As others have pointed out it's very easy to change the default search engine in Chrome. Naturally Google is going to have their own search engine as the default. They are giving us the browser for free and want to make some revenue from their search results. To maintain privacy in searches here is what I do:
1) Change the default search engine to DDG. 2) I use a desktop email client rather than the web client for Gmail. Why? Because as soon as you log into your Google account they start tracking your movements in the browser. The only time I log into Google in my browser is if I want to sync my bookmarks across computers. After the sync, I log off. 3) Think before you search. If the search is something you can't show to your mom then use DDG. I use Google search almost exclusively for work related stuff. Anything personal (medical related, personal finance related, etc.) I use DDG.
If anyone out there has tips I'd love to hear them.
Of the three I mentioned above the only one that has any chance is the 100 point game. Kobe got 81 points back in 2006 so that's at least within striking distance. But who is going to average 50 points a game over an entire season? Not gonna happen. If a player gets 30 points in a single game it's considered a huge achievement. Michael Jordan, who many people consider the greatest player ever, averaged 30.1 points per game for his career. His best season was 35 points per game. Remember, the season that Wilt set those records he also played every minute of every game. Nobody does that now.
Let's talk rebounds. Last year Dwight Howard led the league - with 14.5 rebounds per game. That's a little over half of Wilt's total. Nobody has averaged over 20 since Chamberlain did it in 1968. Wilt also holds the single game record for most rebounds - a mind boggling 55. And he played against Bill Russell that game, not some chump on an expansion team.
Sure, records are made to be broken but some of them will stand the test of time. I also think that Wayne Gretzky's career goals and assists records in the NHL are untouchable as well, but that's another debate for another day:-)
Your opponent was Faith Baptist Bible, not even an NCAA team. Translation - tomato can. To me the greatest feat in basketball still belongs to Wilt Chamberlain and the 100 point game. Done without the benefit of the 3 point shot by the way. That same year he averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds per game. Astounding. Those records will never, ever, be broken at the professional level.
According to http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/ a Schedule 1 drugs are defined as "Substances in this schedule have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.". Schedule 2 are "Substances in this schedule have a high potential for abuse which may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence."
Marijuana clearly has medical uses so including it as a Schedule 1 substance is misleading to say the least.
"A recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana." - I'm going to call BS on this one right out of the gate. How is a cop going to test if you're high on pot? They don't have any equipment with them that can measure it. Someone high on pot can look very much like someone that is just tired...red eyes, slower reaction times, etc.
"Driving within three hours of smoking pot is associated with a near doubling of the risk of fatal crashes." - Bullshit again. The Feds are pulling these stats out of their collective asses. The truth is that pot has a very different effect than alcohol does. Driving under the influence of alcohol is far, far more dangerous than pot. Look, these idiots are still classifying pot as a Schedule 1 drug. It's in the same category as cocaine, heroin and LSD. None of the Schedule 1 drugs have any beneficial use and yet marijuana clearly does for migraine headaches, glaucoma, and nausea from radiation treatment for cancer patients.
I'm not suggesting that people should be driving around stoned. But let's have an intelligent discussion about it before throwing around these outlandish claims.
Now I know this is going to ruffle some feathers but how about just inviting the best qualified speaker you can find...regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation? So the speakers were 100% white males. So what? What is the organizer supposed to do...bring in a few less qualified women and minorities to satisfy some diversity lapdog? Great. Then the conference attendees get a less than optimal experience but at least at the end they can all hold hands and sing kumbaya. Maybe we should just hand out "best in show" ribbons to everyone that presents so that we don't, you know, marginalize anyone. Heaven forbid.
This is a bunch of computer geeks getting together it's not the fucking United Nations. If the conference doesn't have enough "diversity" for you then don't attend it. Plain and simple.
Ok, she is not directly responsible for this fiasco although she does admit to voting for the sale. Just seems odd that one bad move after another seems to follow her wherever she goes. Honestly, I think that her and Carly are locked in a fierce battle for worst CEO of all time. Oops...look out...Balmer is closing fast...
Maybe there should be some sort of "instigator" penalty. In my experience fights are almost always started by bullies. Punishing the victim for defending themselves hardly seems fair to me. Back when I was in school two kids went toe to toe in the schoolyard and that was it. Now you've got kids carrying knives and guns so it's not a simple schoolyard brawl anymore. With a zero tolerance policy bullies will simply resort to more devious tactics such as the spreading of rumors (so and so is "gay", etc.).
Good point, I forgot about the XBox. But I wonder how relevant dedicated gaming machines are going to be in the future? A lot of people are using their tablets to play games. Granted those people are not hard core gamers but they do make up a large population of gaming enthusiasts.
The OS and MS Office are about all they have left. It's a bold move to try and stay relevant in an age of tablet computers (that don't run Windows) and smartphones (most of which don't run Windows either). Yes, they still have a solid foothold in the corporate space with Windows and Exchange and Sharepoint but in the consumer space it's slipping and slipping badly.
Just watch what happens on Black Friday...iPads and Android devices will be flying off the shelves. Windows 8 will be gathering dust. The sad part is that Windows 8 could have been ok but, once again, MS is too late to the party. Apple and Google are firmly intrenched in the smartphone/tablet space with Microsoft left to fight over crumbs.
For many people their impression of Windows comes from using that shitty, three year old, locked down desktop PC at work. They want something new and cool for personal use and MS is far down the list.
The fact that Ballmer is still CEO is baffling to me. By the time he is done he might go down as the worst CEO ever. No amount of chair throwing will help him now. And the "developers, developers, developers" have left the building.
It's especially alarming to hear this coming from someone at SAP. Enterprise software takes a LONG time to master. It's not just learning to program in a particular language, it's learning the intricacies of a VAST application and all the modules that come with it. Of course he's in India so he has that sweatshop mentality. Guess what Ferose? I have seen the code that those monkeys produce and it's shit. We always have to end up fixing it State side...yeah, those more than 35 year old guys that you are so quick to write off.
And if you hire subpar employees your profit will suffer due to lack of productivity and high turnover.
People that are skilled in HR (yes there are a few of them) realize this. One of the big trends now is identifying so called "top talent" in an organization. These are the people that are not easily replaceable, the ones you don't want to lose. These individuals will have no trouble finding another job. In fact, if they are really good they probably have already been contacted by a competitor.
Finding, and keeping, top talent is a huge priority for elite companies. It's not always about money, although that's certainly a major part of the equation. It's about treating people the right way, giving them challenging work, a career path, training.
If a company did that to me I would immediately deduce that they are not a company I would ever want to work for. Their first, and last, contact with me has been based on lies. That bridge has already burned. At that point I would probably tell all the interviewers to go fuck themselves and leave. Then I would tell everyone I know about the experience. Word spreads fast in the IT field.
"The other 69+% of recruiters were Indian shell companies searching for cheap H1B labor to place and wouldn't submit an American for an open contract if you held a gun to their head" - It's gotten to the point now that I won't even speak to a recruiter with a thick Indian accent. What many of them do is sub to a sub to a sub. It's like the Nested Russian Doll model. Each of them take $1 an hour or so. Vultures.
Not so sure about the user car salesman part but for recruiters, yeah, I'd tend to agree there. I get contacted by recruiters a lot and most of them are FOS in my experience. They will build up whatever company they represent and tell you whatever you want to hear. If that involves throwing in a few outright lies, so be it. Their goal is to get bodies in the door. Your job satisfaction is not their concern.
They are salespeople, plain and simple. Part of the problem is the compensation model. They are not paid based on retention they are paid based on how many positions they fill. In some respects it is in their favor to have high turnover...that way they can make more commissions by filling more seats. It is not in their interest to attract quality candidates but simply to attract candidates of any kind.
These days when I speak to a recruiter my standard position is that everything they tell me is a lie until I can verify it independently.
I want to see it succeed. Why? Because it will help drive innovation for iOS and Android. Heck, I'm even pulling for Blackberry. From an end user standpoint, the more we have to choose from the better. So sure, WP8 might stumble a bit out of the gate but it will get better. Even WebOS with it's swipe-to-close-the-app feature had something to add...a feature that Android adopted.
I've seen the WP8 phones but not had a chance to use one yet. Honestly, it didn't seem half bad. The app ecosystem is going to lag for a bit but I think that most of the essential apps are already there. Should be interesting.
Well, that's certainly part of it. That and a general lack of accountability. In the private sector if you screw up a big project you get canned. In public sector you just move on to the next project.
"You probably make a living out of installing ERPs, but hear me out on this." - I do. Go right ahead.
"What I consider very wrong from what you are saying is that the enterprise should adapt to the software and not the other way around." - Perhaps I was a little unclear. Customers most certainly do customize the software to fit their needs. I've never been on an implementation that didn't have at least some customization. When it comes to ERP systems though it's a double edged sword. You can customize as much as you want but you've got to be careful to do it the right way. You've got to have strict standards and stick to them otherwise when you do an upgrade it will be very difficult to distinguish your code from the delivered code. It works best if you can use delivered things as much as possible and customize where you have to but document it thoroughly and test it well.
"If I'm going to spend $1 billion dollars I'd rather take the Industrial Light & Magic approach and build my own tools to do what I need them to do." - That's certainly a viable option. From what I understand Amazon and WalMart built theirs from the ground up. I have another thread in here that talks about that.
"So if a system like this is so crucial to the company, they should just have a larger MIS department in my opinion." - Bingo! Mine too. The mistake that many companies make is underestimating just how much care and feeding these sorts of enterprise class software systems need. Not only in terms of upgrades that can last months or longer but just day to day maintenance...batch jobs, web servers, security...you name it. There are literally millions of lines of code and in some cases thousands of concurrent users and these are often business critical types of applications so it's a big deal if it goes down. For that you need trained and knowledgable staff.
"The bad thing about Android is that there are so many things they can still improve." - Starting with security. Phones are too easily lost or stolen and it's one of the main reasons I won't put any banking apps on my phone. RIM seemed to be heading down the right road security wise but app wise...well, not so much. I'd like to see a Yubikey type of device that plugs into the headphone jack (a-la Square) to provide authentication. Of course the key itself would be password protected so in the event you lost both the phone and the Yubikey you would still have a few layers of passwords to go through. As soon as you realize that the phone's gone a quick remote wipe bricks the thing completely, reducing incentive to steal it in the first place. The only way to reactivate it would be to bring it back to AT&T or Verizon or wherever you bought it and show some evidence that you're the person that purchased the phone.
Exactly. Look how long it has taken the Linux crowd to release something that will work well with all those video cards and wifi cards. Writing an OS for a PC is tough stuff. For a phone I suspect it's much easier. But having said that the power of these mobile OS's continues to amaze me. Android is orders of magnitude better now than just a few years ago.
"The fact that your product doesn't fit what your customer needs isn't a problem with your customer, its a problem with you offering your product for those needs." - All the more reason for doing some analysis up front to determine if the product is a good fit for your company. There is no one size fits all solution. It's like buying an Escalade and then complaining that it gets lousy gas mileage. If the software can't do what you want it to do then don't buy it. Keep looking or build something in house.
I am curious as to how much analysis was done by the powers that be at the Air Force before committing to a contract of this magnitude. My guess would be little or none. Their first mistake was listening to the Oracle salespeople who are notorious for underestimating and oversimplifying. In my experience almost none of them are "software" people in the sense of actually implementing the product. "Oh sure, that's easy. We can do that". Salespeople get their bonuses based on the size of the sale, not how profitable it is. So if it goes way over budget it's not their problem it's a problem for the implementation team. They have already pocketed their bonus and gone off to the next customer. Always, always, get a second opinion on what salespeople are promising you.
"Consulting is the worst part of a consulting gig" - I hate to say it but you're right. Honestly the only part that I enjoy is writing the code. That's fun for me. It's one of the reasons I never went into project management...haven't got the stomach for it. I'm firmly convinced that office politics is the single biggest problem in business today.
There is this glut of, mostly, middle management types that have no real skills other than playing the political games. I can't tell you how many meetings I have been subjected to where I have taken a look around the room and determined that every single one of them is a worthless pile of shit. Most of them sit there and don't say a word. They add nothing of value to the conversation. In fact, the only reason they are there in the first place is because of their position in the company.
My motivation comes from trying to provide the best advice I can and deliver the best product I can. Nothing I can do about the political B.S. Unfortunately it's a necessary evil. Luckily for me I spend more time behind the keyboard and less time in the boardroom these days. Just the way I like it:-)
I'm surprised that this is not already standard procedure. If it were up to me I'd probably disable all the USB ports as well. If you've got the best firewall in the world it won't be worth a plug nickel if someone takes a flash drive with a virus on it and plugs it into a PC in the office. Now you're inside the firewall and it spreads like wildfire.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out it's very easy to change the default search engine in Chrome. Naturally Google is going to have their own search engine as the default. They are giving us the browser for free and want to make some revenue from their search results. To maintain privacy in searches here is what I do:
1) Change the default search engine to DDG.
2) I use a desktop email client rather than the web client for Gmail. Why? Because as soon as you log into your Google account they start tracking your movements in the browser. The only time I log into Google in my browser is if I want to sync my bookmarks across computers. After the sync, I log off.
3) Think before you search. If the search is something you can't show to your mom then use DDG. I use Google search almost exclusively for work related stuff. Anything personal (medical related, personal finance related, etc.) I use DDG.
If anyone out there has tips I'd love to hear them.
Of the three I mentioned above the only one that has any chance is the 100 point game. Kobe got 81 points back in 2006 so that's at least within striking distance. But who is going to average 50 points a game over an entire season? Not gonna happen. If a player gets 30 points in a single game it's considered a huge achievement. Michael Jordan, who many people consider the greatest player ever, averaged 30.1 points per game for his career. His best season was 35 points per game. Remember, the season that Wilt set those records he also played every minute of every game. Nobody does that now.
Let's talk rebounds. Last year Dwight Howard led the league - with 14.5 rebounds per game. That's a little over half of Wilt's total. Nobody has averaged over 20 since Chamberlain did it in 1968. Wilt also holds the single game record for most rebounds - a mind boggling 55. And he played against Bill Russell that game, not some chump on an expansion team.
Sure, records are made to be broken but some of them will stand the test of time. I also think that Wayne Gretzky's career goals and assists records in the NHL are untouchable as well, but that's another debate for another day :-)
Your opponent was Faith Baptist Bible, not even an NCAA team. Translation - tomato can. To me the greatest feat in basketball still belongs to Wilt Chamberlain and the 100 point game. Done without the benefit of the 3 point shot by the way. That same year he averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds per game. Astounding. Those records will never, ever, be broken at the professional level.
Thanks for the correction.
According to http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/schedules/ a Schedule 1 drugs are defined as "Substances in this schedule have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse.". Schedule 2 are "Substances in this schedule have a high potential for abuse which may lead to severe psychological or physical dependence."
Marijuana clearly has medical uses so including it as a Schedule 1 substance is misleading to say the least.
"A recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana." - I'm going to call BS on this one right out of the gate. How is a cop going to test if you're high on pot? They don't have any equipment with them that can measure it. Someone high on pot can look very much like someone that is just tired...red eyes, slower reaction times, etc.
"Driving within three hours of smoking pot is associated with a near doubling of the risk of fatal crashes." - Bullshit again. The Feds are pulling these stats out of their collective asses. The truth is that pot has a very different effect than alcohol does. Driving under the influence of alcohol is far, far more dangerous than pot. Look, these idiots are still classifying pot as a Schedule 1 drug. It's in the same category as cocaine, heroin and LSD. None of the Schedule 1 drugs have any beneficial use and yet marijuana clearly does for migraine headaches, glaucoma, and nausea from radiation treatment for cancer patients.
I'm not suggesting that people should be driving around stoned. But let's have an intelligent discussion about it before throwing around these outlandish claims.
Now I know this is going to ruffle some feathers but how about just inviting the best qualified speaker you can find...regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation? So the speakers were 100% white males. So what? What is the organizer supposed to do...bring in a few less qualified women and minorities to satisfy some diversity lapdog? Great. Then the conference attendees get a less than optimal experience but at least at the end they can all hold hands and sing kumbaya. Maybe we should just hand out "best in show" ribbons to everyone that presents so that we don't, you know, marginalize anyone. Heaven forbid.
This is a bunch of computer geeks getting together it's not the fucking United Nations. If the conference doesn't have enough "diversity" for you then don't attend it. Plain and simple.
Ok, she is not directly responsible for this fiasco although she does admit to voting for the sale. Just seems odd that one bad move after another seems to follow her wherever she goes. Honestly, I think that her and Carly are locked in a fierce battle for worst CEO of all time. Oops...look out...Balmer is closing fast...
Maybe there should be some sort of "instigator" penalty. In my experience fights are almost always started by bullies. Punishing the victim for defending themselves hardly seems fair to me. Back when I was in school two kids went toe to toe in the schoolyard and that was it. Now you've got kids carrying knives and guns so it's not a simple schoolyard brawl anymore. With a zero tolerance policy bullies will simply resort to more devious tactics such as the spreading of rumors (so and so is "gay", etc.).
Good point, I forgot about the XBox. But I wonder how relevant dedicated gaming machines are going to be in the future? A lot of people are using their tablets to play games. Granted those people are not hard core gamers but they do make up a large population of gaming enthusiasts.
What were you using before the centrinos? Stone tablet and chisel? :-D
Too early. The hardware of the time was not capable of providing a good experience.
The OS and MS Office are about all they have left. It's a bold move to try and stay relevant in an age of tablet computers (that don't run Windows) and smartphones (most of which don't run Windows either). Yes, they still have a solid foothold in the corporate space with Windows and Exchange and Sharepoint but in the consumer space it's slipping and slipping badly.
Just watch what happens on Black Friday...iPads and Android devices will be flying off the shelves. Windows 8 will be gathering dust. The sad part is that Windows 8 could have been ok but, once again, MS is too late to the party. Apple and Google are firmly intrenched in the smartphone/tablet space with Microsoft left to fight over crumbs.
For many people their impression of Windows comes from using that shitty, three year old, locked down desktop PC at work. They want something new and cool for personal use and MS is far down the list.
The fact that Ballmer is still CEO is baffling to me. By the time he is done he might go down as the worst CEO ever. No amount of chair throwing will help him now. And the "developers, developers, developers" have left the building.
It's especially alarming to hear this coming from someone at SAP. Enterprise software takes a LONG time to master. It's not just learning to program in a particular language, it's learning the intricacies of a VAST application and all the modules that come with it. Of course he's in India so he has that sweatshop mentality. Guess what Ferose? I have seen the code that those monkeys produce and it's shit. We always have to end up fixing it State side...yeah, those more than 35 year old guys that you are so quick to write off.
And if you hire subpar employees your profit will suffer due to lack of productivity and high turnover.
People that are skilled in HR (yes there are a few of them) realize this. One of the big trends now is identifying so called "top talent" in an organization. These are the people that are not easily replaceable, the ones you don't want to lose. These individuals will have no trouble finding another job. In fact, if they are really good they probably have already been contacted by a competitor.
Finding, and keeping, top talent is a huge priority for elite companies. It's not always about money, although that's certainly a major part of the equation. It's about treating people the right way, giving them challenging work, a career path, training.
If a company did that to me I would immediately deduce that they are not a company I would ever want to work for. Their first, and last, contact with me has been based on lies. That bridge has already burned. At that point I would probably tell all the interviewers to go fuck themselves and leave. Then I would tell everyone I know about the experience. Word spreads fast in the IT field.
"The other 69+% of recruiters were Indian shell companies searching for cheap H1B labor to place and wouldn't submit an American for an open contract if you held a gun to their head" - It's gotten to the point now that I won't even speak to a recruiter with a thick Indian accent. What many of them do is sub to a sub to a sub. It's like the Nested Russian Doll model. Each of them take $1 an hour or so. Vultures.
Not so sure about the user car salesman part but for recruiters, yeah, I'd tend to agree there. I get contacted by recruiters a lot and most of them are FOS in my experience. They will build up whatever company they represent and tell you whatever you want to hear. If that involves throwing in a few outright lies, so be it. Their goal is to get bodies in the door. Your job satisfaction is not their concern.
They are salespeople, plain and simple. Part of the problem is the compensation model. They are not paid based on retention they are paid based on how many positions they fill. In some respects it is in their favor to have high turnover...that way they can make more commissions by filling more seats. It is not in their interest to attract quality candidates but simply to attract candidates of any kind.
These days when I speak to a recruiter my standard position is that everything they tell me is a lie until I can verify it independently.
I want to see it succeed. Why? Because it will help drive innovation for iOS and Android. Heck, I'm even pulling for Blackberry. From an end user standpoint, the more we have to choose from the better. So sure, WP8 might stumble a bit out of the gate but it will get better. Even WebOS with it's swipe-to-close-the-app feature had something to add...a feature that Android adopted.
I've seen the WP8 phones but not had a chance to use one yet. Honestly, it didn't seem half bad. The app ecosystem is going to lag for a bit but I think that most of the essential apps are already there. Should be interesting.
Well, that's certainly part of it. That and a general lack of accountability. In the private sector if you screw up a big project you get canned. In public sector you just move on to the next project.
"You probably make a living out of installing ERPs, but hear me out on this." - I do. Go right ahead.
"What I consider very wrong from what you are saying is that the enterprise should adapt to the software and not the other way around." - Perhaps I was a little unclear. Customers most certainly do customize the software to fit their needs. I've never been on an implementation that didn't have at least some customization. When it comes to ERP systems though it's a double edged sword. You can customize as much as you want but you've got to be careful to do it the right way. You've got to have strict standards and stick to them otherwise when you do an upgrade it will be very difficult to distinguish your code from the delivered code. It works best if you can use delivered things as much as possible and customize where you have to but document it thoroughly and test it well.
"If I'm going to spend $1 billion dollars I'd rather take the Industrial Light & Magic approach and build my own tools to do what I need them to do." - That's certainly a viable option. From what I understand Amazon and WalMart built theirs from the ground up. I have another thread in here that talks about that.
"So if a system like this is so crucial to the company, they should just have a larger MIS department in my opinion." - Bingo! Mine too. The mistake that many companies make is underestimating just how much care and feeding these sorts of enterprise class software systems need. Not only in terms of upgrades that can last months or longer but just day to day maintenance...batch jobs, web servers, security...you name it. There are literally millions of lines of code and in some cases thousands of concurrent users and these are often business critical types of applications so it's a big deal if it goes down. For that you need trained and knowledgable staff.
"The bad thing about Android is that there are so many things they can still improve." - Starting with security. Phones are too easily lost or stolen and it's one of the main reasons I won't put any banking apps on my phone. RIM seemed to be heading down the right road security wise but app wise...well, not so much. I'd like to see a Yubikey type of device that plugs into the headphone jack (a-la Square) to provide authentication. Of course the key itself would be password protected so in the event you lost both the phone and the Yubikey you would still have a few layers of passwords to go through. As soon as you realize that the phone's gone a quick remote wipe bricks the thing completely, reducing incentive to steal it in the first place. The only way to reactivate it would be to bring it back to AT&T or Verizon or wherever you bought it and show some evidence that you're the person that purchased the phone.
Exactly. Look how long it has taken the Linux crowd to release something that will work well with all those video cards and wifi cards. Writing an OS for a PC is tough stuff. For a phone I suspect it's much easier. But having said that the power of these mobile OS's continues to amaze me. Android is orders of magnitude better now than just a few years ago.
"The fact that your product doesn't fit what your customer needs isn't a problem with your customer, its a problem with you offering your product for those needs." - All the more reason for doing some analysis up front to determine if the product is a good fit for your company. There is no one size fits all solution. It's like buying an Escalade and then complaining that it gets lousy gas mileage. If the software can't do what you want it to do then don't buy it. Keep looking or build something in house.
I am curious as to how much analysis was done by the powers that be at the Air Force before committing to a contract of this magnitude. My guess would be little or none. Their first mistake was listening to the Oracle salespeople who are notorious for underestimating and oversimplifying. In my experience almost none of them are "software" people in the sense of actually implementing the product. "Oh sure, that's easy. We can do that". Salespeople get their bonuses based on the size of the sale, not how profitable it is. So if it goes way over budget it's not their problem it's a problem for the implementation team. They have already pocketed their bonus and gone off to the next customer. Always, always, get a second opinion on what salespeople are promising you.
"Consulting is the worst part of a consulting gig" - I hate to say it but you're right. Honestly the only part that I enjoy is writing the code. That's fun for me. It's one of the reasons I never went into project management...haven't got the stomach for it. I'm firmly convinced that office politics is the single biggest problem in business today.
There is this glut of, mostly, middle management types that have no real skills other than playing the political games. I can't tell you how many meetings I have been subjected to where I have taken a look around the room and determined that every single one of them is a worthless pile of shit. Most of them sit there and don't say a word. They add nothing of value to the conversation. In fact, the only reason they are there in the first place is because of their position in the company.
My motivation comes from trying to provide the best advice I can and deliver the best product I can. Nothing I can do about the political B.S. Unfortunately it's a necessary evil. Luckily for me I spend more time behind the keyboard and less time in the boardroom these days. Just the way I like it :-)
I'm surprised that this is not already standard procedure. If it were up to me I'd probably disable all the USB ports as well. If you've got the best firewall in the world it won't be worth a plug nickel if someone takes a flash drive with a virus on it and plugs it into a PC in the office. Now you're inside the firewall and it spreads like wildfire.