Ask Slashdot: Which Tech Company Do You Respect Most? 311
dryriver writes: On Slashdot, we often discuss the missteps and non consumer-friendly behavior of various tech companies. This company forced people into a subscription payment model. That tech company doesn't respect people's privacy. Yet another tech company failed to fix a dangerous exploit quickly, protect people's cloud data properly, or innovate and improve where innovation and improvement was badly needed.
Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"
Here's a question to the contrary: Of all the tech companies you know well and follow -- small, medium, or large -- which are the ones that you respect the most, and why? Which are the companies that still -- or newly -- create great tech in a landscape dotted with profiteers? Also, what is your personal criteria for judging whether a tech company is "good," "neutral," or "bad?"
trump (Score:5, Funny)
Re:trump (Score:5, Informative)
Ubiquiti. They have good products, at good price points. They are well documented, contribute back to the open source community, and they are truly revolutionary in their hardware designs.
Their software is mostly free as well. You can download and use it at will.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: trump (Score:4, Funny)
Whoever (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoever it was that decided to shutdown their secure email service instead of hand over info to the feds.
Re:Whoever (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
As General Patton put it, "I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.
Re:Whoever (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Lavabit (Score:5, Insightful)
Lavabit was a mixed bag, they had their pros and cons.
Pros:
* Provided free email service
* Simple
* Most of the features you expect from an email service
* Spam and virus filters were customizable and much easier than most other services.
* They shut down their servers instead of giving up Edward Snowden.
Cons:
* Buggy, bugs were never fixed, bug reports were never acknowledged
* Poor communication skills from the developers, both free and paid accounts
* Actively lied when they shut the service down. For about 2 days they insisted that it was just an upgrade, would be back up soon, and that our emails were not being lost. If they couldn't tell the truth for legal reasons they should have said nothing instead, there was no excuse for the lies.
* For about 2 days after the shutdown they continued to accept emails sent to users, instead of just rejecting them so the senders would know that the emails had not been delivered.
Lavabit is back up but I don't use them anymore because of their behavior the first time. They are just not trustworthy.
Re: (Score:2)
Hillary don't know jack.
Jack was her IT guy, so ... Jack.
H vs. blame [Re:Whoever] (Score:2)
I agree, the head of security/IT should have made sure everything was in line for the main boss. He/she inspected nothing and didn't check to see that she had sufficient security training, etc. The CEO is supposed to focus on the domain, NOT routine infrastructure.
I can understand how a low-level employee may slip through the inspection cracks, but not the main boss. If the head IT/security person is too scared to approach her, the problem is them. If somebody with more rank won't let them do their job, su
craigslist (Score:5, Insightful)
The only truly ethical tech company I can even really think of.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: craigslist (Score:2)
Their censorship is pretty arbitrary.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Craig was listing to starboard.
Re: craigslist (Score:2)
Is that a euphemism?
Are you trying to say "hardware". Ads are payment (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you trying to say "hardware", that only hardware is technology? Because Google / Alphabet creates a lot of new technology - new speech to text technology, self-driving car tech, etc mostly created in software.
> My standard is how they get their revenues. Making tech - like chips (Intel) makes them a tech company. Using tech to say get revenues from say advertising (Google, Yahoo! & facebook) makes them not tech.
Advertising is a *payment method*. You can pay for YouTube by watching ads or by Vis
Re: (Score:2)
What tech company do you respect most? (Score:4, Funny)
Apple, in 2010. Year of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
It's been downhill ever since:
No Mac mini update since 2012, downgraded in 2014.
No real update for the MacBook Air since 2015.
No more iPod shuffle.
Unreliable keyboards with almost no travel in $1000+ computers.
Either no RAM slots, or insanely hard to access RAM slots except in their $1800+ iMacs, iMac Pro not included.
Re:What tech company do you respect most? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the brings up a good point. It isn't what company that you respect the most, is where was that company when you respected them the most?
Being that most companies are For-Profit there seems to be a time, where the lust for cash crosses their main values.
The big companies Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM... All had their high points where they were respected at one time for being the best example of a company. Then they will undoubtedly trim the fat too much, treat customers poorly, or move the company in a direction people don't want to go and use the companies size and influence to push it.
Which (Score:5, Funny)
Ask Slashdot: What Tech Company Do You Respect Most?
*Which* Tech Company Do You Respect Most?
Re: (Score:3)
So, Grammarly?
Jokes aside, perhaps as to what qualities such a company ought to have is not a bad one either.
What Tech Company do I (Score:5, Insightful)
Just my 2 cents
The Onion (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Onion (Score:5, Insightful)
Onion.com is suffering a slump because real news from the White House is more zany.
Re: The Onion (Score:2)
And also the most hilarious...
None... (Score:5, Interesting)
... since they are all in bed with the entertainment industry and are hell bent on a war against computing and people owning and controlling their own software.
The coming war on General computing and software freedom [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What about someone like Red Hat?
Re:None... (Score:5, Insightful)
Puts on flame suit
Just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
Well, no, that was Pottering, but they did adopt it. Like pretty much everyone else except for Slackware and that Debian fork.
Re:None... (Score:5, Informative)
Lennart Poettering has been a RedHat employee for a long time. They didn't just adopt it, they paid him to write it. He's also responsible for PulseAudio, and I think was working for RedHat then as well.
He's also responsible for Avahi, which is at least only mediocre rather than actively harmful.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah yes, my mistake.
Interesting that he personally got the Lamest Vendor Response award rather than Red Hat though. You would think that they would make more effort to handle massive security flaws, given that they make an enterprise product.
RedHat, Canonical, et al (Score:3, Insightful)
RedHat is for sure on the list, alongside Canonical. They have done more for Linux and FOSS adoption by corporatizing than countless other projects combined. The profit motive is powerful and it gets products into the hands of willing consumers. RedHat and Canonical are the great heroes of FOSS.
Open Whisper Systems deserves great praise, though it is financed by some large donors and thus isn't really a company.
Ixquick, DuckDuckGo and ProtonMail all also deserve great thanks.
Qwest (Score:3)
Mozilla (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, the Mr. Robot promotion [theregister.co.uk] was a huge mistake, and they've finally admitted that and pledged to do better.
But I think that mistake only garnered so much attention because Mozilla has been so transparent and aggressive in protecting privacy and advancing the state of browser technology. If somebody like Goog or MSFT pulled that crap, nobody would blink an eye.
Re:Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned they burned whatever goodwill they ever had when they fired Brendan Eich for political reasons that had nothing to do with his abilities. But even if they hadn't, their recently bullshit with killing XUL extensions and destroying the UI to turn the browser into a poor Chrome clone is enough to evaporate any respect I might have had left.
But wait, there's more, I keep on seeing ADS for their stupid browser. Ads proudly proclaiming the death of extensions and then using BS biased tests as "proof" of the browser's speed.
In short: I have no respect for Mozilla and even less for people who still shill for them.
Re: Mozilla (Score:2, Insightful)
Mozilla's treatment of Eich is 100% on them. They decided that rather than stand for freedom they'd rather censor unpopular views.
They literally replaced their addons system with Chrome's WebExtension API. The new Firefox is quite literally a Chrome clone.
Beyond that, you're, my respect doesn't matter. But they also pissed away the respect of the web development community. Modern web apps target three browsers: Chrome, Mobile Safari, and Internet Explorer. And that's it. Firefox is now a rounding error in u
SpaceX (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like real innovation.
Re: (Score:3)
Easy (Score:3, Interesting)
GNU
Google '96 (Score:2, Insightful)
Do No Evil.
It's all been down hill since then.
SpaceX (Score:4, Interesting)
DuckDuckGo (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to respect Google but becoming a public company turned them evil just like every company that goes public. Now DuckDuckGo has come along and they are great because they respect your privacy and don't collect data on people. They are small with a mere 40-some employees which is enough to keep the site going and few enough for them to pay without exploiting users. If that wasn't enough, all their stuff is open source and on github.
Re: (Score:2)
DuckDuckGo has their own crawler, but they also get results from other APIs and aggregate them. I'm not sure what proportion of their results come from each source, but if you add !g or !b to a DDG search then it will redirect you to Google or Bing. When I've done this, I've usually seen quite different results, so they're not simply forwarding the searches.
They also partner with a load of small domain-specific searches and will present their results for terms in relevant fields.
Mozilla and DuckDuckGo (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Mozilla is doing wonderful things and a single mistake doesn't change that.
DuckDuckGo is the other one...
Re: (Score:3)
Only a *single* mistake? Do you actually use any Mozilla software?
Re: (Score:2)
Firefox is (now, currently) the best browser available
There are a lot of good things about Firefox, but they're still way behind the curve on security. Other browsers moved to aggressive sandboxing of individual tabs 10 years ago. Firefox now kind-of does, but only in the latest release and no one had done any serious adversarial analysis of it.
From the top of my head: (Score:4, Informative)
Enercon [enercon.de] ...
Beyerdynamic [beyerdynamic.com]
Wiha [wiha.com]
Wera [www-de.wera.de]
Ok, the last two are just Toolmakers, but I still count them in.
Easy questiom, Red Hat (Score:3, Interesting)
Tesla (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Boring Company. They make a cool hat.
Re: (Score:2)
And a hot flamethrower: https://www.boringcompany.com/... [boringcompany.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The kids love it!
Re: (Score:2)
Actually the tax incentives were designed by GM, not Tesla, and favour lower end vehicles (the "per-kWh" incentive was designed precisely for the pack size of the Volt), with Tesla as one of the biggest critics of the current incentive scheme; and as for the government loans, Tesla paid theirs back in full way early, with interest (while not all of the Big Three paid theirs back); but hey, clearly Tesla's the problem here.
The (late, lamented) Sun (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, "Sun" lives on today because they open-sourced so much of their software before going defunct. For example: ZFS has become the gold standard in which all other storage solutions hope to achieve parity with.
Define tech (Score:5, Interesting)
I despise Apple. I consider them fashion that uses tech, rather than tech
Intel is tech, and they have accomplished great things. Of course, they are also stuck with a really bad problem at the moment
Atmel and Microchip make useful, but un-glamorous, embedded processors. Their merger has caused us(embedded system programmers) a bit of pain, but on balance, they deserve respect
Fairchild, NXP, Panasonic, AVX, Kemet, Bourns, Vishay and others make the essential tiny bits.. resistors, capacitors, small logic that the rest of the tech world couldn't live without
At one time, Sony was amazing, then they shifted their focus from tech to fashion
LG and Samsung deserve a lot of respect
Possibly my favorite is Texas Instruments
Re:Define tech (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Texas Instruments. When I was designing a power supply for a hobby project I came across their web bench design site. I just plugged in the numbers and out pops a schematic, BOM and board layout with parts that are in stock from Digikey. I've always found TI's documentation to be top notch. That's not to say that some of the other semiconductor manufacturers also don't have great sites either, but I haven't yet found any that match TI. I also respect a lot of the other companies you listed.
Who Makes raspberry pi's? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never heard anything bad, only good.
Re:Who Makes raspberry pi's? (Score:4, Informative)
They are designed by the non profit Pi Foundation, and are made in a Sony factory in the UK.
Re: (Score:2)
Fatmail (Score:3)
I have been a long time paying customer of Fastmail and I am quite happy with them.
Yes, they take my money ($32/year if I renew for 5 years for a legacy plan), but in exchange I get services that I can rely on and prompt support when I need it.
Carbonite (Score:2)
"None" [1] (Score:2)
[1] Well, several in fact, but my experience is that heaping praise upon a good company often leads to them being swallowed by an evil behemoth.
Ansoft corporation was good (Score:2)
None of the S.O.B.s (Score:2)
If you sold real estate like you sold tech, you would go to prison. If you sold used cars like you sold tech, you would go to prison.
If a daughter came to me wanting to pursue a career in tech, I would try to talk her into a rewarding and ethical career in prostitution. (Hey... maybe that explains why fewer woman are in tech...)
The Tech Company I Respect Most is (Score:2)
Mine
Companies deserve no respect (Score:2)
Flip It (Score:5, Insightful)
What tech companies respect you most?
Pick any one... (Score:2)
If you pick any one, I guarantee they're a milkshake duck.
Tech Company? (Score:3)
A person mght be deserving of respect, if they earn it. Companies aren't people.
Hurricane Electric (Score:2)
Sun micro systems (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Here's some. (Score:5, Informative)
Enough said.
NearlyFreeSpeech web hosting: https://www.nearlyfreespeech.n... [nearlyfreespeech.net]
They defend net nuetrality. Their pricing structure is clearly laid out with no hidden fees, and emphasis on efficiency, and they do well when you do well. They are run by highly competent individuals.
DuckDuckGo web search: https://duckduckgo.com/html/ [duckduckgo.com]
Great search that doesn't track you. Fuck yes.
PaleMoon web browser: https://www.palemoon.org/ [palemoon.org]
A modern, FOSS, secure, fast, lean, extensible, and highly configurable browser that took over where FireFox left off. It's run by individuals who have ethics, and stick to them.
Proton Mail web mail: https://protonmail.com/ [protonmail.com]
FOSS end-to-end encrypted e-mail. The only issue I see here is that it is free, so you're likely not the customer... There is another end-to-end encrypted web-mail solution that is $5/mo. or so but I've forgotten the name. Anyone?
Re: (Score:2)
Pepsi (Score:2)
I love Pepsi's caffeine delivery technology.
4th Generation nuclear companies (Score:2)
The two companies I respect the most are NuScale [nuscalepower.com] whose new reactor has been certified by the NRC as being passively safe(ie meltdown proof). These reactors can be factory built and shipped on truck. The second is Bill Gates' company TerraPower [terrapower.com] who are building their first reactor in China.
These companies along with 50+ others will save the world and reduce energy poverty
McMaster-Carr and Cloudflare (Score:2)
McMaster-Carr isn't exactly at the top of the list when people are asked to name 'technology' companies, but they sell pretty much any parts or tools you could want for a build project, they deliver overnight, and their website should be required reading for any e-commerce developer -- frankly, Amazon included: http://mcmaster.com/ [mcmaster.com]
Cloudflare gets a lot of props for protecting websites against DDoS attacks and for affirmatively disclaiming from themselves the power of censorship. (They did drop the Daily
Re: (Score:3)
If we can include hardware manufacturers, even advanced cool hardware, then I'll throw out a nomination for Ronnie Barrett and his "little" gun company.
After California banned possession of 50cal rifles, he stopped sales and service to all law enforcement agencies in the state. To me, that is pretty darned principled. https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Remember when most of us would've said Google? (Score:4, Interesting)
HAHAHAHAHAA!
HAHAHAH!
Oh boy :(
My, how things have changed. Honestly I think I like Microsoft more than Google now.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft seems to learn from their mistakes and get better (slowly). Google seems to learn from getting caught doing things and get better at hiding it.
Uber (Score:2)
They can do whatever they want and get away with it. They are the NFL of tech.
Apple and Microsoft (Score:2)
Juniper Networks (Score:3)
Seems like they're doing pretty well these days.
Tesla (Score:2)
Re:Tesla and also (Score:2)
Easy - Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
NVIDIA (Score:2)
Good tech, good software, amazing future. Also good: Apple, Amazon, Illumina, TMobile.
Not for companies (Score:2)
If anything, respect should be an attitude towards people who make certan decisions in corporations, not for the corporations themselves.
The American personification of the corporation bewilders me.
Red Hat (Score:2)
Red Hat continues to buy good software companies and turn their products into Free Software. Most recent good example: Ansible Tower.
Red Hat does Free Software right, and does right by Free Software.
Unicomp, Inc. (Score:3)
That's how I like companies - extremely good quality at a fair price, no bullshit spending half of their revenue on marketing, locally manufactured, and they ship internationally.
Unfortunately, these companies are getting rarer and rarer. Quality has a hard time surviving among the sharks.
difficult question but (Score:2)
Re: At present (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty sure that the vast majority of C-level execs making 300x the salary of their employees are boomers, not millenials
Re: At present (Score:3)
Bill gates? Stole most tech.
Jobs? Same.
Ellison? Not as criminal as gates or jobs, but was considered unethical in most business dealings.
The list goes on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: IBM quiet giant (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure Microsoft gets respect for that. They acted entirely in their own self interest. they wanted to sell an OS and make the hardware a commodity so that they could be the suppliers of the only non-interchangeable component. They aggressively locked out competitors in this space (e.g. intentionally breaking MS Windows on DR-DOS). It just happened that there was a beneficial side effect to their anti-competitive behaviour.
Modern Microsoft has a few more things that might deserve respect. They'v