I’m lov’n it

 

Welcome to the Windows XP SP3.  I cannot afford that there would be some other threads that would be hazarded to my three XP based systems.

I’ve tried to install this SP3 yesterday night. However the process is not smooth.

For my basic desktop PC, it runs with the basic home version of windows XP, the installation process is ok, just I need to sit in front of the PC and let my anti-virus software and the firewall to "trust" what the SP3 is doing. Anyway, this is meaningful.

The problem of the installation is come from my notebook, that the true system which my family use most. It runs with Windows XP Professional, and I failed to start the downloading files. I downloaded the SP3 files after trying 5 times. then… the installation process started and the restarting system process handed the machine. I need to take off the battary of the notebook to switch off it. GREAT WORK!

I am  suprised again that the process for a professsional version of Windows XP is unstable as such level. May be I need to take time for studying what SP3 have before I do it for my EEEPC.

One more thing, the Windows Live Writer and the offine Hotmail reader DEAD after the SP3 installation ..

First we were employees, plain
and simple. Then we were knowledge workers. After that came "Brand
Me" and the notion that we were all CEOs of Me, Inc. Now our taste
for hyperbole in describing our place in the economic order has become
still more rarefied: what every modern worker aspires to be is a thought
leader.

The blame for this latest craze
rests with the editor of Strategy and Business , a management magazine.
In 1994, he needed a name for a new interview slot and came up with "Thought
Leader". Back then it seemed a forgivably pompous title for the pompous
thoughts of management gurus. Thirteen years on, it has come to be a much
less forgivable name for any old fool in possession of an ego and a blog.

The title offends for three
reasons, and pomposity is the least of them. It is inappropriately Orwellian:
in free societies, thoughts can be provoked or stimulated or gathered.
But not led. Worse still, no one seems quite sure what "thought leader"
means. You might think that to qualify as a thought leader you needed to
have a thought (preferably a new one) and be able to influence other people
with it. Yet mostly when the term is used there is no sign of any thinking
or leading going on at all.

This week the "Thought
Leader Index 2007" is published by a new "communications and
thought leadership consultancy" called Ledbury Group. It went around
asking chief executives, trade union leaders, editors (all thought leaders
themselves, one assumes) to name their favourite thought leaders. The result,
surely, gives an up-to-date snapshot of what the term actually means.

Top of the list is Google.
This presents the first challenge to my definition: Google has no thoughts
and no brain with which to have them as it is a company. It might be brilliantly
successful but is it a thought leader? It has only led my thoughts to the
extent that I no longer retain any knowledge in my head, I just look everything
up on its website instead. But I don’t think that counts.

The next favourite thought-leading
business is Apple. Again, I don’t get it. Apple leads my wallet and my
taste for gorgeous sleek gadgets, but not my thoughts. I am oddly forgiving
each time my iPod breaks and hurry to the Apple store to replace it with
a more glamorous model, but that’s as far as it goes.

You could say both Goldman
Sachs and McKinsey (respectively 8th and 9th place) suggest thoughts of
a kind. Goldman’s thought is "we are richer than you" and McKinsey’s
is "we are brainier than you". Both companies also transmit a
more subliminal thought – "we know something you don’t so stay close
to us". Yet this is more a veiled threat than an idea, and so doesn’t
really count.

Of the top 10 companies,
only the British retailer John Lewis (4th) has a proper, original thought
and that is "we are owned by our employees". But on closer inspection
that isn’t a thought. It’s a business model.

From this list of thought-leading
companies, the concept seems to boil down to this: "thought leader"
is simply a new and unhelpful way of saying successful.

The list of the top thought-leading
individuals is just as baffling. The number one slot goes to Al Gore. This
shows that to be considered a thought leader you don’t have to have a thought
of your own: it’s fine to take someone else’s. Gore’s contribution was
saying it very loudly, with some PowerPoint slides.

Bill Gates follows. I would
classify him as a former thought leader. His was the idea that there should
be a PC on every desk in every home, and very influential it was, too.
But as for any other specific thought he has had, I can’t think of one.

By contrast, David Cameron
has a very clear thought: "I want to be prime minister". But
the snag is that it’s too early to know if the rest of Britain wants it
too.

Gordon Brown fittingly makes
it onto the list at number 10. Though if I were him my main thought would
be: "Why the hell have I been ranked behind Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco,
whose only thought is to build more and more hideous supermarkets?"

I am left none the wiser
by the Thought Leader Index so for elucidation I’ve gone back to Google.
For just $109 you can buy a book called How to Be a Thought Leader, written
by nine leading thought leaders. In the blurb I couldn’t see anything about
thinking at all. It is all about "passion, relevance and reach".

A more helpful website offers
the following definition: "A thought leader is a person or company
that actively promotes and discusses ideas that are relevant to their peer
base." If this is all it is, being a thought leader is a total doddle.
But it also raises the more interesting question of why companies or people
feel there is something so great about it. Surely the job of business leaders
is to lead businesses, not to have original thoughts. The second may sometimes
be a route to the first, but equally it may not be.

An analogy with my (somewhat
inarticulate) sons is apt. By the above definition both are thought leaders
as they actively promote and discuss World of Warcraft, a lethal and addictive
computer game favoured by their peers. But what’s so good about that? Indeed,
I wish they’d stop leading thoughts and get on with their homework