Thomas Buddenbrooks, in the 1870s, didn’t have an iPad. Or an iPhone. Or a MacBook Pro. Or the Internet. Or email. Or voice mail.

Time management under a bit of pressure right now and that makes it even more urgent to stay focused on the important details.

On stocks:

Buy-and-hold stock investors will be devastated in a crash much worse than the declines of 2008 and early 2009 or the worst years of the Great Depression or the Panic of 1873.

On cars:

Sales of Mercedes-Benz cars were up 13.2 per cent in the year to June as strong demand for the premium brand in China and the United States helped drive growth, parent company Daimler AG said Monday.

Mercedes-Benz sold 113,300 cars worldwide last month, making it the best June performance in its history, Daimler said.

Full disclosure: I’m a buy-and-hold stock investor and I have a Mercedes.

I’m in trouble.

BP Oil Spill ‘Slows’ but Serious IT Failures Come to Surface

From the article:

An internal investigation at BP has revealed serious IT failures played a part in the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico…

BP has said the accident “was brought about by the failure of a number of processes, systems and equipment”. It added: “There were multiple control mechanisms– procedures and equipment–in place that should have prevented this accident or reduced the impact of the spill.” These did not succeed.

In the investigation, BP raised “several concerns” about the blowout preventer, which sits on top of the well head 5,000 feet below the water surface, and controls oil flow, according to the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce. The findings are preliminary.

The “failure” of a key emergency disconnect system was noted in a committee memo summarising the early investigation. That system, if effective, would have kicked in to stop the oil from flowing, but signals may not have reached the blowout preventer because of the explosion.

There were also problems with a further automatic closure system, or deadman switch, that should have closed off the preventer if those connections were lost. This also failed. The testing and maintenance of the blowout preventer technology is also in question.

BP additionally experienced “failure” with interventions from its remote operated vehicles, which struggled to operate the shear rams to cut and seal the pipe. The reason for this, too, has not been established.

One person who commented on the article had this to say:

I find the headline of this article if awfully misleading and sensationalist. I didn’t interpret any of the issues stated as “a serious IT failure”, or even an “IT failure”. All the problems encountered seem like engineering and people problems. If their instruments and monitoring systems were working up until the explosion and the workers chose to ignore them, IT has done it’s job, and it was human error that led to the catastrophe.

It’s also quite a stretch to lay blame on IT for troubles with a remote controlled sub 5000ft below the water. The best in the world would have trouble with the same task.

Sounds like the author is the type that is all too quick to deflect blame to the IT dept because they are an easy scapegoat.

On his return to Apple in the 1990s:

“Apple was about 90 days from going bankrupt. It was much worse than I thought back then. I expected all the good people had left, but I found many of them still there, and I asked them, “Why are you still here?” They said it was because they believed in Apple.”

On the platform wars between Microsoft, Google and Apple:

“I don’t see it. We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, and maybe that’s why we lost. We think about the competition, but we’re focused on building a better product.”

On passing Microsoft’s market capitalization:

“It doesn’t matter very much. It’s not what’s important. It’s not what makes you come to work in the morning. It is a little surreal.”

On Google:

“They decided to compete with us. We didn’t go into the search business! We want to create better products than them. If people like our products, we get to come to work for tomorrow. Just because we’re competing doesn’t mean we have to be rude.”

On journalists and, er, bloggers:

“The foundation of a free society is free press, and some of the newspapers are in real trouble. I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers. I’m all for anything that can help newspapers with new ways of expressing themselves and getting paid. We need editorial oversight now more than ever.”

On the future of PCs. They become farm trucks:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms. But cars eventually became more prevalent is people moved to cities. PCs will be like trucks…they are still going to be around, but there is a transformation coming, and it will make some people uneasy. Is it the iPad? Who knows? Will it be next year or five years from now?”

On his work:

“I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to come in and work with some of the most brilliant people in the world. We play in the best sandbox. We’re structured like a start-up. We’re the biggest start-up on the planet. And we all meet once a week to discuss our business…and there’s tremendous teamwork at the top and that filters down to the other employees.”

On his Stanford address:

“Probably I would just turn up the volume on it. The last few years have reminded me that life is fragile.”

Apple’s market cap was $88.68 billion on Oct. 2, 2008 and Microsoft’s was $228.35 billion on Sept. 29, 2008. Microsoft’s market cap is virtually unchanged. Different story for Apple.

The Windows era is over.

When we work out of a sense of freedom and choice we draw on a very different energy from when we work from a sense of compulsion. When we choose, it is a recognition of our responsibility for creating our experience; it carries with it passion and power. Compulsion comes when we lose touch with who we are, lose touch with our strength and our freedom.

The company collected driver’s licence numbers, credit card numbers and transaction records from clients and held onto that information indefinitely.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada highlighted this breach to the media in 2007. And made several observations:

• The security measures that TJX put in place relied on weak encryption technology
• Thieves were able to hack into the company’s database and use the information
• The TJX breach is a dramatic example of how keeping large amounts of sensitive information — particularly information that is not required for business purposes — for a long time can be a serious liability

The Privacy Commissioner also made one other key comment:

The message for retailers is think carefully about how you use personal information. …Think about what information you’re collecting, why you have to collect it, how long you should keep it and how safely it is stored.

Down here, in the US of A, there are some retailers that request photo id to confirm a purchase or to check-in at a hotel. This happened to me several times over the past week. Yesterday, we stopped by a hiking store to pick up a few items. About thirty dollars. I paid with my American Express card. And I was asked for photo id.

The cashier gave a very cursory glance of the id from about three feet away.

So I asked her.

“Why do you ask for photo id?”

“Well, so many people steal credit cards.  We do this to make sure that you have a right to use the card.”

Great Smoky Mountains receives somewhere in excess of 10 million visitors a year. And this store is in the prime shopping area.

“How many times have you found someone using another person’s card?”

“Over the past ten years? Once.”

“Does the card company ask you to demand photo id?”

“No. It is our choice.”

The cashier, who I assumed to be the owner, went on at length to defend her need to see photo id whenever a purchase is made. She summarized her position by saying: “It’s the right thing to do.”

No. It is not the right thing to do. Demanding proof of identity is not a moral act nor is it a legal requirement. It is simply a discretionary “policy” that treats every customer as a suspect.

The card company assumes the responsibility to ensure the appropriate distribution of their product. They also assume the liability for fraudulent use of their product. If they have a concern that the level of fraud is too high, then they can take additional steps — like the recent introduction of smart cards where an individual must have a PIN as well as the original card to make a purchase.

To interrogate customers at point of sale to confirm their identity is an open invitation for identity theft particularly if that information is captured and retained.

I thanked her for her point of view. I also wondered whether, in ten years time, I would have a similar discussion with a retailer defending their policy to take a DNA sample for a thirty dollar purchase.