For the price of an iPhone there is no way it will replace the iPod for most people, plus the fact that you will probably need a phone plan as well. I for one see the real next generation of iPods being the full touch screen. Not to mention from my experience, I know how crappy my cell phone battery is, I know how crappy my iPod battery is, and I can only imagine the problems I'd encounter if I combined the two.
Now bad network engineers (etc.) have another problem, and that problem is called tunnel vision. They're incapable of seeing anything other than the immediate task in front of them, so even when the opportunity comes up to truly solve a problem, they duct-tape the broken symptom for the umpteenth time, and end up creating even MORE work for themselves. (And for the rest of their team, not to mention giving users an unrealistic expectation of service.) The bad network engineers are also aware of how bad they are which makes them paranoid about losing their job so they implement non standard configurations of the network which mucks it up so much that they have job security in that they are the only one that can fix it since they are the only one that know how it works.
AOL's recent announcement of their new "Near Me" service, which allows AIM users to see which of their instant messenger buddies are geographically near them. You mean I can finally see where that 18/f really is...hey wait...thats the old guy down the street!
Seriously, what genius thought this was a good idea in the first place? How long is it going to be before the headlines read something like "Stalker kidnaps child with AIM"? I want to know how this idea got a green light considering the potential danger that it is going to create
3) People in the organization have to be punished for causing problems that they look to IT to fix. Due to others lack of planning, we're constantly having to pull micicles out of our asses. But while we take the risk, others get the reward. This has got to change. Every place that I've worked has had a statement along the lines of "Technology is a privilage not a requirement...failure to follow guidelines may result in loss of...whatever" On the same note every place that I've worked has also had complete violations of the employee technology agreements and management never has the balls to uphold the policy that they put on paper, which makes the pretty worded policy that they probably paid a lawyer thousands of dollars to make completely useless. Even if they did enforce the policy, such as take away the violator's computer for a week, technology is such a part of everyday work that it would be nearly impossible to function without it. Not to mention, the work that the violator can no longer perform would be given to somebody else and would have a domino effect putting off work on other people all the way down the line.
So I guess what I'm saying is management has to create usefull and realistic policies and enforce them. Sometimes you may have to make an example of someone to bring the rest in line, but if punishing the employee that downloads the 10,000 animated smilies but also infects everyone on the network with a virus, the next person might think twice before causally downloading something else.
IT personnel change a bulb...what are you talking about?
You have to fill out a maintenance request, get supervisor approval, send the request to the maintenance department, just about when you forget about it somebody from maintenance finally comes in with the wrong light bulb, send request back through management to order the correct bulb, finally get the correct bulb, and just after you get used to working in the darker room the maintenance guy returns and actually changes the bulb.
The title was a little confusing and its easy to see how people are getting "cell phone services" confused between carrier and features for the phone.
That being said, I have a blackberry that I use through work and they have a cool Blackberry Maps service that ties in maps and directions with the GPS function so the map updates as I'm driving, tells me my speed, and I think it even tells me when a turn is approaching (I only use it when I travel and that hasn't been for a while). Plus the software is a free service available with a (overpriced) data plan.
LOL...It also doesn't hurt that I'm the guy at the pub that all the drunk friends buy me drinks to clean up their computers so their wives won't get PO'ed at them for what they've been looking at. Too bad I don't document what I actually remove from who. I'd really have some good dirt that I don't think I'd ever have to buy a drink again.
Sadly I see "open source" as a phrase going the way of the dinosaur as well. Add this to the other words and phrases that the internet has also made meaningless...
"free"-there is always a cost...spyware, some sort of database or mailing list, or the ones that I love that say free then ask for some sort of payment anyway "no credit card required"- a couple of screens later there is a screen asking for your credit card number for the next one... "age verification"- click here to verify your age, or use an older friend/family's credit card and their info "you have won"-click here to get your new laptop, PS3, iPod, etc...then fill out a bunch of forms, sign up for a bunch of email lists or overpriced crap you don't want, valuing 3 times the amount of the item that you "won" "hot" and "sexy"- I'm sorry, when you describe yourself like this you're either too full of yourself, or more often than not you need a reality check on what hot and/or sexy really mean. "single female looking"- along the same lines of the last one, this usually ends up being an overweight middle aged guy living in his parent's basement with nothing better to do while he is waiting for a response on to his posting on the WOW message boards "click [here] for more"- this one is like playing Russian roulette, you might get another page of information you want, you might be taken to an ad site, you might be taken to a subscription page, you just can't predict what will happen whenever you click on those words.
I know there are many more that I missed, feel free to add your own that you've come across
Why do we have to keep using the EXP methods we've been using for years now. Technically any action performed in a game has a process assigned to it and can be given a mathematical value to increase or decrease a stat or skill on the fly. For example, taking a warrior character out into the woods and have them attack trees (or chopping), this can increase their fighting skills and strength just as good as a battle, but on the same note it won't increase the skill as much as an actual battle. So hypothetically attacking a tree will increase appropriate abilities 0.0001% where fighting a small monster will be different because successful or failed attack, defend, dodge or parry will have a different rating depending on what you are attacking or defending. Blocking an Ogre's club successfully on a low level will have a greater impact than blocking a dragon's breath on a high level with a magical shield.
As the attribute is not being used, it has a natural rate of decay. So while you're traveling between towns, standing around talking to other players, etc... your battle stats are slowly dwindling, which makes it possible that you can at one time be an expert archer, but not using your bow and arrows will result in loss of your ability. Nothing is absolute so there is no 100% or 0%, so even an expert archer will miss on occasion, but even an inexperienced lock pick might be able to open the box (but each failed attempt does increase that skill since you are using it).
Do away with the MP system completely. Magical ability should be determined by the wisdom, intelligence, and some sort of spell familiarity stat. In most RPGs, when I get a spell I'm suddenly 100% proficient with it...real world would be HELL NO! Lets take fire for example. At first I'd probably barely be able to light a candle, give it a while I'd be able to start a campfire, and even later throw fireballs, ignite weapons, or other things. The familiarity with the spell increases so I'd be able to do new things with it. At first I might even be a little unstable, where I'd intend to start a fireplace and end up blowing up the wall of the house. Which leads me to the next stat they should add, a stress (for lack of a better term) stat. When in the midst of a battle, you're extremely outnumbered, near death, no hope...somehow you pull off the miracle shot that ends up destroying all your enemies and saving your friends. Or the opposite you spend all the time learning a spell, and it could be a random non-critical moment, or that one point of the game it absolutely has to be cast...it fails. Maybe even a tiredness stat so that even when I'm a "fire master" I can't cast the most powerful spell all day, they'll slowly get weaker as I use them because it takes more out of the character as they use it. Stronger spells take energy faster than weak ones, but proficiency with the spell also reduces the rate it tires the character.
I'd also like to see spells evolve more rather than how in Final Fantasy series you get the Fire1, Fire2, Fire3 sudden proficiencies. The more you use a specific spell the stronger you get with it. The less you use a spell you lose proficiency with it, not forget just can't use them like you used to. So I'll use fire and lightning spells for an example. I'm using fire and can throw fireballs, ignite pretty much anything I want, etc...but learn lightning. Now that I'm summoning bolts from the sky, shooting bolts from my fingers, or whatever...my fireballs aren't as strong or can't go as far, fires aren't as strong as soon, etc...get my point?
I may be wrong but with some of these methods and changing the focus of RPGs from leveling to actually exploring and enjoying the story, we can get away from the lame missions such as collect 3 bugs for sister's collection. Some may work better than others, or they might not work at all, its just stuff that I've been thinking over the years of playing RPGs that I'm finally given the opportunity to put out there.
Thanks for the clarification, I'm not much of a stocks person so that just flew over my head. I'll make sure to double check my spelling next time...even though that won't stop me from looking like a total idiot
He suggests that bargain-hunting clients avoid both AMD and Intel stock for now. First of all, where in either article was this even eluded to...I did not pick up on it at all. Secondly, is there any alternative to AMD or Intel for an average PC technician?
My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. What else would you expect from the country that gave us Dr. Evil's (adoptive)father? Its still not enough to make me quit eating their waffles or chocolate. MMMMM....chocolate Belgium waffles
While the RIAA has been blaming that drop (and the drop in subsequent years) on piracy, given the volume of file-sharing that year the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total. Thus, 74 million unsold CDs from that year are 'without an excuse for sitting on shelves.' I think being crappy CDs is enough of an excuse
When I bought CDs it was usually just for 1-2 songs then maybe another 1-2 grew on me, the rest of them I usually skip past. iTunes was great when you could buy the individual tracks, but since one of their last deals, in order to get that 1-2 songs I like they made it so I have to download the entire album. I'm not a big music person either, I can't name you bands and songs, but I know what I like and when they won't easily let me get what I want their way, I'm going to look for another way.
Is this just a marketing tactic because forcing a change from hotmail to whatever they are calling their @...com will just scare off too many customers, not to mention confuse everyone that already communicates with one of the few non spam bots that still exist out there (I don't know actual numbers but get more spam from the hotmail domain than actual contacts). Or have they done a study that told them that the general public may be carrying a negative image of "Windows [live] Mail" which may suggest that even though they own 90% of the market that the general public may not actually want to be associated directly as a MS service user.
Some people say that teaching Linux in schools is a bad thing as the commerical world is all Microsoft on the desktop. That's total rubbish too, people should not be taught 'Word' they should be taught general word processing skills and preferably be exposed to a few alternative apps so they don't think there's only one way to do it. I used to work at a school where I fought furiously for Linux only to have the IT manager say it is the job of the school to prepare students for the real world, and Word(Microsoft) not Linux is what the real world uses. Also there was no way anything was going to use Linux.
In the mean time she was trying to cut costs, so got a new Linux server, and ran out to buy a MacBook because it was pretty. With leadership like that can anyone figure out why I left?
I thought that Linux was always bigger than MS in Europe already, was I wrong? With SuSE being originally from Germany and many other local distros, MS was fighting more of an uphill battle to get into European nations. Kind of makes me want to move overseas so I can work with a good stable OS and stick it to Bill Gates and the Legion of Doom...er...Microsoft.
Welcome mass flood of spammers to Gmail! True there were some out there before, but now that it is open its just going to get thousands of times worse. Hopefully they tweak up their internal spam filter to allow for their own domain.
I'm just glad I got in early enough that I have the names that I wanted before they got snatched up and added extra numbers or other junk to them.
Sure if you're talking about sabotage as in taking time to plan out something that causes harm to the system, you probably have to be in IT and pretty smart, or you can take a basic approach. You know that owner/supervisor or whatever higher up that thinks that they are so important that they need full system access...give it to them. I've had to recover a system after one of the higher ups decided that they didn't need want a system directory folder anymore and decided to delete it. Needless to say after that an audit was performed on the system to see who had rights to things that they shouldn't have, and I finally had the approval to apply the restricted rights policy that I'd been advocating for months.
This sounds pretty cool if it works as it is being described. Great asset for surveyors, construction, law enforcement and the neighborhood UFO photographer
I'm no expert, but if you didn't sign a non-compete agreement or anything similar they shouldn't have a case to worry about.
In response to other postings about the whole notice issue in general, a couple of months ago I changed jobs to a non-competing field and gave 3 weeks notice, even though my supervisors had essentially 2 months notice during the interviewing process. Wasn't until the day after I accepted the new position that I was approached with anything resembling a counter offer to stay which shows how out of the loop management was considering it was a 2 person IT dept. and 1 was leaving.
I gave my 3 weeks and kept working up to my last day as if it were any other day. Just that the first week I documented things that I did exclusively for the other person and whoever would eventually replace me, finished any of my projects by the 2nd week, and just dealt with direct support requests by the 3rd. It depends on how you're looking at a job for a reference when you leave, I was counting on a positive reference, and my supervisor was impressed how I just kept on like any other day until my last. I've had countless other co-workers saying how I should just sit around and do nothing, which I admit I was increasingly doing that, but still wanted to leave on positive terms.
In any case giving notice is not a practice used how it is intended. When an employee gives notice it is to give the employer time to hire a replacement and time for the exiting employee to train whoever is taking over their position what they have to do. Since it usually takes months for a company to decide to replace even the most crucial position, it just doesn't work giving 2 weeks or even 2 months.
I used to work for a school district where cost cutting was one of the major issues, which led me to learn about Linux. We had a contract with Novell so naturally I worked with Suse which I was able to incorporate all aspects of my MS environment into and even made them look like they were running natively by using a citrix server. Well the IT manager said that the problem is we have to teach students how to be productive in the "real world" which means using MS products since that is what everyone in the real world uses, and said no more working with linux period. Then she went out and got a Macbook because she liked how the one her friend had looked, proceeded to bog us down with help requests to make the Mac work with our system, then approved a new linux server so she could use iFolder.
Linux is actually a bigger part of the "real world" than I or my former boss could have ever imagined. I was surprised when I was at a Lowes and saw the KDE desktop on the staff terminals. I'm also amazed at how many products actually run linux but since they are "closed" self contained systems the general public is unaware how much it is actually out there.
Linux is and isn't ready for the mainstream, depending what you want it to do. If you are just running general office, internet, email type of environments, it is probably ready but it is definitely an uphill battle. If you use specialized software like CAD, I don't see linux as an adequate solution.
I've completely switched to linux in my personal PC's and I function in the real world as normal as a linux user can. I've even found what I like to call the "linux loophole" where lots of open networks such as at the coffee shops, etc are so focused on blocking MS products that linux and open source such as firefox pass right through those filters that are blocking Windows and IE.
Lets get over it already
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Am I the only one sick of all these election analysis books and articles? Whats done is done already. Even if a smoking gun was exposed saying that blatant fraud was discovered in one or both elections, what would it accomplish? As much as I'd love to press reset and go back to 2000, that ain't gonna happen. We can't suddenly say all policy created in the last 7 years is invalid, that would cause as much of a mess as the last 7 years created.
Lets just say, yes there was questionable events of the last 2 elections. These are the issues in question, now that we know what to look for lets make sure it doesn't happen again. I still think there is lots of work that needs to be done, and even if we go to an all computerized system, there should be a possibly 2 form receipt form that prints out. First so the voter has in their sweaty little palms who they voted for so there is no doubt. Second, a paper record in the event of a recount is required there is a paper copy that the voter submitted as an endorsed copy of their vote, (not signed endorsed, anonymity is still protected, just turning it in is the final step of the process), and thirdly, some people just aren't comfortable with computerized voting, this way if there is any question before they walk out of the poll, they know who they voted for, and maybe even have a "receipt" for themselves just to be sure.
This article fails to address the years of oppression and social isolation that IT Professionals faced before they became the professional that they are. How many of us were the "nerds" "geeks" "dorks" or whatever else they called us back in school when the "cool kids" wanted nothing to do with us unless they needed help with their homework, which usually meant let them copy it. Now that we all grew up the formally "cool kids" try to play down what they did to us in the past, pretend that it never happened and become all chummy so we can once again do their work for them. Especially when the answer is in the manual or help file (I'll admit it, I do check those when I can't immediately find an answer).
As for the part of the article talking about the code of ethics...Pirates of the Carribean said it best...the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
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For the price of an iPhone there is no way it will replace the iPod for most people, plus the fact that you will probably need a phone plan as well. I for one see the real next generation of iPods being the full touch screen. Not to mention from my experience, I know how crappy my cell phone battery is, I know how crappy my iPod battery is, and I can only imagine the problems I'd encounter if I combined the two.
Seriously, what genius thought this was a good idea in the first place? How long is it going to be before the headlines read something like "Stalker kidnaps child with AIM"? I want to know how this idea got a green light considering the potential danger that it is going to create
So I guess what I'm saying is management has to create usefull and realistic policies and enforce them. Sometimes you may have to make an example of someone to bring the rest in line, but if punishing the employee that downloads the 10,000 animated smilies but also infects everyone on the network with a virus, the next person might think twice before causally downloading something else.
IT personnel change a bulb...what are you talking about?
You have to fill out a maintenance request, get supervisor approval, send the request to the maintenance department, just about when you forget about it somebody from maintenance finally comes in with the wrong light bulb, send request back through management to order the correct bulb, finally get the correct bulb, and just after you get used to working in the darker room the maintenance guy returns and actually changes the bulb.
Total time: about a month if you're lucky.
The title was a little confusing and its easy to see how people are getting "cell phone services" confused between carrier and features for the phone.
That being said, I have a blackberry that I use through work and they have a cool Blackberry Maps service that ties in maps and directions with the GPS function so the map updates as I'm driving, tells me my speed, and I think it even tells me when a turn is approaching (I only use it when I travel and that hasn't been for a while). Plus the software is a free service available with a (overpriced) data plan.
LOL...It also doesn't hurt that I'm the guy at the pub that all the drunk friends buy me drinks to clean up their computers so their wives won't get PO'ed at them for what they've been looking at. Too bad I don't document what I actually remove from who. I'd really have some good dirt that I don't think I'd ever have to buy a drink again.
Sadly I see "open source" as a phrase going the way of the dinosaur as well. Add this to the other words and phrases that the internet has also made meaningless...
"free"-there is always a cost...spyware, some sort of database or mailing list, or the ones that I love that say free then ask for some sort of payment anyway
"no credit card required"- a couple of screens later there is a screen asking for your credit card number for the next one...
"age verification"- click here to verify your age, or use an older friend/family's credit card and their info
"you have won"-click here to get your new laptop, PS3, iPod, etc...then fill out a bunch of forms, sign up for a bunch of email lists or overpriced crap you don't want, valuing 3 times the amount of the item that you "won"
"hot" and "sexy"- I'm sorry, when you describe yourself like this you're either too full of yourself, or more often than not you need a reality check on what hot and/or sexy really mean.
"single female looking"- along the same lines of the last one, this usually ends up being an overweight middle aged guy living in his parent's basement with nothing better to do while he is waiting for a response on to his posting on the WOW message boards
"click [here] for more"- this one is like playing Russian roulette, you might get another page of information you want, you might be taken to an ad site, you might be taken to a subscription page, you just can't predict what will happen whenever you click on those words.
I know there are many more that I missed, feel free to add your own that you've come across
Why do we have to keep using the EXP methods we've been using for years now. Technically any action performed in a game has a process assigned to it and can be given a mathematical value to increase or decrease a stat or skill on the fly. For example, taking a warrior character out into the woods and have them attack trees (or chopping), this can increase their fighting skills and strength just as good as a battle, but on the same note it won't increase the skill as much as an actual battle. So hypothetically attacking a tree will increase appropriate abilities 0.0001% where fighting a small monster will be different because successful or failed attack, defend, dodge or parry will have a different rating depending on what you are attacking or defending. Blocking an Ogre's club successfully on a low level will have a greater impact than blocking a dragon's breath on a high level with a magical shield.
As the attribute is not being used, it has a natural rate of decay. So while you're traveling between towns, standing around talking to other players, etc... your battle stats are slowly dwindling, which makes it possible that you can at one time be an expert archer, but not using your bow and arrows will result in loss of your ability. Nothing is absolute so there is no 100% or 0%, so even an expert archer will miss on occasion, but even an inexperienced lock pick might be able to open the box (but each failed attempt does increase that skill since you are using it).
Do away with the MP system completely. Magical ability should be determined by the wisdom, intelligence, and some sort of spell familiarity stat. In most RPGs, when I get a spell I'm suddenly 100% proficient with it...real world would be HELL NO! Lets take fire for example. At first I'd probably barely be able to light a candle, give it a while I'd be able to start a campfire, and even later throw fireballs, ignite weapons, or other things. The familiarity with the spell increases so I'd be able to do new things with it. At first I might even be a little unstable, where I'd intend to start a fireplace and end up blowing up the wall of the house. Which leads me to the next stat they should add, a stress (for lack of a better term) stat. When in the midst of a battle, you're extremely outnumbered, near death, no hope...somehow you pull off the miracle shot that ends up destroying all your enemies and saving your friends. Or the opposite you spend all the time learning a spell, and it could be a random non-critical moment, or that one point of the game it absolutely has to be cast...it fails. Maybe even a tiredness stat so that even when I'm a "fire master" I can't cast the most powerful spell all day, they'll slowly get weaker as I use them because it takes more out of the character as they use it. Stronger spells take energy faster than weak ones, but proficiency with the spell also reduces the rate it tires the character.
I'd also like to see spells evolve more rather than how in Final Fantasy series you get the Fire1, Fire2, Fire3 sudden proficiencies. The more you use a specific spell the stronger you get with it. The less you use a spell you lose proficiency with it, not forget just can't use them like you used to. So I'll use fire and lightning spells for an example. I'm using fire and can throw fireballs, ignite pretty much anything I want, etc...but learn lightning. Now that I'm summoning bolts from the sky, shooting bolts from my fingers, or whatever...my fireballs aren't as strong or can't go as far, fires aren't as strong as soon, etc...get my point?
I may be wrong but with some of these methods and changing the focus of RPGs from leveling to actually exploring and enjoying the story, we can get away from the lame missions such as collect 3 bugs for sister's collection. Some may work better than others, or they might not work at all, its just stuff that I've been thinking over the years of playing RPGs that I'm finally given the opportunity to put out there.
Thanks for the clarification, I'm not much of a stocks person so that just flew over my head. I'll make sure to double check my spelling next time...even though that won't stop me from looking like a total idiot
When I bought CDs it was usually just for 1-2 songs then maybe another 1-2 grew on me, the rest of them I usually skip past. iTunes was great when you could buy the individual tracks, but since one of their last deals, in order to get that 1-2 songs I like they made it so I have to download the entire album. I'm not a big music person either, I can't name you bands and songs, but I know what I like and when they won't easily let me get what I want their way, I'm going to look for another way.
Is this just a marketing tactic because forcing a change from hotmail to whatever they are calling their @...com will just scare off too many customers, not to mention confuse everyone that already communicates with one of the few non spam bots that still exist out there (I don't know actual numbers but get more spam from the hotmail domain than actual contacts). Or have they done a study that told them that the general public may be carrying a negative image of "Windows [live] Mail" which may suggest that even though they own 90% of the market that the general public may not actually want to be associated directly as a MS service user.
In the mean time she was trying to cut costs, so got a new Linux server, and ran out to buy a MacBook because it was pretty. With leadership like that can anyone figure out why I left?
I thought that Linux was always bigger than MS in Europe already, was I wrong? With SuSE being originally from Germany and many other local distros, MS was fighting more of an uphill battle to get into European nations. Kind of makes me want to move overseas so I can work with a good stable OS and stick it to Bill Gates and the Legion of Doom...er...Microsoft.
Welcome mass flood of spammers to Gmail! True there were some out there before, but now that it is open its just going to get thousands of times worse. Hopefully they tweak up their internal spam filter to allow for their own domain.
I'm just glad I got in early enough that I have the names that I wanted before they got snatched up and added extra numbers or other junk to them.
Sure if you're talking about sabotage as in taking time to plan out something that causes harm to the system, you probably have to be in IT and pretty smart, or you can take a basic approach. You know that owner/supervisor or whatever higher up that thinks that they are so important that they need full system access...give it to them. I've had to recover a system after one of the higher ups decided that they didn't need want a system directory folder anymore and decided to delete it. Needless to say after that an audit was performed on the system to see who had rights to things that they shouldn't have, and I finally had the approval to apply the restricted rights policy that I'd been advocating for months.
This sounds pretty cool if it works as it is being described. Great asset for surveyors, construction, law enforcement and the neighborhood UFO photographer
I'm no expert, but if you didn't sign a non-compete agreement or anything similar they shouldn't have a case to worry about.
In response to other postings about the whole notice issue in general, a couple of months ago I changed jobs to a non-competing field and gave 3 weeks notice, even though my supervisors had essentially 2 months notice during the interviewing process. Wasn't until the day after I accepted the new position that I was approached with anything resembling a counter offer to stay which shows how out of the loop management was considering it was a 2 person IT dept. and 1 was leaving.
I gave my 3 weeks and kept working up to my last day as if it were any other day. Just that the first week I documented things that I did exclusively for the other person and whoever would eventually replace me, finished any of my projects by the 2nd week, and just dealt with direct support requests by the 3rd. It depends on how you're looking at a job for a reference when you leave, I was counting on a positive reference, and my supervisor was impressed how I just kept on like any other day until my last. I've had countless other co-workers saying how I should just sit around and do nothing, which I admit I was increasingly doing that, but still wanted to leave on positive terms.
In any case giving notice is not a practice used how it is intended. When an employee gives notice it is to give the employer time to hire a replacement and time for the exiting employee to train whoever is taking over their position what they have to do. Since it usually takes months for a company to decide to replace even the most crucial position, it just doesn't work giving 2 weeks or even 2 months.
I used to work for a school district where cost cutting was one of the major issues, which led me to learn about Linux. We had a contract with Novell so naturally I worked with Suse which I was able to incorporate all aspects of my MS environment into and even made them look like they were running natively by using a citrix server. Well the IT manager said that the problem is we have to teach students how to be productive in the "real world" which means using MS products since that is what everyone in the real world uses, and said no more working with linux period. Then she went out and got a Macbook because she liked how the one her friend had looked, proceeded to bog us down with help requests to make the Mac work with our system, then approved a new linux server so she could use iFolder.
Linux is actually a bigger part of the "real world" than I or my former boss could have ever imagined. I was surprised when I was at a Lowes and saw the KDE desktop on the staff terminals. I'm also amazed at how many products actually run linux but since they are "closed" self contained systems the general public is unaware how much it is actually out there.
Linux is and isn't ready for the mainstream, depending what you want it to do. If you are just running general office, internet, email type of environments, it is probably ready but it is definitely an uphill battle. If you use specialized software like CAD, I don't see linux as an adequate solution.
I've completely switched to linux in my personal PC's and I function in the real world as normal as a linux user can. I've even found what I like to call the "linux loophole" where lots of open networks such as at the coffee shops, etc are so focused on blocking MS products that linux and open source such as firefox pass right through those filters that are blocking Windows and IE.
Am I the only one sick of all these election analysis books and articles? Whats done is done already. Even if a smoking gun was exposed saying that blatant fraud was discovered in one or both elections, what would it accomplish? As much as I'd love to press reset and go back to 2000, that ain't gonna happen. We can't suddenly say all policy created in the last 7 years is invalid, that would cause as much of a mess as the last 7 years created.
Lets just say, yes there was questionable events of the last 2 elections. These are the issues in question, now that we know what to look for lets make sure it doesn't happen again. I still think there is lots of work that needs to be done, and even if we go to an all computerized system, there should be a possibly 2 form receipt form that prints out. First so the voter has in their sweaty little palms who they voted for so there is no doubt. Second, a paper record in the event of a recount is required there is a paper copy that the voter submitted as an endorsed copy of their vote, (not signed endorsed, anonymity is still protected, just turning it in is the final step of the process), and thirdly, some people just aren't comfortable with computerized voting, this way if there is any question before they walk out of the poll, they know who they voted for, and maybe even have a "receipt" for themselves just to be sure.
This article fails to address the years of oppression and social isolation that IT Professionals faced before they became the professional that they are. How many of us were the "nerds" "geeks" "dorks" or whatever else they called us back in school when the "cool kids" wanted nothing to do with us unless they needed help with their homework, which usually meant let them copy it. Now that we all grew up the formally "cool kids" try to play down what they did to us in the past, pretend that it never happened and become all chummy so we can once again do their work for them. Especially when the answer is in the manual or help file (I'll admit it, I do check those when I can't immediately find an answer). As for the part of the article talking about the code of ethics...Pirates of the Carribean said it best...the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.