Gas giants are supposed to have rocky cores, yeah. It's just that most of the planets volume is gas, usually under heavy pressure. So any probe would be crushed and melted long before it had a chance to get to a core.
Keep in mind what I said about conjecture here. The idea that the gas giants have rocky cores just fits the best theories that astronomers have. There's no way to actually bore down and tell for sure at this time.
Come on, I love Astronomy, but observation is the only method to gather information outside of our solar system in astronomy (well, except for radiation studies), and this "world" is so far away, how the hell do they know it's a gas giant core? We're talking about extreme conjecture here. No photos, no probes, just some evidence that it exists by means of tracking positions of its' star (that's typically how these far-away planets are "found"; observations of SOMETHING pulling agaisnt a star and affecting it's motion).
The whole thing is a joke. Here, let me sum up the big question that will be posed to both candidates:
"Fuck everyone else. Which one of you candidates will pledge to funnel more money to scientists?"
This would be the equivilant to attending a forum by any focus group. The intent is to get a bigger committment to that focus groups interests (and that always means more money). Doesn't matter if it's business, education, science, the military, whatever.
So they should just ask the candidate "Who promises to pony up more money to our gang" and save us all a lot of time.
Just spell the band name correctly, as one guy pointed out. It's "Grateful". Sorry 'bout that, Deadheads.
The comparison just seemed logical to me. More than any other language (even LISP, I think), Perl seems to have it's own personalities and culture. If Larry Wall went on a speaking tour, I think Mongers would follow him city to city:-P
Most developers I know basically slam it for it's reputation for being slow, and frankly, because it's not C, the geek Gold Standard. Perl has the same difficulty and has it's own cultish crowd (Perl users are the Greatful Dead fans of computer science). Python is somewhat trendy as well.
But Java....Java was designed to be easily learned, and to especially be used in web-based apps. To Unix geeks, that makes it kind of the Visual Basic for the Slashdot crowd. Not something to brag on.
Fact is, it's a great language, and it's still growing. A friend of mine is a professional Java developer (mostly server side stuff), and he's one of the brighter bulbs in the lamp. He loves it, and still thinks Java's potential is largely untapped. Whereas we know what C can and can't do, Java is still growing. He thinks it'll be used (and used effectively) for things we can't even imagine yet.
...for a time, Clancy's Red Storm Rising was required reading at West Point (and possibly at the other academies), because a lot of people involved in professional war game planning said that his scenarios tracked closely to what they were expecting at the time.
" To a Socialist in Europe, the main US parties are both conservative."
That's because the European Socialist parties are so FAR left, that they're ready to fall off the globe.
This election is a testament to the fact that their are real, far-ranging differences between the Republicans and Democrats. George Wallace was famous for saying that there's not "a dime's worth of difference between the two parties". That's just not true anymore. Both parties have moved much farther along their ideological sides in the past two decades. The GOP is much more right wing, and the Democrats are much more left wing. The only difference between the American Democrats and the European Socialists is that the Dems don't have a plank in the party platform calling for public ownership of production. There's no current call for single-payer health care in the Democratic platform, but it HAS been tried before, and sooner or later, will re-appear in the platform as soon as the party thinks that it's feasable to do so.
I don't know who modded this troll, but that's bullshit. Otter is right.
If you people devoted to Google-worship out there would take your heads out of your collective asses, you'd see exactly what he's talking about. We're only now getting over one disastrous dotcom bubble, and now Google could very well be initiating another one. Just HOW are they going to make enough money to justify their IPO? Advertising? They can't do it through their current ad market. They've sold investors on the promise of profit through some kind of nebulous business expansion. Into WHAT, they won't say. We're just expected to belive that Google will make fabulous money because, well, they're Google.
P.T. Barnum was wrong. There's not a sucker born every minute. There are thousands of them. And apparently, most are investors that refuse to learn their lessons. To make money, you have to have a product to sell.
Oh, and Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto? They're a publicly traded company now. You can kiss that goodbye. Shareholder interest just became the most important principle, no matter how much control Brin and Page think they're keeping.
"The contents of the records were no one's business, being about his personal life. we need more of that. Being a public servant doesn't make your life a video game."
I have to wonder, do you feel that way just because Dean was a Democrat? Or do you think the same thing about Jack Ryan, the Republican Illinois Senate candidate, who was torpedoed after his divorce records were unsealed (against both his request and his ex-wife)?
Your definition of sucess and the business world's definition of success are likely two very different things. Mozilla still has a reputation of being a part time hobby for coders, rather than a serious corporate product. The Netscape name is still recognizable in the business world.
And it doesn't help that the Mozilla project has changed the name of it's products several times now.
Not that I like unions much, but let's face it. Organized labor in the American IT sector just isn't much of a worry. France, a socialist country in all but name, is a different situation. But the minute US workers in IT try to organize, companies will fire them wholesale or move to India. They're already doing this anyway, which goes a long way towards explaining WHY American IT workers don't organize. They might not have ANY jobs left.
...just kidding. Now that I have your attention...
Women will always been in the minority in the math and science fields, and sorry, but it has damn little to do with societal norms or cultural pressure. As many have pointed out here, men and women are inherently different in ways that far transcend physical appearance. That doesn't mean that women aren't up to snuff for CS work, just that in general, most women aren't interested in such fields. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. There have been women that have made outstanding contributions to science, from Marie Curie to Admiral Grace Hopper. But they ARE exceptions. Biology (in the brain, specifically) has the most to do with this. Men and women are wired from birth for different tasks, in general, and there's no way to change that with a summer camp or targeted programs.
As for why the ratio may be worse in CS? Well, CS is mainly about programming, and as people here say, have you SEEN the programmers? Let's face it boys...there are a lot of geeky basement dwellers that have the duel curse of looking like an extra from Real Genius, and having the sexual fantasies of a Penthouse Forum writer. Not exactly a formula to make the ladies comfortable in a cubicle farm full of coders. Again, there are exceptions here. There are coders that are good looking, athletic, have good manners, etc. But CS definitely has a peculiar culture, and one in which many women just don't find desirable. The exception rule, as always, applies. So trying to artificially increase the ranks of women is probably a waste of time.
And the 9th Circuit never found a right-of-center solution it liked. It's by far the most leftist of all US Courts. If there's a controversial issue, you can be sure the 9th will rule against any right-leaning law or practice, and endorse left-leaning ones.
Of course, that makes some of the Marxists here just shoot their wad. For what are supposedly mostly Libertarian readers, Slashdot sure seems to have a lot of people more sympathetic to criminals than the police. And go ahead and mod me troll, flaimbait, fucktard, whatever. I've got plenty of Karma, and I just say that the truth hurts.
...because there's nothing there. I used to believe in the possibility of ET life, but not anymore. I've come to realize how unique the Earth probably is. Conditions for life on a planet have to be just right, and while it's probable there are more earth-type planets out there, I don't think there's many with that perfect set of circumstances to support life. Paraphrasing Tom Skerrit's character in Contact, "Either there's nothing out there but dust and noble gasses, or they're so far away we'll never find them". I have to agree with that. I'm all for space exploration, but for man's direct benefit (harnessing of resources in space/other planets). Sorry, but older and wiser (and maybe more cynical) adulthood has dashed those old hopes of little green men. If you want aliens, you're going to have to get them in Star Trek reruns, because they're not "out there".
You have to start somewhere. Are you saying that GM shouldn't even try? Or that they should ignore customer demand, and make nothing but little Honda-style scooters that you can squeeze two people into? Ever seen one of those? Does Honda include a bag to hang over the side as a standard item, or does cutting grass with it cost extra?
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Two or three gallons saved at first in big trucks is a start.
"Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name."
Bzzzzzz! Wrong, sorry, but thanks for playing, and here's a copy of our home game.
The sex.com ruling established that domain names were indeed property, with corresponding rights. The whole issue here is that the rightful owner doesn't have the resources (read: money) to mount a legal campaign against Penguin. Remember, Katie Jones is in the UK, and if I remember correctly, the UK has the "Loser Pays" system. If Katie didn't win her lawsuit, she'd owe Penguin big. Penguin knows this. I hope the proposal to set up a paypal account to start a legal fund for her goes through. Penguin and their cronies really need to have their asses handed to them over this. And Aftab's assertion that, if Jones doesn't hand over the website "things will only get worse" just disgusts me to no end. And laywers wonder why they're despised.
The real bottom line here: Katie Jones is the rightful owner of her domain name, and Penguin and company have tried to hijack it without any compensation. They should suffer and pay for what they've done.
Marvel has teamed up with the now-infamous Parry Aftab to create a superhero themed website fighting cyber abuse. Marvel needs to hear from the public about Aftab's grab for Katie.com.
Apparently slashdot's campaign has been noticed and dealt with. No new negative reviews are making it up.
Despite the notices that she's sending out claiming *shocked just shocked* ignorance in all of this, if Katie Tarbox tells her laywers and Putnam to cease and desist in the attempt the steal the domain name, they have to do it, at least in the case of the lawyer. So she maintains some responsiblity in all of this. The past crimes against her do not let her off the hook for her unethical behavior now, nor that of her lawyers.
Thanks, Parry, for reminding me why I dislike lawyers so much. You're really keeping up your profession's reputation.
It's an expression that became popular in the 80's down South. It refers to Delta Airlines and their ad campaign from the 70's "When you want to travel, Delta's ready when you are". It was basically a way to respond to the constant criticism of the South by implying "If you don't like it here, no one is forcing you to live here". There's a common perception of those critical of the saying that it's a defense of racism and Jim Crowe in the South. That's untrue, as it was a response mainly to the northerners moving down south in great numbers during the 80's (during the massive growth of southern cities that still continues) trying to change the culture of the South, ridiculing everything from our interest in sports (NASCAR and College Football in particular) to cuisine (mocking grits and sweet iced tea, for instance). Southerners basically got tired of the attempt to turn the South into a Wine and Cheese-eating copy of New England (don't ask me why, but that's where most of the migrants seemed to come from, rather than the west coast).
Ironically, the opposite now seems to be happening, with NASCAR, and southern cuisine and politics spreading to the rest of the nation. But the old accusations that southerners are nothing but ignorant inbreeding rednecks with no culture still gets our hackles up down here. So southerners basically said "If we suck so bad, why are YOU moving here?".
The airline's backend systems will continue to run on either old Tandem mainframes or port to new IBM mainframes (not running Linux, as of yet). Most of the airline's new IT investments are at the airport end.
Unfortunately, the Windows-everywhere trend seems to be winning here. My airport is going to a common-use terminal system, and it's Win2K based. All but one of the big common use vendors are selling Windows-based equipment. Northwest's CUSS (common use self service) terminals are Win2K based as well.
When I asked our vendor, who specializes in smaller airports, whether his company was doing any Linux development, he replied that nope, since most of the systems will never be on a public internet, it was easier and cheaper to get windows developers. No security concerns without the Internet, and 2K/XP/2K3 have become much more stable than older Windows platforms (his company still has older installations overseas that run NT 4 based systems, all due for an upgrade).
"...the locals don't see why anyone would want to use one unless they were some kind of godless heathen communist."
Thanks heaps for perpetuating the myth that we're all inbred idiots in this state. And all becuase you apparently don't like the politics and faith of the people that live here.
I live in Alabama, and I've heard a good bit more about this case than you probably have.
- This guy had complained to his superior's superiors. They apparently didn't care. So this guy's crusade basically ends right there. He did what he should have done, and when those higher ups don't care, you can get pissed all you want, but you don't take matters into your own hands.
- This guy seems to have a personal beef with his boss.
- Most people down here (including people that work in IT) think this guy is an assclown.
This man was doing this to his BOSS. You don't take policy into your own hands against your superiors and expect to keep your job, even for the government. And furthermore, his superior's job didn't involve much computer work. He was basically an admin type that mostly used his comp for email.
But it doesn't matter. This was his BOSS. You stay in official channels when dealing with any personel problem, and you ESPECIALLY do this when a superior is involved. It's lamentable that an Alabama state employee is wasting time on a computer, but that doesn't excuse the sysadmin's actions.
That's why I've installed Netscape 7.1 on my network; most users at least recognize the name, and thus have more of a comfort level when I tell them not to use IE. A vendor of ours asked me for advice on using a different browser. Just for funsies, I told him Mozilla, just to see what his reaction was.
He looked at me like I had just asked him to drink a glass of mud.
Branding matters.
One look said everything. Then I told him "just go to netscape.com and download navigator", and he brightened up, saying "Yeah, I think I'll do that". He was far more comfortable with a known name than with something that sounds like it slithers across the grass on a national geographic special.
Slashdot Mirror
Gas giants are supposed to have rocky cores, yeah. It's just that most of the planets volume is gas, usually under heavy pressure. So any probe would be crushed and melted long before it had a chance to get to a core.
Keep in mind what I said about conjecture here. The idea that the gas giants have rocky cores just fits the best theories that astronomers have. There's no way to actually bore down and tell for sure at this time.
"Your emotive argument relies on capital letters and fuzzy, ill-defined language."
And if you're so confident in YOUR argument, why are you posting as an anonymous coward?
Come on, I love Astronomy, but observation is the only method to gather information outside of our solar system in astronomy (well, except for radiation studies), and this "world" is so far away, how the hell do they know it's a gas giant core? We're talking about extreme conjecture here. No photos, no probes, just some evidence that it exists by means of tracking positions of its' star (that's typically how these far-away planets are "found"; observations of SOMETHING pulling agaisnt a star and affecting it's motion).
The whole thing is a joke. Here, let me sum up the big question that will be posed to both candidates:
"Fuck everyone else. Which one of you candidates will pledge to funnel more money to scientists?"
This would be the equivilant to attending a forum by any focus group. The intent is to get a bigger committment to that focus groups interests (and that always means more money). Doesn't matter if it's business, education, science, the military, whatever.
So they should just ask the candidate "Who promises to pony up more money to our gang" and save us all a lot of time.
"Dude...that quote is priceless. May I steal it?"
:-P
Gracias. Have at it, pard.
Just spell the band name correctly, as one guy pointed out. It's "Grateful". Sorry 'bout that, Deadheads.
The comparison just seemed logical to me. More than any other language (even LISP, I think), Perl seems to have it's own personalities and culture. If Larry Wall went on a speaking tour, I think Mongers would follow him city to city
Most developers I know basically slam it for it's reputation for being slow, and frankly, because it's not C, the geek Gold Standard. Perl has the same difficulty and has it's own cultish crowd (Perl users are the Greatful Dead fans of computer science). Python is somewhat trendy as well.
But Java....Java was designed to be easily learned, and to especially be used in web-based apps. To Unix geeks, that makes it kind of the Visual Basic for the Slashdot crowd. Not something to brag on.
Fact is, it's a great language, and it's still growing. A friend of mine is a professional Java developer (mostly server side stuff), and he's one of the brighter bulbs in the lamp. He loves it, and still thinks Java's potential is largely untapped. Whereas we know what C can and can't do, Java is still growing. He thinks it'll be used (and used effectively) for things we can't even imagine yet.
...for a time, Clancy's Red Storm Rising was required reading at West Point (and possibly at the other academies), because a lot of people involved in professional war game planning said that his scenarios tracked closely to what they were expecting at the time.
" To a Socialist in Europe, the main US parties are both conservative."
That's because the European Socialist parties are so FAR left, that they're ready to fall off the globe.
This election is a testament to the fact that their are real, far-ranging differences between the Republicans and Democrats. George Wallace was famous for saying that there's not "a dime's worth of difference between the two parties". That's just not true anymore. Both parties have moved much farther along their ideological sides in the past two decades. The GOP is much more right wing, and the Democrats are much more left wing. The only difference between the American Democrats and the European Socialists is that the Dems don't have a plank in the party platform calling for public ownership of production. There's no current call for single-payer health care in the Democratic platform, but it HAS been tried before, and sooner or later, will re-appear in the platform as soon as the party thinks that it's feasable to do so.
I don't know who modded this troll, but that's bullshit. Otter is right.
If you people devoted to Google-worship out there would take your heads out of your collective asses, you'd see exactly what he's talking about. We're only now getting over one disastrous dotcom bubble, and now Google could very well be initiating another one. Just HOW are they going to make enough money to justify their IPO? Advertising? They can't do it through their current ad market. They've sold investors on the promise of profit through some kind of nebulous business expansion. Into WHAT, they won't say. We're just expected to belive that Google will make fabulous money because, well, they're Google.
P.T. Barnum was wrong. There's not a sucker born every minute. There are thousands of them. And apparently, most are investors that refuse to learn their lessons. To make money, you have to have a product to sell.
Oh, and Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto? They're a publicly traded company now. You can kiss that goodbye. Shareholder interest just became the most important principle, no matter how much control Brin and Page think they're keeping.
"The contents of the records were no one's business, being about his personal life. we need more of that. Being a public servant doesn't make your life a video game."
I have to wonder, do you feel that way just because Dean was a Democrat? Or do you think the same thing about Jack Ryan, the Republican Illinois Senate candidate, who was torpedoed after his divorce records were unsealed (against both his request and his ex-wife)?
Your definition of sucess and the business world's definition of success are likely two very different things. Mozilla still has a reputation of being a part time hobby for coders, rather than a serious corporate product. The Netscape name is still recognizable in the business world.
And it doesn't help that the Mozilla project has changed the name of it's products several times now.
....where in IT have you ever seen a union shop?
Not that I like unions much, but let's face it. Organized labor in the American IT sector just isn't much of a worry. France, a socialist country in all but name, is a different situation. But the minute US workers in IT try to organize, companies will fire them wholesale or move to India. They're already doing this anyway, which goes a long way towards explaining WHY American IT workers don't organize. They might not have ANY jobs left.
...just kidding. Now that I have your attention...
Women will always been in the minority in the math and science fields, and sorry, but it has damn little to do with societal norms or cultural pressure. As many have pointed out here, men and women are inherently different in ways that far transcend physical appearance. That doesn't mean that women aren't up to snuff for CS work, just that in general, most women aren't interested in such fields. There are exceptions to every rule, of course. There have been women that have made outstanding contributions to science, from Marie Curie to Admiral Grace Hopper. But they ARE exceptions. Biology (in the brain, specifically) has the most to do with this. Men and women are wired from birth for different tasks, in general, and there's no way to change that with a summer camp or targeted programs.
As for why the ratio may be worse in CS? Well, CS is mainly about programming, and as people here say, have you SEEN the programmers? Let's face it boys...there are a lot of geeky basement dwellers that have the duel curse of looking like an extra from Real Genius, and having the sexual fantasies of a Penthouse Forum writer. Not exactly a formula to make the ladies comfortable in a cubicle farm full of coders. Again, there are exceptions here. There are coders that are good looking, athletic, have good manners, etc. But CS definitely has a peculiar culture, and one in which many women just don't find desirable. The exception rule, as always, applies. So trying to artificially increase the ranks of women is probably a waste of time.
"Arpaio never met a reporter he didn't like..."
And the 9th Circuit never found a right-of-center solution it liked. It's by far the most leftist of all US Courts. If there's a controversial issue, you can be sure the 9th will rule against any right-leaning law or practice, and endorse left-leaning ones.
Of course, that makes some of the Marxists here just shoot their wad. For what are supposedly mostly Libertarian readers, Slashdot sure seems to have a lot of people more sympathetic to criminals than the police. And go ahead and mod me troll, flaimbait, fucktard, whatever. I've got plenty of Karma, and I just say that the truth hurts.
...because there's nothing there. I used to believe in the possibility of ET life, but not anymore. I've come to realize how unique the Earth probably is. Conditions for life on a planet have to be just right, and while it's probable there are more earth-type planets out there, I don't think there's many with that perfect set of circumstances to support life. Paraphrasing Tom Skerrit's character in Contact, "Either there's nothing out there but dust and noble gasses, or they're so far away we'll never find them". I have to agree with that. I'm all for space exploration, but for man's direct benefit (harnessing of resources in space/other planets). Sorry, but older and wiser (and maybe more cynical) adulthood has dashed those old hopes of little green men. If you want aliens, you're going to have to get them in Star Trek reruns, because they're not "out there".
You have to start somewhere. Are you saying that GM shouldn't even try? Or that they should ignore customer demand, and make nothing but little Honda-style scooters that you can squeeze two people into? Ever seen one of those? Does Honda include a bag to hang over the side as a standard item, or does cutting grass with it cost extra?
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Two or three gallons saved at first in big trucks is a start.
"Say I register Bill.com and someone writes a book about Bill Gates' secret life as a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from everyone and giving a portion back to the poor. Would I be allowed to tell them that they couldn't call it Bill.com? Fuck no I couldn't. Just because I own a domain name doesn't give me exclusive rights to tell other people what to do with the name."
Bzzzzzz! Wrong, sorry, but thanks for playing, and here's a copy of our home game.
The sex.com ruling established that domain names were indeed property, with corresponding rights. The whole issue here is that the rightful owner doesn't have the resources (read: money) to mount a legal campaign against Penguin. Remember, Katie Jones is in the UK, and if I remember correctly, the UK has the "Loser Pays" system. If Katie didn't win her lawsuit, she'd owe Penguin big. Penguin knows this. I hope the proposal to set up a paypal account to start a legal fund for her goes through. Penguin and their cronies really need to have their asses handed to them over this. And Aftab's assertion that, if Jones doesn't hand over the website "things will only get worse" just disgusts me to no end. And laywers wonder why they're despised.
The real bottom line here: Katie Jones is the rightful owner of her domain name, and Penguin and company have tried to hijack it without any compensation. They should suffer and pay for what they've done.
Come on, fellas....two in one morning? This begs the question: Do you guys even READ Slashdot yourselves?
Marvel has teamed up with the now-infamous Parry Aftab to create a superhero themed website fighting cyber abuse. Marvel needs to hear from the public about Aftab's grab for Katie.com.
http://www.internetsuperheroes.org/index.html
Apparently slashdot's campaign has been noticed and dealt with. No new negative reviews are making it up.
Despite the notices that she's sending out claiming *shocked just shocked* ignorance in all of this, if Katie Tarbox tells her laywers and Putnam to cease and desist in the attempt the steal the domain name, they have to do it, at least in the case of the lawyer. So she maintains some responsiblity in all of this. The past crimes against her do not let her off the hook for her unethical behavior now, nor that of her lawyers.
Thanks, Parry, for reminding me why I dislike lawyers so much. You're really keeping up your profession's reputation.
It's an expression that became popular in the 80's down South. It refers to Delta Airlines and their ad campaign from the 70's "When you want to travel, Delta's ready when you are". It was basically a way to respond to the constant criticism of the South by implying "If you don't like it here, no one is forcing you to live here". There's a common perception of those critical of the saying that it's a defense of racism and Jim Crowe in the South. That's untrue, as it was a response mainly to the northerners moving down south in great numbers during the 80's (during the massive growth of southern cities that still continues) trying to change the culture of the South, ridiculing everything from our interest in sports (NASCAR and College Football in particular) to cuisine (mocking grits and sweet iced tea, for instance). Southerners basically got tired of the attempt to turn the South into a Wine and Cheese-eating copy of New England (don't ask me why, but that's where most of the migrants seemed to come from, rather than the west coast).
Ironically, the opposite now seems to be happening, with NASCAR, and southern cuisine and politics spreading to the rest of the nation. But the old accusations that southerners are nothing but ignorant inbreeding rednecks with no culture still gets our hackles up down here. So southerners basically said "If we suck so bad, why are YOU moving here?".
The airline's backend systems will continue to run on either old Tandem mainframes or port to new IBM mainframes (not running Linux, as of yet). Most of the airline's new IT investments are at the airport end.
Unfortunately, the Windows-everywhere trend seems to be winning here. My airport is going to a common-use terminal system, and it's Win2K based. All but one of the big common use vendors are selling Windows-based equipment. Northwest's CUSS (common use self service) terminals are Win2K based as well.
When I asked our vendor, who specializes in smaller airports, whether his company was doing any Linux development, he replied that nope, since most of the systems will never be on a public internet, it was easier and cheaper to get windows developers. No security concerns without the Internet, and 2K/XP/2K3 have become much more stable than older Windows platforms (his company still has older installations overseas that run NT 4 based systems, all due for an upgrade).
" ...the locals don't see why anyone would want to use one unless they were some kind of godless heathen communist."
Thanks heaps for perpetuating the myth that we're all inbred idiots in this state. And all becuase you apparently don't like the politics and faith of the people that live here.
Delta's ready when you are.
I live in Alabama, and I've heard a good bit more about this case than you probably have.
- This guy had complained to his superior's superiors. They apparently didn't care. So this guy's crusade basically ends right there. He did what he should have done, and when those higher ups don't care, you can get pissed all you want, but you don't take matters into your own hands.
- This guy seems to have a personal beef with his boss.
- Most people down here (including people that work in IT) think this guy is an assclown.
This man was doing this to his BOSS. You don't take policy into your own hands against your superiors and expect to keep your job, even for the government. And furthermore, his superior's job didn't involve much computer work. He was basically an admin type that mostly used his comp for email.
But it doesn't matter. This was his BOSS. You stay in official channels when dealing with any personel problem, and you ESPECIALLY do this when a superior is involved. It's lamentable that an Alabama state employee is wasting time on a computer, but that doesn't excuse the sysadmin's actions.
That's why I've installed Netscape 7.1 on my network; most users at least recognize the name, and thus have more of a comfort level when I tell them not to use IE. A vendor of ours asked me for advice on using a different browser. Just for funsies, I told him Mozilla, just to see what his reaction was.
He looked at me like I had just asked him to drink a glass of mud.
Branding matters.
One look said everything. Then I told him "just go to netscape.com and download navigator", and he brightened up, saying "Yeah, I think I'll do that". He was far more comfortable with a known name than with something that sounds like it slithers across the grass on a national geographic special.