The only thing that surprises me is how not surprised I am about this 11th hour cancelling of the Foleo. For Palm's sake I had been kind of clinging to the notion that perhaps it was all simply bad marketing and that when the Foleo was released a light would turn on as to why it was going to be the mass market hit they needed it to be. It turns out there was no one behind that curtain. It may have been an appealing product for some - but really for very few. And the cost? Well, Colligan says that their going to take a $10 million hit, but what was the opportunity cost for palm? How much has it cost them in the years they spent developing the Foleo while letting their gigantic industry lead in the smartphone business die, leaving them as a has been? Turning their once thriving community of fanatics and developers into a dwindling one filled with resentment?

Heh, I blogged a good more about it... but Colligan really, really has to go.

I'm sure few people here actually read this. I can hardly blame you -- it's long, and it's mostly just bland generalities, with the details both rare and disappointing.

There's nothing new in the speech. She talks a lot about data breaches. Those are devastating, sure, but they're hardly an "issue." Being against data breaches offends no constituency (who *isn't* against them?) -- it's like being "tough on crime." She seems to be against a lot of things that nobody is for.

However, she spends very little time on what most of us think of when we talk about "privacy" -- that is, the government's prohibition, under the fourth amendment, against searching us without probable cause, and without a warrant. In fact, she comes to the conclusion that the warrantless searches the Bush administration are doing are probably fine. She believes in the same odious calculation that defines rights and security as mutually exclusive constraints, that have to be "balanced."

Rather, she only takes Bush to task for not letting congress in on the action. That is, had only Bush asked congress for "authorization" -- which would surely have been forthcoming -- everything would have been okay. "Let is in on the action," she seems to say, "and we'll make sure you get the warrants so your policies will be easier to sell to the masses." Instead of real criticism of a policy that's both illegal and that actually makes us less safe, we get criticism over tactics, and parochial self-interest.

The title and blurb for this are completely misleading.