This sentence is too long, with too much jargon. What is a "global mobile ecosystem"? And how do you "lead and enable" it? My head hurts just trying to understand this mess of modern cliche and empty marketing-speak. Please stop the writer before someone else gets hurt.

******

Today saw the funeral of my last uncle, my mother's elder brother, Jim - James Douglas Frail, who died last week aged 92. In our family, the name Frail has now been extinguished - but there are certainly other Frail families in the country, and it would be interesting to know what their ancestry is. There's a Thomas William Frail, for instance, from the early part of the nineteenth century, who was my greatx4 grandfather's brother, and whose descendants are out there.

When people die, they take with them a series of in-jokes. For instance, Jim was often referred to by my mother as 'James Douglas Frail - curly end of a walking stick' (!) The only theory advanced is that he answered to this as a child when faced with the shape of a tricycle, and asked his name at the same time. In vaguely the same way, my sister Clare and I always referred to the Beatles B-side 'You can't do that' as 'You-can't-do-that-ginger-biscuit'. But why? Clare's dead & I can't recall. Hopeless!

• A: auscashen, Action-Items, All Hands Event, all-time high
• B: below-the-line, big picture, Bio-Break, brainstormen, briefen, Bullshit, bullshitten, busy

So Germans need to learn Business English so that they can get by in German business!

.........................................................................................................................

He suspects that his computer might have picked up a virus and he visits his friends to borrow an entire "suite of defraggers, viruscheckers, password managers, system checkers, etc."

He installs the CDs and "machine go apeshit, trying to dialupconnect to net in order to touch down with home corporation, download virus definitions, machine crash, restart, try to dialupconnect forty times. uninstall entire thing. machine happy."

.........................................................................................................................

The quote is from a Google group at http://tinyurl.com/6apf5h
The drawings are by Gary Olson for the Cartoon College.

.

.

Does that mean a heart patient gets pushed through a screen-door? Cheesecloth? It sounds so technical. It just seems to me that a trained professional is very likely to simply see it, if they know the person and have the person's confidence. But that can't really happen at 5 to 7 minutes per appointment. I wouldn't tell that person I felt down in the dumps either.

There are ideas that depression is difficult to see. I disagree. It is difficult to see for white-coated professionals who carry an air of superiority and give their patients a paltry sum of time. I has been my experience that those white-coated professionals who maintain their balanced concern for their charges do pick up on a patient's state of mind - and the more time they spend, the more likely they are to pick it up soon.

It is also interesting to note that it is not already widely known, as a type of red-flag, that people with heart disease could be expected to have some trouble being light-hearted.

It seems to me that this is one more symptom of the distant medical doctor and alienated patient relationship.

The sheer scale of the balderdash, the confidence of its users, the lack of media criticism and the rise of a highly paid and unproductive elite suggest that perhaps something rather serious has happened.

It is of course a problem for public discourse when participants will not or cannot speak plainly. In most cases nothing very remarkable is being said; the jargon merely masks a vacuous lack of originality. What is remarkable is the lack of a challenging voice and the failure of media to clarify. It is worrying to think that there is a protective consensus around nonsense.

Anyone troubled by this consensus would be wide of the mark to blame capitalists or business. In trying to identify who gains, look not to the super rich but to a new elite who master the language of obscurity. These are the composers of mission statements, the change managers, the authors of impenetrable reports and pointless restructuring. They are many, they are relatively wealthy, they exhibit an extraordinary degree of solidarity and they are not subjected to public scrutiny. They are a nuisance - possibly, a menace - in that they smother innovation, creativity, and argument. A fake progressive and fake business lexicon is used to mask a layer of drones.

By all means let's have fun with this. Let's make the utterance of "key performance indicator" a capital offence! Let's call for the closure of the Podge and Rodge School of Management! But, let us also begin to end this nonsense. Sooner rather than later searing clarity will be needed in government, business and the public sphere.

I was not disappointed.

The shortcomings of the series plot have been covered sufficiently elsewhere and I wasn't expecting literary genius, but I didn't even make it as far as the credits before they pulled a Swordfish* on me:

INT. SECRET LABORATORY - NIGHT

Token computer nerd bad guy is looking at computer screens displaying rotating wire-frame images of a car. He is visibly shocked.

TOKEN NERD GUY

"I've never seen algorithms this complex."

Really? Really? What does that even mean? Is it really so very difficult to come up with vaguely plausible technical jargon? Over the last 10 years computers have become ubiquitous in nearly every part of our lives and yet writers (who presumably use computers to write this awful drivel) are still churning out technobabbling pseudo jargon that would make a Trekkie blush. Do they not get it? Or do they just not care?

Oh well, at least the Hoff was in it.

For the most part, I disregard the improper use of certain terms coined on the internet.  Some of these are bricked, hacked, and encrypted.  I'm usually forgiving until someone decides to turn venomous and use them against fellow developers and their works.  The more popular some of these works get, and the more access individuals have to the developers ear, the more full  of shit they become.  And you probably wonder why sometimes the only access to support you have is by e-mail.

It's so we can take our time to read your e-mail, get steamed, and cool down enough to actually make sense of what you have to say.  (Also your e-mails are too simple or flat out useless.)  My examples in this rant may not be the best, but I don't waste my time by memorizing any of them, just the recent ones.  The following is a list and their proper use in the real world.  Hopefully the people think that they are technically saavy read this.

Terms

• Bricked - When you tamper with a device's firmware and fail to install a custom version properly, voiding the warranty.  This will render your device unusable as normally you cannot restore the device by any traditional means and will require the device to be restored by the original manufacturer.  Your device locking and requiring a reboot is not bricking your device. It's just frozen...
• Hacked - When an experienced programmer exploits flaws in a software's design or code to gain unauthorized access to a system or account.  Getting key logged and your account tampered with is not being hacked. It's just you not being careful with your sensitive information.  Don't use public machines, or machines you do not trust, to access your bank account, or any account you care about losing.
• Encrypted - I see this one used a lot to sell obfuscation software to simple developers wanting to protect their works.  Using a program to "compile" JavaScript or some other publicly accessible, W3C standard is not encryption. Any developer who knows how to use a debugger will be able to figure what your codes does and how to tweak it.  Usually this ends up causing more problems than its worth because they are dependent on a specific browser's custom function.
• leet, elite, 1337, etc... - Never proclaim yourself as an elite, it just makes you look childish and immature. If you become recognized, the people that need to know about you, will.

Tips on Developer Communication

I am not sure how it may work in larger companies, but usually when you submit technical support requests, a copy is sent to the developers themselves.  In your e-mails please use proper punctuation, capitalization, the works.  This helps us better understand your needs and therefore get you a quicker response.  If you're on a phone call with us, please keep in mind that the person you are talking to will automatically assume you're technically illiterate.  This is not to condescend you, but this is done since many people claim to know something they don't.

As someone I know put it, "little dick syndrome."  If you truly know what you're talking about, I'm sure the person on the other end is sorry about you having to call.  Stating that you know WTF you're talking about sure as hell won't help you, so don't try.  If you knew the product as well as you claim to, you wouldn't be calling support.

One common thing I see happen, including with my own family members, is that people take their rage out on the person trying to help them.  I usually feel embarrassed for my relatives or feel pity for the person receiving all the hate.  People fail to realize that the person they are talking to has, probably, no technical knowledge of the product you are using.  You should start getting angry when they give you the run around or down right disrespect you, that's just incompetence on their part.

Good day!

Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act less carefully than it otherwise would, leaving another party to bear some responsibility for the consequences of those actions. For example, an individual with insurance against automobile theft may be less vigilant about locking his or her car, because the negative consequences of automobile theft are (partially) borne by the insurance company.

Moral hazard is related to information asymmetry, a situation in which one party in a transaction has more information than another. The party that is insulated from risk generally has more information about its actions and intentions than the party paying for the negative consequences of the risk. More broadly, moral hazard occurs when the party with more information about its actions or intentions has a tendency or incentive to behave inappropriately from the perspective of the party with less information.

le jargon du business a tendance a vous agacer,

alors voici un moyen simple d'épicer et de rendre plus ludique vos reunions sans pour autant les rendre plus efficaces, jouez au business loto:

FOUTAISES !!!!

Mon experience personnel me fait dire que la quine est jouable a pratiquement tout les coups et que meme un carton plein est possible selon la qualité des intervenants de la reunion :) ...

source : http://www-gmm.insa-toulouse.fr/~gaudron/businessloto.jpg

dans le meme genre mais pour les reunions à "haut potentiel" uniquement ! :

http://www.brevesdecouloir.fr/breves_couloir-bingo.htm

I think language is just another part of society and, looking at [another student's] post regarding the common theme of "social disconnect," would extend language to communications, that is, not only what and how something is said and who says it, but the channel through which it is conveyed. Adding to Gouldner's observations of the vernacular or jargon of specialized groups, I would offer groups each use specific channels to communicate, which add to or distract from the message. Examples might include: journals and lectures for academics; news papers, television and magazines for the government; the internet (blogs, wikis and email) for conspiracists.

As yet another Cool Rules Pronto public service, I've identified a few words and phrases that have been so overused, misused and abused that they no longer have any meaning. (Kind of like the joke in an average Saturday Night Live sketch.) These terms sound important without saying anything, which makes them ideal for press releases and political speeches...

Note: I have not included all the jargon that bugs me, such as "best of breed" in reference to non-animals. That's because some jargon still conveys meaning, even if hearing it feels like a rusty file is being scraped over my frontal lobe. This list also excludes annoying slang, such as "bling" (calling jewelry "bling" is like calling a train a "choo choo"), because most slang terms eventually die, particularly when middle-aged white people start using them.

That said, here are few Words Sucked Dry in no particular order:

1. Mission Critical: This once referred to anything that was vital for the fulfillment of a company's primary activities, such as a fire truck being a "mission critical" element of a firefighting unit. Now it's applied to pretty much anything one company wants to sell to another. Desk-pad calendars? Why, they're mission critical, because without them, how can we keep track of vital lunch dates?! It's also applied to anything a manager wants to do that's not part of his job description: "I have a mission critical lunch date with the hot new girl -- I mean, junior executive -- in accounting..." The term "mission critical" now simply means "business related" -- at best.

2. Unparalleled: I learned this one at MCA Records when I had to write biographies for artists with rather uninteresting backgrounds. I simply wrote that so-and-so has an "unparalleled" background in music, or had taken an "unparalleled" path to the top. Literally, "unparalleled" means "having no equal or match," which means "different." And if the best you can say about something is that it's different, that's not really saying much.

3. World Class: One of the worst car commercials of the past 20 years was the one introducing Daihatsu to America. It featured industrial video clips of an assembly plant with a voiceover straight out of a 1960's elementary-school science film describing Daihatsu as "world class." That essentially killed the term right then and there, since it was applied to a small cheap car with a tiny engine and about as much sex appeal as Karl Rove in a unitard. (My apologies for putting that image in your head.) Not surprisingly, the brand lasted all of four years in the U.S. -- though I do see that the cars are now cuter and hipper, just no longer available Stateside. Literally, "world class" refers to any product that can compete in the international marketplace. But since most consumer products in today's America are imports, isn't everything "world class"?

4. Hero: I know this word has sentimental value to a lot of people, and I don't wish to offend anyone who has genuinely done something heroic. However, when the term is applied to Olympic teams or a multi-million dollar baseball player who hits a walk-off home run, I'm afraid it loses all credibility. "Great athletes"? Certainly. "Sources of inspiration"? Perhaps. "Heroes -- just like all those people who risk their lives to save the lives of others"? Uh, not so much. I believe a hero actually has to help someone at great risk to themselves -- simply joining the military isn't enough. The worst examples of hero abuse come from the business world: just now I Googled "hero" in the news category and got this... "Henry Paulson hailed as a hero for stemming market slide..." Oh, hell no.

Throw in the hit TV series "Heroes" and the hit video game "Guitar Hero," and the word has completely burnt out. Indeed, it's ripe for ridicule, as my frequent collaborator Dane Boedigheimer has done in this video:

5. Executive Experience: Don't get me started on this one.

6. Revolutionary: A term used for everything from Web 2.0 startups to razor blades. Unless you're changing the way an entire industry operates like iTunes, you're about as revolutionary as a new pancake topping at IHOP.

7. Leader/Leading: I already skewered this in "How (Not) To Write A Press Release." Briefly, every company in the universe describes itself as a "leader" or a "leading provider," even if they just started up yesterday. But if everyone's a leader, then who are the followers? A "leading" company should actually be leading its rivals into some new practice or technology. The Toyota Prius? Definitely a leader. The Hyundai anything outside of Korea? No. A genuine leader should also actually rank near the top of their industry according to some criteria, like revenue, or amount of taxpayer dollars needed to bail it out. This word is dead -- time to think of others.

8. Cool: Finally, "cool" as a business term has been dead and tired for decades, but businesses are still using it to describe anything they want to sell to young people. "Check out our cool back-to-school fashions" or "we've got cool electronics" or "are you looking for cool lunch meats?" Note: If you call yourself "cool," you're not.... unless, of course, you're using the word ironically or as a pop-culture reference in the title of your, um, blog.

OK, I've had my rant. Now it's your turn. Got your favorite burnt-out business terms? Please fill me in!

De "algemene bezwaren" zei vanmorgen haast één van de presentatoren van Goeiemorgenwekletsenmaar wat. Hij had bijna gelijk want soms lijken  de Algemene Beschouwingen veel op Algemene Bezwaren. Als kijker heb je er al gauw één groot bezwaar tegen: wat een gezwets en geklets!

Door de Nederlandse jongeren is fractievooritter Mariëtte Hamer van de PvdA tot grootste zwetser van allemaal uitgeroepen. In eerste instantie vind ik zo'n reactie klets. Jongeren zwtsen zelf de godganse dag door en gebruiken daarvoor zelfs een eigen taaltje dat in de Dikke van Dale niet of nauwelijks voorkomt. Voor woorden als vet, wreed en cool hebben ze bijvoorbeeld heel eigen betekenissen bedacht. Mij best maar volgens mij moeten ze begrip hebben voor "jargon", iets dat zij het liefst met gezwets aanduiden.

Misschien hebben ze daarmee toch ook nog wel een beetje gelijk. Ik gun iedere vakgroep en branche zijn jargon. Jargon dient een doel: voor de leden van de professionele groep biedt het mogelijkheden tot snelheid van communicatie en helderheid. Aan de andere kant biedt het ook mogelijkheden tot vervreemding.

Laatst hoorde ik iemand tijdens een dineetje vragen wat de "additieven" waren van het toetje. Kijk, dat vind ik ontaal. Ik zou liever vragen "wat er allemaal in zit"en in een heel vrolijke bui vraag ik me dan af "wat "ze" er allemaal doorheen hebben gekwakt". Zelfs Hero Brinkman begrijpt zulke taal en dat is de bedoeling ook. 

Dat zou ook de bedoeling moeten zijn van Mariëtte Hamer en haar collega's tijdens de Algemene Beschouwingen. Het is een publiek debat en dat betekent dat elke Nederlander er kennis van mag en kan nemen. Door teveel jargon te gebruiken, onthoud je een deel van de bevolking de informatie waarop mensen recht hebben. Dan word je een raar zwetserig mens. Niet omdat je domme dingen zegt maar omdat een groot deel van het publiek je wijsheid niet doorziet. Dat is jammer want dat publiek heeft het recht om over een paar jaar weer voor of tegen je te kiezen.

Ik ben bang dat teveel politici hun debat richten op de collega's en daarbij op de automatische piloot gaan. De vaktermen gieren je om de oren en draaien voorbij in een langdurige film vol stilistische rariteiten zoals die bij de Tweede Kamer behoren. Beter zou het zijn als de politici zich realiseerden dat het stemvee meekijkt en -luistert. Beter zou het zijn om te doen of het debat daadwerkelijk bedoeld is voor het publiek. Ik kan me niet voorstellen dat kamerleden het Nederlands van de Dikke van Dale niet begrijpen. Electoraal zou het zonder meer voordelen hebben.

Nu begrijpt "het schellinkie"  alleen het wezenloze geblaat van Wilders met wie ik het trouwens eens ben dat "onze jongens""  zo snel mogelijk uit Afghanistan terug moeten komen. Alleen: niet om de orde op straat te bewaren want dat is zwetes en klets tegelijk, het jargon van het PVVee.  Onze jongens moeten daar weg om echt werk te gaan doen dat ertoe doet.

Die kijk op het onderwerp heeft niets te maken met blind zijn voor het feit dat we deel uitmaken van een grotere wereld. Het heeft te maken met het feit dat ik zie dat we deel uitmaken van de wereld. Voor Eimert Middelkoop lijkt dat op gezwets maar ik wil het hem graag eens in gewone mensentaal uitleggen. Als hij dat tenminste kan begrijpen.

Tot sterkte,

Kaj Elhorst

Http://politiek.wordpress.com

Service

www.vlaamsprogressieven.be/2008/07/24/hoe-wereldvreemd-kan-je-zijn

www.wuz.nl/artikel/54911175.politici-zijn-wereldvreemd.html

www.testbank.hccnet.nl/pcjargon.htm

www.taalkabaal.nl/turbotaal/index.php

www.xs4all.nl/~pbraut/turbotekst.html

www.gezwets.nl

www.members.tripod.lycos.nl/benplop/benplopgezwets.htm

www.pzc.nl/regio/bevelandentholen/3725734/Gezwets-in-Kamer-kan-niet.ece 

www.hyves.com

We are all predisposed to the language(jargon) of our professions.  However, even broadly educated clients may be totally confuse by some terms commonly used by travel agents.  Think of how you feel after listening to your doctor explaining health problems in Latin or German derived scientific terms.  Wouldn't you like to scream ENGLISH PLEASE ?