In my divorce, I kept the domain name that I was the primary user on, I gave my ex the information necessary to transfer her domain name to herself. Email, she set up her own account and told me to delete the one that was tied to the home ISP. The only online account we both used was for purchasing ebooks, I have not removed her access to that, although she says she hasn't used it for a while because her roommates have their own account and maintain local copies on their home servers she can easily access. Any documents she needs (such as copies of old tax returns) are forwarded to her on request. I'm presuming she copied anything she intended to keep off of the home backup servers as she has not felt the need to ask for any of those files (early drafts of some of her writing, story ideas, etc).
Technically, anything she left in my house after a certain date was forfeit, but I don't have to be a prick about it, I'll accommodate reasonable requests, but I also won't feel bad if I'm cleaning up and dispose of something that had been hers and she later tries to ask for it.
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The F-35 Story
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Yeah, I guess those operations off the USS Tarawa and USS Nassau during Desert Shield and Desert Storm weren't combat (note, the Tarawa and Nassau are amphibious assault ships, they can support VTOL airplanes and helicopters but not conventional carrier aircraft such as the F/A-18 Hornet), operations off the Nassau and Kearsage during Bosnia, and operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq in the current wars. During the Iraq invasion, forward arming/refueling points were established for the Harriers, allowing for more combat operations without requiring a full airbase.
Of course, McPeak was Air Force (and not particularly popular there), so his knowledge of Marine operations is likely limited, and his impartiality is in question since Marine aviation competes with the Air Force for the close air support role.
We have completely different legal controls over what government can do and a MUCH larger infrastructure to deal with. Attempting to cut off Internet service in the US would result in entire armies of lawyers descending on every Federal courthouse within range, with Congress equally intent on shutting down the attempt to preserve their own jobs. The US economy (what's left of it) would come to a screeching halt, since even private corporate links frequently travel through the same trunk facilities as user-based traffic. I know the Obama administration is asking for the power to shut down the Internet in an emergency, but the GOP-dominated House of Representatives isn't exactly likely to cooperate with him on the issue...
No, being professional means knowing that the customer ultimately makes the final call. You can advise them until your face turns blue, but ultimately, they get to decide what they're going to do. I've worked many long hours and torn out lots of hair over situations where upper management ignored my team's advice and it bit us, but that's the breaks. Don't like it, run your own company using your own hardware and you can make the rules how you like. If you're administering somebody else's hardware, the administrative passwords belong to them.
Terry Childs wasn't being professional, he was letting his ego get in the way of professionalism. He was so proud of his network design that he copyrighted it. He didn't trust his management not to screw up his baby, he was on call 24x7x365, nobody else had access. That's not professionalism. Professionalism is recognizing that redundancy is good and single points of failure are bad - including the administrator. If the current passwords go in a sealed envelope in the administrative assistant's safe every month, at least that way the company or department has a possibility of bringing someone in if you get hit by a bus or win the lottery and quit suddenly (and I HAVE, in the past six months, taken over a SAN where the totality of the turnover from the outgoing administrator was a list of switches, arrays, and storage controllers and the usernames/passwords to control them, ZERO documentation, with equipment I'd never worked with before, he turned in his notice on Monday of Thanksgiving week just before going on vacation for the remainder of the week, so there was one week for him to turn over all of his projects and environments he was working on to multiple groups).
My boss isn't a system or storage administrator - but he has the required passwords to get in, even if it means he has to call a consulting company to come in and handle things until I'm replaced. I'm not afraid of losing my job - I bring needed skills to the job, I do quality work, I get along with my team members, and I also get along with the client management and they have confidence in my abilities. I've been with the same team less than a year and my contributions have allowed us to go from purely managing the operating systems for the client to managing the OS's, the hardware (including partitioning and virtualization), and the SAN, increasing the contract value.
Heck, the Marines have adopted the Mk318 round for use with their M16's that uses a hollow-point projectile, as long as the intent of the hollowpoint is for improved ballistics and not increased wounding, it's considered allowable by the JAG lawyers. Of course, the same people screaming about the US using such ammunition were carefully ignoring how the Soviet Union was supplying the African National Congress with black plastic bullets with lead plugs on the end, designed to fragment when hitting a target and be difficult to find when treating the wounded...
There are a number of urban legends that make their way into the training arena, the claim that the.50 caliber can not be used against individuals is one of those. It has no basis in law, it's typical barracks bullshit, just like the claim that the bullets fired from M16's tumble in flight. You'll note that the.50 caliber M2 is mounted on a number of vehicles for use against personnel, as well as being available on a tripod, with a DIFFERENT tripod designated for anti-aircraft use.
Denial of access to their property. As a system administrator, I don't own the hardware I administer. Heck, I do it on contract right now. If the client wants something stupid done, I put my concerns in writing, if they still insist on doing it their way, I do it. If I think they're idiots and I keep having additional grief trying to fix their frequent mistakes, I find someone else to work for.
As someone who supports AIX and Solaris and is certified on both, I prefer working with AIX these days. And we've gotten much better performance out of Power6 p570/MMA's than we did out of the M4000 we tested (and we tested on a per-CPU basis), to the point that for our project, Sun could have GIVEN us M8000's and we'd still have saved money going with the p570 due to the difference in Oracle licensing costs.
Toni Weisskopf is the new publisher, she was Jim's executive editor before he died.
One reasons Baen doesn't publish in PDF is that Adobe wanted ridiculous amounts of money for a license to do so, so Jim decided not to bother.
My first IT job, I'd been building the new company server in my cube, as our "server room" was too small to work in (at least partially due to the stacks of obsolete PC's that WERE STILL ON LEASE so we couldn't dispose of them, and had to store them 'securely'). After I left, the idiot manager (company president's son) tried to move it to the server room, and either dropped it or otherwise induced a hard-drive failure. Entire company was offline until they could get the data back from a data recovery service.
Last job I left, I had HEAVILY documented the project I'd been working on for most of a year. Screenshots, explanations of why certain decisions were made, patch revisions, the works. But the manager was an Oracle bigot who believed all of the hype about how well Oracle 10g would do everything, and didn't think they should be paying for all that expensive Veritas software (multi-node cluster with offsite replication), and hey, the new data center has all kinds of redundancy, so let's just rework everything and drop the offsite replication capacity, since nobody left understood VVR.
Current job, we're underpaid, spent six months trying to find another senior admin for what they pay us, finally gave up and hired a mid-level admin, and we're probably going to turf him out because he's not getting squat done. Our newly hired JUNIOR admin gets more work done, asks more questions, and tries to get involved more. And he's never worked as a Unix admin before (although he does have Unix experience, and likes Linux). Our boss knows he's screwed if any of the three of us that have been there for years leaves, but his superiors haven't been paying much attention. About to grab some certifications and picking up some consulting gigs on the side through someone I know.
Depending on how vulnerable the network was, some IT staff or their management SHOULD lose their jobs. Security is a pain in the ass. There are always reasons not to lock things down, to counter the reasons to lock them down. If the IT staff weren't trying to keep it secure, they need new jobs. If they tried, but management refused to allow it, then the management should take the hit. I don't have much sympathy for people losing their jobs for lack of competence or laziness.
Without more information, we have no way of knowing if he left any back doors (and I wouldn't consider that a "white hat" action), or if he interrupted any processing.
But universities tend to deal with a lot of data that they are SUPPOSED to keep safe. Financial aid information, payrolls, social security numbers for students, faculty, and staff. Credit card information. All sensitive data.
It's also the law that this data be protected. And what incentive is there for universities to protect their networks if nobody brings their vulnerabilities to their attention? Or should they only find out AFTER sensitive data has been stolen? Do you REALLY think administration officials are going to say "let's hire a security testing team to test our network"?
Of course, giving them the information in a way that they could figure out who did it isn't the brightest thing in the world, nobody likes their failures pointed out to them, and it's easier to press charges than it is to admit mistakes and take efforts to clean up.
But we do sanctioned penetration scans against our servers, and if any group "needs" to run insecure services, we require that upper management sign off on the business risk. And our network team ALSO runs sanctioned scans against our systems, with results reported up a different management chain, for accountability purposes.
Not quite. Only a few hardcovers each year include CD's, and those CD's are generally of work by the author of the book. However, non-commercial copying of the CD's is allowed by the publisher, and they're all available online. So for several of the authors, everything except their absolute latest work is available online for free. This includes John Ringo, David Weber, Eric Flint, and others. David Drake has a lot of his Baen work available that way, and also offers some of his work on his website for free download. Of the four of them, Eric Flint has a pension from his union work, but the other three rely solely on royalties for their income.
But how many of the people who get a pirated copy would have paid for a reasonably priced copy if it was available? My wife's book is available on one of the Baen free CD's at baencd.thefifthimperium.com, and has been for a while, but the royalty statement she got today still has Webscriptions royalties...
There have actually been cases where people tried to upload Baen ebooks to pirate sites and were shot down by the pirates because they feel that Baen, by charging a reasonable fee, is doing it right, and that pirating their stuff is like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It's when publishers try to charge more for an electronic copy than they charge for a print copy that piracy is considered ethical by some of the piracy groups. Since my wife is an author, I get the dead-tree versions of all Baen books free. But I still buy some books through Webscriptions for the convenience, and to make sure my friends get paid for their work (of course, some just email it to me, just like they can request electronic copies of my wife's work).
I don't understand how any business can survive by treating their customers like thieves - if the customers aren't already, a sizable percentage will either decide they may as well be thieves, or just walk away and refuse to deal with that business again (it's been a LONG while since I bought an album from a major label, for example).
Tor's parent corporation got cold feet about the Webscriptions deal, but apparently has since reconsidered, and restarted negotiations. The titles currently listed are those that were posted during the several days between the original deal and the parent corporation vetoing it, so that the people who had purchased those books would still be able to access their copies (yes, Webscriptions will always allow you to redownload titles you've purchased from them, as long as they're still in business).
Oh, they're still there. They've expanded beyond drug treatment claims to include 'behavior issues', but aren't staffed or licensed to deal with either. They usually get around that by claiming to be boarding schools, but then they frequently don't meet the licensing requirements to be schools, either. They now call themselves Therapeutic Boarding Schools for 'troubled teens'. If you look at the tactics they use for dealing with the kids, most of them fit in with what I was taught about brainwashing in North Korean and Vietnamese POW camps. It's no real surprise that a lot of the survivors of these programs wind up displaying PTSD later. A friend was sent to one of these places basically because she had problems getting along with her stepfather, one of her classmates there committed suicide not long ago (and it's certainly messed her up some, but she's coming to deal with it. Of course, one of the issues between her and her stepfather is that she's attracted to other women...)
Actually, I'd have to dig out a contract to see, but the authors make at least as much, or more, on ebook sales as they do on paperback sales. Not sure about the eArcs, should know in a few months, though:-)
A problem with Sony's reader is that when one publisher (Baen) contacted them about software to convert existing ebooks, Sony started talking about wanting royalties per book. So while Baen publishes their books in a variety of formats, don't expect them to publish in Sony's format. But Baen already sees more ebook sales than they do sales to Canada, as an example.
First off, new authors DO have to write their books on speculation, and hope a publisher picks it up. The problem is, most first books by new authors don't earn enough to pay off the advance on royalties, so the publisher is taking a gamble with new authors, in the hopes that they'll a) be good enough and b) attract enough fans to be profitable later. As for David Weber, the Honor Harrington series is NOT his first or only series of books. It's just been the most successful one. He's got the Roger Ramius series with John Ringo, the Bahzell Bahnakson series, the Fifth Imperium series, and his new series with Tor (he doesn't plan to do any more of the Starfire books).
*shrug* I've lost a contract and been blacklisted from one of the major IT recruiting companies in my area over reporting security issues and refusing to do work that exposed customer data to exploitation (the corporate security policy in effect at the time made it abundantly clear that if I DID do the work, they'd come after ME for any damages suffered). So the concern is real. My experience is that very FEW companies are willing to deal with the pain and agony of properly securing their data, even now. There's always a manager or VP who can push to get their way, even if it's wrong, and the IT person who fights too hard against it gets nailed in their reviews or gets fired. There's a reason my last performance review had low marks for "cooperation with others". But at a certain point, all I can do is document that I reported a problem and wait for the explosion, and hope that in the aftermath I can cover my ass adequately with the documentation.
Last time I bothered with a certification, I'd been out of work for a month or so and not having many decent hits on the job boards. So I snagged a copy of Solaris x86 and studied up on the new features of Solaris 8 and took the certification exams. And my resume hit percentage went up. But my experience has been that having those certifications is what gets you past the gatekeepers in HR, once you get to the actual hiring manager is when your experience will get vetted. And I've nuked someone after their resume listed "Solaris Certification" and they couldn't answer basic questions about disk slicing, turns out it wasn't a Sun certification, but something offered by a local community college... So, if *I* will see your resume, expect me to ask questions that pertain to what your certification is in...
Actually, the CD's are a marketing device. I've had Baen send me a stack of CD's to hand out at conventions, and I've also burned numerous CD's that John Ringo and I handed out at those conventions as well. The look on Ann Crispin's face when John stood up and announced that we had a stack of those CD's at one of her panels at DragonCon was hilarious... Even more amusing was when she broke down and asked for one - and someone took theirs out of the back of their book and gave it to her, saying they could get another copy later... There have been several CD's released that did NOT come with books, but were instead solely marketing materials, and Jim personally confirmed that those could also be redistributed. Heck, after _Sister Time_ is finished, my wife may do an online book signing in Second Life for _Cally's War_, John Ringo has already said he has no problems with the idea, my wife's just been too busy trying to avoid busting her deadline too much to do anything about it. Yes, the inference is correct, my wife is one of the Baen authors:-)
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In my divorce, I kept the domain name that I was the primary user on, I gave my ex the information necessary to transfer her domain name to herself. Email, she set up her own account and told me to delete the one that was tied to the home ISP. The only online account we both used was for purchasing ebooks, I have not removed her access to that, although she says she hasn't used it for a while because her roommates have their own account and maintain local copies on their home servers she can easily access. Any documents she needs (such as copies of old tax returns) are forwarded to her on request. I'm presuming she copied anything she intended to keep off of the home backup servers as she has not felt the need to ask for any of those files (early drafts of some of her writing, story ideas, etc). Technically, anything she left in my house after a certain date was forfeit, but I don't have to be a prick about it, I'll accommodate reasonable requests, but I also won't feel bad if I'm cleaning up and dispose of something that had been hers and she later tries to ask for it.
Yeah, I guess those operations off the USS Tarawa and USS Nassau during Desert Shield and Desert Storm weren't combat (note, the Tarawa and Nassau are amphibious assault ships, they can support VTOL airplanes and helicopters but not conventional carrier aircraft such as the F/A-18 Hornet), operations off the Nassau and Kearsage during Bosnia, and operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq in the current wars. During the Iraq invasion, forward arming/refueling points were established for the Harriers, allowing for more combat operations without requiring a full airbase. Of course, McPeak was Air Force (and not particularly popular there), so his knowledge of Marine operations is likely limited, and his impartiality is in question since Marine aviation competes with the Air Force for the close air support role.
We have completely different legal controls over what government can do and a MUCH larger infrastructure to deal with. Attempting to cut off Internet service in the US would result in entire armies of lawyers descending on every Federal courthouse within range, with Congress equally intent on shutting down the attempt to preserve their own jobs. The US economy (what's left of it) would come to a screeching halt, since even private corporate links frequently travel through the same trunk facilities as user-based traffic. I know the Obama administration is asking for the power to shut down the Internet in an emergency, but the GOP-dominated House of Representatives isn't exactly likely to cooperate with him on the issue...
No, being professional means knowing that the customer ultimately makes the final call. You can advise them until your face turns blue, but ultimately, they get to decide what they're going to do. I've worked many long hours and torn out lots of hair over situations where upper management ignored my team's advice and it bit us, but that's the breaks. Don't like it, run your own company using your own hardware and you can make the rules how you like. If you're administering somebody else's hardware, the administrative passwords belong to them. Terry Childs wasn't being professional, he was letting his ego get in the way of professionalism. He was so proud of his network design that he copyrighted it. He didn't trust his management not to screw up his baby, he was on call 24x7x365, nobody else had access. That's not professionalism. Professionalism is recognizing that redundancy is good and single points of failure are bad - including the administrator. If the current passwords go in a sealed envelope in the administrative assistant's safe every month, at least that way the company or department has a possibility of bringing someone in if you get hit by a bus or win the lottery and quit suddenly (and I HAVE, in the past six months, taken over a SAN where the totality of the turnover from the outgoing administrator was a list of switches, arrays, and storage controllers and the usernames/passwords to control them, ZERO documentation, with equipment I'd never worked with before, he turned in his notice on Monday of Thanksgiving week just before going on vacation for the remainder of the week, so there was one week for him to turn over all of his projects and environments he was working on to multiple groups). My boss isn't a system or storage administrator - but he has the required passwords to get in, even if it means he has to call a consulting company to come in and handle things until I'm replaced. I'm not afraid of losing my job - I bring needed skills to the job, I do quality work, I get along with my team members, and I also get along with the client management and they have confidence in my abilities. I've been with the same team less than a year and my contributions have allowed us to go from purely managing the operating systems for the client to managing the OS's, the hardware (including partitioning and virtualization), and the SAN, increasing the contract value.
Heck, the Marines have adopted the Mk318 round for use with their M16's that uses a hollow-point projectile, as long as the intent of the hollowpoint is for improved ballistics and not increased wounding, it's considered allowable by the JAG lawyers. Of course, the same people screaming about the US using such ammunition were carefully ignoring how the Soviet Union was supplying the African National Congress with black plastic bullets with lead plugs on the end, designed to fragment when hitting a target and be difficult to find when treating the wounded...
There are a number of urban legends that make their way into the training arena, the claim that the .50 caliber can not be used against individuals is one of those. It has no basis in law, it's typical barracks bullshit, just like the claim that the bullets fired from M16's tumble in flight. You'll note that the .50 caliber M2 is mounted on a number of vehicles for use against personnel, as well as being available on a tripod, with a DIFFERENT tripod designated for anti-aircraft use.
GE had at least two /8's when I worked for them.
Denial of access to their property. As a system administrator, I don't own the hardware I administer. Heck, I do it on contract right now. If the client wants something stupid done, I put my concerns in writing, if they still insist on doing it their way, I do it. If I think they're idiots and I keep having additional grief trying to fix their frequent mistakes, I find someone else to work for.
As someone who supports AIX and Solaris and is certified on both, I prefer working with AIX these days. And we've gotten much better performance out of Power6 p570/MMA's than we did out of the M4000 we tested (and we tested on a per-CPU basis), to the point that for our project, Sun could have GIVEN us M8000's and we'd still have saved money going with the p570 due to the difference in Oracle licensing costs.
Toni Weisskopf is the new publisher, she was Jim's executive editor before he died. One reasons Baen doesn't publish in PDF is that Adobe wanted ridiculous amounts of money for a license to do so, so Jim decided not to bother.
ROFL. You obviously have ZERO clue about how soldiers are trained and expected to behave. And the researchers above have zero clue about COIN.
My first IT job, I'd been building the new company server in my cube, as our "server room" was too small to work in (at least partially due to the stacks of obsolete PC's that WERE STILL ON LEASE so we couldn't dispose of them, and had to store them 'securely'). After I left, the idiot manager (company president's son) tried to move it to the server room, and either dropped it or otherwise induced a hard-drive failure. Entire company was offline until they could get the data back from a data recovery service. Last job I left, I had HEAVILY documented the project I'd been working on for most of a year. Screenshots, explanations of why certain decisions were made, patch revisions, the works. But the manager was an Oracle bigot who believed all of the hype about how well Oracle 10g would do everything, and didn't think they should be paying for all that expensive Veritas software (multi-node cluster with offsite replication), and hey, the new data center has all kinds of redundancy, so let's just rework everything and drop the offsite replication capacity, since nobody left understood VVR. Current job, we're underpaid, spent six months trying to find another senior admin for what they pay us, finally gave up and hired a mid-level admin, and we're probably going to turf him out because he's not getting squat done. Our newly hired JUNIOR admin gets more work done, asks more questions, and tries to get involved more. And he's never worked as a Unix admin before (although he does have Unix experience, and likes Linux). Our boss knows he's screwed if any of the three of us that have been there for years leaves, but his superiors haven't been paying much attention. About to grab some certifications and picking up some consulting gigs on the side through someone I know.
Depending on how vulnerable the network was, some IT staff or their management SHOULD lose their jobs. Security is a pain in the ass. There are always reasons not to lock things down, to counter the reasons to lock them down. If the IT staff weren't trying to keep it secure, they need new jobs. If they tried, but management refused to allow it, then the management should take the hit. I don't have much sympathy for people losing their jobs for lack of competence or laziness. Without more information, we have no way of knowing if he left any back doors (and I wouldn't consider that a "white hat" action), or if he interrupted any processing. But universities tend to deal with a lot of data that they are SUPPOSED to keep safe. Financial aid information, payrolls, social security numbers for students, faculty, and staff. Credit card information. All sensitive data. It's also the law that this data be protected. And what incentive is there for universities to protect their networks if nobody brings their vulnerabilities to their attention? Or should they only find out AFTER sensitive data has been stolen? Do you REALLY think administration officials are going to say "let's hire a security testing team to test our network"? Of course, giving them the information in a way that they could figure out who did it isn't the brightest thing in the world, nobody likes their failures pointed out to them, and it's easier to press charges than it is to admit mistakes and take efforts to clean up. But we do sanctioned penetration scans against our servers, and if any group "needs" to run insecure services, we require that upper management sign off on the business risk. And our network team ALSO runs sanctioned scans against our systems, with results reported up a different management chain, for accountability purposes.
Yes. Cover art is not allowed to genitals or nipples, although some of the art does portray women in skimpy outfits.
Not quite. Only a few hardcovers each year include CD's, and those CD's are generally of work by the author of the book. However, non-commercial copying of the CD's is allowed by the publisher, and they're all available online. So for several of the authors, everything except their absolute latest work is available online for free. This includes John Ringo, David Weber, Eric Flint, and others. David Drake has a lot of his Baen work available that way, and also offers some of his work on his website for free download. Of the four of them, Eric Flint has a pension from his union work, but the other three rely solely on royalties for their income.
But how many of the people who get a pirated copy would have paid for a reasonably priced copy if it was available? My wife's book is available on one of the Baen free CD's at baencd.thefifthimperium.com, and has been for a while, but the royalty statement she got today still has Webscriptions royalties... There have actually been cases where people tried to upload Baen ebooks to pirate sites and were shot down by the pirates because they feel that Baen, by charging a reasonable fee, is doing it right, and that pirating their stuff is like killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It's when publishers try to charge more for an electronic copy than they charge for a print copy that piracy is considered ethical by some of the piracy groups. Since my wife is an author, I get the dead-tree versions of all Baen books free. But I still buy some books through Webscriptions for the convenience, and to make sure my friends get paid for their work (of course, some just email it to me, just like they can request electronic copies of my wife's work). I don't understand how any business can survive by treating their customers like thieves - if the customers aren't already, a sizable percentage will either decide they may as well be thieves, or just walk away and refuse to deal with that business again (it's been a LONG while since I bought an album from a major label, for example).
Tor's parent corporation got cold feet about the Webscriptions deal, but apparently has since reconsidered, and restarted negotiations. The titles currently listed are those that were posted during the several days between the original deal and the parent corporation vetoing it, so that the people who had purchased those books would still be able to access their copies (yes, Webscriptions will always allow you to redownload titles you've purchased from them, as long as they're still in business).
Oh, they're still there. They've expanded beyond drug treatment claims to include 'behavior issues', but aren't staffed or licensed to deal with either. They usually get around that by claiming to be boarding schools, but then they frequently don't meet the licensing requirements to be schools, either. They now call themselves Therapeutic Boarding Schools for 'troubled teens'. If you look at the tactics they use for dealing with the kids, most of them fit in with what I was taught about brainwashing in North Korean and Vietnamese POW camps. It's no real surprise that a lot of the survivors of these programs wind up displaying PTSD later. A friend was sent to one of these places basically because she had problems getting along with her stepfather, one of her classmates there committed suicide not long ago (and it's certainly messed her up some, but she's coming to deal with it. Of course, one of the issues between her and her stepfather is that she's attracted to other women...)
Actually, I'd have to dig out a contract to see, but the authors make at least as much, or more, on ebook sales as they do on paperback sales. Not sure about the eArcs, should know in a few months, though :-)
A problem with Sony's reader is that when one publisher (Baen) contacted them about software to convert existing ebooks, Sony started talking about wanting royalties per book. So while Baen publishes their books in a variety of formats, don't expect them to publish in Sony's format. But Baen already sees more ebook sales than they do sales to Canada, as an example.
First off, new authors DO have to write their books on speculation, and hope a publisher picks it up. The problem is, most first books by new authors don't earn enough to pay off the advance on royalties, so the publisher is taking a gamble with new authors, in the hopes that they'll a) be good enough and b) attract enough fans to be profitable later. As for David Weber, the Honor Harrington series is NOT his first or only series of books. It's just been the most successful one. He's got the Roger Ramius series with John Ringo, the Bahzell Bahnakson series, the Fifth Imperium series, and his new series with Tor (he doesn't plan to do any more of the Starfire books).
*shrug* I've lost a contract and been blacklisted from one of the major IT recruiting companies in my area over reporting security issues and refusing to do work that exposed customer data to exploitation (the corporate security policy in effect at the time made it abundantly clear that if I DID do the work, they'd come after ME for any damages suffered). So the concern is real. My experience is that very FEW companies are willing to deal with the pain and agony of properly securing their data, even now. There's always a manager or VP who can push to get their way, even if it's wrong, and the IT person who fights too hard against it gets nailed in their reviews or gets fired. There's a reason my last performance review had low marks for "cooperation with others". But at a certain point, all I can do is document that I reported a problem and wait for the explosion, and hope that in the aftermath I can cover my ass adequately with the documentation.
Last time I bothered with a certification, I'd been out of work for a month or so and not having many decent hits on the job boards. So I snagged a copy of Solaris x86 and studied up on the new features of Solaris 8 and took the certification exams. And my resume hit percentage went up. But my experience has been that having those certifications is what gets you past the gatekeepers in HR, once you get to the actual hiring manager is when your experience will get vetted. And I've nuked someone after their resume listed "Solaris Certification" and they couldn't answer basic questions about disk slicing, turns out it wasn't a Sun certification, but something offered by a local community college... So, if *I* will see your resume, expect me to ask questions that pertain to what your certification is in...
Actually, the CD's are a marketing device. I've had Baen send me a stack of CD's to hand out at conventions, and I've also burned numerous CD's that John Ringo and I handed out at those conventions as well. The look on Ann Crispin's face when John stood up and announced that we had a stack of those CD's at one of her panels at DragonCon was hilarious... Even more amusing was when she broke down and asked for one - and someone took theirs out of the back of their book and gave it to her, saying they could get another copy later... There have been several CD's released that did NOT come with books, but were instead solely marketing materials, and Jim personally confirmed that those could also be redistributed. Heck, after _Sister Time_ is finished, my wife may do an online book signing in Second Life for _Cally's War_, John Ringo has already said he has no problems with the idea, my wife's just been too busy trying to avoid busting her deadline too much to do anything about it. Yes, the inference is correct, my wife is one of the Baen authors :-)