Wait... so you are saying when I order from Panda Express I'm not getting genuine panda meat?? What a rip off....

... is so metal!

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Thanks... I was waiting for the car analogy.

I wrote about this sentiment a few months ago. A few excerpts.

One of the reasons I like and support the use of open source software is that you can avoid most of the drama that comes from relying on 3rd party vendors. By this I mean.. you must pay exorbitant sums for ongoing maintenance, you are locked into their product upgrade treadmill, you have little say in the direction of their products, you have a single source for support, and if your vendor gets acquired there is a very good chance the product you depend on will go away or change in ways that force you to abandon it with even more pain. I’ve seen this play out from both sides of the table having spent time in both enterprise environments and working for software companies.

In my opinion those resources should be spent building and customizing systems based on open source software whenever practical. Rather than spend your time and money propping up another companies bottom line.. spend them internally refining the tools that run your business until they become a strategic advantage. Build your teams.. invest in your people and develop subject matter experts to give IT a growth path within the company. By doing this you own the results and end up with an advantage that can’t be easily duplicated. Too often IT is viewed strictly as a cost center.. and that’s a real shame because with a little leadership it doesn’t have to be that way. Better to be a builder and own the building than pay rent forever and be forced to move every time the landlord needs more money. And if you are a C level executive.. stop basing your IT strategy on what you read in airline magazines or the latest buzzword-laden reports from Gartner and their ilk.

http://jaredwatkins.com/wordpress/2011/04/dont-be-a-slave-to-your-vendors/

Pfft... you kids and your trying to be all nostalgic. My first computer didn't HAVE a hard drive.. it had a cassette tape and you were lucky to get one of those. The first system of mine that did have a hard drive had a 51/4 full height 5 meg hard drive that used an MFM interface and was manually set in bios to a 'Type 1'. It turned at 3600 rpm and could do 5 mbit/s (ok had to look those up). At the time it was immense.. both in data capacity and size and weight. You could easily kill someone with it.

We need more engineers and less lawyers. There.. fixed that for you.

That thing is awesome... it's like Pimp My Rover over at JPL. It looks like that thing requires a lot more human interaction to operate though.. and so maybe not the best choice for Mars with the lag time.

I like how you describe this... it makes perfect sense in a way that even a PHB can understand. But can I get that in a car analogy?

I've found that another good use for old pinball machine parts is to fake out Libyan terrorists who want you to build them a nuclear bomb. Of course.. experience shows the ruse doesn't hold for long.. so be sure to have a bulletproof vest and time portal handy for a quick escape.

As they found out in Pegasus... if you tap the energy of a supervolcano you are only going to hasten the eruption and the natives will think you are trying to steal their resources when you suggest they evacuate the planet.

Tell that to my only power supplier that will be raising rates by 17% soon. Forcing an electric utility to go green is fairly expensive dontcha' know.

Second!

Yep.. and luckily nothing of value was lost.

The worst part about this... is that the post office was counting on the revenue from those mailings to stay solvent. Doh! No mail for you!