What exactly makes you "worth" so much? So you have a degree, millions of others do too. You most likely have little actual experience, and there are millions of unemployed, skilled, college degree holding workers right now. A 4.0 means nothing, tons of people have them thanks to the dumbing down of America and college coursework.
The harsh reality that college is a sham at this stage in our country will eventually sink in, you're smart.
3.96 QPA in IST BS here. #1 in the entire graduating class my year, worth nothing. After ~8 years I finally make solid bank but I'm totally burnt out and could care less about IT at this point. My next job will have nothing to do with IT.
I've got 12 years+ in IT and I had tons of skills before graduating (hardware, programming, admin, etc.) college, it still mattered not. I had to bust my ass for years before actually making even decent money, and even though I am now, I would throw in the towel on IT in a second to do a normal job. IT has become worthless, it is seen as mostly worthless, and there is no loyalty or dedication to computer-related employees. Add to that the current economic climate and best of luck to new grads. Colleges and tech schools never helped land jobs anyhow, no matter your GPA or quality of the school. Students will soon find that having no outside skills and simply a baseline degree will get them nowhere.
Fuck college, go to trade school, pay a lot less, be in demand, have an normal life. Anyone reading this who is young enough to still change course, do it. I promise you it is the best advice you've ever gotten from an anonymous online stranger for free.
As crazy as it may seem I worked for Radioshack for about 4 1/2 years through and after college. I loved it. I wasn't the annoying clueless RS employee and my customers loved me for that. I could actually answer their questions and help them get exactly what they needed, even if it was some esoteric EE project. The manager at my store Paul, was a very intelligent and great guy which is also what made it enjoyable. It all falls apart after that though, the district meetings, the district managers, and the terrible vision for the company.
I was always in the top sales for my district by virtue of not being a douche so I was spared a lot of problems, but I still would get hassled for not having a high "attach rate" (adding on extras to orders and cell phones) or other such garbage. The company has no solid idea of how to move forward and they keep throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks. All they need to do is become a true electronics store in every neighborhood staffed with knowledgeable people and decent prices.They've tried videogaming, TVs, computers, toys, etc. but never put enough money and time behind any of them to excel. So they just drop it and move on to the next big thing. Instead of crap zip Zaps and stuff start offering real hobby class radio controlled stuff and all the neat things RS used to carry.
1. Management/bosses that have no grasp of technology but need to look like they do to stay employed. 2. Middle management who see their role as web-surfing and bare minimum work because they have people under them to do it all. 3. Underfunding 4. Being forced into unrealistic timetables and deadlines 5. Being expected to be on-call 24x7 with no extra pay or time off 6. Being afraid to speak up ever because the response will always be, "OK, then get on that" 7. Expectations that off-the-shelf software will always magically be a perfect fit with every feature needed 8. Wanton disregard for company property. Cookies mashed in a laptop, 12 broken cell phones a year, etc. 9. Re-infecting your computer the day it comes back to you from being reimaged due to viruses/spyware 10. Disrespect and unprofessionalism from anyone (users or management)
How many besides us admins even know about Sys Admin Day? I'd guess about zero. As someone who has done this job for about 12 years now, I can honestly say that my current job will be my last in this field when it comes to an end. I love how posts in this thread state "we knew what we were getting into when we took this job" No, I am a very hard-working individual who gets results and saves companies a lot of time and money. I'm not a hot-air admin who knows nothing but buzzwords, or a paper admin who has every cert known to man but no actual experience, I take a lot of pride in keeping current and being a well liked member of the company. I deserve to be treated like a professional with the same timeframes, respect, and courtesy afforded to every other role. Yet, so many just accept being treated like a doormat, put under constant intense pressure, underfunded, screamed at, etc. It happens to me too even with being friendly and liked. I've seen much worse on those who also do a great job but might not have the personal skills I do. Regardless it should not happen. It's not right. Companies see and treat IT as a negative cost with no real benefit and I think it is time to stop bending over backwards, giving insane timeframes, working 12+ hours, and on and on just to get shit on time and time again.
Maybe I'm just getting burnt out from IT but I have been in enough different industries that I know it is the same everywhere. From banks to universities to widget makers. No other job requires such constant pressure and re-education for so little in return. For such a smart group of people we let ourselves get trampled on and beat down to this point. I'll gladly step aside for an H1B Visa holder to take my spot for less money and I will go do a "regular" non-IT job for less money and normal hours. All jobs have stress and assholes and problems, but sys admin is just not worth it.
Seriously. It's free and cross platform. Or else get a full-on corporate password manager/vault. In this day and age it drives me fucking insane that everyone acts like this is still an issue and post-its are the only viable solution. FFS.
I install and show people how to use Keypass and allow them to use it for any passwords/info they want and people realize it is handy as hell and adopt it with little issue. I've also set up larger corporate systems with SSL based access and everyone uses it, and especially data centers and banks find it invaluable. TANS are also another great computer-based solution....or, if even those are impossible use a simple word or the first letter of each word in a sentence and then tack on the number of the month. Every month use the same thing but with the next month's number. Easy because the first part becomes ingrained in the memory from constant use and you only have to know what month it is for the number part. Much better than simple words and it is at least almost strong without all the complexity to the user.
is actually better than a chaotic/bazaar mess that spins it wheels for 15 years? No shit!? Man, I mean while everyone blabs on and on about the bazaar and how great the chaotic development is, it isn't good enough for that central part: The Kernel. So why in the hell we keep fighting a cohesive and directed effort to build at least a baseline for the entire OS is beyond me.
This is why I gave up on Linux for all but my servers. One day it will happen, or Google/Ubuntu will do it first. At this point I don't even care, just that it happens.
There may be hope yet for us... however actually following through seems to be our major weakness.
The allure of some shiny, new, bauble is always too much to resist paying 100%+ for on day 1, hour 0, in the end for the great majority and it's always for naught.
If we could get our shit together and hold companies to the fire we'd be far better off. (look at crap like the eee PC, promised at $199, drops at $299+ and people still clamor to buy every last one in seconds... what fucktards we can be)
umm, you mean like how we'll stand in lines for days to pay *above* retail for some new electronic device? Or how many here have already made their first reaction "so what? if it'll remove the ads" etc.
Once something like this gains traction it's over, it starts slowly and then once the genie is out of the bottle it will never be put back in. We'll see.
Seriously I try to get this through people's heads all the time... for geeks we sure can be dumb. It is and has been free. If everyone ignores the service if/when it goes pay or even if only parts go pay only IGNORE them, also make it known you are NOT going to pay for the content... ads are enough to deal with for the content. Then Hulu (which is already successful) will find alternate avenues for revenue. If everyone just jumps in right off the bat you have instantly ensured all future video services like this will be pay-only. Wake up! Please.
Who didn't see this coming? But I think the smarter route is to start it as purely a mobile (smartphone/netbook) OS, work out the kinks and extend it THEN break it out as a full fledged OS. You'd hit the ground running, people already familiar with it, apps developed for it, etc. Then crush Microsoft's grapes.
Yes, but as you can see no one wants to hear it. I have spent over 10 years making this point and everyone turns a blind eye and makes their irrational, ideological, arguments why this is not so. It most certainly makes sense, and yet no one (Linus especially) champions it.
This is the reason I have left the Linux community and besides server use, I have no time for it or the main people surrounding it. It is purely a lesson in frustration to keep up the fight, and eventually this is going to spread like a cancer to bring it down. Chaos can be a bitch too.
QT is not installed by default unless you choose to install KDE or a KDE app from the beginning. A default Gnome install or a lightweight alternative like XFCE would not have them at all and you would be looking at like ~400MB just to use a 30MB app. That is the issue... sure the 1GB I stated was a slight exaggeration but I was making a point.
And yes, Audio and about 30 other areas have major issues that have hung around far too long because of no concise direction or unity.
Why keep fighting it? Just because Windows does it doesn't mean we have to perpetuate it. arguments like yours are the reason we never unify and move the fuck on from the niggling little bullshit that keeps us sucking hind tit for so long. Instead of needing 1GB of libraries to run Amarok wouldn't it be nice to have one SOLID working system that everything "Just Works" on? Seriously I will never agree with folks who think like you do and it has been the reason we have stagnated this long. Look at the audio issues with Linux for example... lets just keep developing new half-assed ones instead of one modern, WORKING, system because of dumb ideology.
Seriously, I have been a heavy Linux user since 1995 and I have even attended and spoken at a few conferences... and I have been saying this for years. You know what it is met with every time? "Blah, blah, chaos, blah" or "blah, blah, choice, blah" or "blah, blah, STFU nub!1, blah" every time. I describe it as trying to build a mansion on a shifting and incomplete foundation... Linux NEEDS to be more than a kernel. It needs to be the entire basic framework (foundation) and it needs to include ONE of each basic app that is standardized in UI, look, and feel. Then you can still tweak, add, subtract, etc. from it and have your customized distros and apps... but we have 40 half-assed apps in one area in all manner of development and disarray with no cohesive vision or goal. it is destined for failure.
As it stands Asus (was, not now) or Ubuntu or some other corporation is the only hope of packaging a solid base system that is re-thought from the ground up. Everyone can keep fighting it for another 15 years and still be nowhere much further than we are now, or we could get our collective heads out of our asses and finally make it happen. OSX has beaten Linux in almost every area in short order due to a single, solid, vision... and it is time Linus steps up and takes some sort of control and direction back.
There's a reason the kernel is not handled like the rest of Linux, but why we are all so stubborn to insist that everything else does not apply. FFS hopefully Google is the voice that finally gets shit on the track again, mine surely hasn't despite my efforts.
E3 this year, my prediction is that one of them will offer something like this service in the U.S. it may just be DVR/ATSC tuner, it may be something more full-blown like this... but one of the big two will do it and it will be the sales generator.
To me it is so silly with all the netbooks and widescreen monitors that everyone still uses the old ideas from when 4:3 ruled the day.
Instead of everything at the top and bottom (which is a problem on MAC/PC/Linux) let's start utilizing the sides more efficiently.
My personal suggestion would be to have each instance be it's own window and have a mechanism for grouping those windows by the user for related windows, something like a "sticky" interface where you can stick a couple together in some configuration. Then on the left or right side of the screen hidden until moused over could be the "tabs" for each window easily accessed by either clicking the tab or scrolling the mousewheel and giving focus.
Just like tossing a stick in a river to watch the flow, we *luckily* have polluted the ocean with a massive continent-sized field of plastic bits we can now follow! Brilliant! Who needs fancy computer models and theoretical conjecture?
Nope. Not true. Take a look at the actual uptime of Google services like Gmail. They barely qualify for 99.9% uptime. Anywhere from an average of 15-30 minutes a month of downtime.
99.999% is doable with their resources. I have run a few very critical systems/networks that achieved 99.99% no sweat on a shoestring budget. The problem is that no one ever thinks past what the reality of their availability is. It is nowhere near reliable enough for most major corporations or mission critical apps. It's essentially a toy.
Obviously they have very poor change management and planning at more than one level. They also apparently have fairly poor design as well. Not good when you want to be taken more seriously than they are with anyone outside of Joe User or Betty's Fudge shoppe type small businesses.
(oh and for the record my home network and systems 1 old XP laptop, 1 Vista 64 laptop, 1 xp pro sp2 server on a 3Mb DSL connection beats Google's uptime by an order of magnitude this year so far)
Finally someone commenting with some sense. It kills me to read all the "Great Job! Google!" and "Bravo!" comments. This exposes a serious flaw in planning, design and change management of a very heavily relied upon resource.
There is nothing to give kudos for here. Gotta love blind loyalty.
I love all the fucktards who keep saying: "oop, the cloud's down I'll go for a stroll" or "welp, google's down, I'll go home." Where in the hell do you work? Your phone is going to be lit up like Times Square with all the user calls/complaints for hours. And just up and leaving offers zero customer service to users who rightfully don't know what is actually wrong.
Shit's down, whether it is your or not you are seen as responsible and at least have to offer some communication and support. The problem is you look bad because you can't tell anyone an actual ETA or valid explanation besides a shrug of the shoulders and a "hopefully CompanyX gets it fixed soon."
Cloud computing can be a great thing but this shows that there are fundamental flaws still. I have run systems that could have zero downtime and achieved it. Yes, it requires redundancy. Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it requires geographically and ISP independent sites. Yes, it requires planning. But it can be done, so stop all the bullshit praise that because it is Google and they are big, this is OK. It isn't. if anything they should NEVER have this kind of issue.
Sorry, but those things have existed forever, and will regardless of any laws or lack thereof. You are always going to have trafficking, weirdos, drug abusers, etc. Your entire argument is bullshit.
Legalize (safely) prostitution as is already being done in NV across the country and watch the impact.
Not that I use this section, but you can guarantee that it will now be tracked, logged, and monitored as well as happily turned over to law enforcement if/when requested. No Thanks.
For me personally Craigslist caving in here has ended my use of the site. I can only hope enough others do as well and make their voice heard.
That is a route map for Shinkansen. As you can see while Japan is relatively small it is fairly linear and that allows for nice long straightaways with few stops. America is not laid out this way for the most part, so that is where things get tricky and while logically on the surface it all seems plausible it really isn't in 90% of the cases here.
Hopefully that helps clarify a bit... I could go on for paragraphs but in the interest of brevity and time I'll stop here. A good discussion, and one I wish these local municipalities would have with the existing train manufacturers and transit authorities before even sending a dime to these leeches.
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What exactly makes you "worth" so much? So you have a degree, millions of others do too. You most likely have little actual experience, and there are millions of unemployed, skilled, college degree holding workers right now. A 4.0 means nothing, tons of people have them thanks to the dumbing down of America and college coursework.
The harsh reality that college is a sham at this stage in our country will eventually sink in, you're smart.
3.96 QPA in IST BS here. #1 in the entire graduating class my year, worth nothing. After ~8 years I finally make solid bank but I'm totally burnt out and could care less about IT at this point. My next job will have nothing to do with IT.
I've got 12 years+ in IT and I had tons of skills before graduating (hardware, programming, admin, etc.) college, it still mattered not. I had to bust my ass for years before actually making even decent money, and even though I am now, I would throw in the towel on IT in a second to do a normal job. IT has become worthless, it is seen as mostly worthless, and there is no loyalty or dedication to computer-related employees. Add to that the current economic climate and best of luck to new grads. Colleges and tech schools never helped land jobs anyhow, no matter your GPA or quality of the school. Students will soon find that having no outside skills and simply a baseline degree will get them nowhere.
Fuck college, go to trade school, pay a lot less, be in demand, have an normal life. Anyone reading this who is young enough to still change course, do it. I promise you it is the best advice you've ever gotten from an anonymous online stranger for free.
As crazy as it may seem I worked for Radioshack for about 4 1/2 years through and after college. I loved it. I wasn't the annoying clueless RS employee and my customers loved me for that. I could actually answer their questions and help them get exactly what they needed, even if it was some esoteric EE project. The manager at my store Paul, was a very intelligent and great guy which is also what made it enjoyable. It all falls apart after that though, the district meetings, the district managers, and the terrible vision for the company.
I was always in the top sales for my district by virtue of not being a douche so I was spared a lot of problems, but I still would get hassled for not having a high "attach rate" (adding on extras to orders and cell phones) or other such garbage. The company has no solid idea of how to move forward and they keep throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping something sticks. All they need to do is become a true electronics store in every neighborhood staffed with knowledgeable people and decent prices.They've tried videogaming, TVs, computers, toys, etc. but never put enough money and time behind any of them to excel. So they just drop it and move on to the next big thing. Instead of crap zip Zaps and stuff start offering real hobby class radio controlled stuff and all the neat things RS used to carry.
Users are generally the least of our problems.
1. Management/bosses that have no grasp of technology but need to look like they do to stay employed.
2. Middle management who see their role as web-surfing and bare minimum work because they have people under them to do it all.
3. Underfunding
4. Being forced into unrealistic timetables and deadlines
5. Being expected to be on-call 24x7 with no extra pay or time off
6. Being afraid to speak up ever because the response will always be, "OK, then get on that"
7. Expectations that off-the-shelf software will always magically be a perfect fit with every feature needed
8. Wanton disregard for company property. Cookies mashed in a laptop, 12 broken cell phones a year, etc.
9. Re-infecting your computer the day it comes back to you from being reimaged due to viruses/spyware
10. Disrespect and unprofessionalism from anyone (users or management)
How many besides us admins even know about Sys Admin Day? I'd guess about zero. As someone who has done this job for about 12 years now, I can honestly say that my current job will be my last in this field when it comes to an end. I love how posts in this thread state "we knew what we were getting into when we took this job" No, I am a very hard-working individual who gets results and saves companies a lot of time and money. I'm not a hot-air admin who knows nothing but buzzwords, or a paper admin who has every cert known to man but no actual experience, I take a lot of pride in keeping current and being a well liked member of the company. I deserve to be treated like a professional with the same timeframes, respect, and courtesy afforded to every other role. Yet, so many just accept being treated like a doormat, put under constant intense pressure, underfunded, screamed at, etc. It happens to me too even with being friendly and liked. I've seen much worse on those who also do a great job but might not have the personal skills I do. Regardless it should not happen. It's not right. Companies see and treat IT as a negative cost with no real benefit and I think it is time to stop bending over backwards, giving insane timeframes, working 12+ hours, and on and on just to get shit on time and time again.
Maybe I'm just getting burnt out from IT but I have been in enough different industries that I know it is the same everywhere. From banks to universities to widget makers. No other job requires such constant pressure and re-education for so little in return. For such a smart group of people we let ourselves get trampled on and beat down to this point. I'll gladly step aside for an H1B Visa holder to take my spot for less money and I will go do a "regular" non-IT job for less money and normal hours. All jobs have stress and assholes and problems, but sys admin is just not worth it.
Seriously. It's free and cross platform. Or else get a full-on corporate password manager/vault. In this day and age it drives me fucking insane that everyone acts like this is still an issue and post-its are the only viable solution. FFS.
I install and show people how to use Keypass and allow them to use it for any passwords/info they want and people realize it is handy as hell and adopt it with little issue. I've also set up larger corporate systems with SSL based access and everyone uses it, and especially data centers and banks find it invaluable. TANS are also another great computer-based solution. ...or, if even those are impossible use a simple word or the first letter of each word in a sentence and then tack on the number of the month. Every month use the same thing but with the next month's number. Easy because the first part becomes ingrained in the memory from constant use and you only have to know what month it is for the number part. Much better than simple words and it is at least almost strong without all the complexity to the user.
is actually better than a chaotic/bazaar mess that spins it wheels for 15 years? No shit!? Man, I mean while everyone blabs on and on about the bazaar and how great the chaotic development is, it isn't good enough for that central part: The Kernel. So why in the hell we keep fighting a cohesive and directed effort to build at least a baseline for the entire OS is beyond me.
This is why I gave up on Linux for all but my servers. One day it will happen, or Google/Ubuntu will do it first. At this point I don't even care, just that it happens.
There may be hope yet for us... however actually following through seems to be our major weakness.
The allure of some shiny, new, bauble is always too much to resist paying 100%+ for on day 1, hour 0, in the end for the great majority and it's always for naught.
If we could get our shit together and hold companies to the fire we'd be far better off. (look at crap like the eee PC, promised at $199, drops at $299+ and people still clamor to buy every last one in seconds... what fucktards we can be)
umm, you mean like how we'll stand in lines for days to pay *above* retail for some new electronic device? Or how many here have already made their first reaction "so what? if it'll remove the ads" etc.
Once something like this gains traction it's over, it starts slowly and then once the genie is out of the bottle it will never be put back in. We'll see.
Seriously I try to get this through people's heads all the time... for geeks we sure can be dumb. It is and has been free. If everyone ignores the service if/when it goes pay or even if only parts go pay only IGNORE them, also make it known you are NOT going to pay for the content... ads are enough to deal with for the content. Then Hulu (which is already successful) will find alternate avenues for revenue. If everyone just jumps in right off the bat you have instantly ensured all future video services like this will be pay-only. Wake up! Please.
Who didn't see this coming? But I think the smarter route is to start it as purely a mobile (smartphone/netbook) OS, work out the kinks and extend it THEN break it out as a full fledged OS. You'd hit the ground running, people already familiar with it, apps developed for it, etc. Then crush Microsoft's grapes.
Yes, but as you can see no one wants to hear it. I have spent over 10 years making this point and everyone turns a blind eye and makes their irrational, ideological, arguments why this is not so. It most certainly makes sense, and yet no one (Linus especially) champions it.
This is the reason I have left the Linux community and besides server use, I have no time for it or the main people surrounding it. It is purely a lesson in frustration to keep up the fight, and eventually this is going to spread like a cancer to bring it down. Chaos can be a bitch too.
QT is not installed by default unless you choose to install KDE or a KDE app from the beginning. A default Gnome install or a lightweight alternative like XFCE would not have them at all and you would be looking at like ~400MB just to use a 30MB app. That is the issue... sure the 1GB I stated was a slight exaggeration but I was making a point.
And yes, Audio and about 30 other areas have major issues that have hung around far too long because of no concise direction or unity.
Why keep fighting it? Just because Windows does it doesn't mean we have to perpetuate it. arguments like yours are the reason we never unify and move the fuck on from the niggling little bullshit that keeps us sucking hind tit for so long. Instead of needing 1GB of libraries to run Amarok wouldn't it be nice to have one SOLID working system that everything "Just Works" on? Seriously I will never agree with folks who think like you do and it has been the reason we have stagnated this long. Look at the audio issues with Linux for example... lets just keep developing new half-assed ones instead of one modern, WORKING, system because of dumb ideology.
Seriously, I have been a heavy Linux user since 1995 and I have even attended and spoken at a few conferences... and I have been saying this for years. You know what it is met with every time? "Blah, blah, chaos, blah" or "blah, blah, choice, blah" or "blah, blah, STFU nub!1, blah" every time. I describe it as trying to build a mansion on a shifting and incomplete foundation... Linux NEEDS to be more than a kernel. It needs to be the entire basic framework (foundation) and it needs to include ONE of each basic app that is standardized in UI, look, and feel. Then you can still tweak, add, subtract, etc. from it and have your customized distros and apps... but we have 40 half-assed apps in one area in all manner of development and disarray with no cohesive vision or goal. it is destined for failure.
As it stands Asus (was, not now) or Ubuntu or some other corporation is the only hope of packaging a solid base system that is re-thought from the ground up. Everyone can keep fighting it for another 15 years and still be nowhere much further than we are now, or we could get our collective heads out of our asses and finally make it happen. OSX has beaten Linux in almost every area in short order due to a single, solid, vision... and it is time Linus steps up and takes some sort of control and direction back.
There's a reason the kernel is not handled like the rest of Linux, but why we are all so stubborn to insist that everything else does not apply. FFS hopefully Google is the voice that finally gets shit on the track again, mine surely hasn't despite my efforts.
E3 this year, my prediction is that one of them will offer something like this service in the U.S. it may just be DVR/ATSC tuner, it may be something more full-blown like this... but one of the big two will do it and it will be the sales generator.
To me it is so silly with all the netbooks and widescreen monitors that everyone still uses the old ideas from when 4:3 ruled the day.
Instead of everything at the top and bottom (which is a problem on MAC/PC/Linux) let's start utilizing the sides more efficiently.
My personal suggestion would be to have each instance be it's own window and have a mechanism for grouping those windows by the user for related windows, something like a "sticky" interface where you can stick a couple together in some configuration. Then on the left or right side of the screen hidden until moused over could be the "tabs" for each window easily accessed by either clicking the tab or scrolling the mousewheel and giving focus.
Just like tossing a stick in a river to watch the flow, we *luckily* have polluted the ocean with a massive continent-sized field of plastic bits we can now follow! Brilliant! Who needs fancy computer models and theoretical conjecture?
Nope. Not true. Take a look at the actual uptime of Google services like Gmail. They barely qualify for 99.9% uptime. Anywhere from an average of 15-30 minutes a month of downtime.
99.999% is doable with their resources. I have run a few very critical systems/networks that achieved 99.99% no sweat on a shoestring budget. The problem is that no one ever thinks past what the reality of their availability is. It is nowhere near reliable enough for most major corporations or mission critical apps. It's essentially a toy.
Obviously they have very poor change management and planning at more than one level. They also apparently have fairly poor design as well. Not good when you want to be taken more seriously than they are with anyone outside of Joe User or Betty's Fudge shoppe type small businesses.
(oh and for the record my home network and systems 1 old XP laptop, 1 Vista 64 laptop, 1 xp pro sp2 server on a 3Mb DSL connection beats Google's uptime by an order of magnitude this year so far)
Finally someone commenting with some sense. It kills me to read all the "Great Job! Google!" and "Bravo!" comments. This exposes a serious flaw in planning, design and change management of a very heavily relied upon resource.
There is nothing to give kudos for here. Gotta love blind loyalty.
I love all the fucktards who keep saying: "oop, the cloud's down I'll go for a stroll" or "welp, google's down, I'll go home." Where in the hell do you work? Your phone is going to be lit up like Times Square with all the user calls/complaints for hours. And just up and leaving offers zero customer service to users who rightfully don't know what is actually wrong.
Shit's down, whether it is your or not you are seen as responsible and at least have to offer some communication and support. The problem is you look bad because you can't tell anyone an actual ETA or valid explanation besides a shrug of the shoulders and a "hopefully CompanyX gets it fixed soon."
Cloud computing can be a great thing but this shows that there are fundamental flaws still. I have run systems that could have zero downtime and achieved it. Yes, it requires redundancy. Yes, it is expensive. Yes, it requires geographically and ISP independent sites. Yes, it requires planning. But it can be done, so stop all the bullshit praise that because it is Google and they are big, this is OK. It isn't. if anything they should NEVER have this kind of issue.
The Google-colored glasses need to be taken off.
Sorry, but those things have existed forever, and will regardless of any laws or lack thereof. You are always going to have trafficking, weirdos, drug abusers, etc. Your entire argument is bullshit.
Legalize (safely) prostitution as is already being done in NV across the country and watch the impact.
Not that I use this section, but you can guarantee that it will now be tracked, logged, and monitored as well as happily turned over to law enforcement if/when requested. No Thanks.
For me personally Craigslist caving in here has ended my use of the site. I can only hope enough others do as well and make their voice heard.
I agree on the inter-continental idea myself. This is the kind of thing that would connect this country and create new opportunities.
http://www.bullet-train.jp/route/route_22.html
That is a route map for Shinkansen. As you can see while Japan is relatively small it is fairly linear and that allows for nice long straightaways with few stops. America is not laid out this way for the most part, so that is where things get tricky and while logically on the surface it all seems plausible it really isn't in 90% of the cases here.
Hopefully that helps clarify a bit... I could go on for paragraphs but in the interest of brevity and time I'll stop here. A good discussion, and one I wish these local municipalities would have with the existing train manufacturers and transit authorities before even sending a dime to these leeches.