Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Which Tech Company Do You Respect Most?
dryriver writes: On Slashdot, we often discuss the missteps and non consumer-friendly behavior of various tech companies. This company forced people into a subscription payment model. That tech company doesn't respect people's privacy. Yet another tech company failed to fix a dangerous exploit quickly, protect people's cloud data properly, or innovate and improve where innovation and improvement was badly needed.
Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"
Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"
Whoever it was that decided to shutdown their secure email service instead of hand over info to the feds.
The only truly ethical tech company I can even really think of.
Respect? duh! None! why should we?
;)
Just my 2 cents
Seems like real innovation.
Didn't they create the plague that is systemd ;) lol
;)
;)
Puts on flame suit
Just my 2 cents
Onion.com is suffering a slump because real news from the White House is more zany.
Table-ized A.I.
As far as I'm concerned they burned whatever goodwill they ever had when they fired Brendan Eich for political reasons that had nothing to do with his abilities. But even if they hadn't, their recently bullshit with killing XUL extensions and destroying the UI to turn the browser into a poor Chrome clone is enough to evaporate any respect I might have had left.
But wait, there's more, I keep on seeing ADS for their stupid browser. Ads proudly proclaiming the death of extensions and then using BS biased tests as "proof" of the browser's speed.
In short: I have no respect for Mozilla and even less for people who still shill for them.
Pretty sure that the vast majority of C-level execs making 300x the salary of their employees are boomers, not millenials
What tech companies respect you most?
I love Texas Instruments. When I was designing a power supply for a hobby project I came across their web bench design site. I just plugged in the numbers and out pops a schematic, BOM and board layout with parts that are in stock from Digikey. I've always found TI's documentation to be top notch. That's not to say that some of the other semiconductor manufacturers also don't have great sites either, but I haven't yet found any that match TI. I also respect a lot of the other companies you listed.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Lavabit was a mixed bag, they had their pros and cons.
Pros:
* Provided free email service
* Simple
* Most of the features you expect from an email service
* Spam and virus filters were customizable and much easier than most other services.
* They shut down their servers instead of giving up Edward Snowden.
Cons:
* Buggy, bugs were never fixed, bug reports were never acknowledged
* Poor communication skills from the developers, both free and paid accounts
* Actively lied when they shut the service down. For about 2 days they insisted that it was just an upgrade, would be back up soon, and that our emails were not being lost. If they couldn't tell the truth for legal reasons they should have said nothing instead, there was no excuse for the lies.
* For about 2 days after the shutdown they continued to accept emails sent to users, instead of just rejecting them so the senders would know that the emails had not been delivered.
Lavabit is back up but I don't use them anymore because of their behavior the first time. They are just not trustworthy.
Actually the brings up a good point. It isn't what company that you respect the most, is where was that company when you respected them the most?
Being that most companies are For-Profit there seems to be a time, where the lust for cash crosses their main values.
The big companies Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM... All had their high points where they were respected at one time for being the best example of a company. Then they will undoubtedly trim the fat too much, treat customers poorly, or move the company in a direction people don't want to go and use the companies size and influence to push it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.