Open Source - A Wise Strategy?

The concept of open source certainly isn't new. Open source is software that the vendor has published the source code, guides and tools to allow the development community to make modifications or enhancements to the software.

Open source has been around since probably the beginning of the personal computer, so this is hardly a mind-blowing development.

There's an article on PC World today where Microsoft has adopted an open source approach to their mapping software and this has helped them to capture some of the market from Google Maps.  As I read this article, it dawned on me that the concept of open source can also be a very strategic one.  In a lot of respects, open source essentially adds thousands, if not tens of thousands "free developers" for the application - at least in terms of it being more desirable.

Mind you, I guess that the downside is that the company relinquishes a certain amount of control over the direction that the application takes, but I guess it's like everything else that they've carefully weighed the advantages and the disadvantages.

SSOTD

Stupid spam of the day.  What a silly phishing attempt.  Obviously, by now, we're all intelligent enough and cautious enough to understand that financial institutions do not send us links to click on with threats that our accounts will be closed, but when you hover over the senders email address and see the address and not the sender's name, and when you hover over the link and see that the website address is nothng related to the institution...

Honestly, it's just insulting, at least put some effort into it, throw a few logos in the email, make the email address/URL even remotely similar.  I understand that they're hoping that even 1 in a million fall for it, but geez, go big or go home boys.

Holy Cow! That's a lot of Bull - and Could Just be a lot of Udder Nonsense!

Vast departure from my usual blog entry, but I think I have a way of posting this as it's very much related to technology and humanity - or cowmanity as the case may be.

Jocko the bull has sadly passed away.  Officially, he has sired 161,000 off-spring, but it's believed to be closer to 400,000.  That is one heck of a commitment to his job if you ask me!

The really interesting thing is that poor Jocko only gets a bronze medal for his impressive impregnatations as there are two bulls with more off-spring.  I need to find out how far behind he was.

Make no mis-steak, some other bulls will have to step up and bring their A game - or should I say their S game?