As I understand it, the Irish problem largely went away with 9/11. Suddenly a lot of "well meaning" (?) Irish Americans sympathetic to terrorism discovered that... um... terrorism is bad, and funding ceased.
I'm assuming that the specific Irish problem you refer to is the IRA (and others) campaign to reunite Northern Ireland with the rest of Ireland. We do have other issues...
9/11 had nothing to do with the IRA's cessation of hostilities: they realised a long time ago that violence wasn't going to achieve their objectives and decided to take the democratic route. I am in no way a fan of the IRA or Sinn Fein (their political wing), but I give them credit for realising that democracy and negotiation was the way to go.
UK border installations (watch towers, armoured checkpoints on roads) were being dismantled in the early 1990s. I remember crossing the border in 1987 or thereabouts and seeing bunkers and machine gun posts. 5 years later, no installations at all.
I had a brief look at the screening tool. I use Linux on my desktop, I use it for mission-critical messaging applications in our production environment (and have been doing so for several years), I use it for the company's e-mail services. My IT team doesn't need any Linux/Unix training - we can keep things ticking over pretty nicely. I'm not interested in adding e-commerce functionality to our websites, because we already have it. I don't have any legacy Unix applications, so I'm not interested in migrating them. The screening tool thinks I'm a Linux experimenter?? I used to be, back in 1996. Now I'm using to keep a business in operation.
I know the screening tool is probably aimed at a specific market segment, but it looks to be a very blunt instrument indeed. Surely Microsoft has better market analysis than this?
Is this the difference between a science degree and an engineering degree? It sounds like the UT course consisted of a lot of rarefied theory and not so much getting down and dirty with the tools. I suspect that most commercial development these days doesn't rely so much on the theoretical elements as grinding stuff out.
Caveat: I'm a civil engineer who took up systems admin to avoid spending his time standing around all day in the rain and the mud. I have caveman mathematics and programming skills...
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As I understand it, the Irish problem largely went away with 9/11. Suddenly a lot of "well meaning" (?) Irish Americans sympathetic to terrorism discovered that ... um ... terrorism is bad, and funding ceased.
I'm assuming that the specific Irish problem you refer to is the IRA (and others) campaign to reunite Northern Ireland with the rest of Ireland. We do have other issues ...
9/11 had nothing to do with the IRA's cessation of hostilities: they realised a long time ago that violence wasn't going to achieve their objectives and decided to take the democratic route. I am in no way a fan of the IRA or Sinn Fein (their political wing), but I give them credit for realising that democracy and negotiation was the way to go.
UK border installations (watch towers, armoured checkpoints on roads) were being dismantled in the early 1990s. I remember crossing the border in 1987 or thereabouts and seeing bunkers and machine gun posts. 5 years later, no installations at all.
I had a brief look at the screening tool. I use Linux on my desktop, I use it for mission-critical messaging applications in our production environment (and have been doing so for several years), I use it for the company's e-mail services. My IT team doesn't need any Linux/Unix training - we can keep things ticking over pretty nicely. I'm not interested in adding e-commerce functionality to our websites, because we already have it. I don't have any legacy Unix applications, so I'm not interested in migrating them. The screening tool thinks I'm a Linux experimenter?? I used to be, back in 1996. Now I'm using to keep a business in operation. I know the screening tool is probably aimed at a specific market segment, but it looks to be a very blunt instrument indeed. Surely Microsoft has better market analysis than this?
Is this the difference between a science degree and an engineering degree? It sounds like the UT course consisted of a lot of rarefied theory and not so much getting down and dirty with the tools. I suspect that most commercial development these days doesn't rely so much on the theoretical elements as grinding stuff out.
...
Caveat: I'm a civil engineer who took up systems admin to avoid spending his time standing around all day in the rain and the mud. I have caveman mathematics and programming skills
Given their attrition rate, shouldn't that be what went through the Crewman in the Red Shirt?