From LinkedIn’s CIO group discussing “What Are the Things We Hate About IT?”…

It is not so much a wonder that people hate IT,
it is a wonder organizations
still find people to take the abuse.”
— Kevin Wood

OK, we’re gonna use one trash-talk about one thing to make a point about something else…Let us know if it works.

In this YouTube clip, filmmaker David Lynch trashes the experience of watching a movie on your phone. No matter how good phones become, even those that start w/ “i,” we agree. People; popcorn; surroundsound; the images enveloping every part of you; experiencing the created world as the filmmaker envisioned it — that’s what we call watching a movie!

We’ll let David Lynch send you a wake-up call, in his own eloquent way, about experiencing a movie. We’d like to draw your attention to the fact that using the best tools for the best experience is always critical — whether it’s for entertainment or work. When your company produces crap project management tools, why subject yourself to that? Why not use awesome tools produced in the open-source marketplace. When your company tries to control your experience of how you build teams or how you communicate or how you perform evaluations or how you report your results with less-than-awesome (AKA: crappy) tools…why subject yourself to that?

Using the best tools for the job…(“best” as defined by “helping you do YOUR best”)…is supercritical. As Mr. Lynch might say IF he were an organizational design expert, “You’ll be cheated…It’s such a sadness…Stop using the company’s fucking tools…Get real!”

WiFi reception in your home, or from your neighbor’s home, or from the hotel across the street not so good? Here’s a great fix…

TEDster Rory Sutherland: “What [we need] is a class of people who have immense amounts of power, but no money at all.” That’s most hackers! Humorous pitch for all benevolent hackers to take over the world. It’s behavioral economics, folks: “Very small changes can have disproportionally huge effects, and vast areas of activity — [e.g.] enormous mergers — can accomplish absolutely bugger-all.”
“>

Do you have a child who is in Grade 4 or 5 or higher? Here’s what they don’t tell you they’re up to in Computer Lab. This student shows everyone how to get into any site that’s blocked by your children’s school IT wizard. Poof. No more blocking!

A white hat hacker is the hero, a good guy. In purely tech-terms, these are ethical hackers who penetrate IT systems in order to better protect them. In workplace-terms, a white hat hacker is one who works around systems, tools, procedures and barriers so that the individual and his/her team can do great work, and so that the company and customers benefit also. White hat hackers are the ultimate win/win/win good guys. They save business from itself, one bad act at a time.

Colleen: One area that might be interesting to consider is how management will often block technology and enforce the Let’s Do It The Old Way mentality. Some managers are afraid that they cannot manage what they do not understand. There is a fear that management will become too dependent on a single employee with IT skills. So they turn a quick simple solution into an expensive long term project by turning it over to the “professional developers.” (This is something I live through constantly. For example: We needed to convert some data from an obscure application with an unknown database type, so I just tried every ODBC connection on my computer, after about 15 minutes I found one that worked perfectly. Yet two months later I found out management hired a consulting company to develop a special program to convert the data: it took 2 programmers 2 weeks to develop their solution.)

CHINA: “Angry migrant workers use new tools — the Internet and 787 million mobile phones”…”Every worker is a labor lawyer by himself. They know their rights better than my HR officer.” Pull quotes from a BusinessWeek article on the birth of a new labor movement in China. Whoa.

Now, kids, hacking work is kinda like marijuana’s role in the drug world. We all know that hacking one’s work is a gateway experience — a stepping stone for bigger, harder hacks. Like that 600 million workers might begin standing up for their rights.

The following is a terrific, but short — two pages — recap of what it’s like to go through a two-week course on learning to hack. Enjoy!

Ever wanted to sign up for any kind of online service or community without providing your real email address, for example because you don’t want to get spammed? tempalias helps you out by providing temporary, anonymous email addresses, also called “aliases”.

Generate an anonymous alias that will forward to your real email address. It will automatically be deleted after either your set time or message limit has been reached. (If the link above doesn’t work, it’s cuz these guys are skating on the edge, and someone may have made them take it down.)

According to the Washington Post, “a 9-year-old McLean boy hacked into the Blackboard Learning System used by the county school system to change teachers’ and staff members’ passwords, change or delete course content, and change course enrollment. …But police and school officials decided no harm, no foul. The boy did not intend to do any serious damage, and didn’t.” Hacking continues as a way to get one’s point across: Change or we’ll help you change.

Ken: Get a USB stick and go to portableapps.com and download all kinds of software. When you plug it into your computer, it starts an alternative start menu and you can run your own programs without admin rights. Apps include open office, skype, security and compression utilities, etc. There are almost 100 apps listed on the site.

Sandy: I was listed formally as a “supervisor” in my organization, however my job had changed and I no longer supervised anyone. Last year my organization ordered that all supervisors take a one week (yes 5 full days) course dealing with OSHA safety issues. I deal with computers not chemicals, so the training would have been a waste of my time. So I had myself “demoted” so I was no longer a “supervisor,” resulting in no reduction of pay or any other type of downside. I avoided the useless training! My ego is quite happy not being called a supervisor and I got a week of my life back.

Ken: Our work computers are completely locked down and it is impossible to do anything with out admin rights. However they still give us access to MS office and VBA which is a full fledged programming language. It is amazing what you can do even with a little bit of programming. If you ever find yourself doing the same routine over and over again, try recording a macro or writing some VBA code to do it for you. I do in 30 minutes what they had three staff members spending an entire day working on before.

Katrin: Want to move from machine to machine without leaving a trace? Or take (legitimate, of course) control of a machine remotely? Just using your USB flash drive? Try PuTTy Portable. Totally free. …More about it.

Jason: This subject is near and dear to me. I currently work for government but have been hacking work for at least 15 years now, just didn’t have a name for it. I am often frustrated when dealing with the “helpless desk” and their motto of “we don’t care about your work, we just need to maintain our systems standards.” Thank you!

Ken: USB drives are a great way to get data so you can work at home. However, security is an issue, so when you store the files on the hard drive, compress and encrypt them using 7-zip — free open source software. Once home encrypt them in a work folder using Truecrypt (also free, open source). This will keep your work files secure, but give you the opportunity to work late nights and weekends. It’s worth it.

Cindy: I recently found a very effective work hack – breaking the printer. Most of the time being able to print things as you want to is a benefit, but sometimes removing this capability can be handy. I recently needed to get my boss’ feedback on something and he refused to read my email about it, insisting I print images first. A little jiggling to the ink cartridge and I was “unable” to give him useless images, requiring that he actually consider the information I was sending him. Viola!

Erik: I run eLearning for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. eLearning is changing so fast, that it’s rare that the more established vendors will be able to deliver what we need. But corporate purchasing policies require me to go to them — at least at first. Yet doing so would be a big waste of time for all involved. So I write the RFP [Request for Proposal] in a way that pretty much guarantees that the approved vendors will bow out, opening the door for me to use the right ones for the job.

Guy Kawasaki’s 11 Rules for Entrepreneurs include:
• Build What You Use (Tools)
• Pay $0 for Tools
• Don’t Let the Bozos Grind You Down
That sure sounds a lot like the rules of hacking to us!