I can't believe I'm saying this. I can't believe I have to say this.

This has been my life for the past couple decades. I am often the "voice of reason", and I don't have the heart to tell folks "No, I'm the voice of common sense", although I suspect they wouldn't get it.

So bad executive behavior, which has been immortalized in dilbert for *decades*, is now worthy of an essay?

There's a certain sense of irony here.

Dear Google,

Hi. My name is grasshoppa. You may know me from such famous threads as "Windows 8 Sucks" and "Windows 8 User Interface, wtf?". You may remember that I, along with a multitude of others, warned MS about making such a radical change to the desktop. No, wait, that's not quite right; we warned against FORCING such a radical change to the desktop. But we were assured by various astroturfers that windows 8 was the bees knees, the mutts nuts and various other wonderous bits of animals ( thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett, for that phrase ). We were called all sorts of various names for our opinions. Yet many of us stuck to our guns; we knew that a mobile interface force fed to desktop users was a recipe for failure.

Please. Listen to us now. This is a remarkable bad idea. This is the kind of idea your competitors DREAM of you implementing. It's really the only way they can get a foot hold into your market. And make no mistake; a foot hold will be all they need, because once you start down this road ( and, inevitably back track a week later due to overwhelming user criticism ), you have lost your momentum. You have lost the confidence necessary to stay that one step ahead of them. And they will then proceed to eat your lunch.

Who am I? No one really. Just some poor schmuck that will have to work with YOUR end users when you force feed them a UI change. And I'm already resentful for it.

So please. For the love of all you hold dear, PLEASE DO NOT FORCE A NEW INTERFACE on people.

Yet the very same folks that got burned here will line up, again, for the next release.

Folks, until these publishers are punished ( by depriving them of your cash ), they won't change. It's up to each of you to STOP GIVING THEM MONEY.

Of course that will never happen. If gamers actually *learned* EA would have been out of business years ago.

The work shows how easy it is to track the movement of large numbers of people with current technology--assuming they are willing to allow their data to be used in this way.

Right..."willing"...let's go with that.

Seriously, unless there is a very real business need ( and no, the CIO jumping up and down about TEH CLOUDS is not a legitimate business need ), keep your data under your control. Not only does this alleviate the problem of bailout should your provider die on short notice, but it also solves the security of cloud data rather nicely.

Granted, that someone even has to point this out shows just how deep the marketing bullshit is on this.

Well, the practice will be illegal anyway. But it always has been, and we see that no one really pays attention to that pesky "legality" question, so what'll probably happen is that it will get a new window dressing, be secret, and no one will be the wiser.

Oh, it'll still be illegal, but that's what gag orders are for.

I have a radical idea. If we accept that game developers are going to have the moral equivalency of a used car salesman with a crack addict to support, how about we ( the customers ) stop giving said addicts OUR GOD DAMNED MONEY FOR SHIT.

Anyone who gives these greedy SOBs a single cent are part of the problem.

How about we hire and promote based on merit and competency?

++ Would read again.

I've got a porter and an ale bubbling away at home, as we speak. Bonus: Don't throw away the spent grains! Make bread instead!

Yes, and?

How my users react to it. I demoed 8 to my users, and got a resounding "HELL NO", due entirely to the start screen. They weren't buying it, and I don't blame them.

Given the leaks so far, I expect my users will be onboard with the new version ( possibly with some grumbling about the "look" ). But I won't really know until I get it in front of them for some feedback.

hahahahaha

No, what we're seeing is one of two things:

1) They've already figured out how to milk this suggestion for every dime ( and given enough time, they'll figure out how to milk even MORE out of it )

2) They see which way the wind is (hopefully) blowing, and realize a compromise NOW might let them salvage some of the situation.

In either case, telling them to go "pound sand" is still the correct response. AT&T and their ilk have screwed over customers for years. There is no reason to suddenly adopt an attitude of cooperation with them, knowing full fucking well the only reason they're doing so is to find a place to stick the knife.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t consent to a search if you are carrying a big roll of legitimate cash.

You never consent to a search. Make them get a warrant or conduct an illegal search. You may have just bought the car. It may have absolutely NOTHING personal in it. You still don't consent to a search.

Period.

Well, cost and interest. As we both touched on, the tech just isn't that interesting. That plus the cost pretty much covers this story.

If companies really want the smart watch to take off, they'll have to drop the cost and increase it's interest factor.