What stops you from negotiating this on your own? If your skills are in demand, and you're well trained enough in your field you can negotiate anything within reason. I really don't understand people who are told to work for free and just do it no questions asked. You have a choice. There's nothing magical about a union, just they are more willing to say no... you're perfectly capable to do that on your own.

"I haven't either. Is there a good reason why we don't have one though?"

Because, no offense, I can negotiate my own pay and benefits better than you all can collectively for me.

For some professions, like teachers, police, etc, where everyone is doing the same exact job it might make sense to go union..... but you and me, although we are "IT", have two very different jobs and responsibilities. "On call" for you might be drastically different than for me. For better or worse a union is negotiating things very broadly and you can't just package "IT" with a bow and serve up the same one to everyone.

As an alternative, learn to negotiate, learn what questions to ask and what to ask for in return. Know what you're willing to accept, and don't be afraid to reject an offer. Ask for what you'll still be happy with 2 years from now. Try and avoid technically inept companies, and make sure expectations are set (i.e. this pager is for catastrophic network failure, not your home email account is broken).

This actually worked at the small enterprise where I take care of things. A user managed to get their machine mucked up with a bunch of spyware and adware by clicking in a forwarded email. I cleaned the machine and then management called a meeting a day or two later. Had every one of the employees in attendance. I gave the standard presentation about email safety, as well as general internet safety. I sat down. The director stood up and informed everyone in the room that the next time a machine needed to be cleaned as a result of operator error, the bill for my services (not cheap) would be deducted from the relevant employee's next paycheck. A sheet of paper was then passed around, with the same directive written on it, and all employees were instructed to either sign or lose their job. They all signed.

That was two years ago. Have not had a SINGLE instance of any malware on any machine, since that time. People now ask me every time they have any doubts about what they're doing, and I've headed off a few potential catastrophes since that started happening.

I'm guessing it's not a coincidence.

It's $300 per VM. That $300 is paid each three years, and drops your price per hour in half. If you're running your instance 24/7 it ends up making a lot of sense to just reserve it.

"Looking at the article, it is likely that people are re-requesting the same machine be started & stopped multiple times per day"

Guilty! I use EC2 as a cheap way to learn / test things in my spare time that I don't get to do at work. As a result I'm starting and stopping machines right now. In the next couple hours I'll probably launch a total of 10 instances for a couple hours.

You run a certain risk with personal data on company hardware. At the very least if you get fired or laid off you'll lose that data if it's not backed up. At the worst end of the spectrum, you'll lose that data and it'll be owned by someone else. You have only two options:

1) Don't take the money. Politely refuse it, and thank your employer for the kind gesture.
2) Take the money and then buy yourself a second notebook. This way you have one you own and one that's the company's.

Would this apply to the app store? Apple has been actively blocking certain applications from the market for some time now, just wondering how this applies to that market.

Additionally, there was a long time where I could not access AIM services through my Verizon blackberry, it was blocked by Verizon, but has since been lifted and I'm able to use the service fine. I'm curious how this will play out with cell companies and their practices of blocking applications and protocols that compete, or make it easier for consumers to work around expensive competing telco offerings. It's certainly not something specific to Apple, or even something new to telcos in general.

While I agree with your point that unions in general have a hold on California legislature, I'd like to clarify one point; Teachers here don't make 20% above the median. The median for California in 2007 was $55,450 as per the most recent income census.

The problem comes from administrative overhead. Of which California is the highest in the nation. Additionally retirement benefits for school staff is way out of control.

The later is the one that's going to cause us the most pain in the future, sense the school pension system in California does not pay for itself, and is continually growing at a faster rate than growth in tax revenue.

One of the problems, IMO, is the legislature here does not address the important issues, like school funding and annual budgets. One interesting proposal going around for next year's ballot is to reduce the legislature to part time to force them to focus on important issues. More on this can be found at: http://www.reformcal.com/cms/

The goals of this project are admirable, however the implications of such a change are up for debate.

"Will those savings offset the new infrastructure the state government will have to build for compliance and auditing of the third parties?"

Ideally compliance and auditing of sensitive data with an internal IT department should be the same as with an external IT department. A government IT employee is no more or less likely to loose, steal or mishandle sensitive data than an employee in the private sector.

As for your other points about costs of converting to the "cloud" I think you hit the nail on the head. If they have the existing infrastructure to justify a new $300m data center, I can totally see development costs exceeding $300m in building out new apps, or converting existing ones to the cloud.

Xen!

Same non-existent support, lower cost.

You'll need to do a little tinkering beyond that.

My MSI Wind boots up and one of the options (F3 if I recall correctly) reinstalls Windows XP to the factory settings off a hidden volume.

I totally agree. I have an MSI Wind (U100) and I use TrueCrypt as someone above recommended. I've not noticed a huge performance decrease on the machine. I have one mount point and I add all personal files in there, leaving apps and OS files unencrypted. On my HP notebook I use Safeboot, which uses whole disk encryption. I used it without safeboot for nearly two years, and so far about six months with it installed. Again, I have no noticeable performance loss. Someone else who uses their computer more heavily than I might have more to add here, but for normal use whole disk encryption works fine. I don't have any problems with streaming youtube (or netflix) on either of the computers. Netflix and compiling C#/.Net stuff on VS2008 are about as CPU heavy as I get on these machines though, so again, there may be others with different experiences.

Space Shuttle don't cause 'em, but it creates them. (how's that for logic?) Here's some pictures of the Shuttle's vapor trail in the high atmosphere, noctilucent. Pretty cool looking, eh? http://www.flickr.com/photos/35423990@N00/sets/72157600329483616/

What happened to all the wankers who hooted and hollered about boycotting them after that?

Still here... still boycotting... just not as vocally anymore...