

Hey check out my new fake boobs at my site guys!

Well, you know this one.

Yo your mother suxx big dixxx!

I hope this is one guy who posts all comments like this otherwise I lose hope for humanity.

I dunno but how do you get a job at Google, send me message at tracy@emofool.com

The irrelevant. Does not answer your question and hooks on one of their own.

I'm not a Twitter ID, I'm a Free Man

I'm not a twitter ID...

Adobe is Update Hell

Update hell. If Dante was writing today, his first circle of hell would involve tight deadlines and PCs that refuse to work because they are downloading updates to software we never knew we needed. Hapless souls would be trapped in a never ending hell of download after download whilst Outlook greyed out and titled itself "Not Responding".

The devil walking the level and punishing the workers would be called "Adobe".

Yesterday, a colleague and I were bemoaning Adobe. His PC needed a reboot because Adobe updated had updated Adobe Reader. A reboot? For software that displays a file. Its an application - not a driver, not an O/S update - an application and his PC was insisting on a reboot.

Earlier the same day, I had been on a website where the page proudly announced that I needed to upgrade my (Adobe) Flash plug-in. I did that last week I think. I duly complied, resigned to my  fate of never ending updates for the Lord Adobe. Of course nothing on the web page truly needed an update, no new features, no mind bending 3D, spatialised sound or shaders. It was just policy. Sigh.

Then this morning. My PC booted and then sat, a dialogue box mocking me. It read:

"Adobe updater. Updating Adobe Updater." (or something similar, it was 5:30am)

I, er , what? Meta-updates? The Lord Adobe has transcended, reached a higher plateau and now can update updates of an updater. Absolute freakin madness.

This isn't the worst part. As if Adobe wasn't content enough to cripple the computing world with ridiculously bloated software, enforced downloads and very little usefulness, they now want a part of the TV world. Oh yes, Adobe Flash coming soon to cripple your TV.

Imagine a second level of hell, where you sit all day on your sofa (surrounded by molten lava) trying to watch TV and each time the show gets good, Adobe announces another update. Possibly just of the updater. Adobe insists before you watch the next show you download the latest Flash which will add amazing new features, you will never need. I imagine Lord Adobe whipping out his ipad and watching TV shows unencumbered.

Recommendation Engine, Knowledge without Intelligence

A recommendation engine is a piece of software that looks at what you like and recommends similar things. A good example is Amazons "people who bought this book also bought...". I had to laugh recently at the internet movie database recommendation engine. I was looking for an old black and white horror called the Night of the Demon. Its a psychological horror/thriller about, unsurprisingly, a demon. IMDB recommended five similar movies:

• The Omen: Check, psychological horror with supernatural entity
• Rosemary's Baby: Check, psychological horror with supernatural entity
• The Ring: Check, psychological horor with supernatural entity
• The Ninth Gate: Check psychological horror with supernatural entity
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Ch..., huh?

Heres the link.

Knowledge without intelligence is a dangerous thing.

Avatar in 3D, a Sad Day for films

I've just seen Avatar in 3D in a completely full cinema. That is James Camerons first great achievement with Avatar: it is a must see event. Booking tickets was hard enough. The fight in the queue outside as people fought for the remaining seats was novel. The surround sound, loud as it was is not as deafening as the sound of ker-ching ringing all the way back to Hollywood.

His second incredible achievement is leaping right across the uncanny valley and creating the first true virtual actors in a cinematic experience. Beowulf and Polar Express certainly gave Cameron a running start but they failed to leap the chasm. The graphics in this movie (CGI if you will) are astoundingly beautiful and realistic - at least as far as we can judge an alien world to be realistic.

His third achievement is to bring 3D mainstream and expose it to a huge audience for the first time. The 3d works and is used subtly without throwing too many arrows into our faces or bubbles hanging in the air. Hollywood is going nuts to reinvent movies in 3D now and even Ridley Scott, a serious director, has just asked for another 8million to redo Robin Hood in 3D before release. 3D has arrived.

Three amazing achievements make this an historical film.  You should see it. You probably have already. It is as I already said, an event.

I'm left, however, after watching it with a deeply sad feeling about the future of films. This film made money, it presents an opportunity to bring an audience back to the cinema through 3D and puts a spanner in the pirating crowds works. So, why sad? Hollywood knows now it just needs a 3D event film and box office takings will be huge. It knows now it doesn't need actors on screen, only voice talent (a dream of many studios as it is much cheaper). Finally it knows that a script with a plot is absolutely optional.

You see Avatar, whilst not a bad fillm, is aside from the visuals, very average. The plot is famously similar to Pocahontas and has no real depth. This is unacceptable for a near 3 hour movie. The acting is flat, devoid of great delivery or charm (sorry Ms Weaver but even you failed to ignite this one). Sam Worthington strolls through the film as if he still believes he is playing a half-man, half-machine terminator. Frankly, after 2 hours we want to leave or see something better and the first hour of THAT was just about the 3D novelty. In the showing we had, surround sound was drowned out by the snoring man to our left and the guy behind him yawning loudly and pointedly. The film is bland. Its the vanilla blancmange of blockbusters. And it made a ton of money. Shit.

Then there is the 3D technology. Aside from the marks left on your face by the glasses (did Dolby actually try wearing the bloody things for any length of time?), my wife suffered from nausea for about 60 minutes and I from headaches afterwards. The 3D worked within limits, things near the front of the view became awfully blurred, things at the side could distort and the whole experience was rather like watching a movie through the bottom of a glass bottle - perfectly in focus in the middle, distorted elsewhere.

Ironically, the greatest directorial shot in the movie, with deepest emotional resonance, that of all the aliens laying their hands on our hero as acceptance into the tribe, forming an organic circle of interconnectedness, is a 2D shot. Its filmed from above, flat. Watch again if you don't believe me.

The 3D is acceptable at times, distracting at others and just plain distorted at others. If you've seen I-Max, if you've seen a 3D film before (such as those for kids) then this is really nothing new.

Avatar then shows how Hollywood can make a ton of money without investing in scripts or actors. Without pacing or editorial comment, you can make the biggest blockbuster of all time. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Matrix and I have no doubt many others are all to be re-released in 3D. I won't be in the queue and if you want films to be more than gimmicks, neither should you be.

This is a sad day for films.