I took a $10,000 a year paycut when I left my previous employer to come to work for my current company... because I felt that I'd be much happier/have a better quality of work-life (old job was starting to destroy my soul / passion for programming)

they wanted to hire me at my previous salary, but it was just not possible under their budgets/etc.

I took the job anyway because I felt their culture and my work quality of life would jsut be a great match.

Now, a couple years later, I've more than made up the difference in pay (proved my worth and the $$$ got found) and am just stupidly happy with this job.

It's actually true that the worst days at my current job are still better than most of the best days for the last 3 years of my previous one.

Basically, I've tried to always value happiness more than pure financial gain, and I've reaped the rewards of "love what you do for a living and you'll never ~work~ another day in your life".

Good Luck

I have three words to explain why these companies avoid cities: Quality of Life

Many of my friends work in and around Washington DC, and I hear horror stories about commute times and traffic jams. I moved down here from nowheresville Western MA where my commute was 20 minutes when there was no traffic and maybe 4o to an hour if there was and that sucked... but friends of mine down here? they're regularly looking at 2 hours + and anyone who wants to live close enough to only have an hour? yeah well, half a million might buy you a postage stamp to live on....

I telecommute today (live in VA and still work for a company in MA) and I tell you my quality of life is tenfold better not having to deal with commuting to/from the office and all the stress it caused. and yes, I know my piddly 20-60 minute commute is nothing compared to what a lot of folks put up with.

Big Cities are more hassle than they're worth for the most part

So, when the FCC re-rules ISPs as Common Carriers, the real good news is that means that 6 strikes rules and other copyright stuff is out the window... after all, a big part of common carrier status is taht you are exempt from having any responsibility for controlling the content you're carrying - so you can't be sued by a copyright owner because user susy q used your infrastructure to share/copy movie x.

(Ok, so I bet they still WILL do crap like that because they're so far in bed with copyright owners... HHHMMM COMCAST/NBC? but it would be nice to stop them having their cake and eating it too... one can dream)

I really am happy that the FCC and the Obama administration "get it" - the Internet has become vital to our economy and a free, fair, open Internet is key to innovation and continued growth. If the 'net were allowed to become an expensive toll road, it would only feed the pockets of the already wealthy whilst simultaneously raising the barrier to entry for anything new/innovative.

Well, indeed, with the way things are today, you may have a point. /looks nervously over shoulder

They do have test servers, but I'm talking about just researching the bot issue - looking up web sites that discussed technical information that maybe WOW would consider "cheat sites" -

Warcraft wasn't using VAC obviously, but I was trying to give an example of researching information that may be on sites that if you looked at my DNS, you might assume I was cheating - In other words: DNS doesn't in and of itself tell the actual story.

Yes, sure, if your dns cache is full of porn sites, one may be able do deduce that you're actively visiting porn sites, but there are lots of sites on blocked/porn net nanny lists that are not actually porn.

If your dns cache is full of right wing news sites, maybe you're right wing right? or wait, maybe you're not ,but you keep tabs on them, or maybe your brother used them.

For instance, back when i was playing WOW a lot, I was also authoring (legal) addons for it. Since one of the activities I was supporting with dual boxing/multi-boxing (one player playing on multiple characters at once (each through their own paid account - legal under the TOS of the game), I did need to tread carefully to keep from crossing the line into what they'd consider "botting" (automation that allows an account to play without human intervention). I did research on some of the bots / botting that was available at the time - as part of understaning the difference (I never downloaded or used one, but yes, I surfed around and very likely included some "bad sites"

My point being that dns histroy is only the grossest of measures of what you're doing on your pc - yes, it may be true that someone who never visits hack sitex/cheat sites will be less likely to have them show up on dnscache, but if they're active in gaming forums or if they're jus plain inquisitive, they could so easily be falesly accused.

Someone who is actually cheating would likely be able to quickly figure out that they should use another computer to download/browse and/or ipconfig /flushdns before playing, etc...

Like most all copy protection - it only stops the casual user and inconveniences many legit users. Anyone actively cheating with any amount of effort will easily avoid this.

Yeah,

You're joking. The PC was an attempt to retain control, quickly churned out by IBM. It was just there to keep down the new micros that were starting to look popular, and the design was never intended to last.

It worked too - IBM retained control over the business market for quite a while, and didn't realise until OS/2 and microchannel that it had actually lost the control it thought it had kept.

Cheers,
Ian

Word 4.2 (I think it was .2) combined with my Mac LC and a Stylewriter was and remains my favourite word processor setup of all time - it got me through the last two years of university (first year I started with an ST, using First Word Plus). Loved 4.2 - perfect mix of simple but powerful.

5.x brought in envelopes and a bunch of stuff I don't recall and didn't use, but started to get slow. 6.x is where the rot set in for me and I've never really liked any version since, whether PC or Mac.

Cheers,
Ian

I had the same experience the first time I saw a GUI machine - an Atari ST in a shop. Although I'd read magazines (anyone remember Input magazine in the UK?) about graphical interfaces, I hadn't ever actually used one or seen one for real.

My first thought on seeing it was "how do I get out of this and where's the computer?". I was essentially looking to type load "" somewhere and was baffled that I couldn't do it.

Cheers,
Ian

I was personally involved in a project to collect and analyze data for a plant floor at my previous job.

Plain and simple - QA and process engineers are asking for more and more data which simply can't work with an Air gap unless the entirety of the colleciotn and analysis systems are inside the Air Gapped network.

I know the company I was working for could not afford the cost of "doing it right" so I had to put routers in each production line's Industrial Ethernet internal network to NAT it out so I could get the data collection servers to gather data.

I made sure the router only allowed external requests coming from the specific data collection system's address - but I was unable to convince them of the need to set it up with a DMZ, so in theory, if you could break into our LAN and get to the correct server, you could use that to jump the air gap.

However, even then, the NAT I set up was for specific port that only allowed queries for settings/data, not for control, and there were far more juicy targets than a plastics extrusion line's controls, so even though it was a risk, the $9million / year they ended up realizing in savings due to the analysis of the data more than made up for the risk that someone would take the time to dig in to damage/control the extrusion lines.

As others have said, there are HUGE disincentives to taking down time to patch these systems... the Data Must Flow is the operational mantra, and they don't want to risk losing production time - even if the very real risk is of a break-in or even just break-down causing potential down time.

Exactly - it's reverse net-neutrality.

I wonder when wired broadband service providers will do that - as it is, I'm pretty sure Comcast/Xfinity is doing sort of the same thing - I can watch as many things "on demand" on my cable box as I want without touching my bandwidth cap, but if I stream the same movies/shows from Netflix/Hulu, etc... then it does count against my cap (which I will just preach to choir and say "what part of unlimited don't you understand")

I for one pretty much want them to NEVER get back to where they were - if the NSA wands to spy on every person outside our broders every waking moment, go ahead - ... that's a political matter - I think it harms us more than it helps, but hey, that's what spys do.

However, the minute they turn their gaze inward - indiscriminately picking up communications / data/ video/ pictures, etc of ordinary Americans inside US borders well, that's where the line is drawn.

Hell, if they accidentally collected some citizens info in the course of monitoring a person of interest who has come into the US, ok, it's a fair cop - easy mistake... but it should be the exception, not the rule, and when you start to mix that unrestrained spy-agency level ability of snooping with federal and law enforcement officials for actions inside the US that have NOTHING TO DO with National Security: well, then you've gone too far.

This flies in the face of the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. This is about building a survailence and police state. This is not the direction I want to see our country take - we need to be directly speaking Truth to Power (which is what Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have done).

We need to stop living in utter fear of our own shadows - not letting the terrorists WIN by feeling terrorized and not let our government BECOME the terrorists (using intimidation and violence for political aims)

It's not just benefiting your employer, learning benefits you too:

Directly by keeping your mind active and engaged.

Directly by allowing you to experiment with ways to do things that might not be allowed in your work environment.

And not the least of which - it's "RBT" (Resume Building Technology) - While you may not be able to claim you did xyz on the job, you can at least indicate your familiarity with the technology.

With so many HR departments acting as gatekeepers - the first person who looks at your application may be someone who only knows to look for the correct buzzwords... when you can legitimately claim to have some knowledge of buzzword x, you improve your chances of getting in the door.

Then, when you talk to someone in the actual interview, you can mention that this is research you do on your own time - to improve/hone your skills.

If that doesn't get you points with the hiring person, well, you're likely interviewing for a place you're going to HATE.

Saying "I don't trust US-Based stuff" could be technical, but its more likely a means to punish the US... "making sure the chickens come home to roost"

Punishing the US which is about the ONLY THING that has any hope of real change - if big US corporations start losing deals because of the shenanigans form the NSA, they'll start throwing their weight around and the politicians will listen.

"Hi [insert computer bios maker here], I'm with the NSA - we've detected a BIOS damaging malware and we would like to you implement these changes to prevent it - No, we totally aren't actually just making shit up to get you to install a backdoor for us, okthxbie"-