Don't these hard copy books still exist after Google has "digitized" them? If you re concerned over your privacy, simply go to the physical library as you would have before the digitization.
Yes, in about the same way that pay phones still exist after the advent of cell phones. And in the same way, we can expect the availability to gradually dwindle until the option no longer exists. Let's not wait until that point to solve the problem.
I'm not saying the BBC is perfect, but as new sources goes, it's probably up there as being one of the most reliable in the world. Look at the demonstrations in Iran. Without the BBC's Farsi division, the extent of our knowledge of what happened after the election would be far less.
The thing is though, the quality of the BBC isn't at issue. Even if it's great, having only one source of news isn't a good thing. I'm not saying I agree with Murdoch per se, but it is difficult to be in the position of attempting to compete with a state-sponsored entity. It's not hard to see how the state could be in the position of driving out all the competition by undercutting them, and as a result being able to effectively control the news.
It's not that BBC *is* doing that, but that such a situation could go bad.
Uhm, you do realise that most of the mainstream media in the US is own by Rupert Murdoch, and other wealthy Republicans?
Not even close to true. He doesn't own ABC, CBS, or NBC. He does own Fox, one of four major networks. On cable, you have Fox News owned by Murdoch (very Republican-oriented, granted), CNN owned by Ted Turner (debatable), but the rest of the news channels aren't close to right-leaning in general. For newspapers, he owns the WSJ, which is the only prominent right-leaning paper, with the Washington Post and New York Times being the two most prominent newspapers in the country. They also happen to be *extremely* left.
So your big Republican conspiracy is 1 out of 4 major networks, one or two major cable news channels, and one major newspaper. That's a lot more than those that are clearly left-leaning. The network news tends to skew left, as do newspapers in major cities.
Normally getting an auditor is a good CYA technique. However, deliberately misleading the auditor is essentially fraudulent misrepresentation. Even so, the auditor should actually perform an audit - not just sit back and sign off on a prepared demo. That's like a CPA just checking your totals without actually looking at your books.
I agree in principle, but there's truth in the saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
In this case, if they created a clone piece of software that was identical but fraudulent, I wonder what they could have inspected to ensure it was fake? Sort of like supplying your CPA with cooked books in your example - a good CPA could sniff out a bad fake, but probably not a good fake.
Come on, I'm tired of seeing crap network shows that my great-aunt watches in the top ten and the shows *I* like getting shitcanned for "low ratings." I would even be willing to "opt-in" to a DVR viewing log system if it meant that my viewing habits could save a few decent shows.
Preach it, brother. ABC is especially notorious about coming up with interesting new shows (that probably appeal to the 18-34 audience that has almost universally adopted DVRs), and then canceling them because the numbers appear bad. But hey, we've got more shows where we watch annoying 15 year olds try to sing! So we've got that going for us.
I only found the first two books funny. The rest... not so much.
Third was pretty good. Not as good as the first two, but pretty good (in my opinion).
The fourth was OK. Definitely a "OK, here's your damn book, get off my back." The best parts seemed self-referential - the supposedly final book is "so long, and thanks for all the fish?" Cute move.
The fifth was hilarious in a way because it seemed to be a genial "fuck you" to forces that insisted on a new book. He closed the book in a very clever way that resulted in the main character being killed off.
Then of course he died himself, which if he could have written it would have been hilarious. I mean no disrespect, but I think he'd have appreciated the symmetry.
I think the fact that you have to adjust for inflation is a good indication that something went wrong.
Couldn't say it better myself. I'd also add that the adjusting for inflation would actually increase the cost if you normalized everything to 2009 dollars.
My brother is an engineer at Boeing... he claims that this is the most screwed up engineering project in terms of cost in human history. I think he has a point.
Oh, I can't imagine it's beat the Big Dig just yet, though it may be on its way. Looks like the relative costs of the two programs are similar...but the Big Dig was a 10-fold cost overrun (from about $2B to $20B.
In more similar endeavors, there's always the Osprey, also coming in at about $20B. Funny, Boeing was one of the co-developers on that clusterfudge too.
He assumes that what's wrong is the business model, as if nothing about journalism, publication, advertising or content has to change to capitalize on a fundamentally different market.
Those are all the basic problems that are well known. Advertising is so cheap elsewhere now that it simply isn't sufficient to subsidize investigative journalism anymore. Journalism is changing - for the worse, because newspapers can't afford to support it based on advertising anymore. So something needs to be done so that the quality of journalism doesn't have to keep declining.
It's not like Murdoch is some crazy guy who doesn't 'get' it. Papers nationwide are shuttering, others are drastically reducing the amount of real journalism they do in favor of retread AP coverage. That's not good at all.
So if advertising is down, some other method of revenue needs to be found. One way is to have people subscribe to get content that was created as opposed to repeated. If there are other ways, and you have ideas in that regard, then I assure you the journalism field would love to hear them.
Everything that doesn't originate with you will route around you somehow.
That's actually the basic idea of dual-system sites - content that isn't largely based on original research is free, premium content is for-pay. Seems fair to me.
Putting up a paywall around the same old stuff isn't going to make us spontaneously want to pay for it.
No, but it will separate you from the people who are willing to pay for it, which is the idea.
Look, the journalism industry is in serious trouble, and the free alternatives simply aren't of equal quality in many cases. Advertising isn't sufficient to pay the bills anymore, so other means need to be found. If you don't want to pay, that's your option. But it doesn't make Murdoch evil simply because he's trying to address the problem.
Perhaps for Senshan it would have been better to let him endure his cruel affliction instead of having his parents pay over $1,000 to have him beaten to death?
And knowing China, they probably also charged his parents for the cost of the stick used to beat him.
Also, I don't know much about these "internet addiction" facilities. Are we talking about people who spend too much time playing WoW, or dissidents who use the internet for communication? Somehow I'm seeing this as being a gulag for political prisoners, but maybe that's just me being cynical.
I've found this depends very much on the type of "illegal" behavior. In general, it seems to depend if the type of illegal behavior is sensible or stupid. Passing on the shoulder to make a right turn isn't rude; it's an indication that a turn lane should be present. Passing on the right, while dangerous, helps get around somebody else who was rude (and probably illegal) in parking in the passing lane. Those all make sense.
There's a lot of other behavior that is rude and doesn't help congestion. For instance, in a jam where both lanes are clogged, and you have some asshole who's constantly changing lanes because one looks faster for 10 seconds. He doesn't get anywhere, just slows everything down. Or the people who use the merge lane as a passing lane. They clog up everything by forcing the whole right lane to come to a stop to let them in when the merge ends. Or the "oh, my exit's over there!" people who wait until the last second to change lanes for their turn, invariably forcing everyone else to stop.
You can claim that certain illegal behaviors benefit traffic as a whole, but my guess is that these are a small subset of the many stupid, dangerous, rude, and illegal things that drivers do.
The OP of the message I replied to made no reference to the ice sheets on land.
Well, unless there's some magical force shield that can melt arctic ice over water but not over Greenland, the two go hand in hand. I'll give the GP credit for possessing a functioning brain.
I think the graphics were less of an issue than the "wooden" feeling of the game -- ie the physics, movement, AI, and combat.
I'll agree there. There were some points where moving things around, trying to climb things, etc was a pain in the ass.
Despite this, it is still one of the greatest games ever made, I cannot even imagine how much ass this game could kick with a modern engine, improved combat, and non-retarded AI.
Agree. What does it say about games that we're willing to consider a game as one of the best ever despite a bad physics engine, bad AI, and mediocre graphics? Yet people play it over an over? The hardest thing to do is to make an open-ended game with many different plot paths, multiple ways to solve problems. It's tough, but it makes for the best games. Wish more publishers could get it right.
Just played it again, and now that you mentioned it, the graphics do look dated. But at the time, I was too into the game to notice. And I would get the rewrite, or reboot.
Maybe my standards are lower, but I played it recently and the graphics were perfectly acceptable, provided you didn't get 6" from an object so you notice the texture flaws. But why the hell would you be doing that anyway?
But there's more to graphics than texture detail anyway. The *original* Deus Ex did a very good job with color balance and saturation, resisting the "wouldn't it be cool if everything were brown?" temptation that the sequel fell prey to. The shadows were very well done without being "let me put my monitor's brightness up to 100" annoying where there's no contrast.
Where graphics are concerned, I'm much more worried that they get color and contrast balance right than textures. Deus Ex's graphics were perfectly good enough to be immersive, and there was nothing annoying that brought me out of the game. Which, given the fantastic storyline, was all I needed.
The only thing that takes a lot of work is peer review. Optimally, you need a mediator who assigns specialists for a double-masked review. With modern technology this can be done very cheaply, by a single non-profit that does nothing else.
Your entire premise sounds like one of those "spherical body on a frictionless surface" problems that deal in the ideal instead of reality. In the real world, you need people like editors who generally have families to feed and require salaries. A lot of money goes into organizing such a publication, and long term, these people probably don't plan on working for free. Bear in mind, "non-profit" doesn't equate to "all-volunteer".
A nominal fee may be collected to support a small staff of mediators. A single mediator can easily process dozens of review requests per day: they just need to go into the database, get a random pick of reviewers who meet minimum requirements (field of study, topics of works that are notorious [1] in the scientific community) and email the assignment. Gosh, a computer could probably do it almost as well, and a lot faster!
Journals that operate like that exist today. Not surprisingly, they're of extremely low quality. You get what you pay for. Better journals put a lot more effort into operations than what you described.
Additionally, many professional societies use their journals to make money that they funnel into educational programs. Considering that the publishers of most higher end journals are *already* non-profit, you're looking at the prospect of removing money from charitable pursuits to facilitate free access. Surprisingly, these issues aren't so simple when you look at all the angles.
Academic authors are not in it trying to make a buck -- very few ever do, and certainly not through journal publications. I think that peer review should be the only filter on academic publishing; there is no reason that journals can't start publishing academic work without such contracts.
Well, without exclusivity here's what'll happen: Nature publishes their journal on 9/1/09. Somebody scans all the articles and they're on the web on 9/2/09. Subscription rates to Nature go through the floor and they go out of business.
I don't see any way we can have organized, peer-reviewed science without A) subscribers paying or B) authors paying. It's simply not free. Most people seem to think that B) is more objectionable since it would conflict with the nature of peer review. As above, A) is pretty much impossible without copyright protection. So there we are.
Now, there are relevant arguments to be made that research more than X years old should be open, and these discussions are very active among non-profit professional societies (American Chemical Society, for instance). The more immediately solvable issue is supporting non-profit societies that publish journals vs. for-profit journals like Elsevier. Those are usually the ones with the most onerous terms, anyway.
It's just another option. You don't have to sell your copyright. Why do scientists sell their copyright to journals? Because journals pay for it. Without copyright, journals would not pay for scientific articles. Well, simply don't sell your work and you can have that result right now, without changing any laws. You keep your copyright, the journal keeps its money.
Before people start lining up to agree with a very dryly sarcastic post, you should have the decency to provide the "and you don't get tenure" part.
Ultra fast trading is an interesting idea and done right it can lead to successful short term returns, but if you take a Ferrari around a hairpin at 120mph, you're still going to hit the wall and die.
Here's what happens when that particular Ferrari hits the wall:
Yup, I understand what you're saying. My point still being... As long as they can point a finger at a person (executives or peons) when the shit hits the fan, and your companies name is in the paper, and the lawsuits soon follow, the SA can say... "Hey, SA did everything we could. It's not our fault Mr Executive wrote down the password. He knows better then that."
It'll never work that way. If the security policy is done by employees, they're taking the fall instead of the executive every time. If it's done by a contractor, they get dumped and blamed. Either way - if it's a high ranking employee (ie, executive) who screws up, someone else will feel the brunt every time. To avoid that, it's a good idea to try to keep your policies executive-proof.
The problem is, it doesn't matter if the security guys are right or not. They'll still lose.
The Security Analyst can care less if you can remember your passwords or not. The real issue is whose fault it's going to be when the system does get compromised. I can tell you right now, it's not going to be the SA. Its all you, the end user! You can fight the good fight for admins and end users, but in the end, SA can care less if you have you password on a sticky note on your monitor. They have covered their ass, and when all your business gets owned. They are going to point their finger right at you. They will keep their job... You wont.
That's all fun and games until the person who wrote the password on the sticky note outranks the admin. And believe me, executives are the worst about that sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't these hard copy books still exist after Google has "digitized" them? If you re concerned over your privacy, simply go to the physical library as you would have before the digitization.
Yes, in about the same way that pay phones still exist after the advent of cell phones. And in the same way, we can expect the availability to gradually dwindle until the option no longer exists. Let's not wait until that point to solve the problem.
I'm not saying the BBC is perfect, but as new sources goes, it's probably up there as being one of the most reliable in the world. Look at the demonstrations in Iran. Without the BBC's Farsi division, the extent of our knowledge of what happened after the election would be far less.
The thing is though, the quality of the BBC isn't at issue. Even if it's great, having only one source of news isn't a good thing. I'm not saying I agree with Murdoch per se, but it is difficult to be in the position of attempting to compete with a state-sponsored entity. It's not hard to see how the state could be in the position of driving out all the competition by undercutting them, and as a result being able to effectively control the news.
It's not that BBC *is* doing that, but that such a situation could go bad.
Uhm, you do realise that most of the mainstream media in the US is own by Rupert Murdoch, and other wealthy Republicans?
Not even close to true. He doesn't own ABC, CBS, or NBC. He does own Fox, one of four major networks. On cable, you have Fox News owned by Murdoch (very Republican-oriented, granted), CNN owned by Ted Turner (debatable), but the rest of the news channels aren't close to right-leaning in general. For newspapers, he owns the WSJ, which is the only prominent right-leaning paper, with the Washington Post and New York Times being the two most prominent newspapers in the country. They also happen to be *extremely* left.
So your big Republican conspiracy is 1 out of 4 major networks, one or two major cable news channels, and one major newspaper. That's a lot more than those that are clearly left-leaning. The network news tends to skew left, as do newspapers in major cities.
Normally getting an auditor is a good CYA technique. However, deliberately misleading the auditor is essentially fraudulent misrepresentation. Even so, the auditor should actually perform an audit - not just sit back and sign off on a prepared demo. That's like a CPA just checking your totals without actually looking at your books.
I agree in principle, but there's truth in the saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
In this case, if they created a clone piece of software that was identical but fraudulent, I wonder what they could have inspected to ensure it was fake? Sort of like supplying your CPA with cooked books in your example - a good CPA could sniff out a bad fake, but probably not a good fake.
Come on, I'm tired of seeing crap network shows that my great-aunt watches in the top ten and the shows *I* like getting shitcanned for "low ratings." I would even be willing to "opt-in" to a DVR viewing log system if it meant that my viewing habits could save a few decent shows.
Preach it, brother. ABC is especially notorious about coming up with interesting new shows (that probably appeal to the 18-34 audience that has almost universally adopted DVRs), and then canceling them because the numbers appear bad. But hey, we've got more shows where we watch annoying 15 year olds try to sing! So we've got that going for us.
I only found the first two books funny. The rest... not so much.
Third was pretty good. Not as good as the first two, but pretty good (in my opinion).
The fourth was OK. Definitely a "OK, here's your damn book, get off my back." The best parts seemed self-referential - the supposedly final book is "so long, and thanks for all the fish?" Cute move.
The fifth was hilarious in a way because it seemed to be a genial "fuck you" to forces that insisted on a new book. He closed the book in a very clever way that resulted in the main character being killed off.
Then of course he died himself, which if he could have written it would have been hilarious. I mean no disrespect, but I think he'd have appreciated the symmetry.
I think the fact that you have to adjust for inflation is a good indication that something went wrong.
Couldn't say it better myself. I'd also add that the adjusting for inflation would actually increase the cost if you normalized everything to 2009 dollars.
My brother is an engineer at Boeing... he claims that this is the most screwed up engineering project in terms of cost in human history. I think he has a point.
Oh, I can't imagine it's beat the Big Dig just yet, though it may be on its way. Looks like the relative costs of the two programs are similar...but the Big Dig was a 10-fold cost overrun (from about $2B to $20B.
In more similar endeavors, there's always the Osprey, also coming in at about $20B. Funny, Boeing was one of the co-developers on that clusterfudge too.
Why are we _supposed_ to care about other species?
As long as you've learned to photosynthesize, then there's no reason.
He assumes that what's wrong is the business model, as if nothing about journalism, publication, advertising or content has to change to capitalize on a fundamentally different market.
Those are all the basic problems that are well known. Advertising is so cheap elsewhere now that it simply isn't sufficient to subsidize investigative journalism anymore. Journalism is changing - for the worse, because newspapers can't afford to support it based on advertising anymore. So something needs to be done so that the quality of journalism doesn't have to keep declining.
It's not like Murdoch is some crazy guy who doesn't 'get' it. Papers nationwide are shuttering, others are drastically reducing the amount of real journalism they do in favor of retread AP coverage. That's not good at all.
So if advertising is down, some other method of revenue needs to be found. One way is to have people subscribe to get content that was created as opposed to repeated. If there are other ways, and you have ideas in that regard, then I assure you the journalism field would love to hear them.
Everything that doesn't originate with you will route around you somehow.
That's actually the basic idea of dual-system sites - content that isn't largely based on original research is free, premium content is for-pay. Seems fair to me.
Putting up a paywall around the same old stuff isn't going to make us spontaneously want to pay for it.
No, but it will separate you from the people who are willing to pay for it, which is the idea.
Look, the journalism industry is in serious trouble, and the free alternatives simply aren't of equal quality in many cases. Advertising isn't sufficient to pay the bills anymore, so other means need to be found. If you don't want to pay, that's your option. But it doesn't make Murdoch evil simply because he's trying to address the problem.
Perhaps for Senshan it would have been better to let him endure his cruel affliction instead of having his parents pay over $1,000 to have him beaten to death?
And knowing China, they probably also charged his parents for the cost of the stick used to beat him.
Also, I don't know much about these "internet addiction" facilities. Are we talking about people who spend too much time playing WoW, or dissidents who use the internet for communication? Somehow I'm seeing this as being a gulag for political prisoners, but maybe that's just me being cynical.
How would HIV be transmitted from a gorilla to humans?
Come on man. I'd draw you a picture, but it's definitely NSFW.
But isn't reliability an objective quantity?
My guess is you're right. They'll get away with "best", but "most reliable" will probably require them to back it up.
I've found this depends very much on the type of "illegal" behavior. In general, it seems to depend if the type of illegal behavior is sensible or stupid. Passing on the shoulder to make a right turn isn't rude; it's an indication that a turn lane should be present. Passing on the right, while dangerous, helps get around somebody else who was rude (and probably illegal) in parking in the passing lane. Those all make sense.
There's a lot of other behavior that is rude and doesn't help congestion. For instance, in a jam where both lanes are clogged, and you have some asshole who's constantly changing lanes because one looks faster for 10 seconds. He doesn't get anywhere, just slows everything down. Or the people who use the merge lane as a passing lane. They clog up everything by forcing the whole right lane to come to a stop to let them in when the merge ends. Or the "oh, my exit's over there!" people who wait until the last second to change lanes for their turn, invariably forcing everyone else to stop.
You can claim that certain illegal behaviors benefit traffic as a whole, but my guess is that these are a small subset of the many stupid, dangerous, rude, and illegal things that drivers do.
The OP of the message I replied to made no reference to the ice sheets on land.
Well, unless there's some magical force shield that can melt arctic ice over water but not over Greenland, the two go hand in hand. I'll give the GP credit for possessing a functioning brain.
I think the graphics were less of an issue than the "wooden" feeling of the game -- ie the physics, movement, AI, and combat.
I'll agree there. There were some points where moving things around, trying to climb things, etc was a pain in the ass.
Despite this, it is still one of the greatest games ever made, I cannot even imagine how much ass this game could kick with a modern engine, improved combat, and non-retarded AI.
Agree. What does it say about games that we're willing to consider a game as one of the best ever despite a bad physics engine, bad AI, and mediocre graphics? Yet people play it over an over? The hardest thing to do is to make an open-ended game with many different plot paths, multiple ways to solve problems. It's tough, but it makes for the best games. Wish more publishers could get it right.
Just played it again, and now that you mentioned it, the graphics do look dated. But at the time, I was too into the game to notice. And I would get the rewrite, or reboot.
Maybe my standards are lower, but I played it recently and the graphics were perfectly acceptable, provided you didn't get 6" from an object so you notice the texture flaws. But why the hell would you be doing that anyway?
But there's more to graphics than texture detail anyway. The *original* Deus Ex did a very good job with color balance and saturation, resisting the "wouldn't it be cool if everything were brown?" temptation that the sequel fell prey to. The shadows were very well done without being "let me put my monitor's brightness up to 100" annoying where there's no contrast.
Where graphics are concerned, I'm much more worried that they get color and contrast balance right than textures. Deus Ex's graphics were perfectly good enough to be immersive, and there was nothing annoying that brought me out of the game. Which, given the fantastic storyline, was all I needed.
*head explodes*
"A laser diode is much more robust than (a laser diode and the frequency-doubling package of nonlinear crystals).
The only thing that takes a lot of work is peer review. Optimally, you need a mediator who assigns specialists for a double-masked review. With modern technology this can be done very cheaply, by a single non-profit that does nothing else.
Your entire premise sounds like one of those "spherical body on a frictionless surface" problems that deal in the ideal instead of reality. In the real world, you need people like editors who generally have families to feed and require salaries. A lot of money goes into organizing such a publication, and long term, these people probably don't plan on working for free. Bear in mind, "non-profit" doesn't equate to "all-volunteer".
A nominal fee may be collected to support a small staff of mediators. A single mediator can easily process dozens of review requests per day: they just need to go into the database, get a random pick of reviewers who meet minimum requirements (field of study, topics of works that are notorious [1] in the scientific community) and email the assignment. Gosh, a computer could probably do it almost as well, and a lot faster!
Journals that operate like that exist today. Not surprisingly, they're of extremely low quality. You get what you pay for. Better journals put a lot more effort into operations than what you described.
Additionally, many professional societies use their journals to make money that they funnel into educational programs. Considering that the publishers of most higher end journals are *already* non-profit, you're looking at the prospect of removing money from charitable pursuits to facilitate free access. Surprisingly, these issues aren't so simple when you look at all the angles.
It's what my wife has, always sticking her foot into her mouth.
Funny, she's got bird flu too, from putting too much cock in her mouth.
Ba da bing!
Academic authors are not in it trying to make a buck -- very few ever do, and certainly not through journal publications. I think that peer review should be the only filter on academic publishing; there is no reason that journals can't start publishing academic work without such contracts.
Well, without exclusivity here's what'll happen: Nature publishes their journal on 9/1/09. Somebody scans all the articles and they're on the web on 9/2/09. Subscription rates to Nature go through the floor and they go out of business.
I don't see any way we can have organized, peer-reviewed science without A) subscribers paying or B) authors paying. It's simply not free. Most people seem to think that B) is more objectionable since it would conflict with the nature of peer review. As above, A) is pretty much impossible without copyright protection. So there we are.
Now, there are relevant arguments to be made that research more than X years old should be open, and these discussions are very active among non-profit professional societies (American Chemical Society, for instance). The more immediately solvable issue is supporting non-profit societies that publish journals vs. for-profit journals like Elsevier. Those are usually the ones with the most onerous terms, anyway.
It's just another option. You don't have to sell your copyright. Why do scientists sell their copyright to journals? Because journals pay for it. Without copyright, journals would not pay for scientific articles. Well, simply don't sell your work and you can have that result right now, without changing any laws. You keep your copyright, the journal keeps its money.
Before people start lining up to agree with a very dryly sarcastic post, you should have the decency to provide the "and you don't get tenure" part.
Ultra fast trading is an interesting idea and done right it can lead to successful short term returns, but if you take a Ferrari around a hairpin at 120mph, you're still going to hit the wall and die.
Here's what happens when that particular Ferrari hits the wall:
http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/09/10/203233.shtml
Yup, I understand what you're saying. My point still being... As long as they can point a finger at a person (executives or peons) when the shit hits the fan, and your companies name is in the paper, and the lawsuits soon follow, the SA can say... "Hey, SA did everything we could. It's not our fault Mr Executive wrote down the password. He knows better then that."
It'll never work that way. If the security policy is done by employees, they're taking the fall instead of the executive every time. If it's done by a contractor, they get dumped and blamed. Either way - if it's a high ranking employee (ie, executive) who screws up, someone else will feel the brunt every time. To avoid that, it's a good idea to try to keep your policies executive-proof.
The problem is, it doesn't matter if the security guys are right or not. They'll still lose.
The Security Analyst can care less if you can remember your passwords or not. The real issue is whose fault it's going to be when the system does get compromised. I can tell you right now, it's not going to be the SA. Its all you, the end user! You can fight the good fight for admins and end users, but in the end, SA can care less if you have you password on a sticky note on your monitor. They have covered their ass, and when all your business gets owned. They are going to point their finger right at you. They will keep their job... You wont.
That's all fun and games until the person who wrote the password on the sticky note outranks the admin. And believe me, executives are the worst about that sort of thing.