I toyed around with Linux a couple years back, was able to successfully install some version of RedHat on an old Toshiba laptop. Once I got it going, I thought, "Okay, what do I do now?" I never looked at it again.
A fair part of that was because the Linux command line is not intuitive. I'm not talking, "I know Windows command line, not Linux, so I don't know what I'm doing." My experience has been that I'm pretty good at figuring things out, and not ashamed to use reference materials. I didn't even know where to start with Linux.
Now that a couple years have passed, and I've got a couple more years' experience under my belt, I intend to take another crack at it. As soon as I get time, of course.
An intuitive interface, GUI or command line, is paramount to getting non-users to become users.
In practice, you're right. No one is making a profit from reselling their old NT4 licenses.
Cars always decrease in value, too, but they're taxed when sold. Old software licenses just lose their value very quickly, and that's why no one makes any money selling used business software.
The state doesn't care whether anyone does or doesn't make a profit, only whether it is conceivable that someone could make a profit. It is conceivable, in theory.
So I was thinking about copyright, and this is as good a place as any to spew it.
Let's say I have a piece of copywritten material, like a DVD movie, which I have purchased legally. I watch this movie, then I lend the physical DVD disc to my friend, so he can watch it at his house. When he's done, he gives it back, and I lend it to a second friend, who also watches it at his house.
End result: three people have watched the movie, and this is legal.
Now, what if I make two copies of the movie, and give one each to my friends. They take these copies, and I my original, and we all watch the movie in our separate homes at the same time.
End result: three people have watched the movie, and this is illegal.
It seems to me that when a copyrighted work is purchased one time, it is legal for multiple people to enjoy the copyrighted work consecutively, but it is illegal for multiple people to enjoy the copyrighted work concurrently. The only thing copyright is doing is lengthening the amount of time it takes for a copyrighted work to gain a larger audience, and the notariety that goes with that, and then the additional revenue that goes along with notariety.
Side note - I have never heard anyone complain about all the copyrighted porn that's being downloaded, and I guarantee that there's more of that than there is music or Hollywood movies. (Just.. just trust me on that.) I imagine that's because the porn industry makes a product that the consumer public will continue to pay for regardless of how much is available for free. The mainstream movie and recording industries should take their cues from this. As has been said a million times before, make a product that people are willing to pay for, and they will pay for it. So long as your target audience (for music and movies) is teenagers, and you continue to produce the crap they want, they're going to keep downloading it free. Make something good that mature adults want, and they will, on the whole, pay for it.
Gmail has labels instead of folders. So I can categorize my email in many different iterations, and look at whatever slice of it I like. As far as I'm aware, Yahoo and Hotmail (and every other mail client) still only let you put an email in one folder. Sure, there's Lookout for Outlook, which is nice, but it's a slap-on fix. Gmail's design goes for the root cause.
The court could have ruled ID in science class as unconstitutional in this case based only on the religious motivation of its insertion into the curriculum, without ruling on whether ID is or is not science. That would have been easy to do, since the school administrator who put ID into the science class here said, "2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross. Isn't anyone going to stand up for him?"
It would have been very easy for the court to rule on the constitutionality of ID in this specific case only, but it seems the court did not take this easy way out.
Instead, the court said that ID is not science. Now precedent says that ID is not science, and that precedent can apply to any case anywhere.
Thank you, Judge John Jones, for having some stones.
Tangentially, I am troubled my the subtle rise in religious and/or moral discontent in this country. We, as a nation, can overtly say that we're not at war with Islam. Our actions at home, however, betray the nation's real intolerance of other cultures, and the intent to impose America's (I use that term loosely) religion and/or morality (also loosely) on people who do not want to be imposed upon by anything. Our actions at home do not match our words. I wonder what we're doing abroad that they're not telling us about, especially in light of secret CIA prisons in Europe, and continual uncovering of prisoner abuse by US forces.
There are some services out there, too, that you can use to verify senders. When you receive an email, your client takes the From address and the source IP and compares them to a record on an online database. If messages from *@domain.com are not registered as coming from the source IP, then the mail is rejected. Problem with this is that all mail servers would need to be registered, and all mail recipients would need to use this service.
Doing this on a global scale is possible, but it would require additional official regulation of SMTP. Or, if people just start adopting such a thing willingly, then only the people who don't use it will get spam email, and the rest of us could remorselessly ignore them.
That's because Beagle 2 has been sitting in the same, albeit faraway, place for two years, is not underneath anything, and is the only non-rock in the vicinity.
Oh, also, the US government hasn't come up with a way to fear-monger based on a Mars probe gone missing. Apparently, they've been trying for two years with no success.
Unfortunately, the author of the article only says, "A bit more experimenting showed a similar effect and he was never again able to match the success of his original site..." I'm guessing that means the tester upped his per word back to $1.00, but wasn't able to get back to 15,000 hits.
Provided that's true, the intervening 1,200 hit days would have dropped the relevance score, which would have dropped the placement and made the hits/day after going back to the $1 price not quite get to 15,000.
I imagine that over a longer period of time, all of this would have smoothed out. And the fact that there was "a bit more experimenting" that is not detailed in the article at all is really sloppy reporting, especially when the author claims to "no idea what the heck is happening."
Maybe they could reduce the fine by determining that some percentage of the people called are non-paying customers. I imagine that could demonstrate an existing customer relationship.
Racism "2 : racial prejudice or discrimination" Includes the words "prejudice" and "discrimination" to define the word.
Bigot "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices" Includes the word "prejudices" to define the word. You are correct that, by definition that "bigotry" does not necessarily include race as a prerequisite. Neither is race excluded. Bigot is defined elsewhere as "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ."
Prejudice "c : an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics" Includes the word "race" to define the word. Prejudice is also described as "Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion."
Discrimination "b : prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment [racial discrimination]" Includes the words "prejudiced" and "prejudicial," and the phrase "racial discrimination" to define the word. Discrimination is described elsewhere as "Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners."
Based on the above, my statement that those words are fairly similar (in this context) stands.
If the original poster did not have any racial prejudice, racial bias, whatever you want to call it, then why specify that both store clerks apppeared to be Indian? If race was not a concern, that piece of information would have no value. I contend that race is not a concern, therefore that piece of information does not have any value.
I'm not saying that it's impossible or even necessarily (I know I used that word before) improbable that the two store clerks in question were trying to pull a fast one. What I am saying is that implying that their race or nationality is evidence that they were trying to pull a fast one is wrong, no matter what word you want to use to describe that. That the post was modded up Interesting is interesting in itself. Ignoring the information about the apparent race of the store clerks', the post seems written by someone who's a bit paranoid. That's not intersting; that's just tinfoilhat.
I know myself, and I know that when I was younger I was a Common Middle-Class Racist(tm). Somewhere along the way, I became aware that that is wrong, and since then I have made efforts to notice prejudices in myself and correct them. I know that I am from from being finished with that, and I fear that at my age, I may never be.
When I read the original post, the phrase "appeared to be Indian" jumped out at me. It's mild, off-the-cuff, minor, and still wrong. Everyone wants to split hairs about whether it's racist or bigoted or prejudiced, but that's completely tangential to what I intended to say.
What I intended to say is that it's wrong. There, I've said it. Split that hair.
All apologies that I used one word instead of another. Racism, bigotry, prejudice - they're all very similar. Please pick whatever word you like and substitute it.
I certainly did not intend to troll, then or now, but I am fairly certain I know what racism is. I do understand a bit of curiosity when one store clerk talks to an unknown person through a walkie-talkie while the customer is unable to hear or understand. However, the poster's careful specification that both of the store clerks he spoke to appeared to be Indian, and the immediate presumption that the second was talking to the first, and the further presumption that the talking was sneaky and to the detriment of the customer, is racist.
Had the poster eliminated mention of race or nationality from the post entirely, I would argue that the post wouldn't carry any weight whatsoever. So a store clerk talked into a walkie-talkie to get a price check? So what? But that post got modded up as Interesting; maybe it was interesting because it speaks of how easy it is to presuppose a stranger's intention using race or nationality as evidence.
Mod me down if you must, but the inference that two 'foreigners' at different stores were in cahoots against the shopper - only evidenced by one's use of a walkie-talkie and a language the shopper didn't understand - smacks of racism. I could be wrong, but that's certainly what it seems like based on what was posted.
While it's possible that both stores were owned and operated by the same person, there's nothing wrong with this. And there's nothing wrong with a store clerk using a walkie-talkie to get a price check on an item, even if the person he's getting a price check from is at a different store location.
I do agree that it was much easier in years past for stores that sell high-priced items to fudge pricing. Now that people are able to do their own research online instead of having to trust colleagues, drive around, or make innumerable phone calls, stores are less able to play games like that.
Ebay is the only place I know of that has everything, the worlds largest flea market.
If you go to a flea market, you're bound to run into some fleas.
Re:Had it for about 6 months
on
Gmail Gets RSS
·
· Score: 1
I've had Web Clips for a while, too. I finally turned them off. I'm just not an "personalized RSS feed on every page I visit" kind of guy, I guess. I prefer the least amount of fluff possible.
Thankfully, the people at Google have made WebClips easy to turn off. They might be for you, but they're not for me.
The other thing they have now is "View as HTML" for downloads. So I've forwarded my work mail to Gmail, set up a filter to label it. Now I can look at tomorrow's stops (as Excel files) from any computer I like and know where I have to go, even when I'm at the in-laws' on their ancient machine without Office (or OpenOffice) installed. View as HTML I find extremely useful.
That's because Japanese business culture is still very steeped in honor and the traditions and rituals that go along with it. People who make mistakes take those mistakes seriously, and take responsibility for their actions. US business is steeped in greed.
That makes sense, and is probably the case. For speculation's sake, what if the virus didn't use the computer time to find out what day it was, but checked a Stratum 2 Time Server instead?
"The nation's most prolific inventor, according to the USPTO and based on number of US patents, appears to be a man who has come up with 100 different ways to make a flower pot."
I don't think it has anything to do with what platform is being used at the desktop.
While a Windows computer and network can be secured, it's rare to find any businesses that actually do it. For the most part, users have elevated privileges that they do not need to do their jobs (read: local admin on the Windows desktop). This comes from lazy or stupid network admins, and those come in all flavors. It also comes from the user culture of "This is my computer, and I can do whatever I want with it," which is allowed by management to thrive.
I would expect that companies that migrate from Windows to [enter your favorite competing operating system here] will have the same problems with security, because the unwashed masses in the cubicles will be running with elevated privileges they don't need so that they can Install Free Games!!! -- just like they are now -- and this will (still) be allowed because someone whined to a middle manager about how the IT guy was being mean to them, and that got up to the execs, who passed down through some chain: "Let people do whatever they want."
If your business migrates to Linux, management will allow many users to run as root, and make you (the admin) let them, even though it is wrong wrong wrong, and even though you tell them a thousand times "no."
Ultimately, IT is not run by IT people, it's run (like everything else in a bureocracy) by executives. So if you wanna ask the right question, ask: "Why do executives, who have no tech experience or knowledge whatsoever, have control of technology? Why can't they hire (and pay appropriately) experienced people to make the right decisions?"
Even better - "Why is IT always the red-headed stepchild of the company, usually delegated to report to Accounting?"
Okay, that tangent/rant has gone far enough. All apologies.
Publicly traded companies must comply with Sarbanes/Oxley. Healthcare organizations must comply with HIPAA. Banks must comply with GLBA. All of these laws have vague clauses in them about network security, and how you have to have it, and how auditors are going to come in and tell you that you don't, and then you have to pay big fines and get a bad name and make X-Treme Reparations(tm).
It's altogether possible that the standard operating procedure I've seen so much posted about here is the result of having to make auditors STFU so the company will pass the muster of these badly written laws. Some auditor somewhere said, "Well, what if your IT person gives notice? We feel that the IT staff person continuing to have systems access after giving notice is an unmitigated risk," even though that's a bunch of hooey.
So the company mitigates the pretend risk by cutting off access immediately, and avoids having to go through the hassle of a failed audit.
Have I mentioned that auditors of network security know absolutely nothing about technology?
... until someone takes advantage of an unsecured system. One of the pieces I heard on NPR about Sony/XCP talked about DoD and Sec of State computers having the XCP rootkit installed. If the DoD and Sec of State offices are allowing users to install software on the computers they use, how can anyone expect any company to take security seriously?
Slashdot Mirror
Upfront admission: I am a Microsoft engineer.
I toyed around with Linux a couple years back, was able to successfully install some version of RedHat on an old Toshiba laptop. Once I got it going, I thought, "Okay, what do I do now?" I never looked at it again.
A fair part of that was because the Linux command line is not intuitive. I'm not talking, "I know Windows command line, not Linux, so I don't know what I'm doing." My experience has been that I'm pretty good at figuring things out, and not ashamed to use reference materials. I didn't even know where to start with Linux.
Now that a couple years have passed, and I've got a couple more years' experience under my belt, I intend to take another crack at it. As soon as I get time, of course.
An intuitive interface, GUI or command line, is paramount to getting non-users to become users.
In practice, you're right. No one is making a profit from reselling their old NT4 licenses.
Cars always decrease in value, too, but they're taxed when sold. Old software licenses just lose their value very quickly, and that's why no one makes any money selling used business software.
The state doesn't care whether anyone does or doesn't make a profit, only whether it is conceivable that someone could make a profit. It is conceivable, in theory.
/me immediately Googles "merkin."
So I was thinking about copyright, and this is as good a place as any to spew it.
.. just trust me on that.) I imagine that's because the porn industry makes a product that the consumer public will continue to pay for regardless of how much is available for free. The mainstream movie and recording industries should take their cues from this. As has been said a million times before, make a product that people are willing to pay for, and they will pay for it. So long as your target audience (for music and movies) is teenagers, and you continue to produce the crap they want, they're going to keep downloading it free. Make something good that mature adults want, and they will, on the whole, pay for it.
Let's say I have a piece of copywritten material, like a DVD movie, which I have purchased legally. I watch this movie, then I lend the physical DVD disc to my friend, so he can watch it at his house. When he's done, he gives it back, and I lend it to a second friend, who also watches it at his house.
End result: three people have watched the movie, and this is legal.
Now, what if I make two copies of the movie, and give one each to my friends. They take these copies, and I my original, and we all watch the movie in our separate homes at the same time.
End result: three people have watched the movie, and this is illegal.
It seems to me that when a copyrighted work is purchased one time, it is legal for multiple people to enjoy the copyrighted work consecutively, but it is illegal for multiple people to enjoy the copyrighted work concurrently. The only thing copyright is doing is lengthening the amount of time it takes for a copyrighted work to gain a larger audience, and the notariety that goes with that, and then the additional revenue that goes along with notariety.
Side note - I have never heard anyone complain about all the copyrighted porn that's being downloaded, and I guarantee that there's more of that than there is music or Hollywood movies. (Just
Gmail has labels instead of folders. So I can categorize my email in many different iterations, and look at whatever slice of it I like. As far as I'm aware, Yahoo and Hotmail (and every other mail client) still only let you put an email in one folder. Sure, there's Lookout for Outlook, which is nice, but it's a slap-on fix. Gmail's design goes for the root cause.
Disclaimer: IANAL
The court could have ruled ID in science class as unconstitutional in this case based only on the religious motivation of its insertion into the curriculum, without ruling on whether ID is or is not science. That would have been easy to do, since the school administrator who put ID into the science class here said, "2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross. Isn't anyone going to stand up for him?"
It would have been very easy for the court to rule on the constitutionality of ID in this specific case only, but it seems the court did not take this easy way out.
Instead, the court said that ID is not science. Now precedent says that ID is not science, and that precedent can apply to any case anywhere.
Thank you, Judge John Jones, for having some stones.
Tangentially, I am troubled my the subtle rise in religious and/or moral discontent in this country. We, as a nation, can overtly say that we're not at war with Islam. Our actions at home, however, betray the nation's real intolerance of other cultures, and the intent to impose America's (I use that term loosely) religion and/or morality (also loosely) on people who do not want to be imposed upon by anything. Our actions at home do not match our words. I wonder what we're doing abroad that they're not telling us about, especially in light of secret CIA prisons in Europe, and continual uncovering of prisoner abuse by US forces.
It's also called SenderID.
e s/senderid/default.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/technologi
There are some services out there, too, that you can use to verify senders. When you receive an email, your client takes the From address and the source IP and compares them to a record on an online database. If messages from *@domain.com are not registered as coming from the source IP, then the mail is rejected. Problem with this is that all mail servers would need to be registered, and all mail recipients would need to use this service.
Doing this on a global scale is possible, but it would require additional official regulation of SMTP. Or, if people just start adopting such a thing willingly, then only the people who don't use it will get spam email, and the rest of us could remorselessly ignore them.
... "Don't Be Stupid."
That's because Beagle 2 has been sitting in the same, albeit faraway, place for two years, is not underneath anything, and is the only non-rock in the vicinity.
Oh, also, the US government hasn't come up with a way to fear-monger based on a Mars probe gone missing. Apparently, they've been trying for two years with no success.
I agree wholly.
..." I'm guessing that means the tester upped his per word back to $1.00, but wasn't able to get back to 15,000 hits.
Unfortunately, the author of the article only says, "A bit more experimenting showed a similar effect and he was never again able to match the success of his original site
Provided that's true, the intervening 1,200 hit days would have dropped the relevance score, which would have dropped the placement and made the hits/day after going back to the $1 price not quite get to 15,000.
I imagine that over a longer period of time, all of this would have smoothed out. And the fact that there was "a bit more experimenting" that is not detailed in the article at all is really sloppy reporting, especially when the author claims to "no idea what the heck is happening."
It's just another conspiracy theory, methinks.
Maybe they could reduce the fine by determining that some percentage of the people called are non-paying customers. I imagine that could demonstrate an existing customer relationship.
Unless the stock certificates are open source (read: free), I'm not buying. HYPOCRITES!
I am a Microsoft Certified Reboot Specialist.
Excellent observation!
Racism
"2 : racial prejudice or discrimination"
Includes the words "prejudice" and "discrimination" to define the word.
Bigot
"a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices"
Includes the word "prejudices" to define the word. You are correct that, by definition that "bigotry" does not necessarily include race as a prerequisite. Neither is race excluded. Bigot is defined elsewhere as "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ."
Prejudice
"c : an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics"
Includes the word "race" to define the word. Prejudice is also described as "Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion."
Discrimination
"b : prejudiced or prejudicial outlook, action, or treatment [racial discrimination]"
Includes the words "prejudiced" and "prejudicial," and the phrase "racial discrimination" to define the word. Discrimination is described elsewhere as "Treatment or consideration based on class or category rather than individual merit; partiality or prejudice: racial discrimination; discrimination against foreigners."
Based on the above, my statement that those words are fairly similar (in this context) stands.
If the original poster did not have any racial prejudice, racial bias, whatever you want to call it, then why specify that both store clerks apppeared to be Indian? If race was not a concern, that piece of information would have no value. I contend that race is not a concern, therefore that piece of information does not have any value.
I'm not saying that it's impossible or even necessarily (I know I used that word before) improbable that the two store clerks in question were trying to pull a fast one. What I am saying is that implying that their race or nationality is evidence that they were trying to pull a fast one is wrong, no matter what word you want to use to describe that. That the post was modded up Interesting is interesting in itself. Ignoring the information about the apparent race of the store clerks', the post seems written by someone who's a bit paranoid. That's not intersting; that's just tinfoil hat.
I know myself, and I know that when I was younger I was a Common Middle-Class Racist(tm). Somewhere along the way, I became aware that that is wrong, and since then I have made efforts to notice prejudices in myself and correct them. I know that I am from from being finished with that, and I fear that at my age, I may never be.
When I read the original post, the phrase "appeared to be Indian" jumped out at me. It's mild, off-the-cuff, minor, and still wrong. Everyone wants to split hairs about whether it's racist or bigoted or prejudiced, but that's completely tangential to what I intended to say.
What I intended to say is that it's wrong. There, I've said it. Split that hair.
All apologies that I used one word instead of another. Racism, bigotry, prejudice - they're all very similar. Please pick whatever word you like and substitute it.
I certainly did not intend to troll, then or now, but I am fairly certain I know what racism is. I do understand a bit of curiosity when one store clerk talks to an unknown person through a walkie-talkie while the customer is unable to hear or understand. However, the poster's careful specification that both of the store clerks he spoke to appeared to be Indian, and the immediate presumption that the second was talking to the first, and the further presumption that the talking was sneaky and to the detriment of the customer, is racist.
Had the poster eliminated mention of race or nationality from the post entirely, I would argue that the post wouldn't carry any weight whatsoever. So a store clerk talked into a walkie-talkie to get a price check? So what? But that post got modded up as Interesting; maybe it was interesting because it speaks of how easy it is to presuppose a stranger's intention using race or nationality as evidence.
Mod me down if you must, but the inference that two 'foreigners' at different stores were in cahoots against the shopper - only evidenced by one's use of a walkie-talkie and a language the shopper didn't understand - smacks of racism. I could be wrong, but that's certainly what it seems like based on what was posted.
While it's possible that both stores were owned and operated by the same person, there's nothing wrong with this. And there's nothing wrong with a store clerk using a walkie-talkie to get a price check on an item, even if the person he's getting a price check from is at a different store location.
I do agree that it was much easier in years past for stores that sell high-priced items to fudge pricing. Now that people are able to do their own research online instead of having to trust colleagues, drive around, or make innumerable phone calls, stores are less able to play games like that.
Ebay is the only place I know of that has everything, the worlds largest flea market.
If you go to a flea market, you're bound to run into some fleas.
I've had Web Clips for a while, too. I finally turned them off. I'm just not an "personalized RSS feed on every page I visit" kind of guy, I guess. I prefer the least amount of fluff possible.
Thankfully, the people at Google have made WebClips easy to turn off. They might be for you, but they're not for me.
The other thing they have now is "View as HTML" for downloads. So I've forwarded my work mail to Gmail, set up a filter to label it. Now I can look at tomorrow's stops (as Excel files) from any computer I like and know where I have to go, even when I'm at the in-laws' on their ancient machine without Office (or OpenOffice) installed. View as HTML I find extremely useful.
That's because Japanese business culture is still very steeped in honor and the traditions and rituals that go along with it. People who make mistakes take those mistakes seriously, and take responsibility for their actions. US business is steeped in greed.
That makes sense, and is probably the case. For speculation's sake, what if the virus didn't use the computer time to find out what day it was, but checked a Stratum 2 Time Server instead?
It should be:
"The nation's most prolific inventor, according to the USPTO and based on number of US patents, appears to be a man who has come up with 100 different ways to make a flower pot."
I don't think it has anything to do with what platform is being used at the desktop.
While a Windows computer and network can be secured, it's rare to find any businesses that actually do it. For the most part, users have elevated privileges that they do not need to do their jobs (read: local admin on the Windows desktop). This comes from lazy or stupid network admins, and those come in all flavors. It also comes from the user culture of "This is my computer, and I can do whatever I want with it," which is allowed by management to thrive.
I would expect that companies that migrate from Windows to [enter your favorite competing operating system here] will have the same problems with security, because the unwashed masses in the cubicles will be running with elevated privileges they don't need so that they can Install Free Games!!! -- just like they are now -- and this will (still) be allowed because someone whined to a middle manager about how the IT guy was being mean to them, and that got up to the execs, who passed down through some chain: "Let people do whatever they want."
If your business migrates to Linux, management will allow many users to run as root, and make you (the admin) let them, even though it is wrong wrong wrong, and even though you tell them a thousand times "no."
Ultimately, IT is not run by IT people, it's run (like everything else in a bureocracy) by executives. So if you wanna ask the right question, ask: "Why do executives, who have no tech experience or knowledge whatsoever, have control of technology? Why can't they hire (and pay appropriately) experienced people to make the right decisions?"
Even better - "Why is IT always the red-headed stepchild of the company, usually delegated to report to Accounting?"
Okay, that tangent/rant has gone far enough. All apologies.
Publicly traded companies must comply with Sarbanes/Oxley. Healthcare organizations must comply with HIPAA. Banks must comply with GLBA. All of these laws have vague clauses in them about network security, and how you have to have it, and how auditors are going to come in and tell you that you don't, and then you have to pay big fines and get a bad name and make X-Treme Reparations(tm).
It's altogether possible that the standard operating procedure I've seen so much posted about here is the result of having to make auditors STFU so the company will pass the muster of these badly written laws. Some auditor somewhere said, "Well, what if your IT person gives notice? We feel that the IT staff person continuing to have systems access after giving notice is an unmitigated risk," even though that's a bunch of hooey.
So the company mitigates the pretend risk by cutting off access immediately, and avoids having to go through the hassle of a failed audit.
Have I mentioned that auditors of network security know absolutely nothing about technology?
... until someone takes advantage of an unsecured system. One of the pieces I heard on NPR about Sony/XCP talked about DoD and Sec of State computers having the XCP rootkit installed. If the DoD and Sec of State offices are allowing users to install software on the computers they use, how can anyone expect any company to take security seriously?