Its a good thing they are all self powered, I would never trust an external drive powered via the bus. Ive seen some terrible devices for USB being self powered that actually caused damage to Motherboards! Unfortunatly many manufacturers seem to skimp on the specs at times, resulting in m/b's or controllers not supplying enough power, or the reverse devices drawing too much.
I had one USB FlashMem reader that came with a Richo Digital camera, that destroyed the usb ports on one M/B and actually destroyed another motherboard entirely!:(
The Audigy has a modified 1394 chip i believe, SB1394 they call it, i dont know the actual difference, but i was told it runs faster than the standard 1394..
An article on Icelands Hydrogen plans can be found here: [smh.com.au]
Actually very interesting, I have to say its refreshing at least to see some countries making serious efforts to resolve these energy problems we all face!
I dont believe that nuclear power is a great long term solution, all it does is changes a large amount of moderatly-harmfull polution to a small extremely-lethal amount of 'controlled' polution. Yes sure we can drum that radioactive waste up and bury it somewhere, but how long do you seriously think we can do that for?
What we need is either a miraculous break though, ie cold-fusion or some-such (I wont hold my breath), or a good reason to stop and SERIOUSLY make efforts find alternatives, like maybe hydrogen, fusion, microwaves from space or whatever!
In my opinion money is the only thing that could bring about the latter, the extra money we will have to 'suddenly' spend when we relise that all those oil fields are actually only 10 or so years from being completly empty. So give us 30 or so years and maybe someone will get a clue.
Cost is the issue here, along with time i might add (as you said). The problem we have is all the artificial pressure keeping fuel prices 'stable', okay excluding OPEC's efforts to the contrary. If fuel costs kept rising at at greater rate than they have been, we would be far more inclined to find and USE new (and perhaps) re-newable energy sources.
I believe its a very short-sighted policy to think that we must keep our oil costs down at any cost. A perfect example being the end of 2000 and begining of this year when oil prices went up, people across Europe and America i think (and later here in Australia) protested to the government to cut tax's on fuels. Eventually many governments complied, such as the Australian govt early this year cutting the re-indexing of fuel tax. The fact is although tax makes up a huge percentage (over 50% was it here??) fuel costs will contiune to rise how much more can we cut the taxes?
In my opinion the tax's should remain, and despite the short-medium term hardship it may cause prices should not be controlled so vigerously! The fact is, oil is non-renewable, and unless we start PAYING more now the general short-sigtedness we seem to suffer from will cause us HUGE problems in the future! Imagine in 30-50 years when we have used up the last reserves (excluding the disgusting (IMO) ideas of oil drilling in Antartica and Alaska) if we havnt used these years to prepare for that eventuality.
That's the main problem with 'artificial' price controls on oil, its naturally going to get much MUCH more expensive, and there is NOTHING we can do about it. Besides of course alternative fuels.
Another option that many smart advertisers are getting already (and have been for a while) is to make the add's interesting, many of which you actually go out of your way to watch.
For example, the Wassup Budweiser add's, okay I live in Australia, those add's never even aired here (i think), but ive seen them all, and im sure just like in the US walking around the streets many times you hear the: "WASSSUP!" from someone! I even admit i bought *a* budweiser after seeing that as well! (Note: Im Australian so i know very well we already have the best beer.:] Mmmmm beer...)
Im sure in your average sitcom's and such its just a matter of time before you start seeing add's sneak in, but i think its highly unlikely that the show producers would allow the addvertisements to compromise or degrade the show, so unless you absolutely despise all add's in any form, im sure you wont even notice them!
I hope so, MOO (1 & 2) were and probably still are my favourite all time games (up there with civ), but one thing i hate is extactly what this topic is about, the whole space opera of 4X's (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate), to me is wrong! I dont want to play by brute force alone, I want good diplomacy, real trading, etc. Not just the usual random AI saying: "We have decided to squash you now.." Me: "Again? sheash.."
I dont think this "War, war, war" mentality is necessarily just aimed at making a more instantly appealing game, but that it is very difficult to make a good computer AI for anything other than fighting! (Even there, well..)
Hopefully with releases like MOO3 this should set a new standard. But thats what i hoped from Civ2 even..:( I'll have to see how far Civ3 has taken this actually...
Quote: "One of our vendors would see a router or firewall machine starting to act funny and then quickly "schedule" some emergency downtime that night to reboot it thus avoiding having to pay."
Thats the whole point of the contract, they are paid to notice that, and then fix it at a convienient time, ie not a week later in the middle of your bussiest hour when that something 'funny' turns into something not so funny.:)
But it is hard i guess, finding a vendor who will actually be able to deliver what they claim..
Sorry let me clarify my point there a little, especially in contex of what you said;
Quote: "Now imagine you really, really need this patch: you can urge your OEM to install it and keep him free from all responsibility"
That is especially bad from the vendors point of view, as one small patch could cause not only an immediate effect, but much much worse some minor, perhaps unknown problems later.
From my perspective as soon as such a server is (lets say) tainted by someone else its a lost cause!:)
I disagree, if i was such a vendor and someone asked for me to trust them to do a patch, hell even to click Start-Shutdown, i would only do so if two condition, first, i have known and worked with you for YEARS (so i know exactly what you know), and secondly if the contract allows it.
The second point i certainly hope would *never* allow it! The whole point of a vendor provided / supported solution like this is to keep every "computer expert" from goin in and "fixing" it! (Note emphasis, nothing personal of course)
Its all a non-issue i believe anyway, the whole point of such contracts and vendor sollutions is that they do the work, including all maintainance and patching. If its a money-back (or part of) guarantee, then they (the vendor) better be damn sure they keep things patched / running.
Spot on! This whole article is flawed, the purpose of Datacenter and the restrictions on it is by design! Premium support means just that, when patches come out from MS, sure it means a few days(/weeks?) etc to be verified, but each M$ advisory has more than just a link to the patch, including steps to limit vulnerability in the interum.
Also the big thing to remember here is each of those exploits used in Nimbda / CodeRed were patched by ms MONTHS before either of those worms came out.
Like any highly customized - specialized vendor supplied unix, Datacenter is limited by design, and for damn good reason!
The reason for the seeming lack of features is licenceing. Remember the whole TS backend (RDP protocol) is originally based on Citrix work, which was licenced with many restrictions for obvious reasons, although i am only guessing. Example NT4 Term Server was limited to 16 colours no auto-drive mapping etc, 2kTS 256 cols with auto-printer mapping but no drive mapping, XP will have full colour support and printer / drive mapping.
Obviously Citrix knew that it would be best to limit M$ 'innovation' as much as possible in the short-medium term when they licenced their code to them.
Quote: "The "sweet spot" is a farm of dual processor servers with 1.5Gb of RAM, thus you wouldn't need Data Center anyway - normal W2k Server would be more than adequate."
The main advantage of Datacenter is not necessarily the greater memory / etc capability, its the vendor support, (think unix system?) being able to get a 99.999% uptime GUARANTEE is a very very good thing on a Windows server, not that its impossible to do similar work for any *very* experienced admin (even on Windows) but having it as a vendor solution means you dont necessarily have to have a *true* expert on your payroll, which especially in the Win2k market is not as easy as you may think!
The problem here is making certain that your vendor is keeping you upto-date, as I see it this whole patch issue is NOT an issue, actually for many companies it would be a great advantage! Remember that all the patches for Nimbda and Code Red were out long before those worms were made, meaning that as long as your contract with your vendor ensures timley updates code red and nimda would be a complete non-issue!
I believe the situation is very similar to that of most Unix systems, and that is really how Datacenter is targeted.
Matrox have a horrible reputation, well at least amongst some, the past 3 years they have done everything possible to fix that, and they have actually come a LONG way!. I remember myself and 2 friends bought Maxtor 3gig drives when they first appeared, all three of them actually failed eventually!:(
But now its quite differnet, and i guess if you havnt been around for over 2 years you wouldnt think of Maxtor that way. Also from recent experience (anocdotal and actual) they are much better now, especially in the service side where at least in Australia they promise "no-questions-asked replacement"! At least for a reseller like us..
If you think you have trouble as a consumer getting warranty type service, feel for you local reseller who has to deal with it xx times a day!:(
My company pumps out quite a few systems per month, and we have been using Seagate HD's for the past two years UNTIL now. For some reason for a period of 2 months we were getting back almost 2 in 3 of the Seagate 20Gig 5400rpm drives (cant remember model number) in our systems. That lasted for two months, until changed to Fujitsu.
The drives would just completly fail anywhere between 1 hour and 1 month from purchase.:( But none of the other Seagate drives has any similar problem, not even the 20Gig 7200rpm. So i would say its very much like the IBM problem, and alike also in that it hasnt been fixed quickly enough!:(
You can get a package of printer / camera together for very cheap, actually in AU$ here HP sells the PhotoSmart range which starts at around AU$600 (thats US$300 about), granted its not a top of the line, but it is actually pretty good considering the price! (We use one here for all our promotional material)
You can of course spend much much more as you stated, of course most consumers probably wouldnt bother if they just want a simple digital camera..
Not that I am at all an expert, but my g/f is an (aspiring) photographer, and the photography company she works at use all digital camera's for their main shots! Granted the main camera is some $14000 beast but the head photographer laughs at her because she's studing all the (expected) dark room techniqes at collage!:)
Im sure i know many people who would laugh at your engineers! Of course I really know nothing about them, so thats far from fair, but from what I have heard and seen, the difference cabeling can make is definatly noticable. Of course their are 'engineers' (no not audiphile's) who also believe Bose make good 'lifestyle' systems.
All this talk of how 10hours battery life is so bad, damn how often do you charge your mobile phone? Personally i use it quite a bit for work and play, enough so (its an Nokia 8810) that if i dont charge it every night by the lunchtime the next day its running out!
Geez if such simple little thing as a mobile cant last two days, how could a PocketPC (word / excel / mp3 / divx / email / internet / phone / etc / etc) be expected to last so long?
I mean its been said a thousand times here, Palm vs (say) iPaq is no comparison, functionality wise.Its like comparing watches to mobile phones!
Ahhh i cant stand TV down here!?!!@$ Damn the govt supported free-to-air monopoly! Jesus even now with digital tv, thanks to one media owner (aka Kerry Packer, Channel 9) we have digital tv in the 'more of the same' format!!@$# Ie no, new channels (except govt chan), and NO FSCKEN digital cable! ARGH!
No wonder the best we see right now on tv, DS9 and Voyager, seasons 6 and 5 respectivly, at that prime-time once a week spot of midnight!!@$ Not to mention Farscape getting axed after such a short time!:(
I think new audiences is right, but i dont think its at all a "Younger Audience" their aiming for, I would think its a small part of a broad strategy they seem to have with the whole season (im guessing from what i have seen / read) too relate to more people, and not just all the sci-fi geeks.
In my opinion (a sci-fi geek) thats a damn good thing, the *worst* thing that could happen (already sooo close) is for it to turn into a
'virtual' b-grade show appealling to only the most diehard geeks. Say like Babylon 5. =)
(Sorry for that flame-bait, i cant stand b5. Please ignore.:])
From what i heard i agree that it fits nicely. Unfortunatly i havnt yet seen the whole episode tho, still waiting for Kazaa to download that one, you americans without UPN think your unlucky! Try living in Australia, right now were are only seeing for the first time Season 6 (YES SIX) of DS9! Not to mention season 5 of Voyager! I dont expect Enterprise here for a few years yet!:( (What about Farscape? You ask? Blockbuster's got it....)
But i digress.,:) From what ive seen it appears that the theme song is trying to play to the wider audience as well as set the stage / time of the show. I think it works, but i will go and re-listen to it again and think about it.
One thing, it certainly breaks the 'same-old same-old' trend of the previous ST series, yet to be seen how much of a Good Thing(TM) that is..
Unfortunately, no such disincentive exists with MCSE, A+, N+, etc...
Are you sure? What do you call CodeRed, Nimba?:)For me when i hear of big companies (like Compaq for one here in Aus) having their mail/web systems down because 'someone' didnt do their job and patch those systems, i *hope* that one of those (us) pesky managers stops to think; "Why werent we protected??"...
With the IT employment sector as it is right now, im happy in the knowledge that when my company needs a new Techie (as we will soon) we have a vast pool of applicants to sift through.
You would be supprised how quickly companies 'get a clue', maybe 18 months ago when hiring an Administrator the 1st problem was finding one, now its very different, and many Managers may not know jack about IT, but they know exactly what they need done! It is really common knowledge (for a manager) that experience counts!
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Its a good thing they are all self powered, I would never trust an external drive powered via the bus. Ive seen some terrible devices for USB being self powered that actually caused damage to Motherboards! Unfortunatly many manufacturers seem to skimp on the specs at times, resulting in m/b's or controllers not supplying enough power, or the reverse devices drawing too much.
:(
I had one USB FlashMem reader that came with a Richo Digital camera, that destroyed the usb ports on one M/B and actually destroyed another motherboard entirely!
The Audigy has a modified 1394 chip i believe, SB1394 they call it, i dont know the actual difference, but i was told it runs faster than the standard 1394..
Anyone have more info on that?
An article on Icelands Hydrogen plans can be found here: [smh.com.au] Actually very interesting, I have to say its refreshing at least to see some countries making serious efforts to resolve these energy problems we all face!
I dont believe that nuclear power is a great long term solution, all it does is changes a large amount of moderatly-harmfull polution to a small extremely-lethal amount of 'controlled' polution. Yes sure we can drum that radioactive waste up and bury it somewhere, but how long do you seriously think we can do that for?
:)
What we need is either a miraculous break though, ie cold-fusion or some-such (I wont hold my breath), or a good reason to stop and SERIOUSLY make efforts find alternatives, like maybe hydrogen, fusion, microwaves from space or whatever!
In my opinion money is the only thing that could bring about the latter, the extra money we will have to 'suddenly' spend when we relise that all those oil fields are actually only 10 or so years from being completly empty. So give us 30 or so years and maybe someone will get a clue.
/end pessimisim
Cost is the issue here, along with time i might add (as you said). The problem we have is all the artificial pressure keeping fuel prices 'stable', okay excluding OPEC's efforts to the contrary. If fuel costs kept rising at at greater rate than they have been, we would be far more inclined to find and USE new (and perhaps) re-newable energy sources.
I believe its a very short-sighted policy to think that we must keep our oil costs down at any cost. A perfect example being the end of 2000 and begining of this year when oil prices went up, people across Europe and America i think (and later here in Australia) protested to the government to cut tax's on fuels. Eventually many governments complied, such as the Australian govt early this year cutting the re-indexing of fuel tax. The fact is although tax makes up a huge percentage (over 50% was it here??) fuel costs will contiune to rise how much more can we cut the taxes?
In my opinion the tax's should remain, and despite the short-medium term hardship it may cause prices should not be controlled so vigerously! The fact is, oil is non-renewable, and unless we start PAYING more now the general short-sigtedness we seem to suffer from will cause us HUGE problems in the future! Imagine in 30-50 years when we have used up the last reserves (excluding the disgusting (IMO) ideas of oil drilling in Antartica and Alaska) if we havnt used these years to prepare for that eventuality.
That's the main problem with 'artificial' price controls on oil, its naturally going to get much MUCH more expensive, and there is NOTHING we can do about it. Besides of course alternative fuels.
Another option that many smart advertisers are getting already (and have been for a while) is to make the add's interesting, many of which you actually go out of your way to watch.
:] Mmmmm beer...)
For example, the Wassup Budweiser add's, okay I live in Australia, those add's never even aired here (i think), but ive seen them all, and im sure just like in the US walking around the streets many times you hear the: "WASSSUP!" from someone! I even admit i bought *a* budweiser after seeing that as well! (Note: Im Australian so i know very well we already have the best beer.
Im sure in your average sitcom's and such its just a matter of time before you start seeing add's sneak in, but i think its highly unlikely that the show producers would allow the addvertisements to compromise or degrade the show, so unless you absolutely despise all add's in any form, im sure you wont even notice them!
I hope so, MOO (1 & 2) were and probably still are my favourite all time games (up there with civ), but one thing i hate is extactly what this topic is about, the whole space opera of 4X's (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate), to me is wrong! I dont want to play by brute force alone, I want good diplomacy, real trading, etc. Not just the usual random AI saying: "We have decided to squash you now.." Me: "Again? sheash.."
:( I'll have to see how far Civ3 has taken this actually...
I dont think this "War, war, war" mentality is necessarily just aimed at making a more instantly appealing game, but that it is very difficult to make a good computer AI for anything other than fighting! (Even there, well..)
Hopefully with releases like MOO3 this should set a new standard. But thats what i hoped from Civ2 even..
Quote: "One of our vendors would see a router or firewall machine starting to act funny and then quickly "schedule" some emergency downtime that night to reboot it thus avoiding having to pay."
:)
Thats the whole point of the contract, they are paid to notice that, and then fix it at a convienient time, ie not a week later in the middle of your bussiest hour when that something 'funny' turns into something not so funny.
But it is hard i guess, finding a vendor who will actually be able to deliver what they claim..
Sorry let me clarify my point there a little, especially in contex of what you said;
:)
:)
Quote: "Now imagine you really, really need this patch: you can urge your OEM to install it and keep him free from all responsibility"
That is especially bad from the vendors point of view, as one small patch could cause not only an immediate effect, but much much worse some minor, perhaps unknown problems later.
From my perspective as soon as such a server is (lets say) tainted by someone else its a lost cause!
Maybe im just a control freak tho?
I disagree, if i was such a vendor and someone asked for me to trust them to do a patch, hell even to click Start-Shutdown, i would only do so if two condition, first, i have known and worked with you for YEARS (so i know exactly what you know), and secondly if the contract allows it.
The second point i certainly hope would *never* allow it! The whole point of a vendor provided / supported solution like this is to keep every "computer expert" from goin in and "fixing" it! (Note emphasis, nothing personal of course)
Its all a non-issue i believe anyway, the whole point of such contracts and vendor sollutions is that they do the work, including all maintainance and patching. If its a money-back (or part of) guarantee, then they (the vendor) better be damn sure they keep things patched / running.
Spot on! This whole article is flawed, the purpose of Datacenter and the restrictions on it is by design! Premium support means just that, when patches come out from MS, sure it means a few days(/weeks?) etc to be verified, but each M$ advisory has more than just a link to the patch, including steps to limit vulnerability in the interum.
Also the big thing to remember here is each of those exploits used in Nimbda / CodeRed were patched by ms MONTHS before either of those worms came out.
Like any highly customized - specialized vendor supplied unix, Datacenter is limited by design, and for damn good reason!
The reason for the seeming lack of features is licenceing. Remember the whole TS backend (RDP protocol) is originally based on Citrix work, which was licenced with many restrictions for obvious reasons, although i am only guessing. Example NT4 Term Server was limited to 16 colours no auto-drive mapping etc, 2kTS 256 cols with auto-printer mapping but no drive mapping, XP will have full colour support and printer / drive mapping.
Obviously Citrix knew that it would be best to limit M$ 'innovation' as much as possible in the short-medium term when they licenced their code to them.
Quote: "The "sweet spot" is a farm of dual processor servers with 1.5Gb of RAM, thus you wouldn't need Data Center anyway - normal W2k Server would be more than adequate."
The main advantage of Datacenter is not necessarily the greater memory / etc capability, its the vendor support, (think unix system?) being able to get a 99.999% uptime GUARANTEE is a very very good thing on a Windows server, not that its impossible to do similar work for any *very* experienced admin (even on Windows) but having it as a vendor solution means you dont necessarily have to have a *true* expert on your payroll, which especially in the Win2k market is not as easy as you may think!
The problem here is making certain that your vendor is keeping you upto-date, as I see it this whole patch issue is NOT an issue, actually for many companies it would be a great advantage! Remember that all the patches for Nimbda and Code Red were out long before those worms were made, meaning that as long as your contract with your vendor ensures timley updates code red and nimda would be a complete non-issue!
I believe the situation is very similar to that of most Unix systems, and that is really how Datacenter is targeted.
Matrox have a horrible reputation, well at least amongst some, the past 3 years they have done everything possible to fix that, and they have actually come a LONG way!. I remember myself and 2 friends bought Maxtor 3gig drives when they first appeared, all three of them actually failed eventually! :(
:(
But now its quite differnet, and i guess if you havnt been around for over 2 years you wouldnt think of Maxtor that way. Also from recent experience (anocdotal and actual) they are much better now, especially in the service side where at least in Australia they promise "no-questions-asked replacement"! At least for a reseller like us..
If you think you have trouble as a consumer getting warranty type service, feel for you local reseller who has to deal with it xx times a day!
My company pumps out quite a few systems per month, and we have been using Seagate HD's for the past two years UNTIL now. For some reason for a period of 2 months we were getting back almost 2 in 3 of the Seagate 20Gig 5400rpm drives (cant remember model number) in our systems. That lasted for two months, until changed to Fujitsu.
:( But none of the other Seagate drives has any similar problem, not even the 20Gig 7200rpm. So i would say its very much like the IBM problem, and alike also in that it hasnt been fixed quickly enough! :(
The drives would just completly fail anywhere between 1 hour and 1 month from purchase.
/rant...
I live off my mobile, unfortunatly I have recieved a number of marketing calls, but half of them (2 out of 4) were from my phone company! :(
The stupidest one was my bank calling me to confirm that i had recieved in the mail and looked at; "their great new special credit offer". hmmm...
You can get a package of printer / camera together for very cheap, actually in AU$ here HP sells the PhotoSmart range which starts at around AU$600 (thats US$300 about), granted its not a top of the line, but it is actually pretty good considering the price! (We use one here for all our promotional material)
You can of course spend much much more as you stated, of course most consumers probably wouldnt bother if they just want a simple digital camera..
Not that I am at all an expert, but my g/f is an (aspiring) photographer, and the photography company she works at use all digital camera's for their main shots! Granted the main camera is some $14000 beast but the head photographer laughs at her because she's studing all the (expected) dark room techniqes at collage! :)
Im sure i know many people who would laugh at your engineers! Of course I really know nothing about them, so thats far from fair, but from what I have heard and seen, the difference cabeling can make is definatly noticable. Of course their are 'engineers' (no not audiphile's) who also believe Bose make good 'lifestyle' systems.
:)
pah!
"I'm confused as to why people that I consider smart still waste their time with it. "
Your confusion is missplaced, simply put its not *your* time to waste. So i ask why do you even waste *your* time worring about them?
Each to our own i say, i like the seti project, if only because the graphs look cool on the screen saver, it doesnt matter really. Does it?
All this talk of how 10hours battery life is so bad, damn how often do you charge your mobile phone? Personally i use it quite a bit for work and play, enough so (its an Nokia 8810) that if i dont charge it every night by the lunchtime the next day its running out!
Geez if such simple little thing as a mobile cant last two days, how could a PocketPC (word / excel / mp3 / divx / email / internet / phone / etc / etc) be expected to last so long?
I mean its been said a thousand times here, Palm vs (say) iPaq is no comparison, functionality wise.Its like comparing watches to mobile phones!
Ahhh i cant stand TV down here!?!!@$ Damn the govt supported free-to-air monopoly! Jesus even now with digital tv, thanks to one media owner (aka Kerry Packer, Channel 9) we have digital tv in the 'more of the same' format!!@$# Ie no, new channels (except govt chan), and NO FSCKEN digital cable! ARGH!
:(
No wonder the best we see right now on tv, DS9 and Voyager, seasons 6 and 5 respectivly, at that prime-time once a week spot of midnight!!@$ Not to mention Farscape getting axed after such a short time!
Grr!! (insert !^inf)
*ah-hem* as you were..
I think new audiences is right, but i dont think its at all a "Younger Audience" their aiming for, I would think its a small part of a broad strategy they seem to have with the whole season (im guessing from what i have seen / read) too relate to more people, and not just all the sci-fi geeks.
:])
In my opinion (a sci-fi geek) thats a damn good thing, the *worst* thing that could happen (already sooo close) is for it to turn into a
'virtual' b-grade show appealling to only the most diehard geeks. Say like Babylon 5. =)
(Sorry for that flame-bait, i cant stand b5. Please ignore.
From what i heard i agree that it fits nicely. Unfortunatly i havnt yet seen the whole episode tho, still waiting for Kazaa to download that one, you americans without UPN think your unlucky! Try living in Australia, right now were are only seeing for the first time Season 6 (YES SIX) of DS9! Not to mention season 5 of Voyager! I dont expect Enterprise here for a few years yet! :( (What about Farscape? You ask? Blockbuster's got it....)
:) From what ive seen it appears that the theme song is trying to play to the wider audience as well as set the stage / time of the show. I think it works, but i will go and re-listen to it again and think about it.
But i digress.,
One thing, it certainly breaks the 'same-old same-old' trend of the previous ST series, yet to be seen how much of a Good Thing(TM) that is..
Unfortunately, no such disincentive exists with MCSE, A+, N+, etc...
:)For me when i hear of big companies (like Compaq for one here in Aus) having their mail/web systems down because 'someone' didnt do their job and patch those systems, i *hope* that one of those (us) pesky managers stops to think; "Why werent we protected??"...
Are you sure? What do you call CodeRed, Nimba?
With the IT employment sector as it is right now, im happy in the knowledge that when my company needs a new Techie (as we will soon) we have a vast pool of applicants to sift through.
You would be supprised how quickly companies 'get a clue', maybe 18 months ago when hiring an Administrator the 1st problem was finding one, now its very different, and many Managers may not know jack about IT, but they know exactly what they need done! It is really common knowledge (for a manager) that experience counts!