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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

or Asia there might be enormous po- tential but littie chance to demonstrate it. That Clarebrough tries to illustrate the superiority of the American spirit through the image of a high-powered European car-the brainchild of an en- trepreneurial Italian family-stuck in an American traffic jam strikes me as more than a little odd.

Christian Kober Director

Degussa

Shanghai, China

None of Our Business?

The commentaries in response to Rob- erta A. Fusaro's case study "None of Our Business?" (December 2004) all sailed past an obvious flaw. KK Incorporated's plan to increase sales using radio fre- quency identification tags is depen- dent not only on technology but also on store personnel welcoming custom- ers by name and steering them to pre-

ferred items, as stated in the piece. The store personnel described in the case do not strike me as up to the task. Perhaps KK would get more bang for its buck, as well as fewer ethical or legal entangle- ments, by tackling its staff motivation and incentive problems.

Kathlene Collins Publisher

Inside Higher Ed Washington, DC

Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform

I read with interest Edward M. Hallow- ell's article, "Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform," in the January 2005 issue. The author's term "attention deficit trait," or ADT, reminds me of what we in the IT industry used to cair'thrashing."

In the world of computers, parallel processing is performed by a central processor that switches back and forth

quickly among several tasks, doing a lit- tle bit of each task one at a time. This ac- tion is performed so rapidly that, to the observing eye, it appears as if the com- puter is performing several tasks simul- taneously. In the old days, a mainframe computer's hard drive could get so over- loaded with jobs that it could end up spending all of its time switching be- tween tasks without processing any of them, resulting in thrashing. This phe- nomenon could bring an entire system to a grinding halt.

Colleagues in my old IT department used to measure each other's personal thrashing levels. The simplest solution, as with our old mainframe computer systems, was quite obvious: Take on fewer tasks, or delegate more to others. ADT sufferers who want to cut down on their thrashing levels would do well to try this approach.

Steve O'Hearn Vice President

Sysorex

Vienna, Virginia

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