The Attack of the Killer Confidentiality Codes - Ahhhhh!!

In honour of Halloween I'd like to point out how the innocent privacy or confidentiality disclaimer, once a nice gesture at the bottom of a web site or an email footer, has grown into a monster. No doubt a combination of global warming, moulds in school portables, SUVs and gay marriage, the confidentiality disclaimer has completely morphed into a huge, abrasive, demanding manifesto threatening to fill up our email quotas everywhere.

Here are just a few that I've come across lately:

Information contained in this electronic message (email) is confidential and intended only for the use of the addressee. If the reader is not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copy of this communication is strictly prohibited. XYZ Incorporated accepts no responsibility or liability in respect to this email other than to the addressee. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by telephone at the number above or by email. Thank you.

The information contained in this message and any attached files are legally privileged and confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or copy of this message and attachments is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify us by telephone or electronic mail and destroy the original message without making any copies. Thank you.

This email communication is intended as a private communication for the sole use of the primary addressee and those individuals listed for copies in the original message. The information contained in this email is private and confidential and If you are not an intended recipient you are hereby notified that copying, forwarding or other dissemination or distribution of this communication by any means is prohibited. If you are not specifically authorized to receive this email and if you believe that you received it in error please notify the original sender immediately. We honour similar requests relating to the privacy of email communications.

The information herein contained is legally privileged or confidential and intended only for use by the recipient individual ('s) or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, redistribution or taking of any action in reliance on the communicated information is strictly prohibited. If you are in receipt of this communication in error, please delete and notify sender by reply email. Thank you.

The information contained in this e-mail, including any attachments, may contain proprietary, privileged and confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any reading, use or dissemination of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please immediately notify us by telephone (212-555-1234) and delete this message from your system. Even though this e-mail and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect that might affect any computer system into which it is received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that it is virus free, and no responsibility is accepted by (XYZ Company) for any loss or damage arising in any way from its use.

And I didn't even include the French translations, which appear with about 10-20% of the ones I see.

Having done a fair bit of work and research into privacy as part of some work I did prior to the launch of PIPEDA, I know full well why such steps are necessary; necessary to communicate in common sense terms the basics of privacy and confidentiality practice. But when the disclaimer itself is longer than the message is intended to cover, I can't help but feel the lawyers are having a bit of a laugh at the monster they've created.

Loft Office Working: 5 Tips

REDUCE STRESS, TEAR DOWN BARRIERS!

FREE YOUR HIDDEN CREATIVE ENERGY!

AN ENVIRONMENT OF COLLABORATION!

For many, the lure of the loft office is its apparent panacea lifestyle where creativity blooms, collaboration reigns, and communication all takes place through osmosis. It’s quite accurate in many ways but, like any lifestyle (which I take to include “workstyle” as well) it has its pros and cons. A month after moving in to share office space (and work more closely on a handful of projects) with Nathon Gunn and the Bitcasters team, I’m now sitting in the sixth open concept or loft office of my career.

With yet another first month under my belt, here are some tips on how to thrive in the loft/open concept office:

1: Wear Headsets – even if you don’t own an ipod or know what an MP3 even looks like, even if you’re not listening to a single thing, headsets tell potential small talkers, long talkers and other distracters that you’re running way too many senses right now to take on even the briefest of conversations. Avoid eye contact to increase the effectiveness (radius of impact, deterrent intensity) of the headsets.

2: Fill Your Desk But Not with Garbage – Filling your desk with files, notebooks, stacks of paper or electronic devices leaves less room for people to add more to your desk, and it virtually prevents someone dropping a new file in front of you to seek your immediate input. But keep it clear of garbage; you’ll find that whatever seemingly innocent garbage you may leave behind – crumpled up paper, empty coffee cups, Coke cans, etc. – mysteriously multiplies every night while you’re at home, blissfully ignorant of the abuse your desk is taking at the office.

3: Use A Wireless Phone Headset – It would be great if you could combine the wireless phone headset with the “listening to music” headset (who knows…maybe you can), but either way, the phone headset allows you to jump from your desk to seek higher, quieter ground, on a moment’s notice in the event that an impromptu meeting or brainstorming session forms at a nearby desk.

4: Keep Valuables Hidden – I’m not talking about fine wine or jewellery here; I mean the things that are really valuable to you throughout the course of your work day. Elastic bands, multiple pens, note pads and Post-it notes, and of course the crown jewel of office supplies….the good stapler. Keep them out of site in a drawer or lidded box under your desk. You won’t need a lock…a closed drawer or box is enough to ward off exploratory fingers.

5. Watch Your Own Habits – Remember the golden rule and that every even remotely annoying habit you have – loud gum smacking, coffee slurping, sniffling, humming or the dreaded leg (or legs or hip or head or foot) shake – is amplified for those around you. Watch it, or there will be emails circulating about it long before you know it’s an issue!

I suppose an important last point is that it’s not for everyone. You may be a “lofter” (don’t know if that term exists) or you may prefer a totally different setting, one with privacy, peace and quite, order. If you’re considering the loft though, try out these tips to make the most of your experience.

Is a dog more sexist than a rat?

By now everyone in Canada has heard about Peter MacKay's alleged reference to former girlfriend and now Liberal MP Belinda Stronach as a dog during Question Period in Parliament yesterday. While admittedly being (or perhaps being admittedly) male precludes me from relating directly inflicted on Ms. Stronach, I can't help but wonder if it really represents a sexist attack, as so many opposition members have accused claimed.

To be sure, there are other words McKay could have used that definitely would have crossed the sexist line. But does referring to a woman as a dog do the same? Put another way, is a dog more sexist than a rat?

While being called a rat isn't an exclusively male experience, it's not often used to describe a woman. What if the tables were turned and it was McKay who crossed the floor? Imagine if the Liberal MP said something to the effect, "I smell a rat here," to which Stronach replied, "that's because he usually sits near you."

Would opposition members be calling Stronach sexist? Tactless, unprofessional, below the belt; mabe. But sexist? I don't know.

Get a (Second) Life

Watching how virtual worlds – like There.com, MTV’s Virtual Laguna Beach and of course, Second Life – have unfolded from novel experiments into entirely separate realities for their “citizens,” I can’t help but recall William Shatner’s (in arguably the best performance of his acting career) appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1987. Playing himself in a skit about a Star Trek convention, he famously trailed off in his thanks to the crowd and shouted “Get a Life!” I can still picture the scene like it was yesterday, especially the look on John Lovitz’s face when Shatner yells, “you! Have you ever kissed a girl?”!

Well, more recently I’ve seen enough news about the intersection of Second Life and the real world to realize that it’s no mere collection of black t-shirt wearing teenagers sitting in their basements sipping on Slurpees. The lines between virtual and real are getting eerily blurry. Consider, in the last week alone:


• IBM talked openly about the fact that it is using the virtual world of Second Life as the next best thing to being there for corporate meetings.



• The New York Times reported that companies such as Sony BMG Entertainment, Sun Microsystems, Nissan Motor, Adidas, Toyota Motor and Starwood Hotels are using Second Life for virtual focus groups and test marketing.



• The Internal Revenue Service reveled its intentions to start monitoring and taxing financial transactions taking place in Second Life.



• News wire service Reuters opened its first virtual bureau in Second Life.



• W Hotels announced plans for the upcoming opening of its Aloft chain of virtual hotels on Second Life.



• Rock star Ben Folds launched his latest album, supersunnyspeedgraphic at two virtual publicity events on Second Life.


And if that’s not enough, this week I even joined the masses and signed up for a Second Life account. My alias is Owen Santos, in case we ever run into each other. Likely more to come on this topic, maybe sipping a virtual coffee while getting a virtual foot rub from my virtual home office!

The rocket science behind stock ratings

Certain professions fascinate me in the brilliance required of their practitioners. How do quantum physicists wrap their heads around abstract, theoretical activities that take place at the sub-atomic level? How to geneticists figure out how to isolate one gene from the 6-billion that make up the human DNA? And how smart do you have to be to come up with - or dispute - the big bang theory?

But the one that stands out time and time again is how stock market analysts get away with what they do (and get paid enormous sums of money to do it)?

A case in point is rocket scientist Todd Coupland, an anlyst at CIBC World Markets. In the wake of recently passed U.S. legislation to prohibit online gambling companies from accepting U.S. transactions, and in a stroke of brilliant economic wizardry, Coupland Tuesday downgraded the online gambling market from "sector outperform" to "sector outperform."

What's so special about Coupland's shrewd financial guidance? Two things:

• I'm not sure it takes a Nobel prize winning economist to figure out that wiping out 300-million potential customers (by some estimates, the U.S. accounts for half of online gambling revenues) will have an adverse effect on the industry trying to serve those customers. Are there more complex or abstract economic factors at play here, or is just me?

• Even more telling is the Coupland's downgrade of the sector was made on Tuesday, the day after the Senate passed the legislation, months after a previous version of the law was tabled to Congress, and after upwards of $6-billion in company value had already been wiped out of the online gambling market. By the time Coupland shared his brilliant insights with the market, shares in companies like World Gaming, PartyGaming, 888 Holdings and Cryptologic had already lost between 25- and 70% of their value. Did Coupland not read up on the market before Tuesday, or does he just not have email?

As I've said before (and is obvious here) my out look on equity analysts is skeptical at best, and perhaps best illustrated by what I continually read as the typical expert opinion on a given stock: "given current market conditions, the share price will absolutely go up in value...unless it doesn't."

For some background information and sources of some of my figures, check out two articles on the topic: Know when to hold 'em from the Globe & Mail, and Internet gaming firms on losing streak, from Ireland's Electric News.

Coupland hasn't helped changed that skepticism. In fact, he's actually motivated me to conduct an experiment I've heard about numerous times in the past; tracking the performance of randomly selected stocks under the hypothesis that stocks with negative ratings actually outperform those with postive ratings.

Stay tuned as I get the experiment up and running. In the meantime, if Coupland or other stock analysts are reading this, please tell me: how do you get away with it, and how can I get in on the action?

Still too much gay ol' time on their hands!

What gives?

As I've griped about in previous posts, the Canadian government (among others) continues to waste finite and sometimes scarce resources on beating the dead horse that is the same sex marriage debate.

This week the government confirmed its intent to revisit the debate if there is sufficient support, or at a minimum table the "Defence of Religions Act" to give officiants the freedom to refuse to perform same sex marriages.

In the past I've complained that - between healthcare, the military, environment, foreign policy, productivity and much, much more - the Canadian government has no shortage of real, far more important issues to deal with. It occurred to me today...maybe I'm laying the blame at the wrong feet. Politicians are driven (today anyways) largely by public opinion polls, so perhaps it's the fault of certain Canadians that we're trying to stop boys from kissing instead of dealing with skyrocketing health care costs.

I'm generalizing here - and going squarely against the lessons of Freakonomics - but I'm going to assume that the public sentiment driving this quagmire of an issue is rooted in the right wing old guard. And to them I say "stop being so goddamn selfish...think of your children."

To continue this debate today is to take resources away from problems that are going to plague us long into the future; long after you're dead. It's as if it's not enough that your CFCs, asbestos and leaded gasoline have left a mess of an atmosphere for your children and grandchildren. Well, as the argument goes, at least you're protecting the sanctity of marriage from the "radical homosexual agenda" and roaming armies of militant lesbians (to say nothing of the damage white heterosexual guys like me have done to it).

If that's the way you want to plan for future generations, I hope it backfires on you. In your old age I hope you find yourself needing a lead umbrella to protect yourselves from the hole in the ozone layer directly above you. I hope you cringe when your pension plan has to be spent on renting military protection from the U.S. I hope you have to drain your retirement savings to pay for your two-tiered long term medical care.

If justice is to be served, as you're wilting away in a costly home for the aged, maybe an angry (and if you have it your way, single) lesbian nurse will jab you extra hard with the needle when it's time for your monthly vitamin B injections.

You know your ad's working when...

...celebrities start using your tag line.

Well, celebrity may be a bit of a stretch but, as the Globe & Mail's Patricia Best reported yesterday, CBC's "uberhip and ultraknowledgeable" George Stroumboulopoulos gave WestJet some great PR after a flight from Vancouver to Toronto last week.

One of the flight attendants asked if he could stick around after the flight landed so she could get a photo with him. To her surprise and delight, he waited at the gate for her until the team had finished all their post-flight duties. When she thanked him enthusiastically, he responded, "it's not every day that I get to meet a WestJet owner!"