Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2007 > January > 18 > Entry
Around the Web, post-ice crisis
I thought the ice storm was over until I tried to drive to work today and ended up pinned on I-35 for an extra 45 minute as huge numbers of 18-wheelers surrounded my tiny car.
Still, you can’t beat the entertainment value of watching enormous sheets of ice fall off the back of vehicles as they speed up an incline.
Here’s what’s going on today:
- Bill Gates says that the Xbox 360’s exciting new IPTV technology (which theoretically will allow you to PVR shows to your Xbox over the tubes of the Nets) is not going to take up hard drive space. Instead, the new content will be streamed, eliminating some of the hard drive size concerns as well as getting rid of the pesky copyright issues of what happens to that content once you have it on your hard drive. This is a huge shocker for me. I’m skeptical about whether there’s bandwidth in most users’ homes to make this work without dragging down the whole home network, but then the 360’s whole online strategy has been a winner so far, so who am I to doubt?
- Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal damns Microsoft Vista with faint praise, chanting the mantra that most of what it’s got, Mac OS already has. Did I make a huge mistake upgrading my PC hardware instead of just buying a new Mac? Maybe I’ll just upgrade my iBook when the Jaguar Mac OS comes out.
- Tony Long at Wired argues for the plight of the telecommutin’ man, but I think it’s a bit too short-sighted to assume that everyone who works in front of a computer is capable of doing great work at home and has the discipline to self-manage. I found myself stuck working at home the past two days, and the minute my toes got cold under the desk, I just wanted to crawl into bed with cats. A recent Network World story suggests that telecommuting can kill a career, but this largely works on the assumption that telecommuters want to someday move up the corporate ladders to become managers, as some Slashdot posters point out. Some of us got out of management to have more flexibility in our personal lives and telecommuting offers a break from the up-the-ladder rat race. Did I just call myself a rat? Oh dear.
- My satellite dish seems to have thawed out, but not before I made the silly mistake of trying to get onto a slick stepladder with a jar of salt. You can imagine how that turned out.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Applications, Austin, Computers, Internet, TV, Videogames
Comments
By Joey
January 19, 2007 9:33 AM | Link to this
The biggest knock to telecommuting I hear, both from managers and workers, is the hit you take in productivity from a lack of self-control. But you have to consider all the reports about interruptions that happen while at the office.
(E.g.,
http://www.lifehack.org/tag/interruption/
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/16/magazine/16guru.html?ex=1287115200&en=c8985a80d74cefc1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss )
For me at least, it's not just an issue of being more distracted at the office or at home. It's the type of distraction. At the office I could be the "shiftless sponge" on AIM, Craigslist, or Kotaku--or all three--and then go back to work just feeling foolish for wasting time. At home I'm more likely to practice my guitar, read a book, meet a friend for lunch, or go jogging and then return to work feeling fairly balanced and satisfied.
Then again, I'm posting this from home while my book is sitting open next to me and the documents I'm working on are minimized.