If the US get their way, no company on this planet would touch a data center that is remotely in league with a US based company with a 10 foot pole.
Which is precisely what companies should have been doing as soon as America passed the PATRIOT Act, which pretty much spelled out their claim to be able to do this.
US based cloud services have been tainted for years now, only now people are starting to realize the truth of it.
Some of us have been saying this exact scenario would happen for years.
When the US government decided American companies were an extended part of the surveillance apparatus, American companies became so embroiled in this as to be laughable. There is no way you ca trust an American company if you're outside of America.
How do you think those stocks are going to fare when everyone cancels contracts with Microsoft et al and flips you the bird?
This is why it's laughable when America says they're the champions of Liberty and Justice -- because they're actively fighting anybody else in the world getting that, which means the rest of the world knows you're lying, and is starting to not give a crap about what America wants.
The problem is that the US courts ruled that US law does apply in Ireland because Microsoft has a presence in both countries.
And you think that somehow the ruling of a US court absolves Microsoft from Irish law?
Because that's a complete crock of shit, and the only way Microsoft in Ireland exists as a corporation is under Irish law.
So, I'm sorry, but a US court cannot compel a foreign citizen or corporation in that country to break local laws just because there is a relationship with a US company.
The problem is that a US court believes it has the authority to make Microsoft Ireland violate the laws of Ireland, when Microsoft Ireland isn't under the legal jurisdiction of that US court. And that's simply not true.
Microsoft is saying "If you want this, go to an Irish court, but don't demand that we break the law for you".
A multinational doesn't want to comply with a valid court order?
No, the issue is if it truly is a valid court order.
See, if an American court decides that American laws are extra-territorial... that is the point at which the rest of the world sends a big "fuck you" to America. (Which is long overdue anyway.)
And any sane country would say "OK, Microsoft, if you do this in violation of local laws, we're going to fine you a percentage of global revenues... because our laws are now extra-territorial."
Microsoft in Ireland may be a wholly owned subsidiary, but it is a separate legal entity operating under the laws of Ireland, and incorporated under Irish law. You can't bypass the Irish courts because Microsoft US owns Microsoft Ireland.
It doesn't work that way.
The PATRIOT ends at the point where an Irish corporation, subject to Irish laws, is told to adhere to a court order by an American court, without consultation with an Irish court.
That's about as self entitled and delusional as you can get as a nation.
If corporations are legally people, then Microsoft Ireland is a citizen of Ireland, and not subject to US courts. Either way, Microsoft Ireland is 100% subject to applicable Irish law.
Maybe in some small way things are coming back around.
But the problem is that many of these abuses have already happened, or are still ongoing -- precisely because top level people spend so much effort undermining those Constitutional protections and making them "optional".
That the police no longer give a damn about probable means it'll be broken for years to come.
And until police start having actual consequences for crap like this, they'll keep doing it.
I would love to see a judge who ruled US protections do not apply have someone use that logic on them.
You want to know something scary?
Alberto Gonzales, the moron who was Bush the 2nd's Attorney General... he once said that habeus corpus wasn't a right. So the legal advice he was giving Shrub? Entirely based on a complete lack of understanding of the law and the Constitution.
Government has reached the point that if they can get a lawyer to craft an opinion about what is legal, it's valid.
Which is how you ended up with police and governments increasingly doing shit which isn't legal. Because they no longer give a damn about what is legal, or follows a set of principles, it's what you can get some sleaze bag of a lawyer to argue in court.
If you point a camera at a politician, you won't have to wait a month to see the camera removed.
And if you pointed a camera at a police station... you are not going to last very long at all.
Because to the police, they can point a camera at you, but if you do it to them you've committed a crime. Just look at how many police try to confiscate/delete video taken of them, despite being repeatedly told they have no legal authority to do that.
Because apparently the police neither know nor care what the law says.
Which is why I say mandatory body cameras on police. Because otherwise they're just thugs with guns and badges when nobody is looking.
I think it's high time police were charged with crimes when they do shit like this. Send a few of these bastards into prison with the rest of the crooks.
America is rapidly deciding that her guiding principles are optional, and that the law only applies if law enforcement says it does.
Wide spread warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, and parallel construction all say that the police and government will do whatever the hell they like, and your rights be damned. And if they have to lie to the court to get what they want, that's OK too.
And for all of those who claim you still have free speech and all that... the answer is simply for now. When it becomes expedient to take away that right, they will.
Land of the free, home of the brave. If it wasn't so scary it would be hilarious.
Many Chinese people see their government's censorship of the internet as protecting them from bad or even criminal activity. You probably wouldn't say that the police "restrict" your ability to commit crime, but rather they protect you from it.
Many American people see their government's tapping of the internet as protecting them from bad or even terrorist activity. You probably wouldn't say the NSA "restrict" your civil liberties, but rather they protect you (and the rest of the world) from them.
One set of brainwashed people who believe the lies of their government is pretty much indistinguishable from another.
The press are owned and controlled by people who probably play golf with the heads of Sony, and keep their yachts in the same marinas. So, you decide if that means the press will do a damned thing about it or not.
It's long past the point where the press will focus on honest and objective reporting, and instead focus on corporate interests and policy.
You really can't take that out of this equation.
Everyone likes to pretend there's still a free press. But, that's not 100% true when corporate policy dictates the news as much as anything.
Well, think of it as "in order to protect our interests and make this go away we are going to hold you legally accountable".
The trick will be if they have a legal basis to say anything about it, or if this is just bluster from a legal team.
You don't lawfully have the information, but is it illegal for you to have it? And, is it actionable that you have it?
Would the lawyers for any large media outfit fight this? Or since all of the large media outfits are owned by companies like Sony and Time and the like, would they decide that they don't want to push the issue too far in case it happens to them?
It's not like we have a media which is in any way objective from what their corporate overlords tell them to do... so the legality versus the will might be a different issue.
This might come down to a back room agreement between the CEOs of some multinationals. Or the media could grow a spine and say "fuck it, we don't care what the board says, this is news-worthy".
At the end of the day, I bet this will be as much about what Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner want, instead of what the law says. Because that's who is really calling the shots.
We responded quickly and were able to cancel the vast majority of orders placed on these affected items immediately and no costs or fees will be incurred by sellers for these cancelled orders.
So, once the order has been placed, haven't you effectively entered into a contract for sale or something?
At which point you the seller don't really the the option to say "Ooops, we didn't mean to do that, we're cancelling your order".
Maybe it's different in the UK, but I thought they couldn't change the terms of sale just because they want to.
If I had made the purchase, I'd be pissed, because this means they can change the terms of sale after they've been offered.
Your website/pricing stuff broke.. NMFP, you offered it 1 penny, I expect to get it for that price.
The creators will tell you what it was intended to do and what it actually means within that narrow GPL context.
No, they won't.
What the creators will tell you amounts to "if we were in charge, these would be the rules of the GPL and what it means". They can tell you their intent, but intent may not equate to any legal weight.
The problem is that ignores the rest of the legal system and copyright law which gives the GPL its teeth. For that you need an actual court to rule.
Nothing at all which is told to you by the creators, proponents, or guys who have read the GPL actually corresponds to the legal interpretation of that license except that it is an opinion.
They'll tell you what they think it means, what they want it to mean, what they believe and hope it means.
None of those, however, is legally binding nor does it establish legal precedent.
No. And THAT is why we have the GPLv3, to head off patent problems (among other things)
Great, at this rate it should be, what, another 15-20 years before that gets tested in court?
Re:Why not ask the authors of the GPL Ver.2?
on
The GPLv2 Goes To Court
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It upsets me that this question will be answered by those who [probably] know nothing about software and code. Why won't they ask those who created this GPL? Wouldn't they surely know better?
Because, the GPL is essentially a contract written in the framework of contract law, which says "you have a copyright exemption under the following circumstances".
There's been tons of confusion about what it actually means, and if it legally means what people think it means.
Until a court actually rules on this, everything else is an opinion based on someone's interpretation.
But, from there, if it stands and the court says "this is the impact", then we'll know and there will be legal precedent.
It's within the realm of the possible the court could invalidate the whole damned thing. And the court could also provide an interpretation which narrows the scope of it. The court could also expand it.
So, it may upset you, but the foundation of the legal system is more or less until a judge rules on it, and until there is a legal precedent... you don't really know if it holds water or not.
Those who created the GPL may not know as much as they think about writing a software license. Or, they knew an awful lot and the court will agree.
At the very least, this should remove some of the ambiguity and confusion.
Implementing it isn't a problem really, just so long as it's not abused
The problem is it will be abused. It will be used for things beyond the scope they claimed it will be. It will essentially suffer from the same kind of scope creep all of this surveillance shit does.
What they say now as "oh, we'll only use this for national security stuff" becomes tomorrow's "well, we had to invent parallel construction to conceal what we do with that stuff we promised was only for national security".
This stuff is designed to give law enforcement unfettered access to anything, while keeping that access secret from the rest of us. And in the case of Canada, this pretty much bypasses privacy legislation
I'm pretty much convinced that all elected officials voting in favor of this crap have forfeited all right to claim any of their information is private while saying they have access to all of our information.
These clowns have been undermining some of the basic premises of Western societies.
It has nothing at all to do with nostalgia. Not even a little. It has to do with a simple, clean device with a lot of storage, that just works.
I updated the OS on my iPod touch.. and three apps broke.
My iPod Classic? It doesn't run iOS, doesn't have apps to break, has huge battery life. Which means until it physically dies, it's going to keep doing the exact same thing.
I wish I'd realized they were getting rid of them , because I'd have bought another one.
For a simple travel player which lets me bring tons of stuff and all that... I really would rather have that than my Touch. Because I could bring a crap ton of music and movies, and play them through the TV with a simple cable.
My iPod touch has made a lot of business trips in hotels a lot more pleasant.
The old fashioned iPod classic with a spinning HD might be relatively low-tech these days. But it did what it did really damned well.
My music collection alone is 78GB (and, yes, it's all ripped from CDs I own). The digital copies of movies I've collected over the years is 200GB.
With a Classic with 160GB of storage, I can have my entire CD collection, and a bunch of movies.
Killing the product was shortsighted, because finding something with that much capacity is pretty difficult.
Unfortunately, my Classic is no longer with me, which is annoying. No fancy touch, no apps, no OS to update (and probably break the device)... none of the crap, just a big honking iPod which held a ton of stuff.
But, apparently companies are only interested in the new hotness, even if the old school model is still a fine product.
Now we have Bennett Fucking Haselton's fucking gift guide?
Tell you what, Bennett... give us all a gift, and stop posting this shit.
So far timothy, soulskill, and samsenpuss all post this crap from Bennett. Is it official dice policy to promote the shit this guy writes? Or is he just sucking your dick?
Yup, and yet they still failed. Good Job guys! How about going back to building cars and not trying to monetize the after purchase experience to death.
LOL, I'm not disagreeing with you.
But, seriously, companies are now expected to keep growing quarterly, or they're seen as stagnating by the stock market.
In order to keep executive compensation at all time highs, they need to implement the full set of MBA approved gibberish, so that the analysts tout how awesome their stock is.
The stock market doesn't reward a car company which makes good cars year over year and has a steady revenue stream. It rewards a car company which has figured out how to monetize its customers and have a growing revenue stream.
Business is no longer operated on solid fundamentals and steady performance. It's operated on perception, and how the next quarter or two will look, and trying to maintain quarter-over-quarter growth which is unsustainable.
As far as I'm concerned, the stock market has been stuck as an unsustainable Ponzi scheme since at least the beginning of the.com era. Nowadays, it seems like most companies are thinking stupid in the long-term in order to maximize the short term -- because that's the current compensation cycle.
Because when R&D and the like gets cut to improve profits now, it might take you a few years to realize just how badly you've shot yourself in the foot.
And the way companies are ran these days, it might be a different executive team, so you need to get your stack before you get your giant severance package.
I'm betting most employees of large corporations find themselves thinking "is our company really being ran by short sighted idiots who don't understand our core business?". And in quite a few cases, the answer is probably "yes, yes it is".
I can't answer if it's more difficult, or simply more challenging.
Increasingly, there seems to be more and more push for internal social media and the like.
There's clearly much more desire to see badges awarded for participating in discussions in Sharepoint than there is on having reliable servers.
So all the funding goes to the sexy mandates, with the apparent assumption that the stable boring stuff happens by magic and doesn't need funding.
Sometimes I find myself shaking my head, because when internally it becomes glitz over substance and functionality, the marketing idiots have screwed us all.
It is mind boggling to me that everyone seems to have gotten hoodwinked into thinking a "Like" button provides more benefit to the company than the things which keep corporate data intact.
It's like IT has become superficial and vacuous, and the decisions are being made by idiots who don't know which parts of technology add value to the business/support core business activities and are necessary.
I've seen "new collaboration tools" deployed in organizations that I immediately think "how the hell does this help me do my job, or improve anything in the company"? In some cases, I still don't have an answer.
But I've seen companies spend a lot of money on systems which add no real value, and which just siphon resources from things which do.
However, some of us are old enough to remember stuff like this:
The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service contends.
Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials.
Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in reducing manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer sailors would be needed to control key ship functions.
But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The very information technology on which the ships depend also makes them vulnerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va.
What, that car manufacturers have treated upgrades and options as a cash cow for decades? Really? OnStar alone makes GM hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. You don't think getting your infotainment system on a subscription would be lucrative???
"So when we look at what we can do with a 4G pipe into a car," Akerson said, "you can change the business model almost entirely."
GM foresees expanded offerings such as custom apps, streaming entertainment and enhanced diagnostic links to dealers. To create the new OnStar, GM appears willing to reboot a business that churns out steady profits but has limited growth potential.
OnStar COO Terry Inch says basic services such as crash notification, security and navigation will remain OnStar's core. But, he says, 4G will enable GM to surpass other automakers.
As in... look at all the bloody money we can make from our proprietary infotainment system once this sucker is hooked up to the cell network.
IMHO, making it difficult to upgrade audio with the whole "integrated dash systems" is NOT a selling point, but is often quite the opposite.
I did not say it was a selling point... at least not the to buyer.
You don't say to the buyer "hey, you know you want this proprietary system which will be obsolete and you'll never be able to upgrade".
You say "look at this super awesome system we have".
The people who sell this shit think them having a proprietary system is good for them, because it will "effectively monetize the driving and in-car infotainment experience of the driver in a highly profitable manner which allows us to expand outside of our core markets" or some other buzzword-bingo mission statement.
Inch says that with 4G, OnStar will be able to send the onboard diagnosis of any problem to a customer's dealer, who could contact the customer. That could increase dealer service revenues. GM also sees it as a way to detect emerging problems early, minimizing warranty work and recalls.
Analyst Roger Lanctot of Strategy Analytics in Newton, Mass., says that could be a major plus.
"Between the vehicle diagnostics and the dealer integration, that's where the rubber hits the road," he says. "That's very valuable aftermarket business."
These damned things are part of long-term, multi-billion dollar business strategies.
They simply are not going to make a standardized, easily upgraded or replaced platform which they all share.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is precisely what companies should have been doing as soon as America passed the PATRIOT Act, which pretty much spelled out their claim to be able to do this.
US based cloud services have been tainted for years now, only now people are starting to realize the truth of it.
Some of us have been saying this exact scenario would happen for years.
When the US government decided American companies were an extended part of the surveillance apparatus, American companies became so embroiled in this as to be laughable. There is no way you ca trust an American company if you're outside of America.
How do you think those stocks are going to fare when everyone cancels contracts with Microsoft et al and flips you the bird?
This is why it's laughable when America says they're the champions of Liberty and Justice -- because they're actively fighting anybody else in the world getting that, which means the rest of the world knows you're lying, and is starting to not give a crap about what America wants.
And you think that somehow the ruling of a US court absolves Microsoft from Irish law?
Because that's a complete crock of shit, and the only way Microsoft in Ireland exists as a corporation is under Irish law.
So, I'm sorry, but a US court cannot compel a foreign citizen or corporation in that country to break local laws just because there is a relationship with a US company.
The problem is that a US court believes it has the authority to make Microsoft Ireland violate the laws of Ireland, when Microsoft Ireland isn't under the legal jurisdiction of that US court. And that's simply not true.
Microsoft is saying "If you want this, go to an Irish court, but don't demand that we break the law for you".
No, the issue is if it truly is a valid court order.
See, if an American court decides that American laws are extra-territorial ... that is the point at which the rest of the world sends a big "fuck you" to America. (Which is long overdue anyway.)
And any sane country would say "OK, Microsoft, if you do this in violation of local laws, we're going to fine you a percentage of global revenues ... because our laws are now extra-territorial."
Microsoft in Ireland may be a wholly owned subsidiary, but it is a separate legal entity operating under the laws of Ireland, and incorporated under Irish law. You can't bypass the Irish courts because Microsoft US owns Microsoft Ireland.
It doesn't work that way.
The PATRIOT ends at the point where an Irish corporation, subject to Irish laws, is told to adhere to a court order by an American court, without consultation with an Irish court.
That's about as self entitled and delusional as you can get as a nation.
If corporations are legally people, then Microsoft Ireland is a citizen of Ireland, and not subject to US courts. Either way, Microsoft Ireland is 100% subject to applicable Irish law.
Maybe in some small way things are coming back around.
But the problem is that many of these abuses have already happened, or are still ongoing -- precisely because top level people spend so much effort undermining those Constitutional protections and making them "optional".
That the police no longer give a damn about probable means it'll be broken for years to come.
And until police start having actual consequences for crap like this, they'll keep doing it.
You want to know something scary?
Alberto Gonzales, the moron who was Bush the 2nd's Attorney General ... he once said that habeus corpus wasn't a right. So the legal advice he was giving Shrub? Entirely based on a complete lack of understanding of the law and the Constitution.
Government has reached the point that if they can get a lawyer to craft an opinion about what is legal, it's valid.
Which is how you ended up with police and governments increasingly doing shit which isn't legal. Because they no longer give a damn about what is legal, or follows a set of principles, it's what you can get some sleaze bag of a lawyer to argue in court.
And if you pointed a camera at a police station ... you are not going to last very long at all.
Because to the police, they can point a camera at you, but if you do it to them you've committed a crime. Just look at how many police try to confiscate/delete video taken of them, despite being repeatedly told they have no legal authority to do that.
Because apparently the police neither know nor care what the law says.
Which is why I say mandatory body cameras on police. Because otherwise they're just thugs with guns and badges when nobody is looking.
I think it's high time police were charged with crimes when they do shit like this. Send a few of these bastards into prison with the rest of the crooks.
America is rapidly deciding that her guiding principles are optional, and that the law only applies if law enforcement says it does.
Wide spread warrantless wiretapping, surveillance, and parallel construction all say that the police and government will do whatever the hell they like, and your rights be damned. And if they have to lie to the court to get what they want, that's OK too.
And for all of those who claim you still have free speech and all that ... the answer is simply for now. When it becomes expedient to take away that right, they will.
Land of the free, home of the brave. If it wasn't so scary it would be hilarious.
Many American people see their government's tapping of the internet as protecting them from bad or even terrorist activity. You probably wouldn't say the NSA "restrict" your civil liberties, but rather they protect you (and the rest of the world) from them.
One set of brainwashed people who believe the lies of their government is pretty much indistinguishable from another.
But ... but ... port 80 is where they keep most of the porn.
We certainly do care. ;-)
Surprisingly, it can actually be both.
Congratulations, you succeeded at Troll Truthiness.
You must be proud.
The same one as always ... the presence of oil.
Oh, you mean the public reason? Well, don't bother, we all know it's oil.
The press are owned and controlled by people who probably play golf with the heads of Sony, and keep their yachts in the same marinas. So, you decide if that means the press will do a damned thing about it or not.
It's long past the point where the press will focus on honest and objective reporting, and instead focus on corporate interests and policy.
You really can't take that out of this equation.
Everyone likes to pretend there's still a free press. But, that's not 100% true when corporate policy dictates the news as much as anything.
Well, think of it as "in order to protect our interests and make this go away we are going to hold you legally accountable".
The trick will be if they have a legal basis to say anything about it, or if this is just bluster from a legal team.
You don't lawfully have the information, but is it illegal for you to have it? And, is it actionable that you have it?
Would the lawyers for any large media outfit fight this? Or since all of the large media outfits are owned by companies like Sony and Time and the like, would they decide that they don't want to push the issue too far in case it happens to them?
It's not like we have a media which is in any way objective from what their corporate overlords tell them to do ... so the legality versus the will might be a different issue.
This might come down to a back room agreement between the CEOs of some multinationals. Or the media could grow a spine and say "fuck it, we don't care what the board says, this is news-worthy".
At the end of the day, I bet this will be as much about what Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner want, instead of what the law says. Because that's who is really calling the shots.
So, once the order has been placed, haven't you effectively entered into a contract for sale or something?
At which point you the seller don't really the the option to say "Ooops, we didn't mean to do that, we're cancelling your order".
Maybe it's different in the UK, but I thought they couldn't change the terms of sale just because they want to.
If I had made the purchase, I'd be pissed, because this means they can change the terms of sale after they've been offered.
Your website/pricing stuff broke .. NMFP, you offered it 1 penny, I expect to get it for that price.
No, they won't.
What the creators will tell you amounts to "if we were in charge, these would be the rules of the GPL and what it means". They can tell you their intent, but intent may not equate to any legal weight.
The problem is that ignores the rest of the legal system and copyright law which gives the GPL its teeth. For that you need an actual court to rule.
Nothing at all which is told to you by the creators, proponents, or guys who have read the GPL actually corresponds to the legal interpretation of that license except that it is an opinion.
They'll tell you what they think it means, what they want it to mean, what they believe and hope it means.
None of those, however, is legally binding nor does it establish legal precedent.
Great, at this rate it should be, what, another 15-20 years before that gets tested in court?
Because, the GPL is essentially a contract written in the framework of contract law, which says "you have a copyright exemption under the following circumstances".
There's been tons of confusion about what it actually means, and if it legally means what people think it means.
Until a court actually rules on this, everything else is an opinion based on someone's interpretation.
But, from there, if it stands and the court says "this is the impact", then we'll know and there will be legal precedent.
It's within the realm of the possible the court could invalidate the whole damned thing. And the court could also provide an interpretation which narrows the scope of it. The court could also expand it.
So, it may upset you, but the foundation of the legal system is more or less until a judge rules on it, and until there is a legal precedent ... you don't really know if it holds water or not.
Those who created the GPL may not know as much as they think about writing a software license. Or, they knew an awful lot and the court will agree.
At the very least, this should remove some of the ambiguity and confusion.
The problem is it will be abused. It will be used for things beyond the scope they claimed it will be. It will essentially suffer from the same kind of scope creep all of this surveillance shit does.
What they say now as "oh, we'll only use this for national security stuff" becomes tomorrow's "well, we had to invent parallel construction to conceal what we do with that stuff we promised was only for national security".
This stuff is designed to give law enforcement unfettered access to anything, while keeping that access secret from the rest of us. And in the case of Canada, this pretty much bypasses privacy legislation
I'm pretty much convinced that all elected officials voting in favor of this crap have forfeited all right to claim any of their information is private while saying they have access to all of our information.
These clowns have been undermining some of the basic premises of Western societies.
Worthless bastards.
It has nothing at all to do with nostalgia. Not even a little. It has to do with a simple, clean device with a lot of storage, that just works.
I updated the OS on my iPod touch .. and three apps broke.
My iPod Classic? It doesn't run iOS, doesn't have apps to break, has huge battery life. Which means until it physically dies, it's going to keep doing the exact same thing.
I wish I'd realized they were getting rid of them , because I'd have bought another one.
For a simple travel player which lets me bring tons of stuff and all that ... I really would rather have that than my Touch. Because I could bring a crap ton of music and movies, and play them through the TV with a simple cable.
My iPod touch has made a lot of business trips in hotels a lot more pleasant.
The old fashioned iPod classic with a spinning HD might be relatively low-tech these days. But it did what it did really damned well.
I am not surprised by this at all.
My music collection alone is 78GB (and, yes, it's all ripped from CDs I own). The digital copies of movies I've collected over the years is 200GB.
With a Classic with 160GB of storage, I can have my entire CD collection, and a bunch of movies.
Killing the product was shortsighted, because finding something with that much capacity is pretty difficult.
Unfortunately, my Classic is no longer with me, which is annoying. No fancy touch, no apps, no OS to update (and probably break the device) ... none of the crap, just a big honking iPod which held a ton of stuff.
But, apparently companies are only interested in the new hotness, even if the old school model is still a fine product.
Now we have Bennett Fucking Haselton's fucking gift guide?
Tell you what, Bennett ... give us all a gift, and stop posting this shit.
So far timothy, soulskill, and samsenpuss all post this crap from Bennett. Is it official dice policy to promote the shit this guy writes? Or is he just sucking your dick?
LOL, I'm not disagreeing with you.
But, seriously, companies are now expected to keep growing quarterly, or they're seen as stagnating by the stock market.
In order to keep executive compensation at all time highs, they need to implement the full set of MBA approved gibberish, so that the analysts tout how awesome their stock is.
The stock market doesn't reward a car company which makes good cars year over year and has a steady revenue stream. It rewards a car company which has figured out how to monetize its customers and have a growing revenue stream.
Business is no longer operated on solid fundamentals and steady performance. It's operated on perception, and how the next quarter or two will look, and trying to maintain quarter-over-quarter growth which is unsustainable.
As far as I'm concerned, the stock market has been stuck as an unsustainable Ponzi scheme since at least the beginning of the .com era. Nowadays, it seems like most companies are thinking stupid in the long-term in order to maximize the short term -- because that's the current compensation cycle.
Because when R&D and the like gets cut to improve profits now, it might take you a few years to realize just how badly you've shot yourself in the foot.
And the way companies are ran these days, it might be a different executive team, so you need to get your stack before you get your giant severance package.
I'm betting most employees of large corporations find themselves thinking "is our company really being ran by short sighted idiots who don't understand our core business?". And in quite a few cases, the answer is probably "yes, yes it is".
I can't answer if it's more difficult, or simply more challenging.
Increasingly, there seems to be more and more push for internal social media and the like.
There's clearly much more desire to see badges awarded for participating in discussions in Sharepoint than there is on having reliable servers.
So all the funding goes to the sexy mandates, with the apparent assumption that the stable boring stuff happens by magic and doesn't need funding.
Sometimes I find myself shaking my head, because when internally it becomes glitz over substance and functionality, the marketing idiots have screwed us all.
It is mind boggling to me that everyone seems to have gotten hoodwinked into thinking a "Like" button provides more benefit to the company than the things which keep corporate data intact.
It's like IT has become superficial and vacuous, and the decisions are being made by idiots who don't know which parts of technology add value to the business/support core business activities and are necessary.
I've seen "new collaboration tools" deployed in organizations that I immediately think "how the hell does this help me do my job, or improve anything in the company"? In some cases, I still don't have an answer.
But I've seen companies spend a lot of money on systems which add no real value, and which just siphon resources from things which do.
All of those are valid points.
However, some of us are old enough to remember stuff like this:
Call it a well earned cynicism.
What, that car manufacturers have treated upgrades and options as a cash cow for decades? Really? OnStar alone makes GM hundreds of millions of dollars in profit. You don't think getting your infotainment system on a subscription would be lucrative???
As in ... look at all the bloody money we can make from our proprietary infotainment system once this sucker is hooked up to the cell network.
I did not say it was a selling point ... at least not the to buyer.
You don't say to the buyer "hey, you know you want this proprietary system which will be obsolete and you'll never be able to upgrade".
You say "look at this super awesome system we have".
The people who sell this shit think them having a proprietary system is good for them, because it will "effectively monetize the driving and in-car infotainment experience of the driver in a highly profitable manner which allows us to expand outside of our core markets" or some other buzzword-bingo mission statement.
These damned things are part of long-term, multi-billion dollar business strategies.
They simply are not going to make a standardized, easily upgraded or replaced platform which they all share.
From their perspective, that would be idiotic.