Rich,
"Often companies that are successful are just the lucky ones. Managers don't realize that, so they figure that whatever worked for somebody else will work for them."
Truer words have never been spoken!!! Someone needs to put up a billboards that says "Your management skills < Luck"
"Often companies that are successful are just the lucky ones. Managers don't realize that, so they figure that whatever worked for somebody else will work for them."
Truer words have never been spoken!!! Someone needs to put up a billboards that says "Your management skills < Luck"
"A company that doesn't buy fire insurance will probably be more competitive than one that does. "
I not so sure about that one... you have to account for revenue loses and gains due to buying insurance. Such a company might be able to participate in both markets- those seeking lowest price and customers seeking "luxury features" simultaneously. If the cost of buying insurance leads to higher net gains then a company will do it. That's not going to be true in all places but as the consciousness of society rises about information security, it will filter through to the supply side of the economy. All that pinned up demand will get answered. Demand should always lead, its a great problem to have.
FOSS products and services have an accelerating demand gap right now. You made it larger by calling for a FOSS alternative to Google Docs 
. Image how popular LibreOffice would be if they could pull that off with public and private deployments? People would flock to it.
. Image how popular LibreOffice would be if they could pull that off with public and private deployments? People would flock to it.Facebook is another good example of here. Google Plus represented the demand gap from Facebook. AndroidOS, the demain gap from iOS (and to be fair both were initially about PalmOS), etc...
I guess it goes back to the idea that competition is good and generally progressive. I see FOSS more as a "if you build it they will come" environment which is equally progressive but more collaborative and social. That is when humans are at their best.
The question is how to do we wake up people? Especially tech professionals not acquainted with FOSS. For example, I still meet and interact with people who have very little exposure to anything other that Windows, Exchange, Active Directory, Cisco, IIS, .NET, MS-SQL or Oracle. Talking to them is sometimes like listening a product commercial. All they know are those products and they can't fathom anything else because 1) there are still good paying jobs and 2) most companies don't want their workers learning for the sake of learning. So anything new needs to have some immediate benefit to the company. Something else I found interesting in the last week was in regards to the last ransomware CERT. It was the idea that a "fix" eventually leads you to re-installing windows and oh by they way, if you don't have media or your license key, just repurchase it. Almost no focus is given on how to use non-Windows methods to help mitigate the situation.
WTF ?!?!
That level of closed mindedness is borderline brain washing- if we can't get the technical among us to un-learn and re-learn we have no hope of getting non-technical people to do so.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
Keith C. Perry, MS E.E.
From: "Rich Freeman" <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 1:59:49 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Spark Core (corrected)
To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List" <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
Sent: Monday, October 27, 2014 1:59:49 PM
Subject: Re: [PLUG] Spark Core (corrected)
On Mon, Oct 27, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Keith C. Perry <kperry@daotechnologies.com> wrote:
That asks Rich's question a different way. If someone says, "we keep your data safe and here's how", sure the client should want to verify what is being said but what about internal audits? Where is the "inspector general" for these companies that has the autonomy to say, "yes, I've verified this" or "no, we're getting this wrong and it needs to be fixed". Basically, IT personnel with executive level enforcement power.
The problem is the whole risk/benefit thing. Money spent on security is only money well-spent if you actually have a security incident, in the same way that money spent on fire insurance is only well-spent if you have a fire.
A company that doesn't buy fire insurance will probably be more competitive than one that does. The same is true of a company that doesn't waste money on securing their credit card readers, like Home Depot. When those companies bear the full costs of their actions, you MIGHT see a change.
It is a bit like how people point out that Facebook didn't plan for the necessary scalability and internally had a lot of struggles keeping up with demand. The thing is, it is a MUCH better situation for a company to have a ton of demand and have to work hard to meet it, versus having spent all their money on preparing for demand and not having any money left for marketing/features/etc to create that demand.
Often companies that are successful are just the lucky ones. Managers don't realize that, so they figure that whatever worked for somebody else will work for them.
--
Rich
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