Friday’s thoughts
Yeah it’s Friday, and based on the amount of traffic downtown this morning, I’m guessing we’re one of the few places actually working today. Sigh. Taking a look around this morning:
Scoble’s got some interesting insight about Microsoft’s decisions, unfortunately his permalinks seem to be having issues, so read the stuff from July 4 for what I’m talking about. It’s interesting because he gets it right, MS doesn’t care about individual computer users, they care about their corporate accounts, and the two do not have the same interests at all. As an IT person I can tell you that I want control of PC’s here to such an extent because I’m responsible for how they are used and making sure they aren’t being mis-used or abused in any way. How do you give IT departments that level of control, keep the OS similar enough that people don’t have to learn two different systems, one for home and one for work, still allow your consumer OS to not have those controls built in, and keep them protected enough to keep novice users from getting a virus that causes problems for other users? You don’t. Not unless there’s an overwhelming demand for it and you’re forced to do. That demand hasn’t formed, yet. I hope it does.
The funny thing about the decision to not include newsgroup reading in Outlook is that it’s so easy to just not have newsgroup traffic be part of your business internet package, or block it at the firewall, that it really shouldn’t matter at all. Unfortunately, if that is, in fact, the reason Outlook deosn’t have it, it only serves as a warning to how little some IT departments understand the very technology they control. (Or is it how much they would have to pay someone who does understand it and how much they can save by having things like that built in and not needing a security expert on payroll?)
Got a large stock of MP3’s that you’re making available online? The record companies may be coming after you next!. – This is just a shot across the bow. They know damn well they can’t sue everyone using the file-sharing services, but once they prove that they can shutdown some big users and it still doesn’t stop the trading, they will be one step closer to their ultimate goal, shutting down all file-sharing traffic at the ISP level. Once the government demands that ISP’s find some way to close off MP3 trading the ISP’s will be forced to halt just about all file transfers to be sure they get all the copyright violations blocked. Then the internet will be the mass media machine the big media companies want it to be.
Aaron is pointing to the personal page of Brad Templeton, the chairman of the EFF. There’s quite a few interesting articles linked there, and Aaron points out a few of his favorites in his post as well, all of them good. Go read them, you’ll learn something!
Also, What do you think about IT certifications?
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