Getting the time right the Sony Ericsson way

Why are most of the appointments in my phone one hour early compared to my mac, I wondered? I recently bought the Sony Ericsson W760i, dropped it - not very hard! - and got a repair under guarantee. In other words, it is a somewhat delicate phone that should be treated with caution, but otherwise it works rather well. So why are my appointments one hour off?

It's the daylight savings time, stupid, I hear you say! You are correct, daylight savings time was not configured correctly. I had configured Time and date, of course, but the phone demands something really peculiar from you to get the time right when syncronizing. If you have a recent Sony Ericsson model, this may apply to you too:

When you configure Time and date (under Menu - Settings - General), you are asked to select your timezone. I selected GMT+1, which is my timezone. Correct? No, you need to read the manual, which tells you that "if you select a city, My time zone also updates the time when daylight saving time changes." Copenhagen is the right answer. I chose Copenhagen as my time zone, and my appointments are now synchronized correctly.

The moral lesson might be - as we used to say when I worked in IT - RTFM: Read the f**cking manual. In this case it turned out to be the solution, but most manuals are so lousy it won't work. I think the real lesson is that user interface design is a major factor in my life, whether I like it or not. In cases such as this one, the user interface on my phone is a major time sink. There is very little I can do about it, except complain in a blog post. So there! Hope this helps someone and that Sony Ericsson listens.

Government wants more Ph.D.s - why?

In the past few years, when somebody mentioned the lack of increased funding to the universities, you would always hear that the number of available Ph.D. grants was rising. However, nobody promised more tenure-track positions for the finished Ph.D. candidates. Somehow, I was lead to assume, an increased number of applicants for tenure-track positions would mean increased quality in the ranks of the fully employed. Competition always works that way, right?

Wrong. The increased number of finished Ph.D. candidates may very well lead to an increase in the number of and qualifications of the partially employed part-time lecturers, but it will not lead to an increase in the quality and output of research. Research being the standard the government usually refer to when it speaks about "world-class universities."

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published several articles commenting on this. However, in a Danish context, I haven't read a single comment. Where did all the Ph.D.s go? Please tell me!