What you don't know, though, is the shop is a front for his more surreptitious and covert activities. Apparently, his superiors in MI6 were a little uneasy with him specifically running a shop selling spy equipment as his "cover", but he successfully convinced them that its the best disguise. You know, hiding in plain sight and all that!
Seriously, this shouldn't be moderated Funny. It should be moderated Insightful.
I'm sure I'm supposed to tell you something about my lawn now, too!
Facebook is indeed profitable.
But merely a fad. Just as much as AOL chat rooms, Friendster and MySpace, and possibly even YouTube and Twitter.
There's nothing demanding that users continue to user Facebook, nothing binds their behavior, and worst of all, user interest can easily evaporate overnight.
Oh but there is something demanding that users continue to use Facebook: The Network Effect.
And within Facebook's network effect, Critical mass has long since been surpassed and Metcalfe's Law has grown to such a large proportion that, for current users of Facebook, leaving Facebook is akin to simply switching off the internet altogether.
Agreed, it's definitely not because of an inherent character flaw of the German people.
If Stanley Milgram's experiment has taught us one thing, it's that as human beings and irrespective of our race, colour, creed and country of birth, we are all fallible and potentially open to coercion to do the bidding (or at least silently allow it to happen - something that Martin Niemöller expressed so beautifully in his "First they came.." statement) of "evil" men.
The navigational aid that you're talking about sounds a lot like "Virtual Cable". Check out the video. Amazing stuff.
Indeed. I think we're broadly in agreement here. The great thing about certain sections of Microsoft is that a lot of the managers in those areas are precisely those developers with the "developer mindset".
For example, Scott Guthrie - who I previously mentioned - was the lead developer on ASP.NET itself (the old "webforms" not the newer MVC incarnation) but is now a vice-president of the Developer Division.
Having people in a managerial capacity with some level of authority and decision making ability who are also developers with the developer mindset is very often a very good thing.
It's not just developers and managers as groups. Remember, that these days Microsoft is a huge organisation and is full of many different divisions. There's Windows, Office, XBox, Windows Phone etc. amongst many others.
The guys that are responsible for this move are the "Web Dev Div", who are a sub-group within the "Developer Division".
It contains many people, including guys like Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack (who recently left to join GitHub) etc., who have always done things that don't seem very Microsoft-like, like releasing ASP.NET MVC as an open-source product - albeit one that didn't accept outside contributions - back in 2009 along with such moves as bundling things like the open source jQuery library with Visual Studio and openly committing improvements back to the core project without trying the usual embrace, extend, extinguish tactics.
Within certain parts of Microsoft, they can, have done, and are continuing to do some very interesting, worthwhile and generally community-friendly (and not-so-evil) work.
In a well known interview with Dr. Carlo Pescio, published in Software Development, June 1997, Pescio asks Wirth:
You probably know about the 'good enough software' concept popularized by Yourdon. In many senses, it's just a rationalization of what's happening in the software world: the first company hitting the market with a feature-rich product is more likely to win the battle than the careful, quality-seeking company. Do you think there is anything developers and software organizations can do about that? I guess many developers would be happy to be given more time to develop better software, but at the same time they are rushed in the name of corporate survival. 'Educating the users' seems more a wild dream than a possibility.
to which Wirth replies:
'Good enough software' is rarely good enough. It is a sad manifestation of the spirit of modern times, in which an individual's pride in his/her work has become rare. The idea that one might derive satisfaction from his or her successful work, because that work is ingenious, beautiful, or just pleasing, has become ridiculed. Nothing but economic success and monetary reward is acceptable. Hence our occupations have become mere jobs. But quality of work can be expected only through personal satisfaction, dedication and enjoyment. In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.
You: I can't let you use the normal Dropbox because SOX made it illegal, but I can give you an account on our internal encrypted fileserver so you can share documents easily with your coworkers. User: Oh, I didn't realize it was a legal issue. Can you show me that fileserver thing?
Except most users stop listening after you've said "I can't let you use...". You're not offering solutions. Your "good IT" is really no different than "bad IT", to the user.
The user wants to use Dropbox. The solution, the only solution as far as the user is concerned, is to give them Dropbox!
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion
