From what can see, former Google Wallet tried to pretend to be a digital version of your physical wallet, holding your credit card details. This new version instead functions as a payment service gateway and injects a unique account # instead to the requestor, hiding your actual account details (instead, using the actual android pay account). I'd actually prefer this myself, sharing my real cc details with less folks.

You know, I just don't understand why so many of these vendors make this so difficult. Roku hugs the peripheries of the future IMHO with internet channels, etc all merged together under an early version cohesive search engine on the TV. WD Live offers awesome local media streaming and supports just about any codec I throw at it. Yet neither of these vendors, nor countless others, seems to be able to simply take these two approaches that exist TODAY and present a single cohesive media player. If I wanted my PC to take on the overhead of decoding video for my Roku, I'd just watch through my homemade media server and burn 150watts at any given time. My WD Live does the same running at 5 watts thank you. Likewise, why does WD not see the opp in front of them to extend their player the way of Roku with plugins and add-on channels? And don't get me started on all the latest Chinese vendors trying to do this with Android on small ARM-based devices ....

I'll go a step further - a few years ago, was looking to add SSO to web product for our customers, and as an existing Oracle customer, they had a package offering for SSO from acquisitions. After agreeing to pay for some base consulting to get preview going, quickly realized what a pile of overcomplicated shit it was at the time (the consultants flown in from all over the place couldn't get the base "hello world" even working, and they all claimed to do this all day long and not unusual challenge). I saw if they couldn't get going, didn't want the ongoing support nightmare, pulled the plug and went with something much simpler. Oracle sales guy laughed, said he already added the skus to our upcoming databse support renewal, and magically, if I tried to take them off, we would loose "bundle" pricing and costs would go way up for just our existing db licensing (ignoring the fact that they were effectively charging us 30% more regardless for no new actual software). One example of many. Oracle is the one company that can fuck off harder than Microsoft for their shitty biz tactics. They shoot themselves in the foot in big picture - any new companies u am at, I steer to anything but Oracle.

Actually, as a former short time IBMer, I think you're both right. IBM core has lifers that have been sucked in and have worked there for years, most without skulls that ate actually marketable outside of IBM (yes, really). This self feeds where the vast majority internally still are riding on skills from 20yrs ago, and so the company competes over the past several years by bleeding out acquisitions it makes as it tries to buy its way into new markets without a real coherent strategy (see everything from storage platforms to their analytics acquisitions over past several years). Its a sales company where they try and compete on their long, slow, stodgy, established contracts, every once in awhile buying a new company and then rolling the capabilities under existing software contracts and agreements, adjusting the margin charge yearly to justify. This hasn't been working for several years at this point, anyone who understands basic financials can see the company has been playing financial games for about the last 4yrs (Money Mag gets credit for being one of the first mainstream places to call this out about a yr ago, even questuoning Buffets inVestment). So yes, they are tech in the sense they invest quite a bit into r&d to establish a patent hold, if someone else comes up with a remotely competent product that sells, IBM goes through this portfolio to attain a royalty stake while divesting itself of the risk. Does that sound like a tech company?

Actually, IBM does invest in desktop Linux and in a company of about 400,000 employees, has a sizable chunk running on an internally built standard and continuing to consolidate onto it. It wouldn't be a stretch for them to give this away given the efforts are already undertaken. The fact that they don't suggests they don't see a return worth it.

I'm passing PCI, SAE16, etc. audits without a problem and as a matter of fact use Puppet as part of my control framework, and a sound network topology around the various environments. Not knowing what "infosec doesn't permit such holes" means, the counter argument in a generalized sense is that trusting a host to gather its own data (audit itself) and then retrieving it nightly isn't exactly a stable methodology?

"Thousands and thousands of virtual machines. Try supporting and auditing that many servers with any other distro ..."

Puppet, CFEngine, Tripwire, etc. all play well with other Linux distros as well. If you're talking about just using RedHat Satellite to manage such a beast, get out of 2001, RH really missed the boat on pushing such potential in the Enterprise space and only over past year seem to be winking at Puppet. If you're talking about their efforts on OpenStack, great, but you still need that next layer down.

Indeed, AT&T went through this I believe last year (or yr before). Over the past several years, they have allowed employees to telecommute and work from anywhere, to the point that employees were moving to their own more preferred locations in the country and taking advantage of the opportunity. AT&T about-faces and says employees are required to show up to office, with mandate of 30 days for the new "initiative." This had the by-product affect of folks who had moved away from offices (or were located in areas where offices had closed up) suddenly were non-compliant and would need to quit or face termination.

I don't necessarily see this as Yahoo's true intent (yet), but it is easier to see this mindset for the likes of Best Buy who is continuing to try and thin the ranks.

Bob probably is well aware of the chaotic disorganization of his system as well, where I suspect he devised something that worked well in small form, but simply is not scaling out beyond its original intent. If you approach it with educating him on understanding Google Docs, and what value it provides, he should start to learn for itself its advantages and how it actually makes it EASIER to manage the docs. He may well fully embrace the idea then on his own (the easier way to get want you want is he wants it as well). Be careful though... he may also finally have found the person he has been looking for all these years to take over the job and do whatever the hell they want with it, in which case he says congrats to you and its yours forever to maintain (until the next solid contributor comes along in 20 years).

-A Jaded Board Member

I applaud the pro-active nature of the organization on this, and appreciate your efforts to have a strong preference of carrot over stick.

I have been managing IT Operations teams for ~10yrs now (with a rooted background in SysAdmin), and more often than not, in my own experience, it is the organizational culture that often strongly correlates to the work output of a collective team. I have worked on companies that paid absolutely ass and were not overly generous with there employees, yet people understood the purpose, the mission, and their role, and gave 110%. I have worked at companies that were more than generous with payroll and side benefits, and folks slacked off.

Without knowing you or your background (nor the respective company), I can say that folks are often cognizant of the extremes they can get away with at work. If you (or the company as a whole) conveys an easy-going atmosphere where even the slackers are well tolerated, well, water sinks to the lowest point. This can often be detrimental to others around them, as it results in "Well if they aren't going the extra mile, why should I?" I believe just about anyone who is reading this has had that very thought cross their mind at one point or another, and it can be a valid one. Giving someone free massages, or cupcakes, or even a hooker aren't exactly motivational items - actually, they work the other way, in that encouraging folks to "take a break" from things, these same folks who even when working you are suggesting aren't putting in a sound effort.

Solution? Again, without know you or the org, do away with the massages, and most other extraordinary benefits that cost the company money, and instead convert this to regular financial bonus incentive. Make a big point on how performance relates to money, and more times than not, I find folks will go above and beyond to earn the extra incentive. You may have a few bad apples you clearly need the stick, but between the two, I'd suggest you may be on the way to success.

Best of luck!

Based on experience, I'd actually bet that Exchange number is higher. In most Exchange implementations I have seen of mid-to-large scale, the workload is distributed. In the survey case you linked, for inbound transit, it is completely sensible and in fact I would just about insist that the inbound transit be in something OTHER than exchange, such as Exim or Postfix, to both save money (why pay for yet another license to just pass mail along to inside resources?), as well as a security posture of managing risk with differentiating MX packages. If I carry that thought forward, a portion of those MX servers may well be in front of Exchange (or god forbid Notes or some other product).

Mainstream media is starting to pick up on this same very notion, with Verizon's latest quarterly report covered by the Boston Globe here which basically highlights the fact that Comcast and Verizon are getting cozy rather than competing. "Verizon Wireless struck a deal to market cable broadband from Comcast and Time Warner Cable in its stores, a move consumer advocates see as a capitulation by Verizon that will leave many areas with just one viable choice for home broadband: cable."

We as taxpaying Americans supporting these monopolies lose out on both fronts while this trend continues ....

So there I am standing at the gas station yesterday, and I catch a quick glimpse of one of those ad's on the TV screen offering to give you 5 cents off per gallon if you pay at the pump with NFC through your phone. I'm a bit amused by this as right next to it is a sign saying not to use your cell phone at the pump with a funny symbol of fire next to it. Curious as to the contrary suggestions, I look at the fine print of the NFC ad where it basically says "for your safety, you can only use this as a single pump" or basically trying to manage the risk by only using it briefly. This is somewhat funny as they can't seem to make up their mind as to whether is it safe, or isn't it?

Almost yearly, I (as do most Americans) get a small little statement/disclaimer entitled "Notice of Disclosures" or something to that affect from various banking, insurance, and other types of institutions I regularly do business with. I believe the only reason they send this is by legal requirement, and it tells me all of the different bits of information they have on me and what they do with it/how they resell it, or excuse me, "share it with valued business partners." Some things I can opt out of, which I eagerly do, while others I simply do not have that option. I've become jaded enough to the point that I am under the impression much of this information is more valuable than my "core" business, such as bank seeing my regular spending habits as well as able to speculate at my income by way of direct deposit tracking. This sort of thing marketers salivate over.

For online companies such as Facebook, the model is hardly different. For companies that give away applications for your tablet or only charge you a small amount of money, this can be an appealing revenue source, whether as a secondary one beyond the $1 they charge you or even the primary one.

Given all this, I tend to question that when building a product such as this, I have a hard time believing Path or any similar companies even remotely care to try and NOT see your information since it blocks them from such sources. Only when the media yanks the covers off do things get more interesting. This lets them assemble a web of contacts which has value, whether for immediate return or as an "asset" for the organization should they ever sell it (and revise their privacy notices).

Lets see how things go once the dust settles and whether they have committed to any of these things.

As a SaaS Operations Manager, I believe you are spot on. While I have no major issue with sending data up to the magical "cloud" in many cases, shame on me if I am not taking some responsibility on my own for backups, etc. Even if a cloud provider provides an SLA and claims full backups, should that fall apart, its still going to be my butt in the sling for recovery.

Their are of course numerous technical solutions to the problem, including cross-site replication, etc. The challenge is the more timely/accurate the replication, usually the higher the cost (bandwdith/limit latency expenses). When the finance folks start to see these numbers, or the customer, suddenly it becomes less "urgent" to them. The trade-off is often times a subtle expectation of HA due to potential direct impact on company profitability, but nobody wants to actually pay for it. I am aware of way to-many orgs that cut corners in this area and simply lie to the customer.

Hence, to your point, hedge your bets and do the best you can with regular backups