red staplers

The NYT had an article yesterday about the impending Blackberry shutdown because of a patent dispute. As a preliminary matter, I think absolute hilarity would ensue if the X number of people who have come to rely on the things all of a suddenly got shut down (disclaimer: you should know that I just got my first cell phone this week). There are 3.65 million BlackBerry users worldwide, but only the ones in the U.S. are in danger of losing service

But more importantly, or at least the thing that bugged me the most after reading the article was the comment that "many corporations prefer BlackBerry because its software offers a high level of security and its devices cannot be used by employees for non-work-related tasks like listening to downloaded music."

Who cares? Many corporations need to suck it. Are CEOs really spending their time worrying about whether Johnny in cubicle 38 is humming along to the latest Beonce record while he puts the cover sheet on his TPX report? The same thing goes for internet blocking software and rules about checking your e-mail etc. If the worker bee is making honey, then who cares what else he is doing? The emphasis should be on productivity, not on how time is actually spent.

No wonder Milton is going to burn the building down.