The reported change to Flash Player's fate is with the mobile version Flash Player, but it raises doubts about the personal-computer version, too.

This makes me smile. The web is going to suck less and we can move forward.

Steve Jobs was right about the floppy, serial, and parallel ports. He was right about Flash.

The masses in IT, so focused on preserving the status quo and unable to see the big picture are the ones that come out looking like total horses' asses today. That's because, well, they are. IT is overrun by them and in the enterprise, well, the horses's asses infest all ranks and far more often than not, call the shots. That's why consumer IT is driving today's innovation and why, thankfully, geeks are no-longer the tech taste-makers.

ITIL incorporates practices and procedures in a number of IT management areas, including the help desk, that are designed to enable organizations to figure out the root causes of IT problems and predict future difficulties.

The increasing call volume at the university keeps the staff busy, said Begley, adding that "it is frustrating, because they see the same problems occurring over and over again." His hope is that ITIL implementation will lead to reductions in some of those repetitive calls.

Technologies that could reduce help desk support demand include things like desktop or application virtualization, where an application can be accessed via a browser. And increasing use of voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology reduces the time it takes support phone systems.

For those organizations reporting an increase in help desk calls, about 41% attributed the uptick to infrastructure or product changes, upgrades or conversions; 26% cited expanded service offerings by the support center; and 22.5% said they have more customers, according to the HDI study.

I suspect that the reason is more that there is a bigger disconnect between IT geekdom and regular people now than there ever was.

In the past, technology was pretty universally understood to be cumbersome and unwieldy to a degree. However, in the past couple years, consumer devices have generally done a decent job of hiding complexity from the users. Enterprise IT systems, on the other hand, have not. What could result is a new disconnect when it comes to usability expectations. The nerds are living in their isolated world where the status quo still reigns. The users are living in a world where RTFM or taking time to understand the technology doesn't cut it anymore.

Geekdom, as a whole, does not understand what user experience really means or what it's all about and this disconnect between users and IT is why after all these many years, I'm starting to get fed up and disillusioned with IT as a whole.

ITIL's great, but it can't solve this fundamental problem.

Apple has struck a deal with Unisys to help market its products to business and government customers, according to a report from Bloomberg.

When Apple snags an enterprise customer, Unisys will handle maintenance and other services, Gene Zapfel, a managing partner at Unisys, told Bloomberg. He said Unisys inked a contract with Apple this month, but could not discuss the terms.

Interesting and pretty bold, considering Apple's history.

This one flew under the radar.

But all of this goes deeper still. The main problem I have with Wilcox’s post is the implication is that no company should step outside of its comfort zone. The arguments that Apple shouldn’t build a tablet simply because other companies have tried and failed in the past, or that they shouldn’t make a tablet because they failed with the Cube, are both troubling. Apple clearly believes that the future of computing is touch-based, and the tablet is a step in that direction. Maybe they’re wrong, but it would be a disservice to everyone to suggest they not even bother to try and find out. The potential upside is far too high. It’s the kind of stuff that keeps technology exciting and advancing.

This is an example of one of the threats to creativity as discussed on my most recent blog post (http://mike-pulsifer.org/2010/01/fostering-creativity/ ). Joe's attitude is one that is all-to-prevalent. Those people really need to just get out of the way and let the rest of us create new and exciting ideas, things, etc.