I have felt your pain. Which is why I wanted to respond when I noticed this part...

Check out the first set of instructions in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894564 which should let you set a wired connection to a higher priority than a wireless.

I could write one of several variations on the theme of Google's "sheep's clothing" strategy, but seeing as how the bought-and-paid-for mods are already clicking away on a lot of these comments (-1 on my earlier post, based on...what exactly?), I don't know that it's worth my time.

You explained a lot about why Google should be perceived differently based on the fuzziness of "Don't Be Evil" but you can't disagree about it's corporate priority.

As a publicly traded company, Google has a fiduciary duty to maximize return on investment for the shareholders. If their actions -- no matter how altruistic they may appear on the surface -- do not/would not translate into shareholder profit, they won't be approved by the shot-callers, assuming the leadership is rational and proper. This is no different than any other public company. As a Google employee, I can see why you may want to believe Google is somehow different in this regard, but it's not.

If you truly want to work somewhere that does good for the public at their own expense, find a non-profit with a mission you support. And work unpaid overtime.

And that makes me proud to be an American.

Our American leaders know we won't believe obvious fabrications like those goofy Russian yokels, so they temper the vote fraud just enough to fly under the radar. And thus they demonstrate how much more they respect the American people's intelligence than the Russian leaders respect their people's intelligence.

Suck it, Russia! USA Number 1!

Great, so now we can expect a Spinning Wing of Death when things go awry?

*whoosh*
"But then I'd sound just as short-sighted as you do."
You apparently missed that bit, where the point I make is precisely that such a position (one role must be superior/more valuable/better paid than the other) is silly.

ACs, either we are defining what falls within IT differently (I would say anything to do with operations, from the support desk on up to the enterprise architect), or your knowledge of the salary range within such positions is extremely limited. There are plenty of operations people making near or above six figures and then some, and plenty of programmers in the same markets who will never see that kind of money until the dollar devalues like the currency of a third world junta. But it's *real* cute how I whipped you into such a frothy-mouthed frenzy with the mere suggestion that you can't perform under pressure.

I could just as easily say "if programmers could think on their feet and fix problems that cost the bottom line thousands of dollars per minute of downtime they would be IT guys." But then I'd sound just as short-sighted as you do.

Based on my own experience, I would argue that there is a severe shortage of computer security specialists and engineers with the skills and knowledge and desire to do battle against would-be adversaries. Whether it's a personal financial concern or a personal ethical concern, there are lots of great reasons for skilled and knowledgeable experts to seek employment elsewhere.

I once had the occasion to rent a car and drive it around on a fine Sunday afternoon. The afternoon was so fine, so inspiring to my pedal-mashing sensibilities, that on a whim I decided to take the car as close to airborne as I could over a rather steep hill.

I ended up catching a little too much air, and bottomed-out the car pretty hard. Upon landing with a loud crunchy thud, all the dash lights went out, the power steering died, and I had to wrestle the car off the road in quite a hurry.

Sitting there, miles from home, on the day of the week when it would be hardest to get a tow and make other transportation arrangements, and worried about what I had done to the car (I was sure it was really messed up based on the noise and the behavior), I was a bit panicked for a second there. After a moment's reflection, I decided "what the hell" and turned the key in the ignition to see what would or wouldn't happen.

And the damn thing started right up, with nary a complaint or anomaly. I deduced that the shock of bottoming-out must have crashed the computer and killed all the electronics, and the good old "reboot and see what happens" actually worked!

Why are you so angry about the point I made? I have interrupted nothing, and in the spirit of my own beliefs, I'll forgive you the ad hominem.

I happen to consider myself a believer, though I have major philosophical, moral, and ethical disagreements with the majority of human beings who identify with the same beliefs/Religion that I do.

That is why I take exception to the notion that a Religion can have an "attitude" -- because that perpetuates stereotypes that if person X identifies with Religion Y, then they believe Z. You say that we all ought to interpret this "shortcut" in one way, but I have observed many different interpretations in my own experience.

It is interesting to me that your comment history shows a pronounced frequency of Troll moderations, and yet you don't appear to be just "having a laugh" -- you sound genuinely unhappy. Do you want to take our discussion off the site? I feel compelled to offer my assistance in raising your spirits.

Religions don't have attitudes. People have attitudes. Sorry for being OT, but elucidating this distinction has become a bit of a hobby of mine.

But I do agree with you and the GP in the points you make.

In a previous life I made my living working for a mortgage lender that did a high volume of VA and FHA loans. Though the end result of the loan origination process in the FHA/VA world is the same as that when dealing with a commercial bank (property owner gets check, loan applicant gets house and mortgage), the "how you get there" was completely different.

Perhaps the single biggest difference, at least in terms of impact on my job, was the trouble resolution process.

All the banks operated slick websites with functioning trouble-ticket systems, staffed call centers with actual human beings you could talk to about your issues, and generally made an acceptable effort to fix problems.

When you had a technical problem with FHA or VA, what could you do? You could email a generic mailbox with your question and hope for the best. That's it!

Once I managed to track down a real, somewhat technically-aware human being at the VA so I could inquire about a persistent, apparently unaddressed trouble we were having accessing a particular feature of the va.gov site. Her answer? "Yeah, that goes down all the time, just give it a few days and they'll get it fixed." This was accepted as normal there, and probably still is.

1) Copy desired formatted/linked/etc text to clipboard.
2) Windows key-R (opens Run box)
3) Ctrl-V (paste the text into the Run box)
4) Shift-Home (select the now-plaintext)
5) Ctrl-C (copy the now-plaintext)
6) Esc (close Run box)

I use this all the time when copying and pasting in Windows, and it works great for me.

THANK YOU! (Was that loud enough?)

I've no points so this will have to do. If you talk to almost anyone about commercials, they might admit to liking a few of the funny ones here or there, but by and large, I think you'd struggle to find a lot of people who want to watch commercials, who seek them out, and take measures to watch them when they would otherwise be interrupted. Basically nobody gives a shit either way about watching commercials.

I don't watch a lot of "live" TV these days, and as a result I really have no tolerance for commercials when I encounter them. So I mute them.

My "opt-in" approach is nothing novel -- on the slim chance that I want to hear whatever the un-programming is saying, I'll un-mute, but otherwise I assume that the sounds coming from commercials are at best disposable to me, and at worst, really fucking annoying.

I do this everywhere I can, and I've yet to meet a single person who wanted to hear commercials when I was muting them.