'It is the intention of the government to ultimately convert the bitcoins to U.S. currency,'

Good luck with that. I've been waiting 3 months now for my U.S. currency.

... I'd like to add that I don't use the TV Server functionality of Media Portal at all. Just the client. My video is stored on a windows server which is simply sharing video folders via SMB, My MPC box is just a PC running Windows 7 and Mediaportal, pointed at the server's SMB shares. You could just as easily keep your video on the MPC box. Takes about 20 minutes to setup and configure from scratch, assuming you have Windows already installed. It's much easier these days as they now include a very complete (or at least complete enough for the vast majority of releases these days) codec package in the install.

I mostly play downloaded video and while MediaPortal is aimed at the DVR crowd, I've found that it's been able to play most everything I download far more consistently than the competition. Also it doesn't try to index every media file you own (though the option is available) which in my experience causes many problems if you have a lot of files with inconsistent naming conventions. MediaPortal lets you simply browse your file system with a MCE Remote, select a file, and play it. It's 100% free and I've been using it for 10 years. Support is continuous and ongoing. I check out the competition every year or so but always return to MediaPortal, so far. In the extremely rare cases when a file doesn't play correctly, it's simple enough to flip over to VLC.... but I probably do this only a few times a year.

OMFG. Who is going to pay those people? Please elaborate. No doubt there's plenty of work to do but how much of that will be paid for and by whom?

Even, assuming that everyone has equal abilities which they obviously don't, under our current capitalist system we compete with each other and some people are STILL GOING TO LOSE. It's unavoidable. Who's going to take care of them?

To hear some people on the right talk, it's as if they believe we could all be in the 1% if we weren't so lazy. This is so absurd. If everyone were a Bill Gates clone, some of them are still going to end up poor because of how our system works. They can't all be the founders of Microsofts.

... the wisdom of putting our most paranoid citizens into our intelligence & defense agencies.

Let me add this: Most of our printers are leased and maintained by the leasing company which is huge headache I don't have to deal with much. Also, we are a relatively relaxed low-security environment. If you work at a bank, I can immediately see how the increased security requirements would cause much more work.

Every environment is different but I tend to agree with ledow.... Based on what you have stated, I would think your IT dept is sufficient in size.

I work at a 400 user company (wholesale/retail) with an IT staff of 4: a developer, an ERP help desk person, a IT director who also manages the ERP system, and myself, the sys admin who handles everything else. We have 30 branch locations a commercial SAN, about 16 virtual servers and 8 or 9 physical ones.

What helps hugely in my case is that the bulk of my users are on thin clients. I've only got one PC at each remote site and maybe 100 at HQ. Everyone else is using thin clients connecting to our 4 RDS server farm. Even so, that leaves 130 or so windows 7 laptops & desktops but I typically only get a handful of calls a week from people with PC problems. As for my servers, I'm actually shocked at how stable and maintenance free they have been - All Dell & Hyper-V. Server 2008R2/Exchange 2010.

I do all the networking, server & SAN management, and desktop support myself, and I frequently wish I had more big projects because I can get quite bored when things are running smoothly. I'm not even a l33t coding admin. Just a competent old-school point and click one. Also I tend do do things cheaply which, ironically, also reduces complexity (in my case). I stay away from the commercial high end backup, system/network management, or security solutions, most of which are geared to enterprises much larger than ours. I stick to free and/or cheap, and for the most part and it all runs very smoothly. The first few years of setup and clean up were a lot of work but these days my network practically runs itself.

What I don't have is an overbearing management structure with unrealistic expectations and requirements, so that also helps a lot. What I do have is 400 people who generally think I'm the best thing since sliced bread and a lot of free time at work.

Ars is not the site it used to be.

You have my sympathies about the key bindings. It happens a lot and used to drive me crazy. I switched to WASD some years ago partially due to being sick of re-mapping my keys every time I got a new game but mainly because of carpal tunnel-like symptoms which the switch actually fixed. These days I still get occasionally burned by PC games assuming that I have a official XBox controller when I have a generic one. You'd think it wouldn't make much difference but it can.

That said, BF4 has been a pretty good launch on my end. It surprisingly runs faster and smoother than BF3 on the same hardware. No serious issues encountered so far, the only annoyances being occasionally getting stuck trying to go up hill or over a very low obstacle and the 13 year old racist, homophobes who seem to be everywhere.

As for Region Lock, you'd think they'd have learned by now. My biggest beef with EA/Dice (and nearly everyone else these days) is the balkanization of their games through Region Lock, DLC, Premium perks, early access, not to mention all that game-ification crap (levels, unlocks. battle packs, dog tags) which serve as disincentives to any coherent team play... much more lucrative to have addicts chasing fake accomplishment playing your game.

And unless you are the rare, true security geek, you will most likely hate your job. The vast majority of government/contract security jobs appear to me to be chasing false positives, editing ACLs & GPOs and then dealing with the unintended consequences of your own command's policy decisions. All in all, tedious, frustrating, and thankless work. I worked in DOD cyber security for few years and would never go back. And that was before Snowden... I can only imagine how horrible it must be now.

We are a Kyocera shop, using everything from FS1370s to TASkalfa 5550Cis, and while I'm no fan of their firmware/software, the hardware does take a beating.

Why?

Security makes pretty much everything in IT more difficult, complicated, and less convenient, not to mention expensive. Frequently, high security implementations will introduce new problems such as incentivising employees to write down passwords or use insecure workarounds for sensitive work.

Quite frankly, most companies without IP or corporate secrets to protect simply don't care all that much. We'll take some basic precautions but GOOD security is just not worth the hassle, nor is there that much to lose. We don't all need to be as paranoid as the NSA. I'm not even sure that the NSA needs to be as paranoid as the NSA.

Where I currently work, security is practically non-existent. Management isn't worried about this despite repeated warnings. Probably the worst thing that could happen to them other than a break-in with mass destruction would be that they lose their customer's credit card info. They don't seem to care too much about this possibility. I'm not even sure that the repercussions warrant caring. We're a hardware store.

Finally, the security industry have become the snake oil salesmen of IT. I've worked in the field and hated every second of it. It takes a certain kind of talent or delusion to really enjoy it. There's a lot of FUD in this field and so much busy work that it will numb your mind.

The one thing that truly sucks about digital music is the death of "mix tapes". Playlists have always been a shitty alternative and some in the industry apparently don't even want those to be shared.

Someone needs to fix this. I'm sure there's an income stream there somewhere.