I haven't seen the title of System or computer operator used since the late 80's. Maybe it's common in your neck of the woods? However most of the places I have traveled System Administrator is the standard title. You want to know what really gets me angry? Most companies use the title Network Administrator for what really is a Windows System Administrator role, my ability to setup VPN, OSPF and BGP has nothing to do with exchange or active directory.

"Yes, there is, and very wrong. Maturity of current IT systems is still far away to what's needed to be able to work in aisles. A programmer doesn't need to be a top notch sysadmin nor the other way around, but they both need to have very clear ideas about the other's trade because is needed both to understand where your program is going to be run and how and what would make proper practices to acomodate the programs within a wider and partially peculiar local environment (and in order to recognize properly engineered programs from lame intents)."

I disagree that all sysadmins require programming knowledge to be successful at their jobs, while it certainly helps to have this knowledge, it really depends upon the their role, the company they work for and the scope of their duties. Some companies use almost entirely pre-canned, purchased software applications to run in their environment without an inhouse dev team and support is a phone call away. Horses for courses after all, just my two cents.

I think you meant "struggled with Unicorns and a flood", that would make it a struggle of old testament biblical proportions.

Yeah Germany uses it, it must be important! Remember this is the same country that brought us WW2, holocaust genocide and considers David Hasselhoff an awesome musician! How can they possibly be wrong about OpenOffice! ;)

They would protect you against Beta particle emitters, which are common in nuclear plants. Alpha yes, don't eat it or breath it in and you're usually fine. It's the Gamma you really have to be concerned about, for that you limit your exposure.

Depending on the level and type of radiation in the area, masks, goggles and gloves may actually be enough. Alpha particles are pretty much only dangerous if ingested or breathed in. Beta waves (very common in most nuclear plants) can almost be stopped by a piece of paper, and typically only your eyes and hands are at risk...hence the goggles and gloves. Gamma radiation, which is common in most nuclear reactor vaults, well there's not much you can do about that other than limiting your exposure. The nuclear symbol the three leafed Trefoil stands for three things: Time, Distance, Shielding.

According to your dystopian view of the future, the day this conspiracy finally happens and you "lose it" on society and end up in a water tower with a high powered rifle trying raise some awareness of what we lost...it won't matter, that news story will be retroactively ripped away and covered up by Big Brother. Get a grip, lighten up...maybe go out for a beer I assure you the world isn't coming to an end, nor are we losing all our rights and freedoms.

What makes you think this move was purely for their antivirus software? I see a lot of negative comments on here, all about their antivirus, look at their website...they do far more than that and have for years.

Mcafee made some very smart acquisitions in the security appliance field, they have a gartner magic quadrant leading IPS appliance (only behind Tipping Point by a slight margin). Their firewall product is excellent, just not widely known about, and I'm told used by departments of the US government (military/FBI etc) it's a proxy based firewall something most firewalls on the market SHOULD do but don't.

Just send the wheelbarrow around to clean up the web corpses.

But I'm not dead yet!

"Yes, you're right, we should devote all our time to getting ourselves to live longer, and none of our time to making our lives more interesting and enjoyable. That'll make a lovely world, won't it."

Similar concept to those male sexual de-sensitizing products on the market that help improve a guy's stamina in bed. Have sex all night long and not feel a thing! What a concept!

You're only partially correct on this, you are wrong in the aspect that the network configs weren't saved to flash they were. The network configs WERE protected from standard password recovery procedures, what made them difficult to break into was he disabled password recovery on all the network hardware and saved that into the configuration onto the flash.

It's not just a CPU/speed issue, even high powered Cisco routers will have Gig-E speeds clobbered if the MTU isn't tweaked to support "Jumbo" frames (9000 vs legacy 1500) The best speed tests on a "Gig-E" link with an MTU of 1500 at best will deliver around 650Mbps to 750Mbps of throughput. Many networks haven't been reconfigured to allow for Jumbo sized frames, hell most computers don't enable it either (usually something in your network card settings must be manually enabled to allow them as they are disabled by default). You also have to factor in TCP window sizing too, sending large packets through is more efficient than sending smaller packets (less router CPU overhead). What is your bandwidth test using as your yardstick? All of this will affect your testing.

Even with the damn checkbox "I don't want to receive messages from bands" checked, you still get band spam. Myspace started out moderately fun, then became way too bloated, slow and flashy. Facebook is starting to turn out similarly, started out lean and mean and people fled there from myspace...now it's starting to get way too bloated, slow and flashy (but still nowhere near as bad as Myspace). History will repeat itself again once the new MyBook.com (or whatever it's called) comes along that is fast, light and easy. Myspace will then die and Facebook will be in the same boat as Myspace is in now....and no it won't be Twitter.

Become a contract consultant for their former employer for nearly double what they made as a salaried employee. ;)

Games companies and Hollywood haven't run out of idea's, there's plenty of original idea's yet to be tapped. The problem is these companies are unwilling to risk their capital on a new, and unproven, Intellectual Property. Thats why we see remakes and sequels. Back in the 80's and 90's game development was smaller, faster and required a lot less cash and time investment up front...if your wild new idea didn't fly it wasen't as much of a financial setback...games today are very expensive to produce, why take risks especially in this economy?