It's actually one of the most popular MDM (mobile device management) platforms used in enterprise environments. We use it and while it isn't perfect, it it is far from "awful". I'm running it on ICS and have found it works pretty well. My battery drop (a given for any app like this) has been insignificant, I can access my corporate email/calendar/contacts, the data is secured, and it is separate from my other data. The biggest problem we've seen is the occasional delay in email delivery compared to ActiveSync, but most of my mail shows up in the Good client within seconds and rarely takes more than 45 - 60 seconds from the time it hits Outlook. Unlike plain ActiveSync, Good provides standard MDM functionality (app inventory, usage data, policy enforcement). And, unlike most other MDM platforms, it allows us to choose to leave the phone alone and care only about the corporate data within the Good container, which works well with the recent trend of BYOD.
Any other brand of Android phone is at the mercy of the often reluctant manufacturer. The iPhone 3GS was introduced in the second quarter of 2009 but still runs the latest iOS. How many phones from that era run Android 2.3 "Gingerbread", let alone Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich"?
I agree that this is a problem with Android. Unfortunately, this is caused primarily by manufacturers and carriers that insist on building their own interface but are not prepared to support it. TouchWiz is why new Samsung phones aren't getting ICS or at least not in the near future. The hardware isn't an issue and getting ICS on it isn't an issue. The problem is porting TouchWiz and testing it on each device. The same goes for Sense from HTC and Motoblur from Motorola. This gets compounded even more by the carrier-specific crap that is bundled and often baked into the ROM.
I loved my original Droid because Verizon had not yet figured out how to crap it up. The Droid X was a mess, especially the eventual 2.3 update, thanks to Verizon. This is why I opted for the Galaxy Nexus when my X finally died.
Thankfully, the relative openness of Android allows options like CM for those of us who care about getting the newer versions of the OS (and removing the extra crap from the manufacturer and carrier). This isn't an answer for the average consumer, but it is better than nothing.
Don't get too concerned, it's not as clear as the people who like to quote the case make it seem...He was selling wheat. If he grew the limit and fed his animals from that, it would be different.
What a crazy tortured defense of a horrible SCOTUS decision. A person is growing a completely legal and basic food crop for personal, on-farm use. The federal government claims this is subject to federal regulation because he will no longer be buying as much wheat from other growers. How is this not clear and an obvious overreach of federal power?
But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'
That line is quite clear - SCOTUS ruled that any local, personal, and otherwise completely legal activity that can be even loosely related to an activity of "interstate commerce" is now open to federal regulation. This ruling has been used since in countless decisions to uphold and expand unconstitutional federal regulation. The reality of that decision is that it makes anything a federal issue and the constitutional limits on federal powers are completely moot.
I guess that depends on what you consider "free". In my home county, the idea of an open and honest election is laughable, and has been as long as anyone remembers; my county is not unique across the US. The use of electronic voting and increased use of absentee voting has increased the opportunity and incident of fraud. The last several national elections have been rife with abuse and fraud in carefully selected neighborhoods, counties, and states.
You could go out and get involved in activism. Find candidates who you trust, and push for them in primaries.
My state primary is so late in the process that no national candidate outside of the the party mainstreams are left. The closest thing to a outsider is Ron Paul and he still has no prayer in a national election. A candidate cannot run on the national level without massive amounts of money and media support. This is an extreme limit on who can participate.
We can protest without the tanks rolling in.
The tanks were called in on protesting war veterans in Washington DC only 80 years ago. The military opened fire on college students protesting in Ohio 42 years ago. The list of US police and military brutality against protesters is quite long and growing daily thanks to the Occupy groups and the US response to them.
[Y]ou saw what happened when the Iranians tried to have an election, and when they tried to protest. They are past the point of no return.
And what point did you think this made? They sat by, even cheered, as an oppressive government centralized and grew its power.
Trust me, I understand and even mostly agree with your notion that the video game heroes here have no clue how a real civil war would feel. Yet, your government apologist comments make me think you will happily sit in the pot until you are boiled to death, never realizing that you could hop out as the water gets hotter. Had you been in any of the various Middle East nations recently, you would have assured their population that it really isn't that bad. Even Saddam had elections and provided most of his people with the basic necessities of life. Is it really worth upsetting that stability for something as obtuse as freedom or liberty?
This is the same county where the circuit clerk and assessor were convicted of vote buying a few years ago. After serving a little time in a federal prison, the assessor was hired by his buddy in the Assessor's office and he is now running for Sheriff.
Two families have ran local politics in this county for decades. The school system is the county's largest employer and the county commission controls everything in the county, top to bottom. Deputies are given jobs as political favors. School consolidation was passed by the county school board during a meeting called on short notice when those who opposed the measure were out of town. People running against the local power base have been threatened, had their houses shot at, and even were physically assaulted.
Evidences that it's different? NO? I didn't think so.
Evidence? Anyone who has spent 10 minutes caring about this issue knows there are significant differences. Let me save you a few keystrokes on Google and start with much deeper wells, moving from vertical wells to horizontal ones, and greatly increasing the amount of fluids used and waste generated.
Irrelevant i any case, there is no evidence fracking impacts any water supply.
You're a bit behind the times I'm afraid. Again, let me saveyou a trip to Google:
This information might have been out there for you years ago had Cheney not inserted his Haliburton exemption in his energy bill back in 2005.
Soon enough? Fracturing has been done in the United States since 1947.
And if you think today's fracking is anything like what was done in 1947, you have no business in this conversation. Industry misinformation like this is not relevant to the discussion.
So why don't they sue all competitors instead of just those who copy their design?
Who else had a product competing in the same market segment as the iPad? As a self-avowed fanboy, surely you understand that Apple doesn't consider a $200 Android 2.1 tablet as their competition. The Galaxy Tab was the only real threat hitting the market at that point. It is inevitable - there will be some decent Windows tablets available and enough good Android tablets that their strategy is no longer viable. In the meantime, they will have raked in a ton of cash as the only game in town.
But I can't help but feel this was the first (or second ish) shot in a war that utltimitly Apple can't win.
Apple wins by delaying competition as long as possible. Just like with the mobile phone market, you can be certain that Apple's market domination will be cut into significantly by other makers across the next year or two. Apple is willing to spend a lot on legal maneuverings for nothing but the time it buys them.
They aren't recording "keystrokes".... they are recording "event data" of which, keystrokes are merely a sub-class of events. It's not a lie...
"While we look at many aspects of a device’s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools."
While I appreciate your efforts at devil's advocate throughout this thread, you seem to have missed the mark on this one. It is immaterial that keystrokes are a sub-class of the event data they are collecting; it is a lie to say categorically that you are not collecting keystrokes when you are.
Spoken like someone who has never worked in the real world. Life isn't black and white - real life decisions are made on a relative basis. Few organizations have the luxury of a DOD budget yet they still have to continue operating. You seem to equate "right" with "expensive". Whether a small co-op, statewide regulated utility, or publicly-traded mammoth, cost always has to figure into the equation. Business is about risk management, not spending unlimited dollars in search of the "perfect" solution.
Security is not optional. All the impediments you described are merely challenges to engineer around. The only real insurmountable obstacle is not giving sufficient damn to actually try to overcome the other issues rather than handwaving them away as "too hard" or "too expensive."
And the only solution you've offered is to build a dedicated network. There are other solutions that you can implement to engineer around the challenges, make use of the public Internet, and are considered good enough. But I guess when all you have is a hammer, every security problem looks like a big nail.
So, what you're saying is, if a utility is too cheap to lay in dedicated network assets and buy their own blacknet (which is not hard to do if you want to), it's ok to just connect the the Internet?
Because all utilities are in developed areas and have tons of cash to burn, right? Natural gas utilities have equipment that must be monitored and/or controlled remotely that may not even have electric service in the vicinity, much less telephone or fiber optic cable, leaving satellite and cellular modems as their only options. Do you really think building a private WIMAX network or launching a satellite is within the budget of a local utility serving 25,000 customers? There is no doubt that many utilities are being lax in their risk assessments and security precautions these days when it comes to using the Internet, but your statement is just silly.
I didn't say every user, I said every customer. We don't need a developer account for each user but we, as a customer of the MDM provider, are required to get a developer program membership with Apple for no purpose other than obtaining the signed cert. At least this was the case a few months ago. I said, I understand they are finally making this less stupid.
I'll also point out that I mentioned, in another post in this thread that GFE is crappy software. The only advantage it has over every other competing product is that it provides strong encryption on-board the iphone/ipad/android. That's critical for my organization and the *only* way we would allow those devices to store company emails. I don't really like it. It has many quirks and doesn't always work. However, it does, substantially, what my organization needs it to do.
Actually, we were pushed toward Good due to another advantage it has over other MDM platforms - it has a reasonable level of functionality on iOS devices without requiring a signed cert from Apple. AirWatch and others all relied lock, stock, and barrel on Apple's MDM APIs, but since we were unable to get a developer account from Apple despite two months of trying (insane, considering we are a public utility with a quarter million customers), we couldn't get an Apple-approved cert which meant we couldn't even demo any of the other products on our iPhones.
I'm with a utility company with over a quarter million customers. We are implementing a mobile device management solution this year to help us administer our assortment of Blackberry, Apple, and Android-based phones. iOS 4 certainly was ahead of Android 2.x in regard to MDM API but their implementation was so anti-enterprise that it was mind-boggling. Apple forces the customer to join the developer program ($300) to get a signed certificate. We're not developing custom apps for the iPhone. We're not working with a third-party to create customized MDM. We're buying off-the-shelf management software and Apple expects every customer to sign up as a developer for the sole purpose of obtaining a signed cert. And yes, we hit this same roadblock with every major product we reviewed. Only one offered a limited mode that didn't require the cert.
Keep in mind that the developer program requires the business to have a DUNS number and membership is at their seemingly random discretion. Despite providing our DUNS number and all other information required, we were initially denied then told we needed to provide our business license. When this was provided, we were told our application was still not approved and we would need to provide our corporate articles of incorporation. At this point, our management became intrigued with our requests for this information, which slowed things on our side. The people at Apple would not explain or answer questions. It was short and simple: "Here is what we require to process your application."
After two months of this and having to shelve the iOS portion of our MDM trials, we gave up on Apple in frustration. We've read that Apple has fixed quite a bit of this idiocy in the past few weeks so perhaps we'll actually be able manage our iPhones next year.
Yes, a few apps work in XP mode, although most still have various quirks. Others have required a terminal server until we can get all of those legacy apps upgraded or replaced.
Who chose Windows 7 over XP? When that's all you can buy from all major OEMs, that's what home and small business users get. No choice involved.
As I said, I like Windows 7 better and I was an XP fan myself. However, most people prefer what they're used to using, not the newer and better thing. The average user sees no major benefits from XP to Windows 7 but they do know that things look different. You need to realize that geeks are a tiny minority in the general population and most people are not like us.
You do realize that your response is not mutually exclusive with the GP's comments? An OS can be both more secure and stable, yet unwanted by home and business users. I really like Windows 7 on my work machine but it has been a nightmare trying to migrate my uncle's small law office because a good number of their applications simply do not work.
So Google should provide a free OS and take the liability costs of defending all patent trolls? That seems like a losing proposition. Of course, like Florian the Troll, the real suggestion is that Google should close source Android, charge licensing fee to manufacturers, and provide legal indemnity with it. This is a scene from Ballmer's nastiest wet dream, not a realistic proposal.
Slashdot Mirror
It's actually one of the most popular MDM (mobile device management) platforms used in enterprise environments. We use it and while it isn't perfect, it it is far from "awful". I'm running it on ICS and have found it works pretty well. My battery drop (a given for any app like this) has been insignificant, I can access my corporate email/calendar/contacts, the data is secured, and it is separate from my other data. The biggest problem we've seen is the occasional delay in email delivery compared to ActiveSync, but most of my mail shows up in the Good client within seconds and rarely takes more than 45 - 60 seconds from the time it hits Outlook. Unlike plain ActiveSync, Good provides standard MDM functionality (app inventory, usage data, policy enforcement). And, unlike most other MDM platforms, it allows us to choose to leave the phone alone and care only about the corporate data within the Good container, which works well with the recent trend of BYOD.
Any other brand of Android phone is at the mercy of the often reluctant manufacturer. The iPhone 3GS was introduced in the second quarter of 2009 but still runs the latest iOS. How many phones from that era run Android 2.3 "Gingerbread", let alone Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich"?
I agree that this is a problem with Android. Unfortunately, this is caused primarily by manufacturers and carriers that insist on building their own interface but are not prepared to support it. TouchWiz is why new Samsung phones aren't getting ICS or at least not in the near future. The hardware isn't an issue and getting ICS on it isn't an issue. The problem is porting TouchWiz and testing it on each device. The same goes for Sense from HTC and Motoblur from Motorola. This gets compounded even more by the carrier-specific crap that is bundled and often baked into the ROM.
I loved my original Droid because Verizon had not yet figured out how to crap it up. The Droid X was a mess, especially the eventual 2.3 update, thanks to Verizon. This is why I opted for the Galaxy Nexus when my X finally died.
Thankfully, the relative openness of Android allows options like CM for those of us who care about getting the newer versions of the OS (and removing the extra crap from the manufacturer and carrier). This isn't an answer for the average consumer, but it is better than nothing.
Don't get too concerned, it's not as clear as the people who like to quote the case make it seem...He was selling wheat. If he grew the limit and fed his animals from that, it would be different.
What a crazy tortured defense of a horrible SCOTUS decision. A person is growing a completely legal and basic food crop for personal, on-farm use. The federal government claims this is subject to federal regulation because he will no longer be buying as much wheat from other growers. How is this not clear and an obvious overreach of federal power?
But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'
That line is quite clear - SCOTUS ruled that any local, personal, and otherwise completely legal activity that can be even loosely related to an activity of "interstate commerce" is now open to federal regulation. This ruling has been used since in countless decisions to uphold and expand unconstitutional federal regulation. The reality of that decision is that it makes anything a federal issue and the constitutional limits on federal powers are completely moot.
If you had bothered to RTFA, you would see
[M]igrating users to local domains will help promote the freedom of expression while allowing the flexibility to abide by local law.
Anyone can use google.com/ncr (NCR stands for “no country redirect”) to see the original page without geographical redirection.
Say it ain't so. I can't imagine Bonch spinning something into an anti-Google farce.
We still have free elections.
I guess that depends on what you consider "free". In my home county, the idea of an open and honest election is laughable, and has been as long as anyone remembers; my county is not unique across the US. The use of electronic voting and increased use of absentee voting has increased the opportunity and incident of fraud. The last several national elections have been rife with abuse and fraud in carefully selected neighborhoods, counties, and states.
You could go out and get involved in activism. Find candidates who you trust, and push for them in primaries.
My state primary is so late in the process that no national candidate outside of the the party mainstreams are left. The closest thing to a outsider is Ron Paul and he still has no prayer in a national election. A candidate cannot run on the national level without massive amounts of money and media support. This is an extreme limit on who can participate.
We can protest without the tanks rolling in.
The tanks were called in on protesting war veterans in Washington DC only 80 years ago. The military opened fire on college students protesting in Ohio 42 years ago. The list of US police and military brutality against protesters is quite long and growing daily thanks to the Occupy groups and the US response to them.
[Y]ou saw what happened when the Iranians tried to have an election, and when they tried to protest. They are past the point of no return.
And what point did you think this made? They sat by, even cheered, as an oppressive government centralized and grew its power.
Trust me, I understand and even mostly agree with your notion that the video game heroes here have no clue how a real civil war would feel. Yet, your government apologist comments make me think you will happily sit in the pot until you are boiled to death, never realizing that you could hop out as the water gets hotter. Had you been in any of the various Middle East nations recently, you would have assured their population that it really isn't that bad. Even Saddam had elections and provided most of his people with the basic necessities of life. Is it really worth upsetting that stability for something as obtuse as freedom or liberty?
Bush wasn't fluent in English; I can't imagine that his Spanish was better.
Here's a great/terrible example: County sheriff and clerk are forced to resign for vote rigging
This is the same county where the circuit clerk and assessor were convicted of vote buying a few years ago. After serving a little time in a federal prison, the assessor was hired by his buddy in the Assessor's office and he is now running for Sheriff.
Two families have ran local politics in this county for decades. The school system is the county's largest employer and the county commission controls everything in the county, top to bottom. Deputies are given jobs as political favors. School consolidation was passed by the county school board during a meeting called on short notice when those who opposed the measure were out of town. People running against the local power base have been threatened, had their houses shot at, and even were physically assaulted.
It was a reference to a Family Guy episode.
To follow up on sibling post from russotto, read The Omnivore's Dilemma (http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-Meals/dp/1594200823). I found this book to be one of the most informative, interesting, and frightening books I've read in a while.
Evidences that it's different? NO? I didn't think so.
Evidence? Anyone who has spent 10 minutes caring about this issue knows there are significant differences. Let me save you a few keystrokes on Google and start with much deeper wells, moving from vertical wells to horizontal ones, and greatly increasing the amount of fluids used and waste generated.
Irrelevant i any case, there is no evidence fracking impacts any water supply.
You're a bit behind the times I'm afraid. Again, let me save you a trip to Google:
This information might have been out there for you years ago had Cheney not inserted his Haliburton exemption in his energy bill back in 2005.
Soon enough? Fracturing has been done in the United States since 1947.
And if you think today's fracking is anything like what was done in 1947, you have no business in this conversation. Industry misinformation like this is not relevant to the discussion.
So why don't they sue all competitors instead of just those who copy their design?
Who else had a product competing in the same market segment as the iPad? As a self-avowed fanboy, surely you understand that Apple doesn't consider a $200 Android 2.1 tablet as their competition. The Galaxy Tab was the only real threat hitting the market at that point. It is inevitable - there will be some decent Windows tablets available and enough good Android tablets that their strategy is no longer viable. In the meantime, they will have raked in a ton of cash as the only game in town.
If there is merit to Apple's case they'll be able to get damages down the line for the patent infringement.
Apple isn't after patent infringement money down the line - they want to keep competitors out of the market as long as possible.
But I can't help but feel this was the first (or second ish) shot in a war that utltimitly Apple can't win.
Apple wins by delaying competition as long as possible. Just like with the mobile phone market, you can be certain that Apple's market domination will be cut into significantly by other makers across the next year or two. Apple is willing to spend a lot on legal maneuverings for nothing but the time it buys them.
They aren't recording "keystrokes" .... they are recording "event data" of which, keystrokes are merely a sub-class of events. It's not a lie...
"While we look at many aspects of a device’s performance, we are counting and summarizing performance, not recording keystrokes or providing tracking tools."
While I appreciate your efforts at devil's advocate throughout this thread, you seem to have missed the mark on this one. It is immaterial that keystrokes are a sub-class of the event data they are collecting; it is a lie to say categorically that you are not collecting keystrokes when you are.
Spoken like someone who has never worked in the real world. Life isn't black and white - real life decisions are made on a relative basis. Few organizations have the luxury of a DOD budget yet they still have to continue operating. You seem to equate "right" with "expensive". Whether a small co-op, statewide regulated utility, or publicly-traded mammoth, cost always has to figure into the equation. Business is about risk management, not spending unlimited dollars in search of the "perfect" solution.
Security is not optional. All the impediments you described are merely challenges to engineer around. The only real insurmountable obstacle is not giving sufficient damn to actually try to overcome the other issues rather than handwaving them away as "too hard" or "too expensive."
And the only solution you've offered is to build a dedicated network. There are other solutions that you can implement to engineer around the challenges, make use of the public Internet, and are considered good enough. But I guess when all you have is a hammer, every security problem looks like a big nail.
So, what you're saying is, if a utility is too cheap to lay in dedicated network assets and buy their own blacknet (which is not hard to do if you want to), it's ok to just connect the the Internet?
Because all utilities are in developed areas and have tons of cash to burn, right? Natural gas utilities have equipment that must be monitored and/or controlled remotely that may not even have electric service in the vicinity, much less telephone or fiber optic cable, leaving satellite and cellular modems as their only options. Do you really think building a private WIMAX network or launching a satellite is within the budget of a local utility serving 25,000 customers? There is no doubt that many utilities are being lax in their risk assessments and security precautions these days when it comes to using the Internet, but your statement is just silly.
I didn't say every user, I said every customer. We don't need a developer account for each user but we, as a customer of the MDM provider, are required to get a developer program membership with Apple for no purpose other than obtaining the signed cert. At least this was the case a few months ago. I said, I understand they are finally making this less stupid.
I'll also point out that I mentioned, in another post in this thread that GFE is crappy software. The only advantage it has over every other competing product is that it provides strong encryption on-board the iphone/ipad/android. That's critical for my organization and the *only* way we would allow those devices to store company emails. I don't really like it. It has many quirks and doesn't always work. However, it does, substantially, what my organization needs it to do.
Actually, we were pushed toward Good due to another advantage it has over other MDM platforms - it has a reasonable level of functionality on iOS devices without requiring a signed cert from Apple. AirWatch and others all relied lock, stock, and barrel on Apple's MDM APIs, but since we were unable to get a developer account from Apple despite two months of trying (insane, considering we are a public utility with a quarter million customers), we couldn't get an Apple-approved cert which meant we couldn't even demo any of the other products on our iPhones.
Only if they decide to grant you a license.
I'm with a utility company with over a quarter million customers. We are implementing a mobile device management solution this year to help us administer our assortment of Blackberry, Apple, and Android-based phones. iOS 4 certainly was ahead of Android 2.x in regard to MDM API but their implementation was so anti-enterprise that it was mind-boggling. Apple forces the customer to join the developer program ($300) to get a signed certificate. We're not developing custom apps for the iPhone. We're not working with a third-party to create customized MDM. We're buying off-the-shelf management software and Apple expects every customer to sign up as a developer for the sole purpose of obtaining a signed cert. And yes, we hit this same roadblock with every major product we reviewed. Only one offered a limited mode that didn't require the cert.
Keep in mind that the developer program requires the business to have a DUNS number and membership is at their seemingly random discretion. Despite providing our DUNS number and all other information required, we were initially denied then told we needed to provide our business license. When this was provided, we were told our application was still not approved and we would need to provide our corporate articles of incorporation. At this point, our management became intrigued with our requests for this information, which slowed things on our side. The people at Apple would not explain or answer questions. It was short and simple: "Here is what we require to process your application."
After two months of this and having to shelve the iOS portion of our MDM trials, we gave up on Apple in frustration. We've read that Apple has fixed quite a bit of this idiocy in the past few weeks so perhaps we'll actually be able manage our iPhones next year.
Yes, a few apps work in XP mode, although most still have various quirks. Others have required a terminal server until we can get all of those legacy apps upgraded or replaced.
Who chose Windows 7 over XP? When that's all you can buy from all major OEMs, that's what home and small business users get. No choice involved.
As I said, I like Windows 7 better and I was an XP fan myself. However, most people prefer what they're used to using, not the newer and better thing. The average user sees no major benefits from XP to Windows 7 but they do know that things look different. You need to realize that geeks are a tiny minority in the general population and most people are not like us.
You do realize that your response is not mutually exclusive with the GP's comments? An OS can be both more secure and stable, yet unwanted by home and business users. I really like Windows 7 on my work machine but it has been a nightmare trying to migrate my uncle's small law office because a good number of their applications simply do not work.
So Google should provide a free OS and take the liability costs of defending all patent trolls? That seems like a losing proposition. Of course, like Florian the Troll, the real suggestion is that Google should close source Android, charge licensing fee to manufacturers, and provide legal indemnity with it. This is a scene from Ballmer's nastiest wet dream, not a realistic proposal.