NightOwl wrote on Apr 5^th, 2007 at 11:57pm:

Actually, working for Symantec has in the main been all-around pretty fantastic; our remoteness meant we basically kept on being a small start-up, but with some of the benefits that come from having corporate muscle. If you had shown me a book like Danger! Quicksand! in 2003 I wouldn't have recognised what it described.

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I can at least understand why Symantec might not want to sell Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 licenses to individual consumers, but what I still find surprising is Symantec’s decision to discontinue the sale of Ghost 2003 (as it increasingly appears to be the case).

Since enhancements to and support of Ghost 2003 have been discontinued, there is no cost to Symantec for making this product available for purchase as a download from their website.  In fact, each and every sale of Ghost 2003 would represent 100% profit.  From a business perspective, what’s the downside?

NightOwl wrote on Apr 6^th, 2007 at 8:51am:

Actually, I wasn't kidding about that. In 2004 things because less pleasant very fast; but that's not reflective of Symantec as a whole, just our site's particular situation.

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I highly recommend it, although so far I've not put much of it into practice. I found out about that book from Kathy Sierra's blog, which is all about an attitude to software design that I am 100% behind - I hope she does eventually decide to keep writing it.

Although she mostly writes (wonderfully!) about software design, she describes some choice pieces of corporate insanity in a couple of entries, this one being one of my favourites.

I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at the Webstock conference last year, and she's as great a speaker as you'd imagine from reading the articles on her site.