IBM hires outside advertising and marketing agencies to handle both their internal and external sales and marketing materials, including some of the research and the entirety of their branding. Their leading agency partner since the mid-1960's has been Ogilvy & Mather. This means that IBM's "outside counsel" is gravely complicit with enabling IBM to push forward these violations. (For more chronology, see http://adage.com/article/adage...)

P.S. Ogilvy & Mather personnel have previously been held responsible/guilty for things like embezzlement, misappropriation of funds from federal contracts, and various grey legal area misdeeds.

Did all of the /.ers somehow forget that this is another media-hyped fictional storytelling program on CBS? Heck, they even fabricate sources in their everyday news reporting! Why would they somehow base their television programs on any actual facts?

CBS' motto is simple: If Mikey's Little Website has it typed up in color-blinding BLINK tags, then it must be true.

The URL is http://www.livestream.com/euro...

I'm actually surprised that the post/summary doesn't include it (except for the incidental embedded version in the one article linked).

Rock on!

I concur with your observation 1000%.

So you spent money and went to school. Some business (not-for-profit or otherwise) returned the favor by printing out 2 sheets of paper with "Master" on them.

Truth be told, your on-paper qualifications mean absolutely nothing to most -- especially HR departments. For the longest time, and this personal opinion seems to have lasted the test of time, persons with more degrees are actually *less* competent to do real-world work. Why? Because instead of sweating it out on the lower floors of an engineering factory to think independently and innovatively, they were cuddled with their frappucinos and $500 hardcover textbook on a couch with 5 different highlighters hoping to absorb the same 'experience.'

However, I do not agree with the OP at all. From my own multiple decades of experience, the good engineering managers exist and don't tend to quit; rather, they are kept and eventually promoted to more vital positions within their firms as the realities of the engineering challenges change. In other words, they adapt to the needs of the organization and eventually move out of the 'engineering manager' role... instead, they become things like Director of this and Vice President of that.

The problem is that it is utterly UNRELATED to the topic of LogMeIn Free being discontinued. The two solutions (LogMeIn v. Cisco Meraki) have literally nothing in common; they don't even compete with each other.

The Meraki solution IS NOT geared towards an end-user logging into a RDP session of their grandmother's computer to troubleshoot why iTunes is not updating properly or to clear her browser's cache. Rather, Meraki's solution IS aimed at corporate IT departments trying to assess the inventory of remote devices (including tablets) that have authenticated into the corporate network for systems access. (This being a simple use-case clearly described on their page.)

If you are remotely familiar with Meraki's portfolio of products, then you would not even consider trying to defend your nonsensical non-suggestion. So, please, do us all a favor and stop trolling unrelated products.

What kind of nonsense is this? How is a devices management platform a viable alternative to remote desktop browsing?

YES!

This should get moderated as Funny!

In my original comment, I obliquely asked whether technology companies' security consultants and government-sanctioned auditors (technical review committees which authorize such devices) were sufficient to address the concern.

Let's remember that this isn't some "nobody knows who built the firmware" scenario. This is in reference to commercial goods and services which have obtained countless industry and government certifications before being made available to the general public. Whether the public comprehends the magnitude of regulations at play is an entirely different story.

If consumers cannot trust the governments and their constellation of countless certification professionals, then what makes anyone think that consumers can trust a handful of ad-hoc peer-reviewers who operate under the freedoms established by the same said governments?! Let's not forget the bottom line: commercial products are different than journal articles specializing in theoretical concepts for academic credentialing.

Yes, that's contradictory and/or hypocrisy. It's ostensibly encouraging a double standard of privacy. Instead, the same level of peer-review should be applied to all entities -- be it a person, a corporation, or an artifact/technology.

(Yes, it's also a double-edge sword to want cake and have to eat it all, too.)

The same firmware concept applies to everything electronic.

Good luck with that!

From the original article, the author (Thom, whom I recognize for his efforts) introduces the topic of peer-reviewing every minutia of the devices we use; he laments about the absence of peer-review in proprietary and closed-source. As an open-source advocate, such a viewpoint is naturally expected and his flashing a light on the subject is always appreciated. [But how does he know? Wouldn't technology companies use security consultants to conduct security audits?]

However, applying the same lines of argument to every closed-source scenario is really preaching anti-capitalism. That means they're arguing against trust of the technology creator, against their desire for trust-based compensation, against the notion of making a dollar in order to spend a dollar (due to constant disclosure of all things 'private'), and against the underlying notion of privacy. Actually, scratch that... they're simply hypocrites.

Why? Because they advocate disclosure (anti-privacy) by others, thus not trusting others. However, they want personal privacy in the hopes of establishing a reputation for being trustworthy -- or are they advocating an ultra-liberal utopia where commerce is not based on property but instead based on a crafted perception of trust? Either way, that's hypocritical behavior! If everything becomes subject to peer-review, then the notion of trust vaporizes... and in the process, privacy is gradually lost... and both factors lead to an erosion of aspects of capitalism.

TL;DR -- Peer-review everything means trusting nothing, disclosure of everything, and loss of privacy... yet it's hypocritical since the advocates seek to maintain anonymity when applying the same frustrations against capitalism as they do against trust-based commerce.

I wholly concur with the above comment, but with an additional stipulation.

Just because somebody can "read" and "write" the communication language does NOT make them a good communicator. Individuals must possess the ability to listen, analyze/synthesize input, and succinctly discuss all topics relevant to their job. That means using analogies, understanding metaphors, adopting synonyms, and providing functional (and professional) definitions for the audience.

In other words, communication skills should be just as mature as the communicator claims to be.