I have 20 people who support 7,500 endpoints, nearly 1,500 printers, 450 servers, and over 500 switches across a multi-site facility. Consider also ensuring that data is backed up, secured, and that disaster recover works they way you planned, or the difficulty in finding people who can solve problems, which is what being a good I.T. professional is actually all about.

I outsource to vendors because I simply haven't got a chance in hell to support it any other way.

For a talking head, such as Paul Venezia to have the audacity to think he knows jack about the enterprise is an insult to those of us who do, and indicative of what is really wrong in I.T.; people who have neither the intellect nor aptitude for information technology being in positions to influence the industry, like the editors for rags like InfoWorld.

Maybe at Google, or Microsoft, or any of the other "places to be" the half-life is 15 years, but most I.T. professionals don't work in that world. We work in mom-and-pop, and small-to-medium sized shops, supporting them, the countless 1000's of other small or large I.T. shops that actually consist of the bulk of the real world. We may consume the products that these "places to be" produce, but we're the ones that actually use them in a meaningful fashion and generate the pressure of implementation behind their technologies, and we do it for our entire careers. That's the problem with talking heads, they don't represent the real world that most people work in but they have undue influence on the perception of the real world. While his observations might be relevant for the rock star shops, he has hardly any bearing in my world.

This is why the world hates scientists. Sure, politicians and terrorists uses the weapons but it is the scientists who give us atomic bombs, the threat of nuclear winter, super viri, and now an engineered avian flu that can kill off half the planet's population.... what next? This asshat's ego is what has caused this, and all of the other asshats who contribute to weapons of mass destruction. Raccoon city here we come!

I'm going to say that no, it would not be Kosher to those movements for whom Kosher matters, the names of which vary depending upon what country you are living in.

For example, Kosher cheese can be made with animal-sourced rennet (non-Kosher) because the rennet itself is so different than the original source animal it came from, but the vat-grown meat (which I would not eat no matter how good it tastes, nothing to do with Kosher or not) would not be different than the original source in composition but only in how it was "raised."

Personally, these things disturb me on a level that I can't quote put my finger on.

Check into the concept of a demarchy, posited in the Revelation Space series of books. Kind of like what you'd end up with crowd sourced democracy, a democratic anarchy. I don't want to live in it.

No one is anti-science so get off your high horse. But really, does it make sense to shit in one's backyard? You science types make all of these experiments up in your heads, go beg for public money to make them happen, and don't truly have idea one about what will happen or how it will affect the Earth. It ain't like we got a backup plan if they really do cause something terrible to happen. Just because they haven't screwed the pooch for all of us yet, doesn't mean they should continue to get a free pass. Why don't you take your advanced degree and go do something beneficial for humanity, like flip burgers or cook fries (we all like fries) and then the limit of your harm equation will be burning your stupid ass on hot oil or maybe burning down Joe's burgers instead of melting the planet or placing a long distance call in the inhibitors. Hey here's an idea, even if giant lasers are cool and all, but fix something instead of waste money.... say spend some effort on finding and developing a nice, clean energy supply that doesn't pollute and can be had cheaply and easily, thereby freeing us from the clutches of the petroleum/coal overlords.

We'd all be able to survive without the Internet. YOU would have to get off your pasty white ass and venture outside, maybe pick up a ball, or a frisbee, or a HAM radio or something, but yeah, you'd survive just fucking fine. AND, in many respects, humanity would be a lot better off with the entitlement mentality that allows some stupid fucktard to make a statement implying the Internet access is a freaking necessity. Morons.

I am responsible for directing technology decisions for a large hospital system and Oracle will get no business recommendations from me for any of their technologies. Last week an Oracle rep called and wanted to talk about database directions and I stopped him, mid-sentence, to tell him that I wasn't interested in hearing anything. He asked why. I told him I don't like patent trolls and Oracle's latest salvo at Google over Android and Java was trolling. He was stupified that I wouldn't want to do business with them because of that. I told him ethics drive my decisions and Oracle failed the test and he should pass it up the line. I doubt he did but I don't care. Don't care about this either, Oracle was always a rotten company to deal with and nothing has changed. I hope Larry's latest blows up in his face.

They're gonna feel like fools when the doom and gloom prophesies don't pan out.

I've always "placed doubt in the legitimacy of your[my] elected officials"

They're all almost always liars, cheats, hypocrites, scammers, lawyers (evil onpar with pedophiles), or general scum. I don't trust any system where the representation is from a ruling elite, made up of monied families and friends, bought and paid by corporations and unions. Personally, anyone that places any trust in the current system is delusional.

eVoting is just another scam foisted on America that will result in less representative democracy. Any politician in favor of it should be summarily executed.

The nice thing about the Kindle, is that I can buy books pretty much I don't have to clutter up my Kindle with useless stuff due to very significant restrictions in how I use my device. Sure, Amazon has DRM but it's easy to get around and readily done. I can dump PDF, mobi, and text on there just fine and guess what, I can read those items for 10 or 12 days in a row between charges AND in full sunlight. The iPad, well, its an awesome device and the whole touch model represents a serious change in human-computer interaction, not seen since the change from DOS to Windows 20 years ago but for reading, I'll stick with my Kindle (or another e-Ink device).

Well, not really. Apple's legal team made sure they were the 'only innovator' in the early GUI days, but that was it for that period. They capitalized on the music biz with their MP3 player at the right time and in a slick way.

But they abandoned the PDA right when it was becoming a big market, and it remained a rather rich market for a decade without them.

Their cellphone just doesn't matter. It's got lots of hype behind it, but it's one of the crowd.

I was just about to mod this "funny" when I noticed the "informative" mod. I'm still laughing so hard at that that I'm all teared up.

Really, are these health professionals truly upset or is some journalist making a story? 3 hours of games is a huge reduction for most kids, let alone ones that would go to this camp. And they've got at least 8 hours for other activities...beavers beware!

So you're saying that you'd rather be a product than a customer?

I'd like to look at it from another perspective. I assume an IT department in an Hospital your dealing with general desktop apps as well as Patient data for insurance claims and employee data of some description. The thought that confidential patient data might be replicated on someones 'personal' machine quite frankly chills me. If I was Emperor if the IT department, I'd ban and make a sack-able offense plugging your personal machine into the hospital network. In my mind, I'd forgo any ability of employees to check their email from home. In fact I'd actively discourage it unless you were currently on-call for a specific reason and that on-call person would be issued work equipment for the task. If patient data was leaked and the media got hold of the story any argument for using personal machines and not locking down the network and securing the machines connected to it would be fuel for that media frenzy.