Apple's taking the position that they don't "mean" to brick it, but it just "might happen" anyways, which of course is total bullshit. As someone who has worked in the world of firmware of the mobile telephone industry, I can tell you that users can very well "brick" their device once they start messing with low level code.
All of our code went through an amazing amount of quality control - from design to deployment - to ensure that device never becomes a brick. However, in one instance, I recall another manufacturer with exactly that problem - the software was flawed enough such that the device could brick itself.
There was a work-around: ship the unit back to a service center, have a tech open up the device, and snap on a specialty programmer to reload the corrected low level code. The problem was that the manufacturer was not prepared for such an event, and so they didn't have the techs or equipment to perform this service fast enough for consumers. The cost went into several millions.
Of course, that's the case of a device with a flaw delivered from the manufacturer. It's quite different when the customer starts messing around with the guts of low-level firmware. At that point, it is only fair to have the customer pay for the physical disassembly and reprogramming, shipping, and associated administrative costs.
So "might" it happen? Yes, as it has happened, both by the manufacturer (in error), and countless times by individuals who screw around and inadvertently change APIs or inject buggy code that could be invoked by a simple software update. This isn't just an Apple thing - it happens industry wide.
I'm not saying that iPhone hackers are wrong. I'm just saying that they have to be very careful, and be prepared to "eat the cost" of any changes that brick the device. Changing low-level code is NEVER something to do without a lot of careful checking.
Hell, I know of a few dozen motherboard manufacturers that say that you should never upgrade your BIOS with even official updates unless you are very very sure that you need the update. I'm sure THEY wouldn't be too keen on getting back a few 10,000 motherboards with crapped out, user-customized BIOS firmware - why should Apple?
For those who are not familiar with the operations of Moffett Field:
Moffett has fairly extensive facilities that are not nearly as heavily utilized as they were during the cold war and WW2, and it is in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Moffett is no longer a military base, but a federal facility that is used for many purposes - mostly but not exclusively centered around technology.
For perhaps a decade, NASA has been leasing out commercial space to private enterprises at Moffett for not only NASA-related research operations, but for general, business operations of private institutions. In additional, there are private educational institutions at Moffett.
The quote was truncated. Here it is in its totality:
"But we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited by one category -- and Java does a better job of capturing exactly that sentiment than any other four letter symbol.
Our first choice was the even more accurate DEAD, but that symbol was already taken by Emerson Burial Caskets."
No, a cartel implies collusion. I am not trying to suggest that Apple and eMusic work together in the sense of collusion, but in terms of a user's experience.
If I usnderstand their business practices correctly, eMusic unilaterally chose not to get themselves into a battle against iTunes, where all others (Napster, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) failed to become profitable.
Legal on-line music distribution is a difficult business to get into. eMusic found a decent way - one which permits the user to keep their relationship with iTunes/iPod, but allows the users to shop at eMusic too. Most other services force you to abandon iTunes, but don't provide enough reason for most users to leave iTunes.
One source speculated that Apple wanted to get fixes in users' hands ahead of the Black Hat conference where details of early iPhone vulnerabilities could be revealed. Admittedly, I had speculated this, but I have no basis to believe that Apple "rushed out" these fixes or had a timeline based on the conference. Instead, my speculation was that Apple merely wanted these fixes out earlier than later, and that some on the inside were happy that the fixes were released in such a timely manner.
Why would Apple want their iPhone users paying someone else for music? They want to lock their customers in to buying only from them. Actually, to clarify, eMusic files work just fine with iPods and the iPhone. It's just that the higher-price AT&T-partnered eMusic service works with specific AT&T-supported cell phones, which do not include the iPhone.
The genius of eMusic is that they don't try to compete head-to-head with iTunes or the iPod - instead, they work together.
MercExchange. MercExchange Who? I know, I know, don't let the door hit me on the way out. The only disturbing part of all this is that it would appear that perhaps the law favors large, recognized companies. Small companies and individuals would seem to have a substantial disadvantage under the law.
Don't get me wrong - I think patent law has been totally out of control for the last decade or more. I also think it has its place. But in all cases, I'd hope that the law would apply to everyone, and not just for the protection and benefit of the largest, wealthiest, or most highly recognized names.
This seems to be pop law. "I'm not ruling in your favor, as you're not the type of company/organization/person I think you should be, and some other things". It isn't that the law is being interpreted here - it's that a judgement is being passed on the qualities of one of the parties, without regard to the law.
Sounds like the new, crappy judicial system is coming back into town. The super-wealthy may rejoice.
I'm in the IT industry, and I have been for the past God-knows-how-many years.
I work with a bunch of excellent IT professionals, and many of them don't have any kind of technical degree. That being said, I think a strong foundation in computer science is very useful.
An understanding of how "computers work" and what is possible versus impractical or even impossible is, in the least, advantageous. It -is- useful to know how the guts of an operating system works, and why. It is good to know about the details of memory management, compilers, and how to design a correct algorithm and understand its efficiency.
But, of course, you could be successful without formal education in those areas.
In short, whatever you decide, just make sure you get a great education and that you get as much out of it as you can. And remember, if you didn't learn everything you wanted to while at university, you can always go back to school and learn about more stuff.
Um, I think I'll stop my family's summertime Lake Michigan vacations.
The fact is that I don't think I want to boat, or have my kids play, in the water there.
Sure, maybe it'll only be so many thousand tons of crud in a bazillion gallons of water. But if anyone in my family ever came down with any disease in the next 40 years, I'd certainly feel a bit guilty.
I imagine that most people who don't pay attention to their electric power consumption can easily cut their power consumption in half, or more, with very little effort. I know I did, and it saves me hundreds of dollars a year.
The simple answer is to turn off equipment that's not in use. It's easy to start with computers and game consoles, but there are other big power consumers in most homes. Sadly, it is nearly impossible to buy equipment with any knowledge of its power efficiency and the performance of its "sleep" capabilities.
I challenge others to plot and publish their power consumption in KW-hours over time. In the least, its interesting to see how much power you use and how much you can reduce consumption without impacting your lifestyle. And it's likely that even if you do the bare minimum, you can save a few hundred dollars worth of power in a year.
In an effort to decrease costs Sony continues to reduce features, and continue to develop their offering. I don't get it. What features were removed from the console?
I understand that Sony has dropped the price of the PS3, and I understand that they've updated its internals for the sake of manufacturing expense.
But it seems to me that the feature set available to the user are identical. Am I missing something?
Since cable bandwidth is shared, wouldn't the time of the test matter? FYI, practically all internet traffic traverses shared communication lines. The point-to-point connection of DSL becomes shared as soon as your local copper pair is squeezed onto a multiplexed line, within a few thousand feet of your home.
In contrast I have heard bad things about Comcast. So now that I am up in the Philadelphia PA area visiting my parents, I decided to test out the speed and reliability using the Speakeasy speed test. I've seen the same thing in the other Comcast markets (but not all over). What would it take for Comcast to throttle all traffic except that going through Speakeasy's "speedtest" IPs? I'm imagine very little, and it likely could make some people feel good about Comcast's performance. That's not to suggest that Comcast is actually faking it - I'm just saying that it could be done. Clearly, Comcast wouldn't do this - it'd be a stupid risk for them.
In any case, maximum download throughput is only a part of service quality. You also need to measure network latency, upload throughput, DNS quality and performance, DHCP reliability, mail services, etc etc.
Network download bitrate is like yesteryear's "MHz wars" - a nearly meaningless value unless the whole system is understood, but a fabulous marketing device.
FYI - my bill for Comcast Internet service is over $55 per month. More than I pay per month in electricity.
1. They didn't cut the existing copper to the house. The installer said they don't do that if there is more then one family or if the customer asks them not to. But even if they had I could still get phone only service over fiber for the same price as over copper. It doesn't matter much as we don't have a LAN lane, only cell phones. That's not what Verizon did to me.
I have a two-family rental property. One family recently had Verizon FIOS installed. The other family is cell-phone only (single guy) with four idle copper lines.
Verizon cut all copper to the house.
The 1st unit now has Verizon fiber and lost its copper connection. The 2nd unit lost its copper, and now has no connection to the street.
and once windows is loaded Windows has full control of your system. The "full control of your system" and "Windows" in a misnomer. It's the spyware that's really in control.
[But more importantly, someone named Dolly Llama must be the creator of the fur of a cat, no?] --Lance.
See, there's your error right there. OS X is not perfect, but it *is* still better than Windows at security (as is pretty much every other multi-user operating system ever made). Correct! I'm not sure if the moderator Trolled me because he didn't interpret my statement as Sarcasm, or if he recognized the sarcasm and hated me for it. I assume the former, but in either case I guess it is troll-like behavior.
Guilty as charged. I feel like Henry David Thoreau.
Although it needs some more sophisitication the cost of it is less than $50,000. Now that a penny infront of the obscene amounts of money NASA spends every day. Read the article again.
That's $50,000 for a prototype robot that they wish could be used on the moon. It is not a production model, it is not slated to go to the moon, and there are no plans to send it to the moon. Ever.
According to the article, which you clearly failed to interpret:
They have now have shown interest in our prototype. The organisation is seriously considering collaboration with us So, a couple folks have looked at it, and they conveyed that they found it interesting. If fact, someone at the instituion thinks the space agency is considering a (mere) collaboration. That's a far and distant cry from them delivering a space-capable robot.
Suddenly, this $50,000 student-built prototype robot seems like it could be a squandering of institutional funds, and that someone is trying to cover it up by pretending that it will go to the moon.
*Please*, no more, "Oh my god! OS X isn't bulletproof! Teh shock!" 'news' items. Whoa! You're completely missing the point.
The point is that Mac users are smug. They generally believe that they have better platform than Windows users, and it is the community's responsibility to continually let them know that their platform is, in fact, not perfect.
Furthermore, continual pointless rantings and debate about tired matters is what keeps readers like you and me coming back.
Question is, why did it take 28 years?" I know that I want my employer to continuously investigate all of its employees to make sure that everything remains on the up-and-up, and to make sure that all potential oversights regarding personnel are rectified.
In fact, since every employer should want continual investigations of its employees, we should just let the government investigate all of us all the time. If new allegations arise, they can be added to a centralized file. It'd be very efficient, saving costs and benefiting from economies of scale. Also, a matrix of relationships can be built. Are you a graduate of MIT? Then you could be a questionable employee, since you may have been given a degree due to this deceptive LIAR admitting you into an MIT program. Did you, like many inside MIT and across the country, believe that she was one of the finest admissions deans in the country? Then you are a FOOL, because she LIED to get a job, didn't have a degree, let alone a Ph.D. And so you should be fired, or at least laughed at.
Oh, I know some will complain... "oh, but don't investigate me - I haven't done ANYthing wrong!" Well, if you think continual employee investigations are a bad idea, then you must have something to hide. And you must be kidding yourself if you don't think they're already here, even within all sorts of otherwise pedestrian organizations.
You make some excellent points. Let me clarify a couple things:
the parent poster got something that worked cross-browser, at the cost of a few days labor by three developers. Can that much developer time be spared on every project? I'd say on a lot of mine it couldn't In my case, the initial project length wouldn't have been any different if it was done right the first time - the three additional days were to fix code. If it was implemented with a good starting plan, it would have taken virtually zero hours. We would have ended up doing this class of change anyway, due to subsequent release of IE7.
In my case, poor knowledge of IT was the cause of failure. It was that the people in charge simply didn't know what they didn't know ("Firefox? What the heck is that?", and "Macintosh? Are they still in business?").
The replacement IT Chief, an outsider with broad knowledge and expertise, came in and quickly saw something that others were simply oblivious to. Of course many of us insiders knew the deal, but were well-suppressed.
I recall one client who had a massively thick corporate branding standards document which had to be obeyed meticulously in all development for them. Who really cares that the company logo is no less than X pixels from everything else and positioned according to a bunch of other guidelines? No one sane, but they sure did.
Their funeral, but he who pays, says. You said it.
Same thing in my place - some IT managers (and those paying their salary) simply aren't saavy enough in the IT arena to know what is important, even to the detrement of their business. In my case, IT and business managers simply made a common error - it looked good, so it must have been the best it could be. Instead, their lack of knowledge and poor decision making led to the potential loss of millions of dollars per month.
The CEO now uses the names of the (former) managers responsible for the old implementation, from both the IT and the retail sides, as the example of short-sightedness and management failure. "Don't give me a Rob-n-Randy Show" - Rob being the former retail VP and Randy being the former IT VP.
But let's assume you really can always do it right in ten developer-days of work. Are those extra days worth the gain of the non-IE chunk of the market? In most cases I'd say yes, but depending on the target audience, not necessarily so. I completely agree, but I'd add that if it's a project that will need to be maintained over time, then clearly you'll want to make sure that it supports the standards so you won't be totally hosed as browsers change over time. So it is more than just supporting users - it's also about having an inexpensively maintainable system - something that caught many businesses with their pants down when IE7 was released.
The primary reason why a company can only support IE is a lack of IT expertise.
With my employer, they hired contract staff to do a lot of web programming for internal use. And IE was our corporate standard. After a while, both the internal staff and the contract staff only knew about IE - my local management and the contract staff wasn't too on top of the reasons why you wouldn't want to build IE-only software.
Then my company was doing more on-line retailing, so they used the same flawed principles to build the retail site. It was basically broken on anything other than our "internal standard" browser. Corporate management was kept in the dark regarding compatability issues - sales are sales, and there was no loss of customers - we simply ignored a subset of the population.
Finally, last fall, a new IT chief was hired (the former one left on his on accord), and the new IT guy was interested in the numbers. And within about 30 seconds he saw that 0% of sales were to Safari and Mozilla users.
The 2nd in command (within IT) claimed that nothing but IE was a popular browser. He was fired in, quite literally, five minutes. Three developers (including me) were then tasked to fix the issue with the site, and within a couple days we had a well-tested site that worked with any modern standards based browser. And it was accessable too (unlike the old site). Happily, we did all this just in time for IE7.
Now, non-IE browsers account for about 15% of our on-line sales, and the new IT guy is considered by all (remaining) to be a hero.
Examples [of an infraction of students' intellectual property rights] include a student not receiving authorship on written work, or having a professor take credit for their work. The rules often change if you get paid.
Employment contracts often stipulate that the employee has relinquished intellectual property rights in the field of business of the employer.
This same idea often applied to graduate students that are paid to help out a professor.
If an employer paid you to write a chapter for a book or to invent a widget, you may not have any intellectual property rights over that work.
If you helped a professor in a lab - and if he's paying you under terms of an employment agreement, that agreement could very well stipulate that you have relinquished all IP rights. Read that agreement before you start to work. If you have a problem with it, negotiate the contractual terms.
This is how a company can "award" employee a $200 "bonus" for an invention that's worth millions of dollars.
Why should I care about ODF vs [MS's] OOXML? Both are so complex that they can only be implemented by big corporations (and Ok, big Open Source groups). Incorrect. The difference is that MS's OOXML can only be fully and completely implemented by those who agree to Microsoft's terms, as the OOXML specification depends on and references secret, Microsoft-proprietary intellectual property. In contrast, ODF can be fully implemented by anyone regardless of an agreement with Microsoft.
The embrace of a fully open standard will lead to innovation within a stagnant industry. This will lead to an improvement in Office-related products, as there will be more than one vendor that will be able to create complete, accurate, and fully compatible standards-based documents without the burdens of agreeing to Microsoft's licensing terms.
The acceptance of a file format, such as OOXML, that can only be fully and correctly implemented by agreeing to terms with Microsoft will lead to same situation we have now - you can either go with Microsoft, or you can go without sharing compatible office documents with your colleagues.
One of Microsoft's innovations is our ability to help millions of customers with our proprietary file formats. If large purchasers, such as your state government, wrongly conclude that an open standard is in their best interest, Microsoft's proprietary file format becomes substantially less valuable to all Americans, and indeed, the world.
So let us describe to you what will happen if this proposal becomes reality:
(1) Microsoft will need to compete with other products based on attributes other than file format. In turn, Microsoft products will rise in price by millions of dollars, leading to riots in your neighborhood.
(2) This will forever make the USA a 3rd world country. China will be willing to step in and take over Microsoft's responsibility as the engine of the American economy.
(3) An American innovator and icon will no longer be the richest man in the world. Americans will no longer be proud or patriotic; most, if not all, will end up voting against you. Microsoft will no longer be a name loved by millions of children - instead, it could be "Al Jezerra".
Please make your decision carefully. We have included a check of $50,000 to put towards your next campaign. See you at the golf tournament next week!
Slashdot Mirror
All of our code went through an amazing amount of quality control - from design to deployment - to ensure that device never becomes a brick. However, in one instance, I recall another manufacturer with exactly that problem - the software was flawed enough such that the device could brick itself.
There was a work-around: ship the unit back to a service center, have a tech open up the device, and snap on a specialty programmer to reload the corrected low level code. The problem was that the manufacturer was not prepared for such an event, and so they didn't have the techs or equipment to perform this service fast enough for consumers. The cost went into several millions.
Of course, that's the case of a device with a flaw delivered from the manufacturer. It's quite different when the customer starts messing around with the guts of low-level firmware. At that point, it is only fair to have the customer pay for the physical disassembly and reprogramming, shipping, and associated administrative costs.
So "might" it happen? Yes, as it has happened, both by the manufacturer (in error), and countless times by individuals who screw around and inadvertently change APIs or inject buggy code that could be invoked by a simple software update. This isn't just an Apple thing - it happens industry wide.
I'm not saying that iPhone hackers are wrong. I'm just saying that they have to be very careful, and be prepared to "eat the cost" of any changes that brick the device. Changing low-level code is NEVER something to do without a lot of careful checking.
Hell, I know of a few dozen motherboard manufacturers that say that you should never upgrade your BIOS with even official updates unless you are very very sure that you need the update. I'm sure THEY wouldn't be too keen on getting back a few 10,000 motherboards with crapped out, user-customized BIOS firmware - why should Apple?
For those who are not familiar with the operations of Moffett Field:
Moffett has fairly extensive facilities that are not nearly as heavily utilized as they were during the cold war and WW2, and it is in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Moffett is no longer a military base, but a federal facility that is used for many purposes - mostly but not exclusively centered around technology.
For perhaps a decade, NASA has been leasing out commercial space to private enterprises at Moffett for not only NASA-related research operations, but for general, business operations of private institutions. In additional, there are private educational institutions at Moffett.
The quote was truncated. Here it is in its totality:
"But we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited by one category -- and Java does a better job of capturing exactly that sentiment than any other four letter symbol.
Our first choice was the even more accurate DEAD, but that symbol was already taken by Emerson Burial Caskets."
No, a cartel implies collusion. I am not trying to suggest that Apple and eMusic work together in the sense of collusion, but in terms of a user's experience.
If I usnderstand their business practices correctly, eMusic unilaterally chose not to get themselves into a battle against iTunes, where all others (Napster, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) failed to become profitable.
Legal on-line music distribution is a difficult business to get into. eMusic found a decent way - one which permits the user to keep their relationship with iTunes/iPod, but allows the users to shop at eMusic too. Most other services force you to abandon iTunes, but don't provide enough reason for most users to leave iTunes.
The genius of eMusic is that they don't try to compete head-to-head with iTunes or the iPod - instead, they work together.
MercExchange Who?
I know, I know, don't let the door hit me on the way out. The only disturbing part of all this is that it would appear that perhaps the law favors large, recognized companies. Small companies and individuals would seem to have a substantial disadvantage under the law.
Don't get me wrong - I think patent law has been totally out of control for the last decade or more. I also think it has its place. But in all cases, I'd hope that the law would apply to everyone, and not just for the protection and benefit of the largest, wealthiest, or most highly recognized names.
This seems to be pop law. "I'm not ruling in your favor, as you're not the type of company/organization/person I think you should be, and some other things". It isn't that the law is being interpreted here - it's that a judgement is being passed on the qualities of one of the parties, without regard to the law.
Sounds like the new, crappy judicial system is coming back into town. The super-wealthy may rejoice.
I'm in the IT industry, and I have been for the past God-knows-how-many years.
I work with a bunch of excellent IT professionals, and many of them don't have any kind of technical degree. That being said, I think a strong foundation in computer science is very useful.
An understanding of how "computers work" and what is possible versus impractical or even impossible is, in the least, advantageous. It -is- useful to know how the guts of an operating system works, and why. It is good to know about the details of memory management, compilers, and how to design a correct algorithm and understand its efficiency.
But, of course, you could be successful without formal education in those areas.
In short, whatever you decide, just make sure you get a great education and that you get as much out of it as you can. And remember, if you didn't learn everything you wanted to while at university, you can always go back to school and learn about more stuff.
Um, I think I'll stop my family's summertime Lake Michigan vacations.
The fact is that I don't think I want to boat, or have my kids play, in the water there.
Sure, maybe it'll only be so many thousand tons of crud in a bazillion gallons of water. But if anyone in my family ever came down with any disease in the next 40 years, I'd certainly feel a bit guilty.
I imagine that most people who don't pay attention to their electric power consumption can easily cut their power consumption in half, or more, with very little effort. I know I did, and it saves me hundreds of dollars a year.
y -do-you-use.html
The simple answer is to turn off equipment that's not in use. It's easy to start with computers and game consoles, but there are other big power consumers in most homes. Sadly, it is nearly impossible to buy equipment with any knowledge of its power efficiency and the performance of its "sleep" capabilities.
I challenge others to plot and publish their power consumption in KW-hours over time. In the least, its interesting to see how much power you use and how much you can reduce consumption without impacting your lifestyle. And it's likely that even if you do the bare minimum, you can save a few hundred dollars worth of power in a year.
Here's my average annual power consumption chart for the past 5+ years: http://lancej.blogspot.com/2007/04/how-much-energ
I understand that Sony has dropped the price of the PS3, and I understand that they've updated its internals for the sake of manufacturing expense.
But it seems to me that the feature set available to the user are identical. Am I missing something?
$0.15 a kilowatt-hour. The trick is to turn off stuff when you're not using it. Having the A/C run all day when no one is home is just stupid.
In any case, maximum download throughput is only a part of service quality. You also need to measure network latency, upload throughput, DNS quality and performance, DHCP reliability, mail services, etc etc.
Network download bitrate is like yesteryear's "MHz wars" - a nearly meaningless value unless the whole system is understood, but a fabulous marketing device.
FYI - my bill for Comcast Internet service is over $55 per month. More than I pay per month in electricity.
I have a two-family rental property. One family recently had Verizon FIOS installed. The other family is cell-phone only (single guy) with four idle copper lines.
Verizon cut all copper to the house.
The 1st unit now has Verizon fiber and lost its copper connection.
The 2nd unit lost its copper, and now has no connection to the street.
[But more importantly, someone named Dolly Llama must be the creator of the fur of a cat, no?]
--Lance.
Guilty as charged. I feel like Henry David Thoreau.
That's $50,000 for a prototype robot that they wish could be used on the moon. It is not a production model, it is not slated to go to the moon, and there are no plans to send it to the moon. Ever.
According to the article, which you clearly failed to interpret: They have now have shown interest in our prototype. The organisation is seriously considering collaboration with us So, a couple folks have looked at it, and they conveyed that they found it interesting. If fact, someone at the instituion thinks the space agency is considering a (mere) collaboration. That's a far and distant cry from them delivering a space-capable robot.
Suddenly, this $50,000 student-built prototype robot seems like it could be a squandering of institutional funds, and that someone is trying to cover it up by pretending that it will go to the moon.
The point is that Mac users are smug. They generally believe that they have better platform than Windows users, and it is the community's responsibility to continually let them know that their platform is, in fact, not perfect.
Furthermore, continual pointless rantings and debate about tired matters is what keeps readers like you and me coming back.
In fact, since every employer should want continual investigations of its employees, we should just let the government investigate all of us all the time. If new allegations arise, they can be added to a centralized file. It'd be very efficient, saving costs and benefiting from economies of scale. Also, a matrix of relationships can be built. Are you a graduate of MIT? Then you could be a questionable employee, since you may have been given a degree due to this deceptive LIAR admitting you into an MIT program. Did you, like many inside MIT and across the country, believe that she was one of the finest admissions deans in the country? Then you are a FOOL, because she LIED to get a job, didn't have a degree, let alone a Ph.D. And so you should be fired, or at least laughed at.
Oh, I know some will complain... "oh, but don't investigate me - I haven't done ANYthing wrong!" Well, if you think continual employee investigations are a bad idea, then you must have something to hide. And you must be kidding yourself if you don't think they're already here, even within all sorts of otherwise pedestrian organizations.
In my case, poor knowledge of IT was the cause of failure. It was that the people in charge simply didn't know what they didn't know ("Firefox? What the heck is that?", and "Macintosh? Are they still in business?").
The replacement IT Chief, an outsider with broad knowledge and expertise, came in and quickly saw something that others were simply oblivious to. Of course many of us insiders knew the deal, but were well-suppressed. I recall one client who had a massively thick corporate branding standards document which had to be obeyed meticulously in all development for them. Who really cares that the company logo is no less than X pixels from everything else and positioned according to a bunch of other guidelines? No one sane, but they sure did. Their funeral, but he who pays, says. You said it.
Same thing in my place - some IT managers (and those paying their salary) simply aren't saavy enough in the IT arena to know what is important, even to the detrement of their business. In my case, IT and business managers simply made a common error - it looked good, so it must have been the best it could be. Instead, their lack of knowledge and poor decision making led to the potential loss of millions of dollars per month.
The CEO now uses the names of the (former) managers responsible for the old implementation, from both the IT and the retail sides, as the example of short-sightedness and management failure. "Don't give me a Rob-n-Randy Show" - Rob being the former retail VP and Randy being the former IT VP. But let's assume you really can always do it right in ten developer-days of work. Are those extra days worth the gain of the non-IE chunk of the market? In most cases I'd say yes, but depending on the target audience, not necessarily so. I completely agree, but I'd add that if it's a project that will need to be maintained over time, then clearly you'll want to make sure that it supports the standards so you won't be totally hosed as browsers change over time. So it is more than just supporting users - it's also about having an inexpensively maintainable system - something that caught many businesses with their pants down when IE7 was released.
The primary reason why a company can only support IE is a lack of IT expertise.
With my employer, they hired contract staff to do a lot of web programming for internal use. And IE was our corporate standard. After a while, both the internal staff and the contract staff only knew about IE - my local management and the contract staff wasn't too on top of the reasons why you wouldn't want to build IE-only software.
Then my company was doing more on-line retailing, so they used the same flawed principles to build the retail site. It was basically broken on anything other than our "internal standard" browser. Corporate management was kept in the dark regarding compatability issues - sales are sales, and there was no loss of customers - we simply ignored a subset of the population.
Finally, last fall, a new IT chief was hired (the former one left on his on accord), and the new IT guy was interested in the numbers. And within about 30 seconds he saw that 0% of sales were to Safari and Mozilla users.
The 2nd in command (within IT) claimed that nothing but IE was a popular browser. He was fired in, quite literally, five minutes. Three developers (including me) were then tasked to fix the issue with the site, and within a couple days we had a well-tested site that worked with any modern standards based browser. And it was accessable too (unlike the old site). Happily, we did all this just in time for IE7.
Now, non-IE browsers account for about 15% of our on-line sales, and the new IT guy is considered by all (remaining) to be a hero.
PS - you've heard of my employer.
Employment contracts often stipulate that the employee has relinquished intellectual property rights in the field of business of the employer.
This same idea often applied to graduate students that are paid to help out a professor.
If an employer paid you to write a chapter for a book or to invent a widget, you may not have any intellectual property rights over that work.
If you helped a professor in a lab - and if he's paying you under terms of an employment agreement, that agreement could very well stipulate that you have relinquished all IP rights. Read that agreement before you start to work. If you have a problem with it, negotiate the contractual terms.
This is how a company can "award" employee a $200 "bonus" for an invention that's worth millions of dollars.
The embrace of a fully open standard will lead to innovation within a stagnant industry. This will lead to an improvement in Office-related products, as there will be more than one vendor that will be able to create complete, accurate, and fully compatible standards-based documents without the burdens of agreeing to Microsoft's licensing terms.
The acceptance of a file format, such as OOXML, that can only be fully and correctly implemented by agreeing to terms with Microsoft will lead to same situation we have now - you can either go with Microsoft, or you can go without sharing compatible office documents with your colleagues.
Dear Representative Smith:
One of Microsoft's innovations is our ability to help millions of customers with our proprietary file formats. If large purchasers, such as your state government, wrongly conclude that an open standard is in their best interest, Microsoft's proprietary file format becomes substantially less valuable to all Americans, and indeed, the world.
So let us describe to you what will happen if this proposal becomes reality:
(1) Microsoft will need to compete with other products based on attributes other than file format. In turn, Microsoft products will rise in price by millions of dollars, leading to riots in your neighborhood.
(2) This will forever make the USA a 3rd world country. China will be willing to step in and take over Microsoft's responsibility as the engine of the American economy.
(3) An American innovator and icon will no longer be the richest man in the world. Americans will no longer be proud or patriotic; most, if not all, will end up voting against you. Microsoft will no longer be a name loved by millions of children - instead, it could be "Al Jezerra".
Please make your decision carefully. We have included a check of $50,000 to put towards your next campaign. See you at the golf tournament next week!