Corporate gaming promotes productivity

As a gamer, I think this is great news. Far too often playing computer games is given a bad reputation. It’s a great stress reliever, sharpens your mental abilities, and most of all it’s just plain fun. It’s not just a time waster or slacking off, it will provide returns in the long run. Trust me, you’d rather an employee go postal playing Halo than in RL. (see original post below)

“David Edery and Ethan Mollick argue that many skills and lessons from the gaming world are applicable in the business world. The smartest firms, the authors argue, will not only allow game-playing in the workplace, but will actively encourage it.

To CEOs who throw a tantrum every time they catch someone playing solitaire on an office PC, or who consider video games to be the exclusive preserve of pasty-faced teens, that may sound like daft advice.” (link)

Greenpeace starts something up with Microsoft and Nintendo

Apple’s ongoing spat with Greenpeace has produced plenty of publicity, and undoubtedly encouraged Apple to start talking openly about its environmental plans. So, Greenpeace has decided to expand the scope of its investigations in its latest report, bringing in game manufacturers Microsoft and Nintendo. Let’s just say that the new additions make Apple (which was credited with slight improvements) look good. Microsoft came in near the bottom, and Nintendo became the first company to completely flunk the evaluation.

Is this scorecard something that should be taken seriously? The answer is mixed. The description of the standards (PDF) indicates that Greenpeace reserves the right to arbitrarily change a company’s score if they decide the company did something disagreeable. “Penalty points are deducted,” the criteria state, “from overall scores if Greenpeace finds a company lying, practicing double standards or other corporate misconduct.” In this report, Motorola and Nokia both got dinged a point. (link)

Khaki laptop thief manages to steal 130 laptops.

Under normal circumstances, the chances of catching Outback’s burglar would be slim. He left no usable fingerprints. There was no surveillance video of him. Because eBay does not require sellers to list a computer’s serial number, the laptops would disappear without a trace.

Meanwhile, Outback officials were justifiably worried. What if the laptops contained proprietary information about the company’s future plans? What if a disgruntled ex-employee were to give a laptop to a competitor, or to extort money from the company? What if key files were not backed up?

Almly, of course, was not interested in the laptops’ contents, and Outback had an ace up its sleeve. Nine of its 11 stolen laptops had been equipped with security software that transmits a stolen computer’s physical location the moment a thief accesses the Internet with it. With that information, a nationwide crime spree began to unravel.

Brass obtained a search warrant for Almly’s Miami Beach condo. There, he found some of the Outback laptops, and several others he checked against an FBI database of stolen property. One turned out to have been stolen in Milwaukee, another in Naples.

With Almly’s name and photo in hand, Brass issued an alert to police departments across the country. One, Miami-Dade, matched the photo to surveillance video from the burglaries at Burger King, FedEx and two other companies and re-arrested Almly in his Miami jail cell.

Brass subpoenaed Almly’s eBay transaction records, which allowed him to track down more stolen laptops. The canny thief never knew what hit him.

“He just figured that a corporation like Outback would kind of write it off, absorb the loss and move on from there,” Brass said.

(story)