Mitch Wagner of InformationWeek writes, in a long discussion about Apple supporting the Enterprise:

Gruber’s post has the inherent assumption that it’s IT’s job to serve the company’s users. It’s not, though, it’s the job to serve the organization, and its goals. This often means that users get inferior technology because that’s really all they need to do their jobs.

This makes the assumption that serving the organisation and serving the company’s users are different goals with different outcomes.

Happy users are more productive. This isn’t about making sure that every user has their ‘Tunes or a copy of Pirates of the Carribean on their phone but more about making sure the technology is accessible and usable.

The IT manager’s job isn’t to deploy software that end-users find sexy, or that makes them happy. The IT department’s job is to deploy tools that make people, and the organization, more productive.

This isn’t what IT departments do, however.

They deploy tools which make their own jobs easier, users and organisation be damned. That’s why you end up with Windows PCs locked down so tight that the end user can’t change the clock thats 14 minutes slow. They can’t install ZIP software to open a zip of holiday photos they’ve been sent (it’s finally built into Vista).

The most interesting speech from an IT manager I heard was:

We’re rolling out Vista at the end of the year and nothing will make this deadline slip, not the business nor the end users. This deadline is like Y2K.

Great attitude…

A man who was spotted in the street using his laptop to access an unsecured wireless connection has been arrested. … When questioned he admitted using the owner’s unsecured wireless internet connection without permission and was arrested on suspicion of stealing a wireless broadband connection. The man was bailed to October pending further inquiries. Dishonestly obtaining free internet access is an offence under the Communications Act 2003 and a potential breach of the Computer Misuse Act.

Next they’ll be arresting people for illegally smelling the perfume and aftershave of people as they walk past. Or illegally hearing conversations spoken aloud in a public place. I’m going to assume that the OWNER of the broadband has to press charges here?

Every day, the Government invents new stupidities to amaze me.

So, what to do.

• 1. You could start using BT’s expensive and slow BT OpenWorld network.
• 2. You could use your mobile carriers expensive and slow network.
• 3. You could join an organisation devoted to Free and Open Wireless using Mesh networks, distributed gateways and supported by goodwill.

[UPDATE: There are some on this BBC Magazine comment list who would compare stealing wireless as being the same as stealing pens, stealing a car or warming your hands in someone else’s pockets (brrrr, scary analogy). If this is the case, the onus should be on the owner of the Wireless Access Point to secure their network in simple steps. Ignorance of the proper operation of a device is not really an excuse. ]

Whatever you might say about the lack of an official iPhone SDK, there is something to be said for a controlled, tested environment.

Earlier today, my Nokia N800 died. Not in hardware, just refused to boot. what had I done? I’d installed Pidgin, MaemoMapper, XMaeme and a few other apps that weren’t endorsed by Nokia. Despite it being a Debian Linux machine, it refused to boot and there was no way to coax it back to life.

The only way was to re-flash it which meant I lost a few days work everything since my last backup. I didn’t lose anything I stored on external cards and I didn’t lose any mail, thanks to IMAP.

But yeah, pain in the butt.

I’m sure the N800 and the N770 before it have sold tens of thousands of units but I’m not sure they would ever outsell the iPhone - the hype monster of the modern era. And I’m sure there are folk out there hacking their iPhones now who really shouldn’t….

Hadley Stern of AppleMatters disagrees and maintains Apple is being arrogant. Maybe so, but it doesn’t make them wrong.

My N800 is working again and I did miss it. At least until I get an iPhone.

Next week, we’re losing one of our developers to a big fancy firm in Belfast. Steve has been an extremely valuable part of the team for the last few months and has helped us with many of the skunkworks projects which have been paying the bills for the last year. Good luck Steve, I know they’re going to work you hard!
This, of course, creates an opening for anyone enterprising enough to want to spend part of their time in Mallusk working on web and Mac-based software in a relaxed atmosphere with plenty of coffee. We also subscribe to the notion of 20% of daytime work being spent on FLOSS (Free, Libre, Open Source Software). We’ll provide you with an Intel iMac or MacBook with external screen for the daily work and salary is negotiable but dependent on experience and also with an OTE based on the sales.
Skills would have to include PHP, Cocoa desirable but not essential if you’re willing to learn. Ruby would also be a really nice addition as we have some older code we want translated to ObjC/Cocoa. This role would suit a graduate but we’d also accept a student looking for a years placement. You’d have to be able to work without a lot of supervision but we’d be looking for someone with a lot of vision and drive who really wanted to make something of themselves.