Does that apply to software too? The only good software is produced by the private sector?
This just doesn't hold water. There are some things that the private sector does well. Regulate itself is not one of them. Anything that is not immediately (or ever) profitable in and of itself is also something the private sector sucks at.
In the private sector short term profitability is often the only thing that matters and there are so many things for which this is the completely wrong approach.
Agreed. I'd say Gmail is also compelling and maybe even Google Docs. A consistent set of APIs and a single platform that supported all of these products would be an awesome thing.
However that lack of a platform is maybe more of a symptom than an underlying problem. From a user perspective, the problem I struggle with when it comes to Google is that they seem to lack focus and an easily identified direction. Maybe the higher ups at Google know where they are going, but they seem to be just trying a bunch of different stuff and abandoning what doesn't catch on or leaving it to fester.
This is a big problem. Am I going to even bother to try the next thing that comes out of Google if it's not something that clearly builds on something they already have? How do I know it's going to be around?
I believe he stressed that it should be their top priority from now on.
A good platform is a wonderful thing but when you're new to a market a compelling product is far and away more important. The API can come later. It's good to know that's where you're going when you start but a complete API doesn't necessarily need to be ready at launch. The iPhone SDK wasn't available at launch. Facebook's API also came later and Amazon's services came well after it had established itself as a dominant online retailer.
Google+ is not compelling enough to get enough people to make it their main social networking site. It has nothing to do with a lack of an underlying platform.
I agree that the platform can be a major, even critical factor, in a product's long term success.
There's a lot of truth to what he said but I would argue that a complete set of APIs is maybe the 2nd or 3rd most important thing, - not the first. There's been some arguably very good platforms with excellent developer tools that failed in the marketplace because they offered nothing to the USER that was compelling enough to get them to change platforms.
Along with creating a good platform, in order to attract developers you need to be able to deliver a user base. Facebook can do that. Amazon can do that. Microsoft can do that. Apple can do that on the iPhone, it's been harder on the Mac. NeXT couldn't. OS/2 couldn't.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft all got into the market early enough with PRODUCTS that were compelling enough. It's a lot tougher for the followers. Just look at the iPad vs. Zoom vs. Touchpad. When your platform/product's usefulness actually depends on a critical mass of other people using it, - like a social network (Google+) it has to offer something so much better it gets people to switch in huge numbers. Google+ hasn't done that. Lot's of people have tried it but when you're whole reason for going there is social networking and everybody else is on Facebook, well, let's just say a good platform isn't going to save you.
So is having highly polished software that makes things easy to use. You might have to pay for it but if it saves you time and frustration or is just fun to use, what's the problem with that?
The mistake thinking that you can only have one or the other. Both can and do exist. I like it that way.
Saying that closed systems as promulgated by Jobs is not in the people's best interests of the people clearly indicates a narrow understanding of what matters to most people. Of course that vision didn't limit anyone's choices to those he approved of. There are plenty of other choices.
IMO Stallman and Jobs are more alike than different. They are both very passionate about things that matter very little to the larger society.
The problem with your argument and many others like it is that you place too small a value on the ability to bring something to market. Sure, you need the people to write the code and design the hardware, but getting it to work in a lab someplace in only part of what needs to be done. Certainly Steve Jobs wouldn't have gotten to where he did without somebody like Woz to make the visions a reality. What I think is funny is that a lot of people point out how evil Jobs is because he didn't share $5,000 in bonus money with Woz on Breakout. Sure, it was horribly selfish but Woz ended up making a fortune because of Steve Jobs. He's long since forgiven him.
I'd argue that a lot of things would have come a lot later and perhaps we'd still be waiting for if not for Steve Jobs. It was his understanding of, and connections to the entertainment business along with his understanding of the computer user that lead to the iTunes store. Could Gates have done or anyone else done that? It wasn't only salesmanship. It was attention to detail and refusal to let products out the door that didn't meet his standards.
Why do you suppose Tim Berners-Lee was using a NeXT computer? It certainly wasn't the industry standard, and I'm sorry, something like creation of the Web goes beyond the creation of Doom or graphics drivers.
Never watched a Pixar movie?
Never owned a device with a firewire port?
What about MS Windows? Windows up until at least 3.1 licensed some Mac OS technology.
Downloaded any music using a paid service? Maybe you haven't use an Apple product to do so, but Steve Jobs and company turned the music industry upside down and forever changed the way we buy music.
First web server? Written on NeXT computer. First spreadsheet? Written for an Apple computer.
Maybe you have never owned Apple product but my guess is that many of the products you do use have been profoundly influenced by Apple's designs in one way or another.
What if there was never was a Steve Jobs? What would the computer industry look like today? Would the computer as a personal device be as prevalent as it is? Would there be as many IT jobs as there are today?
I'm not saying that he was a great humanitarian or anything. But his impact on our lives is undeniable.
If nothing else, the lesson I wish the world would take from Apple and Steve Jobs is how to weather an economic downturn. Layoff staff? Hunker down? F*&k no. Make stuff people want, - not just cheaper versions of and minor improvements to what's already available. Innovate.
He had an ability to make stuff that was complicated into things mortals could do on their own. I agree that it is a shame he couldn't have applied this talent to the world's more profound problems.
I was in a similar situation. An opportunity came up that I couldn't ignore, but leaving my current company would have left them in a real bind. What did I do?
I gave them 1 months notice. I told the new company that that's the only way I would take the job and that I would probably do the same for them down the road. I actually think they were impressed by that. During that month I attended some meetings at the new company, did some "homework" and was already getting some stuff done for them before my official start date.
My old company asked if I'd mind doing some work for them now and then while they got up to speed on the things I was doing. I said as long it was something fairly quick, I'd be willing to do it.
Did I mention that this was during the dot-com bubble? Fast forward 5 months and my flashy new company had burned through all it's money. There was a buyer and what was supposedly a "done deal" fell apart at the last minute. Suddenly I was without a job. The collapse was one of the top stories in the business section of the local paper.
The next morning I get a call from my old boss: "I heard you might be looking for work."
Got a nice raise and have been there ever since. Don't burn bridges if you can avoid it.
I grew up outside a small town. My Dad worked "in town" about 4 miles away. He was a plumber essentially, and needed a van to go from job to job. However, he could have easily left his van at his office and rode a bike to work at the beginning of the day and home at the end. My mom worked for the small school district. She could have done the same. In fact at the time, most of the people who lived in that town, also worked in that town.
It just never occurred to anybody to ride a bike. In fact, people would have thought there was something wrong with any adult riding a bike to work. This has nothing to do with practicality, distance, or size of the city and everything to do with culture. It's too bad because both of my parents would have seriously benefited from the exercise and maybe have still been around today.
At the time I was only a little better, I would walk places and ride my bike but wouldn't have been caught dead riding a bike to my first real job even though I easily could have. A bike would have been more reliable than that POS 1967 Fairlane I drove when I was 16.
How often really is it that you need to transport something really heavy to work? Maybe once in awhile? So you need to drive a car 200 times a year to work for the 20 times you can't carry something on a bike?
As far as weather goes, I live in Minneapolis and ride my bike year round to work (6 miles each way) in virtually any weather. I have studded tires for the snow and ice. I know how to dress so I can be reasonably comfortable in -20 degree weather. More comfortable than the poor saps that walk 4 blocks from the parking ramp to our building. In one of the snowiest winters we've had in recent memory, there was only two days last year when I decided it was too deep for me to ride. I jogged to the train station on those days. Many people who drive to work didn't make it all.
A smaller carbon foot print is great and all, but the biggest benefit is my health.
I realize that there are people who live too far away from work to make riding a bike practical. If you live in a rural area, I can certainly understand. But most of us in the States live in cities or suburbs. We need better designed cities and towns that don't separate residential from retail the way we do. Even if you can't bike to work, you should be able to hop on a bike and grab a couple things at the store or get a bite to eat.
I'm 47 and I split my time between management and software development. Though I strive to always improve, the management aspect of my work is not something I particularly enjoy. My personal view is that my skills as a manager are easy to find in other people. My technical skills not so much.
Given that, I feel that letting my technical skills atrophy would be a huge mistake.
Yes, become proficient with web technologies. Learn HTML 5 and how to create rich applications for mobile devices. Create an app for the App Store or Android Marketplace. Get involved with an open source project.
Oh, and grow your hair out. Once you hit 40 you need long hair to be taken seriously as a developer.
At least in Northeastern Minnesota, stimulus money is being combined with money from other sources to bring broadband to hospitals, schools, local government buildings AND residents.
Also we shouldn't confuse "rural" with "farmland". Northeastern Minnesota is a rocky, sometimes forrested terrain dotted by lakes. Large swaths of it are part of a couple of national parks.
This is a fundamental question. I don't want my personal contacts, info, pictures and data on a company device. Further, it's none of their business who I call and connect with on my own time. They shouldn't be able to see those records.
At the same time, as an IT manager, I have big concerns about storing corporate info on personal devices that we don't control.
I personally don't want to carry around 2 different mobile phones, one for business and one for personal use.
The answer isn't a device that gives total sovereignty to my company. The answer is a way to partition the data that ends up on a phone as either belonging to the company or the holder of the device. A company should only be able to wipe out what's theirs, not the entire device.
As far as I know, no one has this completely figured out yet, certainly not RIM.
Oh and I forgot another point. We've made great strides in improving the efficiency of the automobile since the 70's, yet as a society we still consume more gasoline because we drive more than we did in the 70's. In a sense creating a more efficient gizmo is just pissing in the wind because we aren't dealing with the fundamental problem.
Is having twice as many clothes as my counterpart in the 50's made me happier? I doubt it. Did my Dad miss out because he had to use a screw driver that he turned with his own hand as opposed to being driven by a motor? I suspect not.
I work for an energy efficiency organization. One of the things that we're working on with the DOE is a rating for homes similar to what you see for appliances. Instead of getting a new appliance though, the idea is to make improvements to your home in order to get a better score. The rating is from 1 to 10. One issue is that you can probably only move up a couple of rating points no matter what you do. So there's talk of basing the initial score on housing type and size so that you can always get a high score if you make some improvements. This solution though masks energy hogs. In other words, the problem often isn't so much that a house needs more insulation, it's that it's 3 times as big as it needs to be.
I'm all for multiple tracks but I rarely hear people talk about consumption, only where the power should come from and sometimes efficiency. Yeah, in the short term we need new power sources but we will never solve the problem unless we attempt to curb the trends in consumption. Don't forget, we not only have an energy problem, we have an obesity epidemic. The two are related. People need to eat less and move more.
How many folks really lead a happier and more fulfilling life because we now use leaf blowers instead of rakes?
Not only efficiency but we need to deal with the other half of the equation, - consumption. For example, modern houses are more energy efficient than those built 30 years ago. The problem is that they're also a lot bigger, wiping out any savings gained from the efficiency.
We need to take a hard look at how we live our lives. How many people drive 3 miles or less to work when they could easily ride a bike? Not only would they save energy but they'd be much healthier and save themselves some money in the process.
We were primarily a Dell shop for a long time. Even with laptops from the same manufacturer they often used completely different power supplies, - meaning that if you lost or damaged one, or even left it at home you had to hope the one or two other people in the office that had laptops with the same PS could borrow you a spare until yours was replaced. Major PITA.
"blah blah blah fuckwit VP du jour blah blah blah "
I run a small IT department. A lot of people don't understand the ins and outs of our jobs, any more than we understand all the accounting rules or HR policies. For some reason though IT people can be unbelievably condescending when it comes to our area of expertise.
I overheard one of our support staff telling a Mac developer that he couldn't have admin rights to his Mac because we needed to "protect him from himself". This from a guy who has a tiny fraction of experience maintaining Macs compared to the developer he was talking to.
Let's just say I had a few words with that member of our support staff about how not to talk to our users. Further I instructed everyone that the phrase "protect you from yourself" should never come out of the mouth of anyone on our staff again. "Protect our network from increasingly sophisticated attacks", - fine. "Protect you from yourself." - not OK. Just to be clear, I'm not some dude with management experience and limited technical knowledge brought in to run the department. I have a CS degree and worn both software development and network support hats for many years.
Now I'm sure you've never called the VP in question a "fuckwit" to their face, but I will not tolerate that attitude. I had a contractor (this time it was a developer) regularly insulting one of our support staff's ability using vulgar terms behind his back. He was the sort of guy that some organizations will put up with as long a they're performing. I dumped him as soon as I could find a replacement. People like that, even if they are extremely talented, have a way of dragging the whole team down.
I don't think they'll "kill off OS X", any time soon but I do think we're going to see fewer and fewer general purpose PCs/Macs for consumers and more specialized devices. Other than enthusiasts and people in the industry, most folks won't think of the particular OS a device runs as an entity distinct from the device itself.
Sony may have very legitimate reasons for deciding that "other OS" was too risky a feature to maintain going forward. Where I fault them is not being clear to their user base. They should have come out and said: "There's an upgrade coming that will disable this feature. If having that feature is important to you, then don't upgrade, but this will mean limited access to PSN". And rather than sneak the upgrade through, which is what it sounds like they did, there should have been an easy and clear way to opt out.
Do you really think Sony would care or have any legal grounds to prevent somebody from turning a PS3 into an alarm clock with a remote or a fish tank? As long it's not trying to connect to the PSN network and present itself as a PS3 running an unaltered and legitimate version of the firmware, no one would care. Unless of course the mods circumvented content protection (whether you agree with current laws or not, they're still laws).
Can you take a firearm you own and modify it anyway you want? File off the S/N because it ruins the aesthetic? Of course not. Certain mods lend themselves to criminal activity. Your rights end when the safety of others start to come into play. And yes, a PS3 deliberately modified to enable a feature deemed as a risk to security is a safety issue for other PSN users.
And I agree that people have a right to be angry, just like when the people in a home owner's association no longer get their driveways plowed even though that was part of the deal when they first moved in.
I'll even grant this this is worse given that the people in a homeowner's association have some say over who runs it.
But Sony decided that it was a security risk, that not all people who want to run linux have pure motives (which is apparently true) and so they took it away knowing that it would anger a small fraction of their customers. Could they have done it a better way? Was there another alternative? Sure. They didn't handle this well, but that doesn't even close to justify what's been happening.
PS/3 users have been denied access to the Sony gaming network limiting the functionality of other people's PS3s in a significant way. It's also not clear what private information may have been stolen. I'd say this has been damaging to other PS3 owners don't you think?
And your response is that it's their fault for buying a PS3? Nice.
The vast majority of them had no idea that it was ever an option to run linux, nor did they care. You really think they stood there in the store in front of the display debating whether or not they should "give up their freedom" by buying the PS3?
It's not a war. It's a product you can buy or not, continue to use or not, keep or sell. There are countless other options for running linux.
Get mad at Sony. Quit buying their stuff. Write letters. Dis them on blogs and gaming forums.
Do you think hacking their network makes them sorry for taking the feature away? That they'll recognize the error of their ways and bring it back? More likely it just makes them sorry for ever including it in the first place and you will never see it in another Sony product. Not only that but anyone else considering offering the option of running another OS on their console is probably thinking twice.
Let's be clear though. The substantial piece of functionality was not an advertised feature, just a side effect of how it was built.
It's more like an architect removing a large unused hidden space between the walls that 98% of the home buyers didn't know even existed. Then because some fraction of a percent of the home buyers was pissed off, they decided to destroy the air conditioners on all the other homes. It's juvenile.
Just like you agree to the rules of a homeowner's association, you agree to abide by the software agreement before you first use the console.
And just like the software agreement, the rules of the homeowner's association can change. They may want to put new vinyl siding on. Guess what? Even if you don't like you'll probably have to pay for at least some of it. Don't like it? Move out.
Sony wasn't forcing anybody to upgrade were they? If you don't upgrade, you may not get access to all the services anymore, but you don't own the service, you're right to use it is conditional.
Was the ability to run linux an advertised feature of the PS/3? I bet not.
It sounds like all they were trying to do WAS restrict what was allowed to connect to their network. And that should include a PS/3 that's been modified to have much more capability and potentially be much more of a security threat than an unmodified PS/3.
Slashdot Mirror
Does that apply to software too? The only good software is produced by the private sector?
This just doesn't hold water. There are some things that the private sector does well. Regulate itself is not one of them. Anything that is not immediately (or ever) profitable in and of itself is also something the private sector sucks at.
In the private sector short term profitability is often the only thing that matters and there are so many things for which this is the completely wrong approach.
Agreed. I'd say Gmail is also compelling and maybe even Google Docs. A consistent set of APIs and a single platform that supported all of these products would be an awesome thing.
However that lack of a platform is maybe more of a symptom than an underlying problem. From a user perspective, the problem I struggle with when it comes to Google is that they seem to lack focus and an easily identified direction. Maybe the higher ups at Google know where they are going, but they seem to be just trying a bunch of different stuff and abandoning what doesn't catch on or leaving it to fester.
This is a big problem. Am I going to even bother to try the next thing that comes out of Google if it's not something that clearly builds on something they already have? How do I know it's going to be around?
I believe he stressed that it should be their top priority from now on.
A good platform is a wonderful thing but when you're new to a market a compelling product is far and away more important. The API can come later. It's good to know that's where you're going when you start but a complete API doesn't necessarily need to be ready at launch. The iPhone SDK wasn't available at launch. Facebook's API also came later and Amazon's services came well after it had established itself as a dominant online retailer.
Google+ is not compelling enough to get enough people to make it their main social networking site. It has nothing to do with a lack of an underlying platform.
I agree that the platform can be a major, even critical factor, in a product's long term success.
There's a lot of truth to what he said but I would argue that a complete set of APIs is maybe the 2nd or 3rd most important thing, - not the first. There's been some arguably very good platforms with excellent developer tools that failed in the marketplace because they offered nothing to the USER that was compelling enough to get them to change platforms.
Along with creating a good platform, in order to attract developers you need to be able to deliver a user base. Facebook can do that. Amazon can do that. Microsoft can do that. Apple can do that on the iPhone, it's been harder on the Mac. NeXT couldn't. OS/2 couldn't.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft all got into the market early enough with PRODUCTS that were compelling enough. It's a lot tougher for the followers. Just look at the iPad vs. Zoom vs. Touchpad. When your platform/product's usefulness actually depends on a critical mass of other people using it, - like a social network (Google+) it has to offer something so much better it gets people to switch in huge numbers. Google+ hasn't done that. Lot's of people have tried it but when you're whole reason for going there is social networking and everybody else is on Facebook, well, let's just say a good platform isn't going to save you.
Free and open software is a benefit to society.
So is having highly polished software that makes things easy to use. You might have to pay for it but if it saves you time and frustration or is just fun to use, what's the problem with that?
The mistake thinking that you can only have one or the other. Both can and do exist. I like it that way.
Saying that closed systems as promulgated by Jobs is not in the people's best interests of the people clearly indicates a narrow understanding of what matters to most people. Of course that vision didn't limit anyone's choices to those he approved of. There are plenty of other choices.
IMO Stallman and Jobs are more alike than different. They are both very passionate about things that matter very little to the larger society.
The problem with your argument and many others like it is that you place too small a value on the ability to bring something to market. Sure, you need the people to write the code and design the hardware, but getting it to work in a lab someplace in only part of what needs to be done. Certainly Steve Jobs wouldn't have gotten to where he did without somebody like Woz to make the visions a reality. What I think is funny is that a lot of people point out how evil Jobs is because he didn't share $5,000 in bonus money with Woz on Breakout. Sure, it was horribly selfish but Woz ended up making a fortune because of Steve Jobs. He's long since forgiven him.
I'd argue that a lot of things would have come a lot later and perhaps we'd still be waiting for if not for Steve Jobs. It was his understanding of, and connections to the entertainment business along with his understanding of the computer user that lead to the iTunes store. Could Gates have done or anyone else done that? It wasn't only salesmanship. It was attention to detail and refusal to let products out the door that didn't meet his standards.
Why do you suppose Tim Berners-Lee was using a NeXT computer? It certainly wasn't the industry standard, and I'm sorry, something like creation of the Web goes beyond the creation of Doom or graphics drivers.
Never watched a Pixar movie? Never owned a device with a firewire port?
What about MS Windows? Windows up until at least 3.1 licensed some Mac OS technology.
Downloaded any music using a paid service? Maybe you haven't use an Apple product to do so, but Steve Jobs and company turned the music industry upside down and forever changed the way we buy music.
First web server? Written on NeXT computer. First spreadsheet? Written for an Apple computer.
Maybe you have never owned Apple product but my guess is that many of the products you do use have been profoundly influenced by Apple's designs in one way or another.
What if there was never was a Steve Jobs? What would the computer industry look like today? Would the computer as a personal device be as prevalent as it is? Would there be as many IT jobs as there are today?
I'm not saying that he was a great humanitarian or anything. But his impact on our lives is undeniable.
If nothing else, the lesson I wish the world would take from Apple and Steve Jobs is how to weather an economic downturn. Layoff staff? Hunker down? F*&k no. Make stuff people want, - not just cheaper versions of and minor improvements to what's already available. Innovate.
He had an ability to make stuff that was complicated into things mortals could do on their own. I agree that it is a shame he couldn't have applied this talent to the world's more profound problems.
I was in a similar situation. An opportunity came up that I couldn't ignore, but leaving my current company would have left them in a real bind. What did I do?
I gave them 1 months notice. I told the new company that that's the only way I would take the job and that I would probably do the same for them down the road. I actually think they were impressed by that. During that month I attended some meetings at the new company, did some "homework" and was already getting some stuff done for them before my official start date.
My old company asked if I'd mind doing some work for them now and then while they got up to speed on the things I was doing. I said as long it was something fairly quick, I'd be willing to do it.
Did I mention that this was during the dot-com bubble? Fast forward 5 months and my flashy new company had burned through all it's money. There was a buyer and what was supposedly a "done deal" fell apart at the last minute. Suddenly I was without a job. The collapse was one of the top stories in the business section of the local paper.
The next morning I get a call from my old boss: "I heard you might be looking for work."
Got a nice raise and have been there ever since. Don't burn bridges if you can avoid it.
You must have done something right.
I grew up outside a small town. My Dad worked "in town" about 4 miles away. He was a plumber essentially, and needed a van to go from job to job. However, he could have easily left his van at his office and rode a bike to work at the beginning of the day and home at the end. My mom worked for the small school district. She could have done the same. In fact at the time, most of the people who lived in that town, also worked in that town.
It just never occurred to anybody to ride a bike. In fact, people would have thought there was something wrong with any adult riding a bike to work. This has nothing to do with practicality, distance, or size of the city and everything to do with culture. It's too bad because both of my parents would have seriously benefited from the exercise and maybe have still been around today.
At the time I was only a little better, I would walk places and ride my bike but wouldn't have been caught dead riding a bike to my first real job even though I easily could have. A bike would have been more reliable than that POS 1967 Fairlane I drove when I was 16.
How often really is it that you need to transport something really heavy to work? Maybe once in awhile? So you need to drive a car 200 times a year to work for the 20 times you can't carry something on a bike?
As far as weather goes, I live in Minneapolis and ride my bike year round to work (6 miles each way) in virtually any weather. I have studded tires for the snow and ice. I know how to dress so I can be reasonably comfortable in -20 degree weather. More comfortable than the poor saps that walk 4 blocks from the parking ramp to our building. In one of the snowiest winters we've had in recent memory, there was only two days last year when I decided it was too deep for me to ride. I jogged to the train station on those days. Many people who drive to work didn't make it all.
A smaller carbon foot print is great and all, but the biggest benefit is my health.
I realize that there are people who live too far away from work to make riding a bike practical. If you live in a rural area, I can certainly understand. But most of us in the States live in cities or suburbs. We need better designed cities and towns that don't separate residential from retail the way we do. Even if you can't bike to work, you should be able to hop on a bike and grab a couple things at the store or get a bite to eat.
I'm 47 and I split my time between management and software development. Though I strive to always improve, the management aspect of my work is not something I particularly enjoy. My personal view is that my skills as a manager are easy to find in other people. My technical skills not so much. Given that, I feel that letting my technical skills atrophy would be a huge mistake.
Yes, become proficient with web technologies. Learn HTML 5 and how to create rich applications for mobile devices. Create an app for the App Store or Android Marketplace. Get involved with an open source project.
Oh, and grow your hair out. Once you hit 40 you need long hair to be taken seriously as a developer.
At least in Northeastern Minnesota, stimulus money is being combined with money from other sources to bring broadband to hospitals, schools, local government buildings AND residents.
Also we shouldn't confuse "rural" with "farmland". Northeastern Minnesota is a rocky, sometimes forrested terrain dotted by lakes. Large swaths of it are part of a couple of national parks.
This is a fundamental question. I don't want my personal contacts, info, pictures and data on a company device. Further, it's none of their business who I call and connect with on my own time. They shouldn't be able to see those records.
At the same time, as an IT manager, I have big concerns about storing corporate info on personal devices that we don't control.
I personally don't want to carry around 2 different mobile phones, one for business and one for personal use.
The answer isn't a device that gives total sovereignty to my company. The answer is a way to partition the data that ends up on a phone as either belonging to the company or the holder of the device. A company should only be able to wipe out what's theirs, not the entire device.
As far as I know, no one has this completely figured out yet, certainly not RIM.
Oh and I forgot another point. We've made great strides in improving the efficiency of the automobile since the 70's, yet as a society we still consume more gasoline because we drive more than we did in the 70's. In a sense creating a more efficient gizmo is just pissing in the wind because we aren't dealing with the fundamental problem.
Is having twice as many clothes as my counterpart in the 50's made me happier? I doubt it. Did my Dad miss out because he had to use a screw driver that he turned with his own hand as opposed to being driven by a motor? I suspect not.
I work for an energy efficiency organization. One of the things that we're working on with the DOE is a rating for homes similar to what you see for appliances. Instead of getting a new appliance though, the idea is to make improvements to your home in order to get a better score. The rating is from 1 to 10. One issue is that you can probably only move up a couple of rating points no matter what you do. So there's talk of basing the initial score on housing type and size so that you can always get a high score if you make some improvements. This solution though masks energy hogs. In other words, the problem often isn't so much that a house needs more insulation, it's that it's 3 times as big as it needs to be.
I'm all for multiple tracks but I rarely hear people talk about consumption, only where the power should come from and sometimes efficiency. Yeah, in the short term we need new power sources but we will never solve the problem unless we attempt to curb the trends in consumption. Don't forget, we not only have an energy problem, we have an obesity epidemic. The two are related. People need to eat less and move more.
How many folks really lead a happier and more fulfilling life because we now use leaf blowers instead of rakes?
Not only efficiency but we need to deal with the other half of the equation, - consumption. For example, modern houses are more energy efficient than those built 30 years ago. The problem is that they're also a lot bigger, wiping out any savings gained from the efficiency.
We need to take a hard look at how we live our lives. How many people drive 3 miles or less to work when they could easily ride a bike? Not only would they save energy but they'd be much healthier and save themselves some money in the process.
We were primarily a Dell shop for a long time. Even with laptops from the same manufacturer they often used completely different power supplies, - meaning that if you lost or damaged one, or even left it at home you had to hope the one or two other people in the office that had laptops with the same PS could borrow you a spare until yours was replaced. Major PITA.
I run a small IT department. A lot of people don't understand the ins and outs of our jobs, any more than we understand all the accounting rules or HR policies. For some reason though IT people can be unbelievably condescending when it comes to our area of expertise.
I overheard one of our support staff telling a Mac developer that he couldn't have admin rights to his Mac because we needed to "protect him from himself". This from a guy who has a tiny fraction of experience maintaining Macs compared to the developer he was talking to.
Let's just say I had a few words with that member of our support staff about how not to talk to our users. Further I instructed everyone that the phrase "protect you from yourself" should never come out of the mouth of anyone on our staff again. "Protect our network from increasingly sophisticated attacks", - fine. "Protect you from yourself." - not OK. Just to be clear, I'm not some dude with management experience and limited technical knowledge brought in to run the department. I have a CS degree and worn both software development and network support hats for many years.
Now I'm sure you've never called the VP in question a "fuckwit" to their face, but I will not tolerate that attitude. I had a contractor (this time it was a developer) regularly insulting one of our support staff's ability using vulgar terms behind his back. He was the sort of guy that some organizations will put up with as long a they're performing. I dumped him as soon as I could find a replacement. People like that, even if they are extremely talented, have a way of dragging the whole team down.
I don't think they'll "kill off OS X", any time soon but I do think we're going to see fewer and fewer general purpose PCs/Macs for consumers and more specialized devices. Other than enthusiasts and people in the industry, most folks won't think of the particular OS a device runs as an entity distinct from the device itself.
Sony may have very legitimate reasons for deciding that "other OS" was too risky a feature to maintain going forward. Where I fault them is not being clear to their user base. They should have come out and said: "There's an upgrade coming that will disable this feature. If having that feature is important to you, then don't upgrade, but this will mean limited access to PSN". And rather than sneak the upgrade through, which is what it sounds like they did, there should have been an easy and clear way to opt out. Do you really think Sony would care or have any legal grounds to prevent somebody from turning a PS3 into an alarm clock with a remote or a fish tank? As long it's not trying to connect to the PSN network and present itself as a PS3 running an unaltered and legitimate version of the firmware, no one would care. Unless of course the mods circumvented content protection (whether you agree with current laws or not, they're still laws).
Can you take a firearm you own and modify it anyway you want? File off the S/N because it ruins the aesthetic? Of course not. Certain mods lend themselves to criminal activity. Your rights end when the safety of others start to come into play. And yes, a PS3 deliberately modified to enable a feature deemed as a risk to security is a safety issue for other PSN users.
And I agree that people have a right to be angry, just like when the people in a home owner's association no longer get their driveways plowed even though that was part of the deal when they first moved in.
I'll even grant this this is worse given that the people in a homeowner's association have some say over who runs it.
But Sony decided that it was a security risk, that not all people who want to run linux have pure motives (which is apparently true) and so they took it away knowing that it would anger a small fraction of their customers. Could they have done it a better way? Was there another alternative? Sure. They didn't handle this well, but that doesn't even close to justify what's been happening.
PS/3 users have been denied access to the Sony gaming network limiting the functionality of other people's PS3s in a significant way. It's also not clear what private information may have been stolen. I'd say this has been damaging to other PS3 owners don't you think?
And your response is that it's their fault for buying a PS3? Nice.
The vast majority of them had no idea that it was ever an option to run linux, nor did they care. You really think they stood there in the store in front of the display debating whether or not they should "give up their freedom" by buying the PS3?
It's not a war. It's a product you can buy or not, continue to use or not, keep or sell. There are countless other options for running linux.
Get mad at Sony. Quit buying their stuff. Write letters. Dis them on blogs and gaming forums.
Do you think hacking their network makes them sorry for taking the feature away? That they'll recognize the error of their ways and bring it back? More likely it just makes them sorry for ever including it in the first place and you will never see it in another Sony product. Not only that but anyone else considering offering the option of running another OS on their console is probably thinking twice.
Let's be clear though. The substantial piece of functionality was not an advertised feature, just a side effect of how it was built. It's more like an architect removing a large unused hidden space between the walls that 98% of the home buyers didn't know even existed. Then because some fraction of a percent of the home buyers was pissed off, they decided to destroy the air conditioners on all the other homes. It's juvenile.
Just like you agree to the rules of a homeowner's association, you agree to abide by the software agreement before you first use the console. And just like the software agreement, the rules of the homeowner's association can change. They may want to put new vinyl siding on. Guess what? Even if you don't like you'll probably have to pay for at least some of it. Don't like it? Move out. Sony wasn't forcing anybody to upgrade were they? If you don't upgrade, you may not get access to all the services anymore, but you don't own the service, you're right to use it is conditional. Was the ability to run linux an advertised feature of the PS/3? I bet not. It sounds like all they were trying to do WAS restrict what was allowed to connect to their network. And that should include a PS/3 that's been modified to have much more capability and potentially be much more of a security threat than an unmodified PS/3.
And an appropriate response for an upset homeowner is to remove another room from all the other houses built by the same architect?