Something Wicked This Way Comes (holidays i mean…)

Onward come the holidays of year-end.  I have little use for acknowledging the importance of these days and do not publicly announce my own warmth for them.

I would as soon turn a tale of hunting Santa Claus and his eight tiny reindeer as I would relate memories of gleeful anticipation and a rose-colored childhood.  Neither of which are based in the truth of anything that I’ve experienced.

We all have ideals and dreams that vastly differ from the reality of commercialism and the shallow facade of any peace on this earth.  In the end of all things we see what it is that we wish to see.  We translate events from a filter installed by all those that have come before us and yet even through this jaded consciousness we maintain a tenuous connection to a truth that leads us blindly to hope.

Nortel Networks Bankruptcy, is Old Tech going the way of Old Media?

I must admit that I was a bit shocked when I saw this at first.  Now that I have time to think about it I am not wholly surprised.  I wonder if these large long lived tech companies are seeing the beginning of the end for their business model and mode of operation.  Sure the current global financial crisis has something to do with Nortel’s potential demise, but is it possible that the way they have been doing business for the past hundred years is no longer viable.  I look at the RIA and see an old business model that no longer works and an institution that is not willing to change how they do business.  I think every company, owner, employee that lives by the old “that is how we’ve always done it” mantra is doomed to failure.  When I see Apple, I see a company that is large and is not locked into the practices that brought it initial success.  Okay, yes Apple is one of the most locked down and tight assed companies around today but I’m willing to bet that when that no longer is seen as viable to them it will change, like now might be that time since Jobs may be stepping down permanently.  Microsoft is another example of old ways gone stale.  Microsoft is a huge company and they are having some identity issues.  I think they have figured out that the same old way of doing business isn’t going to work for them any more and they are working hard at figuring out what they need to do to stay successful.  I wonder if there was any internal debate at Nortel.  I wonder if Nortel lacked the internal ability to change in this age of dynamic business and if they even saw “the writting on the wall”, so to speak.  I think this may be an interesting year in that the lack of (hollow, feigned, foundationless…) financial prosperity will be the straw that finally breaks the back of “old” media/business.

Internet Services worth a crap

This may end up being one post that I ignore in the future because I can’ get any reviews done and it may also end up being something that I end up forgetting about 15 seconds after I click “post”.  My intention is to take a look at some of the services out there on the ‘net and let folks know what doesn’t suck.

Windows 7?!?

Okay, I have seen some of the different ideas as to why this next release of the Microsoft Desktop Operating System should and should not be called Windows 7.  The real question to me is what happened at Microsoft between XP and Vista?  If you look at the release timeline of past releases, you’ll see roughly 2 years pass from version to version.  A bit too long if you ask me but that is not the point here.  From XP’s release to Vista’s release there was a 5 year gap.  Now it is true that the then “Longhorn” came and disappeared in the development process, but that doesn’t explain to me where all that development time went.  Maybe Microsoft’s internal management and bureaucracy is so bloated and stagnant that all they had to show for those years of coding was Vista.  ugh!

My guess here is that an internal political struggle ended up wasting vast amounts of time and money on the behalf of Microsoft and also put it in a position of playing catchup to Apple’s comeback in consumer electronics and to Google’s Internet explosion.  I think this political mess has possibly ended up putting the “lucky 7″ behind the Windows name in order to help consumers forget about the negatives of the past year but hopefully it has been able to redirect its focus on development.  Windows 7 sounds like it is getting some good attention to its development process, but Microsoft is still not focusing enough on its core in my opinion, but then again nobody asked me.