there is no such thing as free software. Nobody develops software for charity. That's like saying that software developers are simply unable to experience altruism because free software development makes them "feel good" - And "feel good" is a form of profit.
If that's Microsoft's position, than clearly this organization is just another profiteer.
You must not remember the days when everybody loved that scrappy upstate Bill Gates. I don't remember the days when everyone loved Gates, and I lived through them all.
In fact, we all remember when Bill Gates announced to Homebrew that he was planning to sell his BASIC interpreter for cash. Trust me, there were quite a few displeased people - not because they wanted "good stuff for free", but because it corrupted a community that was sharing its work for the great benefit.
I thought it was fair - even smart - but I also concluded that his approach turned off the exact community that he was trying to sell to. "Customers be damned" comes to mind.
And that was back in 1976. Don't get me wrong - Apple also had a crappy dozen years, when its machines were named Macs with a number. Apple was despised, even by its strongest supporters.
But Apple later learned that you have to have great products that your customers love. Google knows this too. GM? Not so much. Microsoft? No, not any more. Maybe someday they'll come back.
GM has been in the dumps for decades - so can Microsoft. Apple and Google will continue as long as their management knows that you have to strive for excellent products.
Hmmm, maybe this guy simply isn't cut out to be an engineer.
I remember my engineering program in college. It was loaded with a bunch of student that often complained about the instructors, the program, and the lack of leniency. In every case I can recall, the whiners were the lousy students.
The short of it is that not everyone who gets into a great engineering program is really cut out to be an engineer. [Also note that many who once failed to get into a great engineering program are great engineers now]
The fact is that engineering requires a lot of hard work. Complaining about how other majors have it "so easy" is just ignoring the fact that you're a lousy student that gets a deservedly poor grade. If you aren't getting excellent grades in your courses, my wager is that you either (1) don't have what it takes, or (2) aren't studying enough, or (3) have too many other obligations to study enough.
Yes, some instructors are lousy; some are fabulous. Most institutions let you pick your courses. Choose wisely. If there aren't enough good options, you picked the wrong institution - find a new one. And unless you're currently a top notch student, stop whining about your own failings.
There's a much more substantial danger with asbestos. cigarette smoke. CO from your furnace, or from your attached garage. Radon. Electricity from the wall socket. And lead paint. These things seriously injure or kill thousands per year.
And now you tell me that mercury from my breaking-lightbulbs spree will kill my family tree? Good God!
The amount of mercury in a modern lightbulb is thousands of times less than what is found in a mercury thermometer or a thermostat. And let's not even begin to discuss the amount of mercury within traditional fluorescent bulbs and the amalgam in some fillings.
The other major handset maker -- Apple -- doesn't support Flash on the iPhone and has no plans to do so in the near future. I think this is a real problem for iPhone owners. Most iPhone owners love their Safari browser - yet they are denied all Flash content on the iPhone.
Remember that funny "get a Mac" web ad that has the PC on the ladder, attempting to repair the broken Vista signage? That was a Flash-based ad. And millions of iPhone users couldn't even see it. Or hear it.
Without Flash support, many web sites lose important advertising revenue. The lack of Flash support is a true shame, taking power away from customers who have repeatedly asked for this powerful technology. Flash has turned the web into a true capitalist marketplace. Now Apple is stripping the web of the one thing that makes it so great.
Yes, allowing the user to modify a device complicates support. But this can be dealt with - look at how e.g. HP and Dell manage user support nowadays? "Reset your system to the factory-shipped state with the included Restore partition - problem solved." This is even easier to do with the iPhone. Haha, you have never worked in tech support! Asking a user to turn back their device to the "factory default state" is asking them to dispose of their content.
"But what about their Backups?", you might ask. You must be kidding - these are users, nothing more.
I understand why Apple doesn't support Flash on the iPhone: Because Flash sucks. And I say that even knowing that you love it.
Yeah, it is a great software platform for your Webkinz and your ability to deliver those super-fancy web advertisements that everyone likes. It's also a cool platform for those awesome games, like the one where if you shoot a duck you'll be a winner of a fabulous prize. And the one where you have to choose the right urinal.
For me, believe it or not, I'm not into lousy web games. I don't like three (or more) animated ads on a web page. And I don't like my CPU chugging at 100% just because a crap web site wants to deliver a singing, dancing Flash-based ad to me.
So Apple: Good for you. I agree - Flash is merely a battery killer; a misused web technology that is much more often used for junk than for quality content. On a small-screen platform it would be unbearable. Adobe needs to address these issues before Flash gets ported to the iPhone.
I turned off Flash long ago - I'm surprised more people haven't done so.
Yeah, I also found the "10 euros a day" statement a little - um, weird. So weird that I figure that it must be a mistake.
Neither individuals or corporations will be willing to pay $5600+ per year for wireless internet connectivity. So the 10 euros per day statement must be for either something else, or just a misquote, or he's seriously confused.
In short, this is a more efficient way to perform electrolysis is a net energy saver versus current methods. If you need hydrogen for any industrial process, this is great news.
However, to take this one improvement in the realm of "electrolysis" and then take the leap to "cheap energy for our cars" is nothing short of a lie.
Obviously, this new technology is not sufficient to move a car. That's the fossil fuel industry talking - as they know that ridiculous claims around new energy technologies will disenfranchise both the public and investors on "alternative energy". Which will, in turn, protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
You're living in the past. Everyone knows IE6 was horrible. I'm running IE7 under protected mode. If you're going to talk shit, at least talk shit about current software. People who spend their time talking about how Windows 98 crashed a lot, IE5 and 6 were really insecure, [...] IE6 is current software. Its utilization is quite substantial, and is not comparable to the utilization of Windows 98 or IE5.
According to my service's traffic, about 40% of IE users still use IE6. And the most recent NetApplications survey agrees (43% of IE usage).
I speculate that IE6 usage is so high because many corporate web services require IE6 - Microsoft's upgrade to IE7 caught many foolish IT departments owners by complete surprise, despite IE7's very long and public gestation period.
Furthermore, IE6 is still supported by Microsoft. It is not "obsolete".
Here's why Forbes pretends it knows what its talking about:
AT&T announced that it will expand its 3G wireless broadband service
Broadcom, last year began "cranking out" samples of the BCM21551 3G chipsset
Apple "quietly" upgraded the storage on its highest-end iPhone to 16 GB
Jobs "complained" about the slow pages of the nytimes.com
Here are some questions that Forbes should have asked:
Is the AT&T's 3G expansion really about the iPhone, or is it about AT&T advertising the fact that it wants high-value data-centric corporate accounts to come on board?
Does the Broadcom chipset fit Apple's need? Yes, it is designed to be a low-power 3G chipset. But does it deliver, and is it designed well enough for a product like the iPhone? Is it stable and reliable?
Does a memory upgrade of the iPhone merely mean that Apple thinks users will pay for more memory if offered?
Was Jobs complaining about EDGE, or about the busy NYTimes page? After all, he was using WIFI, and he wasn't loading the simplified NYTimes mobile page.
Again, Forbes shows that journalism takes the back seat. There are plenty of great articles that could be written. Instead, we get an article that isn't even worthy of an unpopular rumor blog. Like mine.
The article's author is presenting a pronunciation opinion as a "fact":
(Kids! That word, meaning "trite" or "unoriginal", is pronounced "ba-NAHL". If you say it the wrong way like I did in an interview, it sounds naughty and you sound stupid.) The fact is that only a mere 46% of a set of experts in American English pronunciation agreed that banal rhymes with "canal". In other words, that set of experts would disagree with his claim.
From American Heritage:
"The pronunciation of banal is not settled among educated speakers of American English. Sixty years ago, H.W. Fowler recommended the pronunciation (rhyming with panel), but this pronunciation is now regarded as recondite by most Americans: it is preferred by only 2 percent of the Usage Panel. Other possibilities are (rhyming with anal), preferred by 38 percent of the Panel; (rhyming with canal), preferred by 46 percent; and (the last syllable rhyming with doll), preferred by 14 percent (this last pronunciation is more common in British English)." ... and this is from an expert panel on the language.
$100 premium for an additional 16 GB of flash on the Touch, but a $100 premium for an additional 8 GB on the iPhone. Ouch.
Although this is an unfair comparison - a decent-but-low-end 8 GB SD memory card retails for about $50; 16 GB for maybe $100. I'm not sure how the speed, power consumption, or reliability of the iPod memory compares with that of stock SD cards.
Meanwhile, the big digital music companies, such as Apple, want the royalty rate lowered even more, to something like 4% of wholesale. So any representations by any of these companies that they are concerned for the 'creators' of the music must henceforth be taken with a boxcar-load of salt." This 4% proposal is for Internet Radio, not for Digital Music Sales. From the article:
"New-media companies want the rate to go even lower, contending that it should disappear when music is digitally streamed To me, this means that some "non-label" companies think that Internet Radio should take on the common terrestrial radio songwriter royalty plan, instead of being treated substantially differently merely because the transport is the internet instead of the airwaves.
Of course, streaming internet radio is quite different than music sales.
In years past, there was no way that Microsoft would have approved such a weak op-ed piece. Maybe some low-level manager approved this one, because it is simply an embarrassment to the company - with ridiculous examples that a high school student could rip apart regardless of the interpretation of their text.
Sadly, Microsoft is at the point where it needs to step up its game and change the way it does business if it wants to remain relevant. This piece, and the purchase of Yahoo, are all signs that Microsoft can no longer manage to design its own future - instead, it needs to look to the outside to fix its internal shortcomings.
To me, that means that Microsoft will be more apt to try to buy its way out of management failures - by buying companies such as Yahoo - which in turn will bring great new ideas and assets to Microsoft, but at the huge expense of making Microsoft substantially harder to manage.
It could work out, but it's a slippery, dangerous slope, similar to (but different than) going into massive debt. But instead of a direct financial debt, it will be a huge on-going management burden - one that could only be controlled with strong merger-centric leadership.
History is full of merger failures due to culture clashes. I doubt Ballmer is the guy that can pull it off. My prediction - Ballmer be put in the twilight in 2 years or less. You heard it from me.
According to the report, affordable broadband is critical to the productivity of the economy.
Well guess what? I spend over $55 per month for my Internet service. And that includes $0.76 in taxes. Do I pay it? You bet. Hell, I'm an IT guy, so connectivity is important to me. But regular "non-IT" people? Is broadband worth $670 per year to them?
$670 is more than my telephone bill. It is even more than my monthly electric bill. That's right, I spend substantially more on Internet connectivity than on Telephone OR Electricity. Let me tell you, I'd give up broadband way before I gave up electricity or telephone.
So, all-mighty-report-writers, here's a clue: many American families aren't going to be able to pay that kind of price.
I was about 18 years old when I was putt-putting around in a small 20-foot motor boat in Narragansett Bay of off Rhode Island with some friends.
We were fishing and otherwise having a good time, when I noticed a large wave coming towards us in otherwise calm waters. In panic, I quickly pointed it out my friend Bruce who was piloting the craft. "No problem", he said, who calmly started to turn the boat into the wave. I don't think he quite understood how huge the wave was - maybe he was thinking it was the wake from another boat.... clearly its size didn't register with him.
But I sure did recognize the size of this wave, and it was considerably higher than 10 feet. I ducked and covered and held on for dear life, but it was faster or closer than I thought.
Before I was ready for it, the wave threw up the boat and slammed it back down at an unnatural angle. We were all knocked around. I was thrown from the bow to the stern of the boat, getting my body knocked on the windshield, my friends, and the seats (in that order). Bruce landed in the water, and someone helped him back on board.
The boat was flooded, but no one was seriously hurt. We checked out our bloody scrapes, put equipment back in place, and mopped up all the water in the boat.
It was weird - just this one big wave in a calm bay on a calm summer morning.
Of course if you run it in winter then you're spending $0 on it. You've got yourself a heat transfer unit with a COP of 1. That's less power you need to otherwise spend to keep your living area warm. Likewise, in the summer, your Air Conditioner needs to run all that much more to eject the 200 watts of additional heat that your PS3 is generating. Leading to even higher energy costs.
Unless you run your PS/3 outdoors in the summer, of course.
His piece is titled:
"Leopard's Release Date a Serious Mistake" But it closes with the line:
"did Apple make a serious mistake by delaying Leopard's release until October? I don't think so." So what does it all mean? To me, it means that "OS Weakly" has nothing of substance to say.
Having every single district in the country independently evaluate all the options and make its own local decisions is a recipe for inefficiency and inconsistent results. Well, you're right about the "State's rights" thing. However, the States can and often do work together to make things happen effectively and efficiently.
In this case, those states that worked together seemed to get it right. The states that did their own thing, or worse, let local jurisdictions make their own decisions were the only ones that seemed to have a fiasco.
"States rights" gives states the right to be very smart - or very stupid.
Maybe next time there is a perceived problem, congress wont rush headlong into an expensive act with a fasttrack deadline because we have to "do something!"
Sometimes you have to take the time to figure out what the real problems are and address them properly before pissing your money away on waste and potential changes that make things worse. In the case of lever machines and pucnh cards, the replacements were a waste of money and possibly made things worse. Sadly, the real problems were "figured out" long ago, and Congress merely told jurisdictions to take action quickly.
Unfortunately, there were missteps in many jurisdictions. The reasons for the missteps are up for debate, and are very politically charged, but basically includes:
Inept analysis and decision making
Poor/non-existent understanding of the voting process and related technologies
Failure to include any independent experts
In short, their inability to execute wasn't due to the timeline - it was due to the fact that many people who were supposed to be responsible and capable in the area of voting turned out to be inept political appointees who only knew how to listen to the vendors' sales pitch. Instead of involving unbiased experts, they instead portrayed themselves as "experts" and made very poor decisions.
However, to be fair, many districts around the country did make great decisions in upgrading their voting process and related technologies. I think you'll find that those districts performed detailed analysis and included unbiased experts before making a decision.
About $95 million was allocated for the BTS ERP implementation project, with $55 million earmarked for Deloitte Consulting Perhaps a big piece of the $55 million is to cover the expenses of good lawyers, who could be used to protect Deloitte from the financial burdens of a massive implementation failure. Technology consultants may no longer be a good project investment.
University professor and artist Steve Kurtz publicizes the history of chemical weapons with performance art pieces. The day his wife died of a heart attack, 911 responders mistook his scientific equipment for bioterrorism supplies. My neighbor puts on the same kind of show - you know, another one of those performance art pieces about the history of chemical weapons. It seems like no one attends his performances.... he says it has something to do with the feds scaring people away.
At first I didn't believe him, but after reading this story, I'm not so sure.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's Microsoft's position, than clearly this organization is just another profiteer.
In fact, we all remember when Bill Gates announced to Homebrew that he was planning to sell his BASIC interpreter for cash. Trust me, there were quite a few displeased people - not because they wanted "good stuff for free", but because it corrupted a community that was sharing its work for the great benefit.
I thought it was fair - even smart - but I also concluded that his approach turned off the exact community that he was trying to sell to. "Customers be damned" comes to mind.
And that was back in 1976. Don't get me wrong - Apple also had a crappy dozen years, when its machines were named Macs with a number. Apple was despised, even by its strongest supporters.
But Apple later learned that you have to have great products that your customers love. Google knows this too. GM? Not so much. Microsoft? No, not any more. Maybe someday they'll come back.
GM has been in the dumps for decades - so can Microsoft. Apple and Google will continue as long as their management knows that you have to strive for excellent products.
Hmmm, maybe this guy simply isn't cut out to be an engineer.
I remember my engineering program in college. It was loaded with a bunch of student that often complained about the instructors, the program, and the lack of leniency. In every case I can recall, the whiners were the lousy students.
The short of it is that not everyone who gets into a great engineering program is really cut out to be an engineer. [Also note that many who once failed to get into a great engineering program are great engineers now]
The fact is that engineering requires a lot of hard work. Complaining about how other majors have it "so easy" is just ignoring the fact that you're a lousy student that gets a deservedly poor grade. If you aren't getting excellent grades in your courses, my wager is that you either (1) don't have what it takes, or (2) aren't studying enough, or (3) have too many other obligations to study enough.
Yes, some instructors are lousy; some are fabulous. Most institutions let you pick your courses. Choose wisely. If there aren't enough good options, you picked the wrong institution - find a new one. And unless you're currently a top notch student, stop whining about your own failings.
By the way, I don't hire whiners.
Good luck.
There's a much more substantial danger with asbestos. cigarette smoke. CO from your furnace, or from your attached garage. Radon. Electricity from the wall socket. And lead paint. These things seriously injure or kill thousands per year.
And now you tell me that mercury from my breaking-lightbulbs spree will kill my family tree? Good God!
The amount of mercury in a modern lightbulb is thousands of times less than what is found in a mercury thermometer or a thermostat. And let's not even begin to discuss the amount of mercury within traditional fluorescent bulbs and the amalgam in some fillings.
Remember that funny "get a Mac" web ad that has the PC on the ladder, attempting to repair the broken Vista signage? That was a Flash-based ad. And millions of iPhone users couldn't even see it. Or hear it.
Without Flash support, many web sites lose important advertising revenue. The lack of Flash support is a true shame, taking power away from customers who have repeatedly asked for this powerful technology. Flash has turned the web into a true capitalist marketplace. Now Apple is stripping the web of the one thing that makes it so great.
In Sarcasm,
LanceJ
"But what about their Backups?", you might ask. You must be kidding - these are users, nothing more.
I understand why Apple doesn't support Flash on the iPhone: Because Flash sucks. And I say that even knowing that you love it.
Yeah, it is a great software platform for your Webkinz and your ability to deliver those super-fancy web advertisements that everyone likes. It's also a cool platform for those awesome games, like the one where if you shoot a duck you'll be a winner of a fabulous prize. And the one where you have to choose the right urinal.
For me, believe it or not, I'm not into lousy web games. I don't like three (or more) animated ads on a web page. And I don't like my CPU chugging at 100% just because a crap web site wants to deliver a singing, dancing Flash-based ad to me.
So Apple: Good for you. I agree - Flash is merely a battery killer; a misused web technology that is much more often used for junk than for quality content. On a small-screen platform it would be unbearable. Adobe needs to address these issues before Flash gets ported to the iPhone.
I turned off Flash long ago - I'm surprised more people haven't done so.
Yeah, I also found the "10 euros a day" statement a little - um, weird. So weird that I figure that it must be a mistake.
Neither individuals or corporations will be willing to pay $5600+ per year for wireless internet connectivity. So the 10 euros per day statement must be for either something else, or just a misquote, or he's seriously confused.
In short, this is a more efficient way to perform electrolysis is a net energy saver versus current methods. If you need hydrogen for any industrial process, this is great news.
However, to take this one improvement in the realm of "electrolysis" and then take the leap to "cheap energy for our cars" is nothing short of a lie.
Obviously, this new technology is not sufficient to move a car. That's the fossil fuel industry talking - as they know that ridiculous claims around new energy technologies will disenfranchise both the public and investors on "alternative energy". Which will, in turn, protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
According to my service's traffic, about 40% of IE users still use IE6. And the most recent NetApplications survey agrees (43% of IE usage).
I speculate that IE6 usage is so high because many corporate web services require IE6 - Microsoft's upgrade to IE7 caught many foolish IT departments owners by complete surprise, despite IE7's very long and public gestation period.
Furthermore, IE6 is still supported by Microsoft. It is not "obsolete".
Here are some questions that Forbes should have asked:
Again, Forbes shows that journalism takes the back seat. There are plenty of great articles that could be written. Instead, we get an article that isn't even worthy of an unpopular rumor blog. Like mine.
The article's author is presenting a pronunciation opinion as a "fact": (Kids! That word, meaning "trite" or "unoriginal", is pronounced "ba-NAHL". If you say it the wrong way like I did in an interview, it sounds naughty and you sound stupid.) The fact is that only a mere 46% of a set of experts in American English pronunciation agreed that banal rhymes with "canal". In other words, that set of experts would disagree with his claim.
From American Heritage: "The pronunciation of banal is not settled among educated speakers of American English. Sixty years ago, H.W. Fowler recommended the pronunciation (rhyming with panel), but this pronunciation is now regarded as recondite by most Americans: it is preferred by only 2 percent of the Usage Panel. Other possibilities are (rhyming with anal), preferred by 38 percent of the Panel; (rhyming with canal), preferred by 46 percent; and (the last syllable rhyming with doll), preferred by 14 percent (this last pronunciation is more common in British English)." ... and this is from an expert panel on the language.
Source: http://www.bartleby.com/61/18/B0051800.html
Next thing he'll be telling us is that "Windows Vista" and "Piece of Shit" aren't homonyms. Good luck with that.
$100 premium for an additional 16 GB of flash on the Touch, but a $100 premium for an additional 8 GB on the iPhone. Ouch.
Although this is an unfair comparison - a decent-but-low-end 8 GB SD memory card retails for about $50; 16 GB for maybe $100. I'm not sure how the speed, power consumption, or reliability of the iPod memory compares with that of stock SD cards.
Of course, streaming internet radio is quite different than music sales.
In years past, there was no way that Microsoft would have approved such a weak op-ed piece. Maybe some low-level manager approved this one, because it is simply an embarrassment to the company - with ridiculous examples that a high school student could rip apart regardless of the interpretation of their text.
Sadly, Microsoft is at the point where it needs to step up its game and change the way it does business if it wants to remain relevant. This piece, and the purchase of Yahoo, are all signs that Microsoft can no longer manage to design its own future - instead, it needs to look to the outside to fix its internal shortcomings.
To me, that means that Microsoft will be more apt to try to buy its way out of management failures - by buying companies such as Yahoo - which in turn will bring great new ideas and assets to Microsoft, but at the huge expense of making Microsoft substantially harder to manage.
It could work out, but it's a slippery, dangerous slope, similar to (but different than) going into massive debt. But instead of a direct financial debt, it will be a huge on-going management burden - one that could only be controlled with strong merger-centric leadership.
History is full of merger failures due to culture clashes. I doubt Ballmer is the guy that can pull it off. My prediction - Ballmer be put in the twilight in 2 years or less. You heard it from me.
According to the report, affordable broadband is critical to the productivity of the economy.
Well guess what? I spend over $55 per month for my Internet service. And that includes $0.76 in taxes. Do I pay it? You bet. Hell, I'm an IT guy, so connectivity is important to me. But regular "non-IT" people? Is broadband worth $670 per year to them?
$670 is more than my telephone bill. It is even more than my monthly electric bill. That's right, I spend substantially more on Internet connectivity than on Telephone OR Electricity. Let me tell you, I'd give up broadband way before I gave up electricity or telephone.
So, all-mighty-report-writers, here's a clue: many American families aren't going to be able to pay that kind of price.
Don't be shocked if "PC Load Letter" replaces "hanging chads".
Oh, one more thing, before anyone replies. It wasn't actually rouge. It was pretty much the same color as any other part of the ocean.
Friggin' spell check doesn't check MY spelling, damn it.
I was about 18 years old when I was putt-putting around in a small 20-foot motor boat in Narragansett Bay of off Rhode Island with some friends.
We were fishing and otherwise having a good time, when I noticed a large wave coming towards us in otherwise calm waters. In panic, I quickly pointed it out my friend Bruce who was piloting the craft. "No problem", he said, who calmly started to turn the boat into the wave. I don't think he quite understood how huge the wave was - maybe he was thinking it was the wake from another boat.... clearly its size didn't register with him.
But I sure did recognize the size of this wave, and it was considerably higher than 10 feet. I ducked and covered and held on for dear life, but it was faster or closer than I thought.
Before I was ready for it, the wave threw up the boat and slammed it back down at an unnatural angle. We were all knocked around. I was thrown from the bow to the stern of the boat, getting my body knocked on the windshield, my friends, and the seats (in that order). Bruce landed in the water, and someone helped him back on board.
The boat was flooded, but no one was seriously hurt. We checked out our bloody scrapes, put equipment back in place, and mopped up all the water in the boat.
It was weird - just this one big wave in a calm bay on a calm summer morning.
Unless you run your PS/3 outdoors in the summer, of course.
His piece is titled: "Leopard's Release Date a Serious Mistake" But it closes with the line: "did Apple make a serious mistake by delaying Leopard's release until October? I don't think so." So what does it all mean? To me, it means that "OS Weakly" has nothing of substance to say.
In this case, those states that worked together seemed to get it right. The states that did their own thing, or worse, let local jurisdictions make their own decisions were the only ones that seemed to have a fiasco.
"States rights" gives states the right to be very smart - or very stupid.
Sometimes you have to take the time to figure out what the real problems are and address them properly before pissing your money away on waste and potential changes that make things worse. In the case of lever machines and pucnh cards, the replacements were a waste of money and possibly made things worse. Sadly, the real problems were "figured out" long ago, and Congress merely told jurisdictions to take action quickly.
Unfortunately, there were missteps in many jurisdictions. The reasons for the missteps are up for debate, and are very politically charged, but basically includes:
- Inept analysis and decision making
- Poor/non-existent understanding of the voting process and related technologies
- Failure to include any independent experts
In short, their inability to execute wasn't due to the timeline - it was due to the fact that many people who were supposed to be responsible and capable in the area of voting turned out to be inept political appointees who only knew how to listen to the vendors' sales pitch. Instead of involving unbiased experts, they instead portrayed themselves as "experts" and made very poor decisions.However, to be fair, many districts around the country did make great decisions in upgrading their voting process and related technologies. I think you'll find that those districts performed detailed analysis and included unbiased experts before making a decision.
At first I didn't believe him, but after reading this story, I'm not so sure.