Personally I've lost interested to Minecraft long time ago. It was fun back then, but meh now.
"Back then"? Dude it's only been in beta for 6 months, and before that it wasn't what anybody would call a "game". You must have the lifespan of a gnat to refer to that as "back then".
I knew when I decided not to buy it that it would get boring fast. I've watched a few people play it and all I ever see them do is start fresh, start a "home base", get to the point that they can hide in base during the night and explore during the day, and then close it to play a different game.
This is how I play it, too. But it's how I play most games. Minecraft, more than most games, feels like getting your Legos out when you were still in grade school. You either tear everything apart and start over, or you go back to the one or two things you built that were really awesome. You play with it for a bit, then put it away. You'll come back again and play later.
Not everything needs to be World of Warcraft -- all-encompassing and more demanding of your time than most women.
And Notch really has no incentive to finish the game anymore. Anyone who was going to buy the game has already bought into the "free updates forever" alpha... Give it a few months and nobody will remember who he is; a "1-hit wonder" of video games.
That's assuming Notch's primary incentive is to make money. I'm not sure that's really the case. Making money is nice, sure, but it's not like he started this with the idea that he was going to make a boatload of money and then drop it. That's like saying he set out to create a new genre of gaming (which, largely, he did).
And yet people seem to like the Windows 8 demos. I think they're all bloody awful.
Even worse, some people are convinced that this new interface is the only interface anything should have. That Windows is dead, OS X is dead, GNU/Linux is dead, and now it's just a matter of Android vs iOS.
Do these people not have to create anything on their computers? That's the only conceivable reason I can fathom for thinking the keyboard and mouse are going away.
Yeah, if it doesn't run on BeOS, QNX, and the PS3 then it's not a worthwhile platform. I mean, who cares if the two platforms it does run on are over 98% of the desktop marketplace?
Oh, right, we're just bitter that Silverlight doesn't run on Linux.
Wow you could take over for Glen Beck with that level of fearmongering.
The Internet isn't secure. So -- rather than trying to blacklist attackers -- you build a whitelisted network you know all hosts are safe on. That is, if the global network is not secure enough for your system demands, use something else. Shutting down the.cn TLD or IP range is wholly empty. You're still allowing strangers on the network and your systems are still vulnerable. Fix the problem, not the symptom.
I'd look at the root cause of why the customers seem to trust the engineers more than the sales people.
It's simple. Not only do the engineers understand the product better, not only can they speak the jargon accurately, not only can they back up their technical opinions, the simple fact that the engineers do not have the conflict of interest that sales commissions bring into play counts for a lot. When I talk to a sales rep I know his answer is always, always going to be "buy more stuff from us" regardless of what my actual question is.
Just how many years had Nvidia's lawyers completed before they signed this kind of agreement with no less than Microsoft?
More than you, clearly.
"We agree that you will have tens of millions of sales of your product for which we will pay you, and should anyone try to buy your company, we can offer to buy you out for the same price. So if you get one offer to be bought out, you pretty much get two."
You know what happens when a company is bought out? The executives, lawyers, and owners/shareholders make a boatload of cash. This was basically win/win for nVidia (unless they had really good prospects or wanted to be bought out by another company) while assuring MS that they won't lose the source of their chips to a competitor without a chance to stop it. All this does is discourage other parties from making lowball offers. All MS would do is hold on to nVidia until they no longer needed the chips, then spin it off.
It's generally better to start a project from "I want to accomplish [x], so what do I need?" rather than "I have [x], so what can I accomplish with it?" The first approach will be much more focused and more likely to succeed.
While generally this is true, professionals tend to forget that at the very beginning plain ignorance (not stupidity... ignorance means one simply does not know) is the main problem. The question is "I don't know what I can accomplish or what I'm supposed to do. How do I know what's reasonable, what's too expensive, what might be accomplished?" If you're used to Algebra, how do you know when you need Trig or Calculus? It's obvious to those who use it a lot (e.g., a given physics problem can be many times easier if you know the Law of Cosines, or how to construct and evaluate an infinite series, or integrate or derive an equation) but if you've never even seen it done, never know what it's for or how to know when to use it, you don't even know what question to ask.
Unfortunately, most IT professionals learn this type of thing simply by being immersed in the field and by observing more experienced professionals. You need someone with this knowledge already, but consultants are so expensive you need to have a project for them and it's impossible to hire an IT specialist in such a small company.
I tend to agree. I've been using computers since the 8086 days, and I haven't suffered damage from a virus, per se (when I was naive I didn't use computers for serious work), but I have run them before (generally my AV client caught them). I've also had my AV client catch a virus in an archive I've downloaded, gotten mysterious attachments on emails which my AV client has sometimes deleted, and back in the late 90's I got spyware/malware which installed as part of other software I downloaded which resulted in me learning about Ad-aware and malware in general.
I don't know everything about computers. Nobody does, anymore. I've made my share of mistakes through the years when I was more trusting and less knowledgeable.
The internal version number is indicative of what kernel they're using. 2000 = 5.0, XP = 5.1, 2003 (and XP x64) = 5.2 because they're slightly different kernel revisions. Vista = 6.0 and 7 = 6.1 because Vista was completely different and 7 rewrote the bits of the kernel that sucked in 6.0. 8 will be 7.0 presumably because of major changes such as ARM and SoC support.
And people wonder why brick & mortar stores are struggling so much.
If I go to Best Buy, I expect the store to be poorly laid out, I expect the cashier to harass me to buy some extra I don't want ($30 "insurance" on a $50 item? WTF is the point of that?), and I expect the asshole at the door to ask to see my receipt. I don't expect informed salespersons. I don't expect competitive prices.
I expect the same thing at GameStop, except I don't expect the level of politeness that I get at Best Buy (which is passable) and I expect GameStop to actively try to sucker me out of my money at every opportunity while simultaneously trying to not get me what I actually want.
Or I can go to Amazon or Newegg, where I can get a better price, better product reviews, more convenience, and far less irritation.
I don't shop at Best Buy except under duress, and I haven't walked into a GameStop voluntarily or otherwise since about 2004.
Indeed, in the 90's it was quite common for the entire stock to be sold out the same day it was released. The very reason pre-orders became common is because stores wouldn't get enough copies of the game to cover demand. I distinctly remember NES/SNES games like SMB3, Contra 3, Street Fighter II de-jour, Mortal Kombat, etc. being sold out within about 50 miles of where I lived. They weren't the games I played (except SMB3, which I pre-ordered) but my best friend at the time had a mother who wouldn't let him put money down for pre-orders -- I think she was afraid they were going to rip him off or something -- and I distinctly remember him complaining about how he wasn't going to get whatever game was coming out. There was a time that if you didn't pre-order a popular game, you didn't get the game until a month later.
Especially considering the number of companies that hire everyone as an "independent contractor" just to make their own accounting easier. There could be 50 people in the building, but only one of them actually works for the company. Now who's the greedy bastard?
I did fine. And if I hadn't.... isn't flunking an intro class usually a reliable sign that it's not a good subject for you?
This is the exact question TFA is asking. The status quo answer is "yes," but it's useful to question that from time to time. The real underlying question is "How do we start teaching computers?" A person might have an interest in computers, and find they can succeed in Software Engineering, or Systems Analysis, or Computer Engineering, or Network Engineering, or Systems Administration, or Web Design, or Computer Information Systems.
How, exactly, does someone discover what they like and what they're good at if the introductory course is a weeder course for Software Engineering? What class do I take to figure that out? "You just know" is a bullshit answer. It's not teaching, it's not educating, and it's not helpful to students.
Computer Science has changed a lot since the 1990s, and even more since the 1980s, yet in many universities the coursework hasn't changed all that much and they still treat it as a generic computer degree. Time was, you took Computer Science and it was a theoretical science because most computers couldn't do the things in the books you were reading. Now, there are such disparate careers which require extremely technical knowledge which is specific to just one area that most everyone is a specialist. You cannot be a true computer Renaissance Man any longer. You can't read half a dozen books and be up to speed on the entire field of computing anymore. You'd have to read about 50, and you'd probably still need to pick and choose. The field is too complex, and there are too many areas of specialization.
Look, they don't expect a Chemical Engineer to know how to build a bridge, or expect an Cardiologist to do neurosurgery. Why does everyone in computing have to know how pointers work? Unless you're a Software Engineer, you really don't need to know that. It's a waste of time for most people. There is a need for all computer students to understand how programs work and Software Engineers need to know about pointers, but that level of understanding should not be necessary in a 100 level introductory class.
It's not a question of "can you willingly learn on your own". That is what college itself is about. That's what any Bachelor's Degree is supposed to show. This is about "are we alienating students who might otherwise succeed in this field?" and "are our expectations of introductory student knowledge realistic?"
The Encyclopedia Britannica lists the area of the Sahara as 8.6 million km^2 (I choose that because Wikipedia's is far larger... 9.4 million km^2). Let's assume that half of the Sahara dessert is inhabitable (which I believe is a gross overestimation). Even then, 2% of the remaining area is still 86,000 km^2, or roughly the size of South Carolina, Austria, or New Zealand. Just because it's an extremely small proportion of the Earth's surface doesn't mean it's not still fantastically huge.
If we want to look in man-made terms, we can just look at the urbanized areas of the United States. 86,000 km^2 is equivalent to the areas of New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA; Chicago, IL-IN; Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD; Miami, FL; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX; Boston, MA-NH-RI; Washington, DC-VA-MD; Detroit, MI; Houston, TX; Atlanta, GA; San Francisco-Oakland, CA; Phoenix-Mesa, AZ; Seattle, WA; San Diego, CA; Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN; Saint Louis, MO-IL; Baltimore, MD; Tampa-Saint Petersburg, FL; Denver-Aurora, CO; Cleveland, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR-WA; San Jose, CA; Riverside-San Bernardino, CA; Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN; Virginia Beach, VA; Sacramento, CA; Kansas City, MO-KS; San Antonio, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Milwaukee, WI; Indianapolis, IN; Providence, RI-MA; Orlando, FL; and Columbus, OH combined. This is the equivalent of constructing the entirety of the US Interstate Highway System out of PV cells, except building the road 1 km wide and 10,000 km longer.
Wait, this is SlashDot. 2% of the uninhabitable Sahara is equivalent to about 440,000 Libraries of Congress (using 2.1 million ft^2 for the area of the building).
I thought the most preventable of all security holes was blank administrator passwords. Granted, the most notorious instance of this was the default install of SQL Server 2000's sa account....
P.C. is about respecting the subjective opinions and beliefs of others. A science class should be based on observed facts only unless it's made clear what is an unproven hypothesis.
I have no problem with someone taking a class which offers the view that life is intelligently designed [presenting opinion as opinion]. I have no problem with the details of natural selection and speciation being taught [presenting fact as fact]. I have a problem with intelligent design being presented as a definite fact [presenting opinion as fact]. I have a problem with the origins of life being taught as necessarily independent of an intelligent creator [presenting opinion as fact].
The latter, I'm sure, will inflame many people on this site, but as I know of no observation of life arising where none had been before it remains a hypothesis.
Sure, you tell the salesman who brings in 150k of business a week for your company that he can't use his new toys to keep track of his contacts. He talks to his boss about the fat guy in IT that drains company resources by depriving him of valuable tools. And then reminds his boss that he makes all the sales that actually pay for IT to exist.
See how long it takes to change policy. Unless you're in non-profit or government, the folks making the money are the folks calling the shots.
If this is the kind of response you're getting when you say "no," then you're not very good at the human side of IT.
In most large organizations I've worked at that have had a functioning IT department, there is a CIO or technology manager whose job it is to listen to both the requests made by employees (especially those made by supervisors and executives) and then listen to the issues presented by the IT personnel who understand the technical issues. This person will then make a decision based on the benefits to the company and the costs and risks (and laws) which impact the business. They then formulate an answer, and present it in such a way that those who disagree with it (either IT or the requester) understand why the decision is what it is and why it must be the way that has been decided. In a well run organization, this IT manager understands that part of the responsibility of IT is to protect the business from employees and to protect the IT employees from compromising situations. In an idea situation, the CEO will back the CIO when questions about technical decisions arise.
In the situation you present, I would say "Additional services often require additional infrastructure and require additional time to maintain and service. I do not know enough about this specific technology, and I would like to investigate it for you and determine what our business needs will be. It would be irresponsible of me to set this up without fully understanding exactly what it's going to do. I do not want to risk not being able to fix it if it doesn't work or if it has problems in use."
Usually the response will be "But I just [...]" or "It's only [...]". Some people interpret this as being told what to do by someone who doesn't understand the job. That line of thinking, however, is fueled by ego and leads towards conflict. For my part, I just think they're trying to talk you out of saying "no." People are conditioned to think that if they don't hear "Yes I'll do that immediately" then the answer is "no." I try to answer "I understand why you want this done. I can see the benefits. I just want to make sure that I can do it right so you can actually reap those rewards."
At this point you're being really reasonable. People are also conditioned to accept a reasonable response, because they know that being unreasonable is likely to harm them more than anything else.
This gives you something you need: time. Time to build evidence for your case. You can collect the details of what would be required and what the costs would be (including additional infrastructure and additional personnel if there would be a lot of support). Now when you say "no" you have evidence for why your answer is the correct one, and if they say "do it anyway" you can show them what you need (which, again, is reasonable). Without evidence and documentation, you're just butting your ego against the executive, and that doesn't work when you start in a subordinate position. It's very difficult, however, for any person -- no matter how unreasonable -- to continue to flatly argue when you can show them a document which lists the costs in time and money you will require.
On some occasions, you will meet people who start out butting ego. Regardless of what you say or how reasonable your response, they will not be happy. They will continue to state that their request is really quite simple and extremely important, and will ignore anything you say that doesn't meet with their demands. From your
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I've lost interested to Minecraft long time ago. It was fun back then, but meh now.
"Back then"? Dude it's only been in beta for 6 months, and before that it wasn't what anybody would call a "game". You must have the lifespan of a gnat to refer to that as "back then".
I knew when I decided not to buy it that it would get boring fast. I've watched a few people play it and all I ever see them do is start fresh, start a "home base", get to the point that they can hide in base during the night and explore during the day, and then close it to play a different game.
This is how I play it, too. But it's how I play most games. Minecraft, more than most games, feels like getting your Legos out when you were still in grade school. You either tear everything apart and start over, or you go back to the one or two things you built that were really awesome. You play with it for a bit, then put it away. You'll come back again and play later.
Not everything needs to be World of Warcraft -- all-encompassing and more demanding of your time than most women.
And Notch really has no incentive to finish the game anymore. Anyone who was going to buy the game has already bought into the "free updates forever" alpha... Give it a few months and nobody will remember who he is; a "1-hit wonder" of video games.
That's assuming Notch's primary incentive is to make money. I'm not sure that's really the case. Making money is nice, sure, but it's not like he started this with the idea that he was going to make a boatload of money and then drop it. That's like saying he set out to create a new genre of gaming (which, largely, he did).
And yet people seem to like the Windows 8 demos. I think they're all bloody awful.
Even worse, some people are convinced that this new interface is the only interface anything should have. That Windows is dead, OS X is dead, GNU/Linux is dead, and now it's just a matter of Android vs iOS.
Do these people not have to create anything on their computers? That's the only conceivable reason I can fathom for thinking the keyboard and mouse are going away.
Yeah, if it doesn't run on BeOS, QNX, and the PS3 then it's not a worthwhile platform. I mean, who cares if the two platforms it does run on are over 98% of the desktop marketplace?
Oh, right, we're just bitter that Silverlight doesn't run on Linux.
'John and Jane Does' is correct. 'John Does' is lazy and sexist.
Wow you could take over for Glen Beck with that level of fearmongering.
The Internet isn't secure. So -- rather than trying to blacklist attackers -- you build a whitelisted network you know all hosts are safe on. That is, if the global network is not secure enough for your system demands, use something else. Shutting down the .cn TLD or IP range is wholly empty. You're still allowing strangers on the network and your systems are still vulnerable. Fix the problem, not the symptom.
I'd look at the root cause of why the customers seem to trust the engineers more than the sales people.
It's simple. Not only do the engineers understand the product better, not only can they speak the jargon accurately, not only can they back up their technical opinions, the simple fact that the engineers do not have the conflict of interest that sales commissions bring into play counts for a lot. When I talk to a sales rep I know his answer is always, always going to be "buy more stuff from us" regardless of what my actual question is.
Maybe he's trying to get a job at Fox News?
Just how many years had Nvidia's lawyers completed before they signed this kind of agreement with no less than Microsoft?
More than you, clearly.
"We agree that you will have tens of millions of sales of your product for which we will pay you, and should anyone try to buy your company, we can offer to buy you out for the same price. So if you get one offer to be bought out, you pretty much get two."
You know what happens when a company is bought out? The executives, lawyers, and owners/shareholders make a boatload of cash. This was basically win/win for nVidia (unless they had really good prospects or wanted to be bought out by another company) while assuring MS that they won't lose the source of their chips to a competitor without a chance to stop it. All this does is discourage other parties from making lowball offers. All MS would do is hold on to nVidia until they no longer needed the chips, then spin it off.
It's generally better to start a project from "I want to accomplish [x], so what do I need?" rather than "I have [x], so what can I accomplish with it?" The first approach will be much more focused and more likely to succeed.
While generally this is true, professionals tend to forget that at the very beginning plain ignorance (not stupidity... ignorance means one simply does not know) is the main problem. The question is "I don't know what I can accomplish or what I'm supposed to do. How do I know what's reasonable, what's too expensive, what might be accomplished?" If you're used to Algebra, how do you know when you need Trig or Calculus? It's obvious to those who use it a lot (e.g., a given physics problem can be many times easier if you know the Law of Cosines, or how to construct and evaluate an infinite series, or integrate or derive an equation) but if you've never even seen it done, never know what it's for or how to know when to use it, you don't even know what question to ask.
Unfortunately, most IT professionals learn this type of thing simply by being immersed in the field and by observing more experienced professionals. You need someone with this knowledge already, but consultants are so expensive you need to have a project for them and it's impossible to hire an IT specialist in such a small company.
I tend to agree. I've been using computers since the 8086 days, and I haven't suffered damage from a virus, per se (when I was naive I didn't use computers for serious work), but I have run them before (generally my AV client caught them). I've also had my AV client catch a virus in an archive I've downloaded, gotten mysterious attachments on emails which my AV client has sometimes deleted, and back in the late 90's I got spyware/malware which installed as part of other software I downloaded which resulted in me learning about Ad-aware and malware in general.
I don't know everything about computers. Nobody does, anymore. I've made my share of mistakes through the years when I was more trusting and less knowledgeable.
Raw talent doesn't get you an interview in the first place. You get filtered to /dev/null without a degree or several certs and experience.
Currently, Windows 8's version is "7.0".
The internal version number is indicative of what kernel they're using. 2000 = 5.0, XP = 5.1, 2003 (and XP x64) = 5.2 because they're slightly different kernel revisions. Vista = 6.0 and 7 = 6.1 because Vista was completely different and 7 rewrote the bits of the kernel that sucked in 6.0. 8 will be 7.0 presumably because of major changes such as ARM and SoC support.
And people wonder why brick & mortar stores are struggling so much.
If I go to Best Buy, I expect the store to be poorly laid out, I expect the cashier to harass me to buy some extra I don't want ($30 "insurance" on a $50 item? WTF is the point of that?), and I expect the asshole at the door to ask to see my receipt. I don't expect informed salespersons. I don't expect competitive prices.
I expect the same thing at GameStop, except I don't expect the level of politeness that I get at Best Buy (which is passable) and I expect GameStop to actively try to sucker me out of my money at every opportunity while simultaneously trying to not get me what I actually want.
Or I can go to Amazon or Newegg, where I can get a better price, better product reviews, more convenience, and far less irritation.
I don't shop at Best Buy except under duress, and I haven't walked into a GameStop voluntarily or otherwise since about 2004.
Indeed, in the 90's it was quite common for the entire stock to be sold out the same day it was released. The very reason pre-orders became common is because stores wouldn't get enough copies of the game to cover demand. I distinctly remember NES/SNES games like SMB3, Contra 3, Street Fighter II de-jour, Mortal Kombat, etc. being sold out within about 50 miles of where I lived. They weren't the games I played (except SMB3, which I pre-ordered) but my best friend at the time had a mother who wouldn't let him put money down for pre-orders -- I think she was afraid they were going to rip him off or something -- and I distinctly remember him complaining about how he wasn't going to get whatever game was coming out. There was a time that if you didn't pre-order a popular game, you didn't get the game until a month later.
Letting you use your device during take-off and landing doesn't benefit them at all.
So the technical answer really is "they're assholes"? Good to know!
The United States government is so corrupt that the only way they see it surviving is to use 1984 as a howto manual.
Aw, can't they at least use Brave New World?
Damn, I knew I was going to look at square miles by mistake once.
Especially considering the number of companies that hire everyone as an "independent contractor" just to make their own accounting easier. There could be 50 people in the building, but only one of them actually works for the company. Now who's the greedy bastard?
I did fine. And if I hadn't.... isn't flunking an intro class usually a reliable sign that it's not a good subject for you?
This is the exact question TFA is asking. The status quo answer is "yes," but it's useful to question that from time to time. The real underlying question is "How do we start teaching computers?" A person might have an interest in computers, and find they can succeed in Software Engineering, or Systems Analysis, or Computer Engineering, or Network Engineering, or Systems Administration, or Web Design, or Computer Information Systems.
How, exactly, does someone discover what they like and what they're good at if the introductory course is a weeder course for Software Engineering? What class do I take to figure that out? "You just know" is a bullshit answer. It's not teaching, it's not educating, and it's not helpful to students.
Computer Science has changed a lot since the 1990s, and even more since the 1980s, yet in many universities the coursework hasn't changed all that much and they still treat it as a generic computer degree. Time was, you took Computer Science and it was a theoretical science because most computers couldn't do the things in the books you were reading. Now, there are such disparate careers which require extremely technical knowledge which is specific to just one area that most everyone is a specialist. You cannot be a true computer Renaissance Man any longer. You can't read half a dozen books and be up to speed on the entire field of computing anymore. You'd have to read about 50, and you'd probably still need to pick and choose. The field is too complex, and there are too many areas of specialization.
Look, they don't expect a Chemical Engineer to know how to build a bridge, or expect an Cardiologist to do neurosurgery. Why does everyone in computing have to know how pointers work? Unless you're a Software Engineer, you really don't need to know that. It's a waste of time for most people. There is a need for all computer students to understand how programs work and Software Engineers need to know about pointers, but that level of understanding should not be necessary in a 100 level introductory class.
It's not a question of "can you willingly learn on your own". That is what college itself is about. That's what any Bachelor's Degree is supposed to show. This is about "are we alienating students who might otherwise succeed in this field?" and "are our expectations of introductory student knowledge realistic?"
Remember when Sony products were cool because they were innovative?
Yes, I'm actually that old.
That's OK. I'm old enough to remember before Sony meant good. I remember when Sony meant cheap knock-off from Japan.
The Encyclopedia Britannica lists the area of the Sahara as 8.6 million km^2 (I choose that because Wikipedia's is far larger... 9.4 million km^2). Let's assume that half of the Sahara dessert is inhabitable (which I believe is a gross overestimation). Even then, 2% of the remaining area is still 86,000 km^2, or roughly the size of South Carolina, Austria, or New Zealand. Just because it's an extremely small proportion of the Earth's surface doesn't mean it's not still fantastically huge.
If we want to look in man-made terms, we can just look at the urbanized areas of the United States. 86,000 km^2 is equivalent to the areas of New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA; Chicago, IL-IN; Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD; Miami, FL; Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX; Boston, MA-NH-RI; Washington, DC-VA-MD; Detroit, MI; Houston, TX; Atlanta, GA; San Francisco-Oakland, CA; Phoenix-Mesa, AZ; Seattle, WA; San Diego, CA; Minneapolis-Saint Paul, MN; Saint Louis, MO-IL; Baltimore, MD; Tampa-Saint Petersburg, FL; Denver-Aurora, CO; Cleveland, OH; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR-WA; San Jose, CA; Riverside-San Bernardino, CA; Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN; Virginia Beach, VA; Sacramento, CA; Kansas City, MO-KS; San Antonio, TX; Las Vegas, NV; Milwaukee, WI; Indianapolis, IN; Providence, RI-MA; Orlando, FL; and Columbus, OH combined . This is the equivalent of constructing the entirety of the US Interstate Highway System out of PV cells, except building the road 1 km wide and 10,000 km longer.
Wait, this is SlashDot. 2% of the uninhabitable Sahara is equivalent to about 440,000 Libraries of Congress (using 2.1 million ft^2 for the area of the building).
I thought the most preventable of all security holes was blank administrator passwords. Granted, the most notorious instance of this was the default install of SQL Server 2000's sa account....
But is the cat dead or alive?
P.C. is about respecting the subjective opinions and beliefs of others. A science class should be based on observed facts only unless it's made clear what is an unproven hypothesis.
I have no problem with someone taking a class which offers the view that life is intelligently designed [presenting opinion as opinion]. I have no problem with the details of natural selection and speciation being taught [presenting fact as fact]. I have a problem with intelligent design being presented as a definite fact [presenting opinion as fact]. I have a problem with the origins of life being taught as necessarily independent of an intelligent creator [presenting opinion as fact].
The latter, I'm sure, will inflame many people on this site, but as I know of no observation of life arising where none had been before it remains a hypothesis.
Sure, you tell the salesman who brings in 150k of business a week for your company that he can't use his new toys to keep track of his contacts. He talks to his boss about the fat guy in IT that drains company resources by depriving him of valuable tools. And then reminds his boss that he makes all the sales that actually pay for IT to exist.
See how long it takes to change policy. Unless you're in non-profit or government, the folks making the money are the folks calling the shots.
If this is the kind of response you're getting when you say "no," then you're not very good at the human side of IT.
In most large organizations I've worked at that have had a functioning IT department, there is a CIO or technology manager whose job it is to listen to both the requests made by employees (especially those made by supervisors and executives) and then listen to the issues presented by the IT personnel who understand the technical issues. This person will then make a decision based on the benefits to the company and the costs and risks (and laws) which impact the business. They then formulate an answer, and present it in such a way that those who disagree with it (either IT or the requester) understand why the decision is what it is and why it must be the way that has been decided. In a well run organization, this IT manager understands that part of the responsibility of IT is to protect the business from employees and to protect the IT employees from compromising situations. In an idea situation, the CEO will back the CIO when questions about technical decisions arise.
In the situation you present, I would say "Additional services often require additional infrastructure and require additional time to maintain and service. I do not know enough about this specific technology, and I would like to investigate it for you and determine what our business needs will be. It would be irresponsible of me to set this up without fully understanding exactly what it's going to do. I do not want to risk not being able to fix it if it doesn't work or if it has problems in use."
Usually the response will be "But I just [...]" or "It's only [...]". Some people interpret this as being told what to do by someone who doesn't understand the job. That line of thinking, however, is fueled by ego and leads towards conflict. For my part, I just think they're trying to talk you out of saying "no." People are conditioned to think that if they don't hear "Yes I'll do that immediately" then the answer is "no." I try to answer "I understand why you want this done. I can see the benefits. I just want to make sure that I can do it right so you can actually reap those rewards."
At this point you're being really reasonable. People are also conditioned to accept a reasonable response, because they know that being unreasonable is likely to harm them more than anything else.
This gives you something you need: time. Time to build evidence for your case. You can collect the details of what would be required and what the costs would be (including additional infrastructure and additional personnel if there would be a lot of support). Now when you say "no" you have evidence for why your answer is the correct one, and if they say "do it anyway" you can show them what you need (which, again, is reasonable). Without evidence and documentation, you're just butting your ego against the executive, and that doesn't work when you start in a subordinate position. It's very difficult, however, for any person -- no matter how unreasonable -- to continue to flatly argue when you can show them a document which lists the costs in time and money you will require.
On some occasions, you will meet people who start out butting ego. Regardless of what you say or how reasonable your response, they will not be happy. They will continue to state that their request is really quite simple and extremely important, and will ignore anything you say that doesn't meet with their demands. From your