To the "Troll" moderator, have you even bothered trying to understand the technical issues? If so, please respond with an intelligent answer instead of just modding down an opinion that you don't like (and apparently don't understand).
This is not a trivial question, and everything in Microsoft's new "security push" is open to question until they respond in a more intelligent way than Stephen Toulouse's mind-numbingly ambiguous non-response.
Disagree with me if you want, but do so openly. Not like a mod-points-laden coward.
To elaborate, what does the security review process look like from the inside (such that other development teams might learn from it)? How does it differ from a code review? Why would this process *not* catch something like the WMF hole, given that this appears to be blatantly erroneous programming (assuming it wasn't intentional at the corporate level)?
My biggest concerns about MS today surround this process, which is completely invisible to the world, but which we rely on for having greater confidence in MS products. Understanding how MS approaches these reviews might make us feel better (or might depress us beyond reason).
...that you should cancel the next meeting with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/husband. All that dang communication crap gets in the way of _______ (insert favorite fantasy activity that might happen if you had a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or husband)!
Too much communication is a problem? Too many meetings are a problem? Who's running the meetings? Is there some magic metric out there that gauges if my meetings are more or less detrimental than yours? Why don't we all just squirrel away in our cubes or offices, do the crap that we think is best, and see what happens at the end of the quarter?
All face-to-face communication is not equal. Assuming that it is, and making blanket assumptions with uncontrolled data is worse than going to too many meetings, realizing your depressed, and telling your boss to kiss off. It may get you fired, but that meeting won't be boring.
Tim
P.S. Read "Death by Meeting : A Leadership Fable" by Patrick Lencioni, or any of his other books.
Point taken. As someone who typically runs spell-check prior to submitting a post (and chose not to for expediency), the post-post spell-check has me fuming at myself. (I think 8 is a new "personal worst.")
Thanks for the humility reset.:-)
Tim
P.S. Even more annoying was using "effects" instead of "affects."
I think those same techs who are frustrated with users who make the same mistakes over and over would make similar (but different) mistakes if they were suddenly immersed in the Accounts Receivable Department, but only had to work there for a few minutes, and then left that world to return to their own.
We regularly forget that most people do not think the same way the computer works, and therefore make "silly" mistakes. They make them over and over again, and as a result, otherwise intelligent people look (and feel) like idiots. The tiny details that we pick up as being clues to "something stupid" are lost on them because they are so completely unfamiliar with the whole environment.
I'm not excusing incompetence. I'm making allowances for people who are forced (sometimes, without good reason) to use a technology solution for things that can be done another way. A friend of mine blows them off as "mouth-breathers." Sure, it's a funny insult, but it embodies exactly the problem I'm describing.
When you care about the people who use your product, it doesn't matter if it's a technology product or not, you will find ways to deal with "stupid behavior," and will make that behavior less likely, if not impossible.
By the way, people *do* drive cars this way, as evidenced by the brake-interlock found on any automatic transmission vehicle, a side-effect of the Audi 5000 debacle. Auto manufacturers responded predictably, but eventually provided the right solution: make it impossible to put the car into gear if you don't have your foot on the brake. The interlock is completely transparent to an experienced driver, as the behavior it blocks is un-safe by most any measure.
How many of you are going to see your parent or grandparent struggling through such an ordeal and immediately brand them as "idiots"? It didn't surprise me in the least that a Windows machine owned by my father was massively infected with spyware and malware, including the infamous "Weather Bug." Dad simply didn't know any better, regardless of how often I might try to explain how he could avoid the problem altogether. Most of my family is tech-oriented, but my wife's family is not. Are they idiots? No, but they sure have more computer-related problems.
How often is lack of root access a day-to-day problem for a Mac or Linux user? Why is it ever expected that a "user" would want to install something that ran at that level? Well, with Windows, your choice is pretty simple: If you want to do anything beyond superficial, you need to be Administrator or Power User, or customize your access rights (depending on your Windows version).
I'll get off the soapbox, because the world has spoken with it's behavior. People have been (and continue to be) trusting enough in the companies selling technology to not feel compelled to learn more about it. We can deal with it or not, and assuming that you're willing to get a black eye for it, then it makes more sense to push a more vulnerable solution out the door (since the buying public isn't knowledgeable enough to know the diff), and make sure your lawyers can protect you against any product failures.
Whether you approve of the morality or not, MS clearly chose the right path when they came to this fork in the road. Their products have performed horribly in this regard, but their bank balance says it all.
Tim
P.S. You're absolutely right about the psychology of one or two user experiences coloring the support guy's perception of the whole company. As any student of stereotyping and prejudice can tell you, judging an entire group based on a small sample is a sad fact of human nature.
It's no surprise that we who write software are seen as arrogant when we see the *average* user, the person who makes technically uninformed decisions, and our response is, "the problem isn't with our system, the problem is that you Mr. User are an idiot."
The world has idiots. Why can't technology people (us) accept this without derision? The world also has many people who don't know technology, and don't care too. They are not necessarily the same people.
Emerson said "Every man is in some way my superior, and in that i can learn from him." We seem to be so busy casting aspersions that we don't have time to listen. We're so quick to insult, perhaps because we (developers and technology people) don't *care* about users. Are we so superior to Emerson that there's nobody we can learn from?
Why can't *someone* care enough about the technologically illiterate to protect them against themselves? Why isn't there a company out there that will make it difficult for a regular user to install something that has potentially deep affects to the OS, but makes the OS accessible to that same user?
This is similar to what the automakers discovered when they decided to make cars harder to steal. The improved alarms and systems that made it more difficult to steal a parked car forced the thieves into something far more dangerous: carjacking. After watching the statistics rise since security systems became better and better, it's not clear that we've made a step forward.
For the person that really wants access, cutting off a finger may be just a minor hurdle. The "something you are" also poses a problem once a system has been breached. "How do I become something else, now that someone else is the same thing that I am?"
I have done reviews of several of Schildt's books, and if you have read one, then you have virtually read them all. I have even seen the same programming errors repeated between books that were supposedly covering different compilers. The link above gives several classic examples.
There are a ton of C/C++ books out, and half of them are decent reads. The other half seem to be written by Schildt.
I would steer clear of this particular "book machine."
Why is it that the non-secular are insulted by the truth. When they acknowledge that theres a problem, the first thing they do is split themselves off from those other crazy believers. It seems to me that they put themselves in the wholesome and decent category and push everyone else to the edges.
And I did this? I said that I would like to say that I'm insulted by the GP, but I'm not because I agree that it is largely true. Do I disagree with the interpretation of some others in the Southern Baptist church? Yes, but I still go to one. Where did I "split off from those crazy believers"? A central tenent of Baptist theology is the autonomy of the local church, which allows each church to move in an independent the theological direction, if they choose.
You flipped the bozo bit on yourself when you decided to take another man's word on how everything came to being without proof or facts. You lock the bit down when you ask to be thought of as reasonable when your premises aren't reasonable at all. The definition of faith is belief without reason. So, I really do believe your crazy for believing religion is real. Its history of damage is so plainly obvious, its history of corruption has scarred the world repeatedly. The greatest evils against others has been done under its auspices. Religion is nothing but a naked power grab.
So I should "throw the baby out with the [holy] bathwater?" I should cast aside any and all religions because extremists act like idiots? It seems to make more sense to call them on the carpet for their inconsistent and immoral behavior instead of just casting it all aside. As for throwing the bozo bit on myself, when I look at other people of faith, there are more than a couple of minds that I don't mind being associated with, Donald Knuth being one of the more obvious. Whether you agree with his faith or not, I would expect that you would hesitate to blast his intelligence as quickly as you've attacked mine.
To presume to influence or control events beyond mortal control is outrageous, and with nothing but stories to substantiate it.
It's outrageous to think that a preeminent being might be capable of influencing events in the mortal world more than we can? Hmmm...
Its galling to hear you speak of how your fellow believers have changed , and yet you haven't persuaded them to act differently because they're as unreasonable, self-important, and entrenched in their world view as you are. The differences between you and the rest are superficial, as credible as debating the number of fairies. Its all the same side of the same coin. That somehow you know and are privvy to the thoughts, purposes and will of a supreme being, and can manipluate such a being with certain gestures, rituals and thoughts.
Bull. I am absolutely dedicated to the truth. At present, I haven't seen evidence of something beyond a faith in God that provides a more adequate answer than I have now, but instead of simply assuming that I have the One Truth (tm) however, I continue to engage in discussions like this, taking into consideration reasonable input, and paying particular attention to those who research what they say instead of making blind attacks on my intelligence or character. One of my best friends is an atheist, and is also more knowledgeable about the Old Testament than most of my Christian friends. Over the years, we have developed a sincere appreciation for each other's views. I certainly don't want to be deluded, so I continue to listen and learn, just because of the possibility that I might have it wrong.
Lastly, I have never suggested that I have any ability to manipulate God. You've made that assumption yourself.
I think it's more accurate to say that Islam sprang from Abraham. In addition to being the father of monotheism, he was also, indirectly, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The Calvinist resurgence has coincided with the theological shift of the last 20 years. I have serious issues with Calvinism, as do most of the my Southern Baptist friends. However, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (a voluntary association of churches that exists generally to facilitate cooperation in ministry) is strongly Calvinist at the moment. However, as I said before, having no pope, there is nothing that forces us to ascribe to this particular theology.
As a card-carrying Southern Baptist, I'd like to say that I'm insulted, but sadly, your assessment is more true than not. We have, particularly in the last 20 years, taken on an anti-intellectualism stance that borders on the kind of thing that you see in HS jocks, where they apparently take their pride in NOT being intellectual. It's as if being educated about science and history (meaning, using books other than The Bible) becomes an immediate mark of suspicion.
Fortunately, the history of the Baptist denomination is one of independent behavior, so we have no pope or central authority figure who can tell us what to believe, or what creed we have to sign up for in order to stay members of a Baptist church. (I could go into great detail about some of the finer points of Baptist tradition that demonstrate this kind of independent thinking, but that's a bit OT... not Old Testament.)
As it stands today, much of the work that had been done in integrating pastoral care with well-researched psychology is virtually out of the cirriculum in most of our seminaries. Sadly, the work of Baptist leaders and theologians in the 50's, 60's, and early 70's has been cast aside by a large segment of our denomination in favor of segregating language/theology, and radically poor politics.
In spite of this, there are a few of us left who still think for ourselves, so please hesitate to flip the bozo bit on all of us just yet.
You still have to figure out how to find it the first time, (evidently some people have never heard of bookmarks) download it, you still have to check back periodically, barring an RSS feed (which AFAIK still wouldn't get the file for you, just give you notification and/or a link), and copy it to my iPod...
For the geeks, that might be the path, but if you're using an iPod anyway, it probably makes more sense to look the podcast up on iTMS via iTunes. That mechanism is no harder than buying music, which several non-techie types seem to have figured out.
Then again, you can add an RSS feed manually for something not in their directory, and it's still pretty hard to screw it up, but YMMV.
In my experience, AntiVir has been better at catching nasty stuff, it's runtime checker is less intrusive, and the online updates are more comprehensive. My "Emergency Recovery CD" that I use to rescue friends' PCs includes AntiVir, Firefox, ZoneLabs (would have preferred Sygate, but that's gone), and AdAware, along with instructions (printed) on how to reboot into Safe Mode, run these utilities, and get things back to normal.
The only time I've returned are when husbands (typically) start hitting porn sites with IE (in spite of my attempts to educate them about the high number of attacks, geared specifically toward IE, and using porn content as bait).
For my money (or lack thereof), AntiVir is the best $0 option.
It's a card company per se, it's a "processing" company. As such, you don't have any direct control over whether a merchant uses them or not.
In addition, this was eight years ago, so there's no way for me to know if they have changed security practices or not. They're still in business, so I suppose they must have. This being the case, it wouldn't be fair for me to name names about how poor the practices were, because that may not be the case now.
Even so, it's scary how bad the conventional security can be, even in a place where the electronic security is extremely high.
I agree that this is probably the rationale behind the action. Here's a scarier situation:
After announcing my resignation at a large credit card processing company, I worked my two weeks, and on my last day found out that my access card expired at Noon that day instead of Midnight. I mentioned to the security guard at the door what had happened, and offered him the name of my manager that he could call up to the front door and validate my identity.
Instead, he said "oh... ok" and just unlocked the door and let me in!
He had no idea who I was. At the time, there were roughly 8000 people working in this location, so he didn't recognize me (I'd been there less than six months). Once inside, I was free to roam where I wanted, and could have easily destroyed any data on a number of secure servers.
I immediately went to my boss, explained to him what happened, and he said "Oh yeah... doesn't surprise me a bit."
This is the same place that was incredibly anal about changing passwords and monitoring both ingress and egress using your card.
What this experience taught me was that I had made the right career choice in deciding to leave.
This is an interesting question, since I just changed jobs, having left a position as a Custom Software Development Project Manager for a Fortune 100 company. I sent the notice to my current manager and previous manager via e-mail on a Friday night (sent it encrypted with receipt notification). I alerted them to my decision, ensured them that the reason for my leaving was about a new opportunity (and not because I thought somebody was a PHB/Dolt/Bozo/Insert-insult-here).
The following Monday morning, I sat down with both of them and went through it all verbally. I gave them two weeks notice in my e-mail, which would have made my last day the Friday after Thanksgiving. Per company policy, I had to work the next Monday to get paid for those days, so I agreed to this (after checking with the new place), and then got back to work.
I will point out that I know this is an unusual situation, particularly at a company of this size. In my case, there was a significant level of trust that went up several levels above me, prompting one of the people up the chain to send me a very personal and heartfelt message of thanks for my years of service. For the next two weeks, I was working an average of 10 hours/day, including a few hours on the day after Thanksgiving.
How did I get this kind of treatment, along with an invitation to return if my new adventure didn't pan out? I established a long history of trustworthy behavior. In addition to this, the project that I was working on had extremely high priority, and we didn't have anyone else who had the same combination of knowledge and skills that I did for that particular project (a combination of reverse-engineering and product familiarity).
Now, to be fair, it would not have surprised me if they had said "sorry, you're gone" on that Monday morning, and sent me packing. In many ways, it would have made my life easier. On the other hand I would have missed out on the "Top 10 List" read aloud during my farewell lunch, where we all got several good laughs at my expense.
Even more important, I would have missed the pleasure of working even more closely with some of my best friends, on a highly-valuable project, utilizing the limit of my abilities.
I don't plan on spending any money on it. My 14 year-old plans on doing so. He doesn't have the cash for the 360 + a surround sound system, but he would need to know that it will be limited if he goes through the current stereo outs.
Sorry that I didn't read the other 30 answers that had nothing to do with my situation.
However, my circumstances are probably not that unusual.
Slashdot Mirror
Understood. I was asking for discussion *instead* of blind moderation. I realize it's a bit after the fact though. :-)
Tim
To the "Troll" moderator, have you even bothered trying to understand the technical issues? If so, please respond with an intelligent answer instead of just modding down an opinion that you don't like (and apparently don't understand).
This is not a trivial question, and everything in Microsoft's new "security push" is open to question until they respond in a more intelligent way than Stephen Toulouse's mind-numbingly ambiguous non-response.
Disagree with me if you want, but do so openly. Not like a mod-points-laden coward.
Tim
To elaborate, what does the security review process look like from the inside (such that other development teams might learn from it)? How does it differ from a code review? Why would this process *not* catch something like the WMF hole, given that this appears to be blatantly erroneous programming (assuming it wasn't intentional at the corporate level)?
My biggest concerns about MS today surround this process, which is completely invisible to the world, but which we rely on for having greater confidence in MS products. Understanding how MS approaches these reviews might make us feel better (or might depress us beyond reason).
Tim
That is soooooo cruel.
Tim
...that you should cancel the next meeting with your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/husband. All that dang communication crap gets in the way of _______ (insert favorite fantasy activity that might happen if you had a wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, or husband)!
Too much communication is a problem? Too many meetings are a problem? Who's running the meetings? Is there some magic metric out there that gauges if my meetings are more or less detrimental than yours? Why don't we all just squirrel away in our cubes or offices, do the crap that we think is best, and see what happens at the end of the quarter?
Goodbye, Boring Meetings! Hello, Bankruptcy Court!
All face-to-face communication is not equal. Assuming that it is, and making blanket assumptions with uncontrolled data is worse than going to too many meetings, realizing your depressed, and telling your boss to kiss off. It may get you fired, but that meeting won't be boring.
Tim
P.S. Read "Death by Meeting : A Leadership Fable" by Patrick Lencioni, or any of his other books.
Point taken. As someone who typically runs spell-check prior to submitting a post (and chose not to for expediency), the post-post spell-check has me fuming at myself. (I think 8 is a new "personal worst.")
:-)
Thanks for the humility reset.
Tim
P.S. Even more annoying was using "effects" instead of "affects."
I think those same techs who are frustrated with users who make the same mistakes over and over would make similar (but different) mistakes if they were suddenly immersed in the Accounts Receivable Department, but only had to work there for a few minutes, and then left that world to return to their own.
We regularly forget that most people do not think the same way the computer works, and therefore make "silly" mistakes. They make them over and over again, and as a result, otherwise intelligent people look (and feel) like idiots. The tiny details that we pick up as being clues to "something stupid" are lost on them because they are so completely unfamiliar with the whole environment.
I'm not excusing incompetence. I'm making allowances for people who are forced (sometimes, without good reason) to use a technology solution for things that can be done another way. A friend of mine blows them off as "mouth-breathers." Sure, it's a funny insult, but it embodies exactly the problem I'm describing.
When you care about the people who use your product, it doesn't matter if it's a technology product or not, you will find ways to deal with "stupid behavior," and will make that behavior less likely, if not impossible.
By the way, people *do* drive cars this way, as evidenced by the brake-interlock found on any automatic transmission vehicle, a side-effect of the Audi 5000 debacle. Auto manufacturers responded predictably, but eventually provided the right solution: make it impossible to put the car into gear if you don't have your foot on the brake. The interlock is completely transparent to an experienced driver, as the behavior it blocks is un-safe by most any measure.
How many of you are going to see your parent or grandparent struggling through such an ordeal and immediately brand them as "idiots"? It didn't surprise me in the least that a Windows machine owned by my father was massively infected with spyware and malware, including the infamous "Weather Bug." Dad simply didn't know any better, regardless of how often I might try to explain how he could avoid the problem altogether. Most of my family is tech-oriented, but my wife's family is not. Are they idiots? No, but they sure have more computer-related problems.
How often is lack of root access a day-to-day problem for a Mac or Linux user? Why is it ever expected that a "user" would want to install something that ran at that level? Well, with Windows, your choice is pretty simple: If you want to do anything beyond superficial, you need to be Administrator or Power User, or customize your access rights (depending on your Windows version).
I'll get off the soapbox, because the world has spoken with it's behavior. People have been (and continue to be) trusting enough in the companies selling technology to not feel compelled to learn more about it. We can deal with it or not, and assuming that you're willing to get a black eye for it, then it makes more sense to push a more vulnerable solution out the door (since the buying public isn't knowledgeable enough to know the diff), and make sure your lawyers can protect you against any product failures.
Whether you approve of the morality or not, MS clearly chose the right path when they came to this fork in the road. Their products have performed horribly in this regard, but their bank balance says it all.
Tim
P.S. You're absolutely right about the psychology of one or two user experiences coloring the support guy's perception of the whole company. As any student of stereotyping and prejudice can tell you, judging an entire group based on a small sample is a sad fact of human nature.
It's no surprise that we who write software are seen as arrogant when we see the *average* user, the person who makes technically uninformed decisions, and our response is, "the problem isn't with our system, the problem is that you Mr. User are an idiot."
The world has idiots. Why can't technology people (us) accept this without derision? The world also has many people who don't know technology, and don't care too. They are not necessarily the same people.
Emerson said "Every man is in some way my superior, and in that i can learn from him." We seem to be so busy casting aspersions that we don't have time to listen. We're so quick to insult, perhaps because we (developers and technology people) don't *care* about users. Are we so superior to Emerson that there's nobody we can learn from?
Why can't *someone* care enough about the technologically illiterate to protect them against themselves? Why isn't there a company out there that will make it difficult for a regular user to install something that has potentially deep affects to the OS, but makes the OS accessible to that same user?
Oh wait... there already is one.
Tim
Sinusoidal waves?
Tim
Tim
...it reduces the time between duplicate stories arriving.
Tim
Bingo!
t ing-christ-back-in-christmas/
http://timthefoolman.wordpress.com/2005/12/20/put
Tim
Tim
This is similar to what the automakers discovered when they decided to make cars harder to steal. The improved alarms and systems that made it more difficult to steal a parked car forced the thieves into something far more dangerous: carjacking. After watching the statistics rise since security systems became better and better, it's not clear that we've made a step forward.
For the person that really wants access, cutting off a finger may be just a minor hurdle. The "something you are" also poses a problem once a system has been breached. "How do I become something else, now that someone else is the same thing that I am?"
Tim
I have done reviews of several of Schildt's books, and if you have read one, then you have virtually read them all. I have even seen the same programming errors repeated between books that were supposedly covering different compilers. The link above gives several classic examples.
There are a ton of C/C++ books out, and half of them are decent reads. The other half seem to be written by Schildt.
I would steer clear of this particular "book machine."
Tim
Lastly, I have never suggested that I have any ability to manipulate God. You've made that assumption yourself.
Tim
I think it's more accurate to say that Islam sprang from Abraham. In addition to being the father of monotheism, he was also, indirectly, the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Did I get the wrong memo about Ishmael and Hagar?
Tim
The Calvinist resurgence has coincided with the theological shift of the last 20 years. I have serious issues with Calvinism, as do most of the my Southern Baptist friends. However, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (a voluntary association of churches that exists generally to facilitate cooperation in ministry) is strongly Calvinist at the moment. However, as I said before, having no pope, there is nothing that forces us to ascribe to this particular theology.
Tim
As a card-carrying Southern Baptist, I'd like to say that I'm insulted, but sadly, your assessment is more true than not. We have, particularly in the last 20 years, taken on an anti-intellectualism stance that borders on the kind of thing that you see in HS jocks, where they apparently take their pride in NOT being intellectual. It's as if being educated about science and history (meaning, using books other than The Bible) becomes an immediate mark of suspicion.
Fortunately, the history of the Baptist denomination is one of independent behavior, so we have no pope or central authority figure who can tell us what to believe, or what creed we have to sign up for in order to stay members of a Baptist church. (I could go into great detail about some of the finer points of Baptist tradition that demonstrate this kind of independent thinking, but that's a bit OT... not Old Testament.)
As it stands today, much of the work that had been done in integrating pastoral care with well-researched psychology is virtually out of the cirriculum in most of our seminaries. Sadly, the work of Baptist leaders and theologians in the 50's, 60's, and early 70's has been cast aside by a large segment of our denomination in favor of segregating language/theology, and radically poor politics.
In spite of this, there are a few of us left who still think for ourselves, so please hesitate to flip the bozo bit on all of us just yet.
Tim
Then again, you can add an RSS feed manually for something not in their directory, and it's still pretty hard to screw it up, but YMMV.
Tim
In my experience, AntiVir has been better at catching nasty stuff, it's runtime checker is less intrusive, and the online updates are more comprehensive. My "Emergency Recovery CD" that I use to rescue friends' PCs includes AntiVir, Firefox, ZoneLabs (would have preferred Sygate, but that's gone), and AdAware, along with instructions (printed) on how to reboot into Safe Mode, run these utilities, and get things back to normal.
The only time I've returned are when husbands (typically) start hitting porn sites with IE (in spite of my attempts to educate them about the high number of attacks, geared specifically toward IE, and using porn content as bait).
For my money (or lack thereof), AntiVir is the best $0 option.
Tim
It's a card company per se, it's a "processing" company. As such, you don't have any direct control over whether a merchant uses them or not.
In addition, this was eight years ago, so there's no way for me to know if they have changed security practices or not. They're still in business, so I suppose they must have. This being the case, it wouldn't be fair for me to name names about how poor the practices were, because that may not be the case now.
Even so, it's scary how bad the conventional security can be, even in a place where the electronic security is extremely high.
Tim
I agree that this is probably the rationale behind the action. Here's a scarier situation:
After announcing my resignation at a large credit card processing company, I worked my two weeks, and on my last day found out that my access card expired at Noon that day instead of Midnight. I mentioned to the security guard at the door what had happened, and offered him the name of my manager that he could call up to the front door and validate my identity.
Instead, he said "oh... ok" and just unlocked the door and let me in!
He had no idea who I was. At the time, there were roughly 8000 people working in this location, so he didn't recognize me (I'd been there less than six months). Once inside, I was free to roam where I wanted, and could have easily destroyed any data on a number of secure servers.
I immediately went to my boss, explained to him what happened, and he said "Oh yeah... doesn't surprise me a bit."
This is the same place that was incredibly anal about changing passwords and monitoring both ingress and egress using your card.
What this experience taught me was that I had made the right career choice in deciding to leave.
Tim
This is an interesting question, since I just changed jobs, having left a position as a Custom Software Development Project Manager for a Fortune 100 company. I sent the notice to my current manager and previous manager via e-mail on a Friday night (sent it encrypted with receipt notification). I alerted them to my decision, ensured them that the reason for my leaving was about a new opportunity (and not because I thought somebody was a PHB/Dolt/Bozo/Insert-insult-here).
The following Monday morning, I sat down with both of them and went through it all verbally. I gave them two weeks notice in my e-mail, which would have made my last day the Friday after Thanksgiving. Per company policy, I had to work the next Monday to get paid for those days, so I agreed to this (after checking with the new place), and then got back to work.
I will point out that I know this is an unusual situation, particularly at a company of this size. In my case, there was a significant level of trust that went up several levels above me, prompting one of the people up the chain to send me a very personal and heartfelt message of thanks for my years of service. For the next two weeks, I was working an average of 10 hours/day, including a few hours on the day after Thanksgiving.
How did I get this kind of treatment, along with an invitation to return if my new adventure didn't pan out? I established a long history of trustworthy behavior. In addition to this, the project that I was working on had extremely high priority, and we didn't have anyone else who had the same combination of knowledge and skills that I did for that particular project (a combination of reverse-engineering and product familiarity).
Now, to be fair, it would not have surprised me if they had said "sorry, you're gone" on that Monday morning, and sent me packing. In many ways, it would have made my life easier. On the other hand I would have missed out on the "Top 10 List" read aloud during my farewell lunch, where we all got several good laughs at my expense.
Even more important, I would have missed the pleasure of working even more closely with some of my best friends, on a highly-valuable project, utilizing the limit of my abilities.
Now, on to the future...
Tim
I don't plan on spending any money on it. My 14 year-old plans on doing so. He doesn't have the cash for the 360 + a surround sound system, but he would need to know that it will be limited if he goes through the current stereo outs.
Sorry that I didn't read the other 30 answers that had nothing to do with my situation.
However, my circumstances are probably not that unusual.
Tim