Eideard

Global technology giant Atos, which plans to stop using email internally by 2014, says it is already seeing the benefits of the initiative.

Atos, a French firm with 80,000 employees around the world, first announced the plan — described by some critics as “stupid” and by others as “ingenious” — in February.

The company said an internal review found that on average, employees spend 15 to 20 hours a week on email, and only 15 per cent of the emails are actually useful. It also found that younger workers barely used email, relying more on social media, said Holger Kormann, general manager of Atos Canada, which has 250 employees.

The company is currently in the early stages of creating awareness of the initiative and introducing replacement tools such as instant messaging, video conferencing, Facebook, and collaboration software such as Live Meeting, Kormann told CBC’s The Current…

Already, he said, instant messaging has proven to be more effective for time-sensitive communications, and Kormann has reduced his own email load by 20 per cent.

Over time, the initiative will help balance people’s personal and professional time, he said, as people are no longer contacted while they are away from the office…

William Powers…said Atos isn’t the first company to consider phasing out email. “Other companies including Intel the chip-maker have been doing experiments of this kind for a decade or more,” he said. “In fact, the tech companies have always been leading the way in rethinking the very tools that they make.”

And after “a decade or more” they’ve added additional services and do a better job of filtering email.

Thanks, Cinaedh

Century City and downtown Los Angeles
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said…it would again delay issuing a final limit on smog pollution opposed by manufacturers and many Republican lawmakers until the Obama administration has finished reviewing it.

In December, the agency said it would issue the rule by the end of July…

“Following completion of this final step, EPA will finalize its reconsideration, but will not issue the final rule on July 29th, the date the agency had intended,” the EPA said in a release…It was the fourth time the agency delayed the smog standards, originally slated to be finalized last August…

The proposal was stronger than 2008 standards set by the Bush administration. Environmentalists blasted those for being less than what government scientists recommended.

Under the rule, factories and oil, natural gas and power generators would be forced to cut emissions of nitrogen oxides and other chemicals called volatile organic compounds. Smog forms when those chemicals react with sunlight.

The rule has been opposed by industry groups. The American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable complain that it would damage the economic recovery and that many areas would not be able to meet the new limits…

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has said the ozone rules would save as much as $100 billion in health costs, and help prevent as much as 12,000 premature deaths from heart and lung complications…

Every additional day of delay means more Americans will suffer…that is, ordinary Americans. Not those who will return to their home districts after another do-nothing session of Congress. Those politicians who should be prompting the EPA to get off their rusty dusty butts and aid the lives of American people aren’t risking their health by doing anything more than passing quickly through pollution zones.

The same holds true in spades for that herd of dinosaurs who smoke their cigars in private clubs funded by the American Petroleum Institute, the greenback claque chauffeured forth-and-back to meetings of the US Chamber of Commerce. Perish the thought anything other than filtered, conditioned air reaches their pampered respiratory systems.

Which one will you be hiring to cut your lawn?

A lot of Americans don’t like illegal immigration. But what they like even less is the idea of having to live without the labor provided by illegal immigrants. There you have the great contradiction that lies at the heart of the U.S. immigration debate — one that must be confronted and reconciled if it is ever going to be resolved…

Now, a Texas state representative offers more clarity. Republican Debbie Riddle has proposed a bill that creates harsh punishments for those who hire illegal immigrants. House Bill 1202 calls for up to two years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines….

But wait. There’s a loophole in Riddle’s bill: The person doing the hiring has to be acting “intentionally, knowingly or recklessly.” That’s too many adverbs for me. You’ll note that hiring an illegal immigrant is already a federal offense under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, but one of the reasons that the law’s employer sanctions are rarely enforced is because — under the statute — an employer has to act “knowingly,” and that’s hard for a prosecutor to prove…

And, in the provision of Riddle’s proposal that is causing the most outrage, there is also an odd exemption: The person hiring an illegal immigrant is in the clear if he or she is doing so “for the purpose of obtaining labor or other work to be performed exclusively or primarily at a single-family residence…”

That reminds me. Let’s have a word about illegal immigrant labor. The myth persists that the only reason Americans hire illegal immigrants is because the undocumented will work for lower wages than American workers demand to do the same jobs. It’s a popular narrative because it makes U.S. natives seem almost noble, as if they won’t let themselves be exploited.

But, in truth, it’s only half the reason that illegal immigrants are in such great demand in the United States. There is also the little-discussed fact that they’re dependable and work hard, qualities that many Americans have unfortunately long since abandoned.

I guess Ruben has been away from – or never experienced – manual labor in construction trades.

Thousands of Hispanic and Anglo New Mexicans lost their jobs and were replaced by undocumentados. And the only response of the state – was to start issuing driver’s licenses for illegals – to get to work legally, I guess.

Google dealt another blow to [sleazy] Web site owners Thursday when it gave users the option to block certain domains from search results.

Going forward, if you conduct a Google.com search, click on a link, but then return to Google, the search giant will include a “Block all xyx.com results” link underneath the site you just clicked. Once clicked, Google will display a message that says, “We will not show you results from xyz.com again” with the option to undo or manage blocked sites.

“Once you’ve blocked a domain, you won’t see it in your future search results,” Google said in a blog post, though “the next time you’re searching and a blocked page would have appeared, you’ll see a message telling you results have been blocked, making it easy to manage your personal list of blocked sites…”

Blocked sites will be tied to your Google Account, so you have to be signed in to confirm a block…

Google said Thursday that it is “not currently using the domains people block as a signal in ranking, [but] we’ll look at the data and see whether it would be useful as we continue to evaluate and improve our search results in the future.”

Bravo! Though I expect usage to be broadly defined, e.g., political, social, emotional – the opportunity to block spam sites warms the cockles of my heart. That includes otherwise potentially useful sites that work hard at thwarting pop-up blockers.

Just tried to use it; but, it’s not working in Safari, yet. Tried it in FireFox – and the result is up top.

Yellow Sac Spider

A spider that likes the smell of gasoline so much it chooses to build its webs in car emission systems was behind the recall of thousands of Mazda cars in the United States this week.

Mazda said it was recalling 52,000 cars after the National Highway Safety Commission said the spider webs may restrict a vent line, which could cause the emissions control system to increase pressure in the fuel tank…

The culprit is the Yellow Sac spider, which makes the Mazda6 model of Mazda cars its home because it is lured inside by the smell of the fuel…

“While it’s very rare, this spider’s distinguishing characteristic is that it likes the smell of gasoline, caused by the hydrogen oxide,” said automotive journalist Mitsuhiro Kunisawa.

“Once it smells the gasoline from outside, it will go inside. In the United States, it’s a relatively common type of spider.”

The affected model, the Mazda6, has two pipes coming out from its gas tank, which is extremely rare and means that the smell of gasoline is strong enough to draw the spider in but not strong enough to kill it, Kunisawa said.

He added that there was no similar problem with any other Mazda car.

The recall will allow dealers to install a spring which will interfere with spiders entering the fuel vent.

Har!

As the recall of tainted eggs grew to more than a half-billion late last week, three federal agencies were involved in the response, yet it was not clear which one was in the best position to lead.

On August 13, the Food and Drug Administration posted on its website a press release from Wright County Egg, one of the nation’s largest egg producer, that millions of eggs were being voluntarily recalled because of possible Salmonella contamination. In the days that followed, FDA inspectors were reportedly dispatched to Wright County Egg facilities.

“Because USDA is responsible for egg safety at processing plants, it is troubling that FDA is the lead agency in this investigation even though it has never inspected the Wright County Egg facility,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a leading Congressional food safety advocate. “Instead of reinforcing each other’s work, the current food safety system of split jurisdiction appears to have resulted in a disjointed inspection process.”

So, when did the USDA do any inspections?

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