I guess it's my bias, but I don't put a lot of stock in certifications and those you listed have nothing to do with programming. Certifications show that you know how to use the technology du jour but don't demonstrate that you have a fundamental understanding of how computers work. I'd also be suspect of a degree program that focuses on.NET or any one particular framework.
When I'm looking to supplement our staff, sure I'd like to have somebody who's experienced with the technology we're using at the moment. At the same time, I'd take a clearly talented C++ developer whose never written a line of Java in his life and who really wants the job over somebody who is competent with Java but otherwise nothing to get excited about.
Good programmers are good programmers regardless of language and they should be able to easily pick up new ones.
I agree that she's probably not going to be moving fast enough that speed alone will make aerodynamics very important. However, they talked about the high winds alot, so even if she's not moving fast, a stiff headwind will still make riding position (and aerodynamics in general) matter.
It just seemed strange that they talked about the aerodynamics of the bike and it doesn't look like they really did anything at all in that regard other than internal cable routing. They even did wind tunnel testing but I think it was more about getting her positioned as optimally as possible. However, if they really cared about aerodynamics, they would have come up with some sort of recumbent with a fairing.
Internal gearing has become more and more popular for offroad use but in this case I think simplicity is more important. It's easy to replace a broken derailleur and I don't think she's going to be pedaling through rock gardens or doing monster drops.
I live in Minnesota and ride 6 miles to work year round in all weather and have gone winter camping where we slept under the stars for a weekend in -15F. I'm very intrigued by the design of this bike and would LOVE to try one here. Typical mountain bikes are a ton of work to pedal through even a few inches of snow, - at least the type of snow we get in these parts.
Somebody has already mentioned the Surly Pugsley and while it's a fine machine it has its limitations. If the snow isn't fairly firm, it's worse than a conventional bike. You end up pushing 4 inches of tire through the snow instead of 2.
An ultra-wide, small diameter tire like the ones they're using make a lot of sense. More float without all the extra weight of a large diameter tire. They mentioned the aerodynamics of the bike but it doesn't look like they've done much in that department other than adding aero bars.
Clothing and supplies will be a huge deal. She's going be traveling mostly under her own power and working hard. Her clothing needs to be able to wick sweat effectively while still keeping the wind out. She'll also need a lot of water and need to consume a lot of calories. Does she have a support team supplying her?
We danced for hours around the issue and it was a very good BOF. At the end I summed it up and we all agreed, the software developer will not make the same amount of money as they had until the 2000 crash. I stand by the statement and it was true. Since 2000 the wages of the software industry as a developer have been driven down due to Open Source, and due to out sourcing.
There were lots of factors driving up compensation for software developers prior to 2000 including the Y2K bug and the dot com bubble. That simply wasn't going to last.
I agree that outsourcing has had an impact but to me it's much harder to determine how open source has affected wages. I suspect it's not really that much of a factor relative to other things like the general sluggishness of the economy.
... funny thing... what CPU does Apple run on btw?
What CPU does Apple run on? iPods run on some Apple labeled ARM chip made by Samsung as far I know. iPhones, iTouches and iPads use A4s or A5s. I believe Apple had some hand in designing those and they are also manufactured by Samsung. There's been discussions in the past and currently about uses Intel's Atom.
The Mac is interesting story. Over it's history it's executed, not one but two major processor switches. From the Motorola 68000 series to the PowerPC series, and then from the PowerPC to Intel. Bill Gates has said himself that he was astonished that Apple was able to pull it off as seamlessly as they did.
What if IBM had continued to kick Intel's ass like they were for awhile? Could the "open" platform have made the switch? I'd argue that having more control over the platform has allowed Apple to more easily change horses.
What new and exciting product have they come out with in the last couple of decades?
You might have heard of a collection of toy apps called "WebSphere"? Really nothing, but the transaction processing industry with their crazy ol' uptime and throughput demands seems fond of it.;)
IBM has indeed moved out of the PC market for the most part, but they remain as strong as ever in the ways of Big Iron.
So I'll ask again, what new and exciting product has IBM come out with ?;)
Might be my biases but I played around with Websphere a decade ago and never really thought of it as anything ground breaking. Not saying it isn't a good or valuable product. I'm glad you brought it up though because it does help emphasis another point I wanted to make. "Open" and "Closed" aren't very accurate terms when describing many of these products. Is websphere "Open"? Is Java? OS X? Darwin? Most people would agree IOS isn't but what about webkit? I'd argue that webkit has done a lot to help standardize the web and I'd also argue that it's a critical part of IOS.
And believe it or not I'm a fan of open systems. But there's some closed ones I like too.
If it were strictly a matter of user preference back in the mid to late 80's, the Mac may indeed have been the one to dominate, but at work most people had little choice but to use the computer that was given to them. They typically chose to get the same computers for their home for reasons of compatibility, price, and availability of software.
But lets look a little deeper. How did that end up working out for IBM? How many PCs has IBM sold lately? What new and exciting product have they come out with in the last couple of decades?
Apple is still selling the Mac and still innovating. PCs are basically a commodity. When Apple did license the Mac OS, it nearly wiped them out. They didn't have other lines of business to fall back on like IBM did when the clone manufactures started eating their lunch on price.
Besides, dominating the marketplace isn't the only definition of success. I'd also argue that there's plenty of room for both open and closed systems. I'd prefer to live in a world with both. While the general purpose PC may be fading somewhat in importance, I think that's just simply part of the natural progression of technology.
The Internet may be the new general purpose PC. Lots of cloud based services include APIs that you can leverage. IOS is only one platform. Android is another. So is the Internet. I don't think the latter is threatened by the existence of IOS in any way. In fact, I'd argue that its existence has promoted the Internet as a platform.
At least in this part of the world, a single incandescent bulb is responsible for more mercury being released into the environment than would a broken CFL lamp. That's because most of our electricity comes from coal fired power plants and mercury is just one of the harmful byproducts.
This from popular mechanics:
Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, a coal plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.
I think you undervalue Jobs' role in the creation of Apple. For example, Woz really had no idea how to package the components into a case that would appeal to anyone other than a hobbyist. It was Jobs insistence that the Apple II have a switching power supply to reduce heat. Woz knew little about them. Basically every desktop computer uses a switching power supply now.
Woz has had little impact at Apple since 1978 or so. I don't think he had any involvement in the creation of the Mac.
Don't get me wrong. Without Woz, there never would have been an Apple computer to sell, but without Jobs, Woz would have likely never created a computer at all and would have spent his career at HP.
We used to home school our kids and while it's true that you can certainly spend a lot of money on materials, I'd say that's about the last thing anyone worries about when deciding whether or not to homeschool their kids. As someone else said, the biggest financial factor is having to get by on a single income.
We're not rich and neither were most of the people I met that did home school. The driving force is the feeling that their kids weren't getting what they needed from the other education options available. Or, in many cases, the parents were worried about their kids getting exposed to things they felt weren't good for the them and which contributed nothing to their education.
That doesn't mean that kindles and the like aren't a boon to home educators, I think they can be. But I don't think their existence will affect the number of people that decide to go down that road.
I could debate the pros and cons of homeschooling all day long. I will only say this: For some kids and families, it's a great option. It does not, however, replace the need for a strong public education system.
That's true. However, some Christian parents deliberately limit their name selection to not only biblical names, but names of recognized saints. Catholics are supposed to choose a patron saint for their child and name them accordingly.
And even though Moxie's parents may not have intentionally restricted themselves to saints, the pool of common names they were likely to choose from has certainly been made smaller due to our ancestors adherence to this policy.
My wife, who converted to Catholicism after our kids were born (and long after I last considered myself one), regrets the fact that we didn't name our kids after saints. The practice survives to this day.
Problem is that locally at least they have horribly inconsistent download speeds and that some throttling is probably necessary. I don't know what their user agreements are like. I don't have a problem with throttling in principle as long as the provider is very clear about the circumstances that will trigger it. There needs to be truth in labeling.
I recognize that I'm becoming an old geezer. The mini-computers we used were VAXes and they had many features that are just now starting to come into the PC world and I've missed them. The PCs did lack security and a bunch of other "Enterprise" or "Business" features, but they also brought about a huge revolution in software. Suddenly all this stuff was becoming available at an astonishing rate and at a much cheaper cost compared to what you saw in the VAX world, and you didn't need to go through IT to get it.
This revolution is occurring again with smart phones and tablets. The same concerns are being brought up, - often using the same terms, and the same thing is going to happen.
Oh and I forgot one thing. IT people tend to be solutions oriented yes. They will look long and hard for a solution, - as long is falls within their religious views on technology.
If it falls outside their views, they will fight to the death.
IT exists outside of large enterprises so I disagree with your premise. Only part of my role involves projects that have an organization wide impact. I'm also not suggesting that we say yes to every malcontent and that each person can decide whether they want Lotus Notes or MS Exchange. We'll decide on the server technology and hopefully select something that doesn't lock us into one type of client because one size does not fit all.
The Post Office doesn't dictate that you have to get your mail at your home. You can get a P.O. box. On my street, people pick out their own mail box and mine looks completely different from my neighbors. Some people don't have a box at all, just a slot. As long as it works for sending and receiving mail, it's fine.
Standardization and central control aren't evil but lock-in is. You always have to be ready to adopt new technology even if it is disruptive, - especially if it is disruptive, as long as the value is there.
Of course I'd be remise to say that every organization is the same. I think technology plays a key role in making our organization better than some of our competitors. Yeah, we probably spend more on it too. We want to foster innovation. We want smart people to work here and we want to put the tools in their hands that lets them do their job most effectively.
What a load of crap. Most of those new PC users in the 80's weren't doing innovative new things on their new PC's, they were running the software that IT tested and deployed. PC's were mainly used to replace established pen & paper work practices, not so the users could innovate.
The same is true for smart phones. Most of the people who claim to need a smart phone to do their job are just replacing a laptop that did the same job. The smart phone might be slightly more convenient but it isn't some huge world changing innovation of that particular business use.
If people had of demanded that 25 year ago PC architectures should be connected to the modern Internet they would have been laughed out of the meeting. Don't blame IT for the fact that the underlying architecture of most smart phones is not suitable to secure business practices.
I started out in IT back in the 80's. Our IT Manager wanted nothing to do with the few PCs we had in the office. The people that got them were the people who had the power to go over his head. The software that they ran wasn't IT tested and deployed. It was stuff those power users installed themselves. Probably some of it they bought on their own. About 30% of it was pirated if not more. There was no reliable automated backup procedure. No offsite storage. All of this drove my IT Manager nuts but he refused to work with the people that wanted them. In short, as far as he was concerned the underlying architecture of the PC and the DOS operating system weren't suitable for business.
Eventually he saw the writing on the wall and we started incorporating the PCs into the office network. We even began programming for them.
Why do you think PCs replaced the mini-computer in the office 25 years ago? PCs could only run one app at a time. There was no login. No hard drive unless you were one of the lucky few. Awkward backups if they were done at all. In spite of that, they took over in large part because they put power in the hands of the user instead of IT. Now IT has basically locked down the PC. I understand why and I'm not saying there aren't valid reasons. However, I think we've gone too far in many cases. We may scream: "Security!" and "Data Privacy!" but what it amounts to is that we've used these as reasons to limit productivity and innovation because we want our jobs to be easy and without risk.
IT needs to figure it out how to put power into the hands of the user or they will find their jobs disappearing into the cloud, - literally.
About 25 years ago, my boss, the IT manager, had the same attitude towards PCs. He referred to them as "toys". They lacked security. At the time you didn't even need to log into them. You had to upgrade and install software on them independently. Backing them up was problematic, etc. etc.
Of course the mini-computers and terminals we all used at the time were eventually replaced with PCs.
It's about productivity. It's about not depending on an IT department with a backlog of 2 years for every little thing. What we've done to the PC in the name of security and making life easier for IT is to make them part of a centrally controlled system just like the mini computers were 25 years ago.
Want to use a great new piece of software?
Is it on the approved list?
No?
Too bad.
That is not how we should be doing things.
I'm an IT director. Yes, you need security. Yes, centrally controlled admin is good. Being able to roll out tested software patches on mass is good. However, our role in IT is to FACILITATE, not to be a road block. That doesn't mean we have to say yes to everything but we need to understand why people want to use these devices for work and if there is a legitimate purpose, we need to figure out how to make it happen.
Our job is to support our people, even if that makes our job harder.
Messaging is supposed to be RIM's forte. You would expect the Playbook to not only have a messaging app, but one with compelling features the others don't have, -whether their security related or otherwise.
A web app, which more than likely was designed primarily for desktop use, is a poor substitute.
When the iPhone first came out, a lot of people in our office wanted to be able to get their Lotus Notes email on it. IBM promised a native client, but it never came (not really their fault). What did happen though was the addition of ActiveSync compatibility with the iPhone email client. This let a lot of other email systems like Gmail and Exchange in the door. Unfortunately, there's still hoops to jump through to get Notes to sync with an iPhone (or Android device). Guess what email system will probably be gone in the next 6 months?
Notes does have a smart phone optimized web app and it's not bad, but it's not as good as using the native app.
A principle that knows what they're doing and has a supportive administration backing them can get rid of teachers, - union or not.
Even if you don't want to go the route of documenting their deficiencies, you can certainly make their job highly unpleasant and move them out of direct teaching roles.
I was sitting at a leadership council meeting at my son's public school a few years ago during a time when they were negotiating another teachers' contract with the district. One of the parents started talking about the difficulty that unions created in terms of retaining the best and getting rid of the worst.
The principle quietly listened and then said: "Believe me when I say, any teacher than I don't want here will not last." Then he turned to the teachers in the room, - one of which was a union steward. "Do any of the staff here have any doubts about that?". They all shook their heads.
Do unions make it more difficult than it probably should be? Very possible. But you don't want a situation where a bad principle can fire anybody he/she sees as a trouble maker either.
That's crap. If a principle wants a teacher to move on, there are a variety of ways to get that done. The principle needs to be savvy and needs to be willing to do it. I worked with such a principle and he definitely wasn't the only one.
The bigger issue is that kids are not "one size fits all". You can take a teacher that's performing well in one school and put them in another school with a different demographic and they may have a very difficult time duplicating their past success.
Not saying that there aren't bad teachers and good teachers. There are. But people are vastly over simplifying if they think the biggest problem with the educational system is tied to teacher performance. It is unrealistic to expect schools to deal with problems that are societal in nature and start well before a kid ever sees a classroom.
Can schools do more than they are? Yes, absolutely. Training teachers in methods that work for a given demographic is key. So is hiring the right kind of teacher for the right kind of kids.
You realize that pesky government regulation, - like the ones that broke the ties between Western Union and AT&T and eventually forced AT&T to licenses its patents on UNIX to universities is largely responsible for the rise in popularity and open-ness of the OS right?
You also realize that MS Windows was developed by a private corporation right?
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I agree. If you have something to pair that programming skill up with, it can make a huge difference.
I guess it's my bias, but I don't put a lot of stock in certifications and those you listed have nothing to do with programming. Certifications show that you know how to use the technology du jour but don't demonstrate that you have a fundamental understanding of how computers work. I'd also be suspect of a degree program that focuses on .NET or any one particular framework.
When I'm looking to supplement our staff, sure I'd like to have somebody who's experienced with the technology we're using at the moment. At the same time, I'd take a clearly talented C++ developer whose never written a line of Java in his life and who really wants the job over somebody who is competent with Java but otherwise nothing to get excited about.
Good programmers are good programmers regardless of language and they should be able to easily pick up new ones.
I agree that she's probably not going to be moving fast enough that speed alone will make aerodynamics very important. However, they talked about the high winds alot, so even if she's not moving fast, a stiff headwind will still make riding position (and aerodynamics in general) matter.
It just seemed strange that they talked about the aerodynamics of the bike and it doesn't look like they really did anything at all in that regard other than internal cable routing. They even did wind tunnel testing but I think it was more about getting her positioned as optimally as possible. However, if they really cared about aerodynamics, they would have come up with some sort of recumbent with a fairing.
Internal gearing has become more and more popular for offroad use but in this case I think simplicity is more important. It's easy to replace a broken derailleur and I don't think she's going to be pedaling through rock gardens or doing monster drops.
I live in Minnesota and ride 6 miles to work year round in all weather and have gone winter camping where we slept under the stars for a weekend in -15F. I'm very intrigued by the design of this bike and would LOVE to try one here. Typical mountain bikes are a ton of work to pedal through even a few inches of snow, - at least the type of snow we get in these parts.
Somebody has already mentioned the Surly Pugsley and while it's a fine machine it has its limitations. If the snow isn't fairly firm, it's worse than a conventional bike. You end up pushing 4 inches of tire through the snow instead of 2.
An ultra-wide, small diameter tire like the ones they're using make a lot of sense. More float without all the extra weight of a large diameter tire. They mentioned the aerodynamics of the bike but it doesn't look like they've done much in that department other than adding aero bars.
Clothing and supplies will be a huge deal. She's going be traveling mostly under her own power and working hard. Her clothing needs to be able to wick sweat effectively while still keeping the wind out. She'll also need a lot of water and need to consume a lot of calories. Does she have a support team supplying her?
Good Luck to her !
We danced for hours around the issue and it was a very good BOF. At the end I summed it up and we all agreed, the software developer will not make the same amount of money as they had until the 2000 crash. I stand by the statement and it was true. Since 2000 the wages of the software industry as a developer have been driven down due to Open Source, and due to out sourcing.
There were lots of factors driving up compensation for software developers prior to 2000 including the Y2K bug and the dot com bubble. That simply wasn't going to last.
I agree that outsourcing has had an impact but to me it's much harder to determine how open source has affected wages. I suspect it's not really that much of a factor relative to other things like the general sluggishness of the economy.
... funny thing... what CPU does Apple run on btw?
What CPU does Apple run on? iPods run on some Apple labeled ARM chip made by Samsung as far I know. iPhones, iTouches and iPads use A4s or A5s. I believe Apple had some hand in designing those and they are also manufactured by Samsung. There's been discussions in the past and currently about uses Intel's Atom.
The Mac is interesting story. Over it's history it's executed, not one but two major processor switches. From the Motorola 68000 series to the PowerPC series, and then from the PowerPC to Intel. Bill Gates has said himself that he was astonished that Apple was able to pull it off as seamlessly as they did.
What if IBM had continued to kick Intel's ass like they were for awhile? Could the "open" platform have made the switch? I'd argue that having more control over the platform has allowed Apple to more easily change horses.
What new and exciting product have they come out with in the last couple of decades? You might have heard of a collection of toy apps called "WebSphere"? Really nothing, but the transaction processing industry with their crazy ol' uptime and throughput demands seems fond of it. ;)
IBM has indeed moved out of the PC market for the most part, but they remain as strong as ever in the ways of Big Iron.
So I'll ask again, what new and exciting product has IBM come out with ? ;)
Might be my biases but I played around with Websphere a decade ago and never really thought of it as anything ground breaking. Not saying it isn't a good or valuable product. I'm glad you brought it up though because it does help emphasis another point I wanted to make. "Open" and "Closed" aren't very accurate terms when describing many of these products. Is websphere "Open"? Is Java? OS X? Darwin? Most people would agree IOS isn't but what about webkit? I'd argue that webkit has done a lot to help standardize the web and I'd also argue that it's a critical part of IOS.
And believe it or not I'm a fan of open systems. But there's some closed ones I like too.
If it were strictly a matter of user preference back in the mid to late 80's, the Mac may indeed have been the one to dominate, but at work most people had little choice but to use the computer that was given to them. They typically chose to get the same computers for their home for reasons of compatibility, price, and availability of software.
But lets look a little deeper. How did that end up working out for IBM? How many PCs has IBM sold lately? What new and exciting product have they come out with in the last couple of decades?
Apple is still selling the Mac and still innovating. PCs are basically a commodity. When Apple did license the Mac OS, it nearly wiped them out. They didn't have other lines of business to fall back on like IBM did when the clone manufactures started eating their lunch on price.
Besides, dominating the marketplace isn't the only definition of success. I'd also argue that there's plenty of room for both open and closed systems. I'd prefer to live in a world with both. While the general purpose PC may be fading somewhat in importance, I think that's just simply part of the natural progression of technology.
The Internet may be the new general purpose PC. Lots of cloud based services include APIs that you can leverage. IOS is only one platform. Android is another. So is the Internet. I don't think the latter is threatened by the existence of IOS in any way. In fact, I'd argue that its existence has promoted the Internet as a platform.
At least in this part of the world, a single incandescent bulb is responsible for more mercury being released into the environment than would a broken CFL lamp. That's because most of our electricity comes from coal fired power plants and mercury is just one of the harmful byproducts.
This from popular mechanics:
Over the 7500-hour average range of one CFL, a coal plant will emit 13.16 mg of mercury to sustain a 75-watt incandescent bulb but only 3.51 mg of mercury to sustain a 20-watt CFL (the lightning equivalent of a 75-watt traditional bulb). Even if the mercury contained in a CFL was directly released into the atmosphere, an incandescent would still contribute 4.65 more milligrams of mercury into the environment over its lifetime.
I think you undervalue Jobs' role in the creation of Apple. For example, Woz really had no idea how to package the components into a case that would appeal to anyone other than a hobbyist. It was Jobs insistence that the Apple II have a switching power supply to reduce heat. Woz knew little about them. Basically every desktop computer uses a switching power supply now.
Woz has had little impact at Apple since 1978 or so. I don't think he had any involvement in the creation of the Mac.
Don't get me wrong. Without Woz, there never would have been an Apple computer to sell, but without Jobs, Woz would have likely never created a computer at all and would have spent his career at HP.
We used to home school our kids and while it's true that you can certainly spend a lot of money on materials, I'd say that's about the last thing anyone worries about when deciding whether or not to homeschool their kids. As someone else said, the biggest financial factor is having to get by on a single income.
We're not rich and neither were most of the people I met that did home school. The driving force is the feeling that their kids weren't getting what they needed from the other education options available. Or, in many cases, the parents were worried about their kids getting exposed to things they felt weren't good for the them and which contributed nothing to their education.
That doesn't mean that kindles and the like aren't a boon to home educators, I think they can be. But I don't think their existence will affect the number of people that decide to go down that road.
I could debate the pros and cons of homeschooling all day long. I will only say this: For some kids and families, it's a great option. It does not, however, replace the need for a strong public education system.
That's true. However, some Christian parents deliberately limit their name selection to not only biblical names, but names of recognized saints. Catholics are supposed to choose a patron saint for their child and name them accordingly.
And even though Moxie's parents may not have intentionally restricted themselves to saints, the pool of common names they were likely to choose from has certainly been made smaller due to our ancestors adherence to this policy.
My wife, who converted to Catholicism after our kids were born (and long after I last considered myself one), regrets the fact that we didn't name our kids after saints. The practice survives to this day.
Problem is that locally at least they have horribly inconsistent download speeds and that some throttling is probably necessary. I don't know what their user agreements are like. I don't have a problem with throttling in principle as long as the provider is very clear about the circumstances that will trigger it. There needs to be truth in labeling.
There are several businesses making a killing repairing iPhones (and other phones).
I recognize that I'm becoming an old geezer. The mini-computers we used were VAXes and they had many features that are just now starting to come into the PC world and I've missed them. The PCs did lack security and a bunch of other "Enterprise" or "Business" features, but they also brought about a huge revolution in software. Suddenly all this stuff was becoming available at an astonishing rate and at a much cheaper cost compared to what you saw in the VAX world, and you didn't need to go through IT to get it.
This revolution is occurring again with smart phones and tablets. The same concerns are being brought up, - often using the same terms, and the same thing is going to happen.
Oh and I forgot one thing. IT people tend to be solutions oriented yes. They will look long and hard for a solution, - as long is falls within their religious views on technology.
If it falls outside their views, they will fight to the death.
IT exists outside of large enterprises so I disagree with your premise. Only part of my role involves projects that have an organization wide impact. I'm also not suggesting that we say yes to every malcontent and that each person can decide whether they want Lotus Notes or MS Exchange. We'll decide on the server technology and hopefully select something that doesn't lock us into one type of client because one size does not fit all.
The Post Office doesn't dictate that you have to get your mail at your home. You can get a P.O. box. On my street, people pick out their own mail box and mine looks completely different from my neighbors. Some people don't have a box at all, just a slot. As long as it works for sending and receiving mail, it's fine.
Standardization and central control aren't evil but lock-in is. You always have to be ready to adopt new technology even if it is disruptive, - especially if it is disruptive, as long as the value is there.
Of course I'd be remise to say that every organization is the same. I think technology plays a key role in making our organization better than some of our competitors. Yeah, we probably spend more on it too. We want to foster innovation. We want smart people to work here and we want to put the tools in their hands that lets them do their job most effectively.
What a load of crap. Most of those new PC users in the 80's weren't doing innovative new things on their new PC's, they were running the software that IT tested and deployed. PC's were mainly used to replace established pen & paper work practices, not so the users could innovate.
The same is true for smart phones. Most of the people who claim to need a smart phone to do their job are just replacing a laptop that did the same job. The smart phone might be slightly more convenient but it isn't some huge world changing innovation of that particular business use.
If people had of demanded that 25 year ago PC architectures should be connected to the modern Internet they would have been laughed out of the meeting. Don't blame IT for the fact that the underlying architecture of most smart phones is not suitable to secure business practices.
I started out in IT back in the 80's. Our IT Manager wanted nothing to do with the few PCs we had in the office. The people that got them were the people who had the power to go over his head. The software that they ran wasn't IT tested and deployed. It was stuff those power users installed themselves. Probably some of it they bought on their own. About 30% of it was pirated if not more. There was no reliable automated backup procedure. No offsite storage. All of this drove my IT Manager nuts but he refused to work with the people that wanted them. In short, as far as he was concerned the underlying architecture of the PC and the DOS operating system weren't suitable for business.
Eventually he saw the writing on the wall and we started incorporating the PCs into the office network. We even began programming for them.
Get a business case together?
Why do you think PCs replaced the mini-computer in the office 25 years ago? PCs could only run one app at a time. There was no login. No hard drive unless you were one of the lucky few. Awkward backups if they were done at all. In spite of that, they took over in large part because they put power in the hands of the user instead of IT. Now IT has basically locked down the PC. I understand why and I'm not saying there aren't valid reasons. However, I think we've gone too far in many cases. We may scream: "Security!" and "Data Privacy!" but what it amounts to is that we've used these as reasons to limit productivity and innovation because we want our jobs to be easy and without risk.
IT needs to figure it out how to put power into the hands of the user or they will find their jobs disappearing into the cloud, - literally.
About 25 years ago, my boss, the IT manager, had the same attitude towards PCs. He referred to them as "toys". They lacked security. At the time you didn't even need to log into them. You had to upgrade and install software on them independently. Backing them up was problematic, etc. etc.
Of course the mini-computers and terminals we all used at the time were eventually replaced with PCs.
It's about productivity. It's about not depending on an IT department with a backlog of 2 years for every little thing. What we've done to the PC in the name of security and making life easier for IT is to make them part of a centrally controlled system just like the mini computers were 25 years ago.
Want to use a great new piece of software? Is it on the approved list? No? Too bad.
That is not how we should be doing things.
I'm an IT director. Yes, you need security. Yes, centrally controlled admin is good. Being able to roll out tested software patches on mass is good. However, our role in IT is to FACILITATE, not to be a road block. That doesn't mean we have to say yes to everything but we need to understand why people want to use these devices for work and if there is a legitimate purpose, we need to figure out how to make it happen.
Our job is to support our people, even if that makes our job harder.
Messaging is supposed to be RIM's forte. You would expect the Playbook to not only have a messaging app, but one with compelling features the others don't have, -whether their security related or otherwise.
A web app, which more than likely was designed primarily for desktop use, is a poor substitute.
When the iPhone first came out, a lot of people in our office wanted to be able to get their Lotus Notes email on it. IBM promised a native client, but it never came (not really their fault). What did happen though was the addition of ActiveSync compatibility with the iPhone email client. This let a lot of other email systems like Gmail and Exchange in the door. Unfortunately, there's still hoops to jump through to get Notes to sync with an iPhone (or Android device). Guess what email system will probably be gone in the next 6 months?
Notes does have a smart phone optimized web app and it's not bad, but it's not as good as using the native app.
Except that it's not really true.
A principle that knows what they're doing and has a supportive administration backing them can get rid of teachers, - union or not. Even if you don't want to go the route of documenting their deficiencies, you can certainly make their job highly unpleasant and move them out of direct teaching roles.
I was sitting at a leadership council meeting at my son's public school a few years ago during a time when they were negotiating another teachers' contract with the district. One of the parents started talking about the difficulty that unions created in terms of retaining the best and getting rid of the worst.
The principle quietly listened and then said: "Believe me when I say, any teacher than I don't want here will not last." Then he turned to the teachers in the room, - one of which was a union steward. "Do any of the staff here have any doubts about that?". They all shook their heads.
Do unions make it more difficult than it probably should be? Very possible. But you don't want a situation where a bad principle can fire anybody he/she sees as a trouble maker either.
That's crap. If a principle wants a teacher to move on, there are a variety of ways to get that done. The principle needs to be savvy and needs to be willing to do it. I worked with such a principle and he definitely wasn't the only one.
The bigger issue is that kids are not "one size fits all". You can take a teacher that's performing well in one school and put them in another school with a different demographic and they may have a very difficult time duplicating their past success.
Not saying that there aren't bad teachers and good teachers. There are. But people are vastly over simplifying if they think the biggest problem with the educational system is tied to teacher performance. It is unrealistic to expect schools to deal with problems that are societal in nature and start well before a kid ever sees a classroom.
Can schools do more than they are? Yes, absolutely. Training teachers in methods that work for a given demographic is key. So is hiring the right kind of teacher for the right kind of kids.
You realize that pesky government regulation, - like the ones that broke the ties between Western Union and AT&T and eventually forced AT&T to licenses its patents on UNIX to universities is largely responsible for the rise in popularity and open-ness of the OS right?
You also realize that MS Windows was developed by a private corporation right?