So.... I can develop for Android ICS. Now! Just to learn Java! *coughs*

Eat a taco, recharge your smart phone from the caloric content.... sound's like a win win to me (jk)

*facepalm* That would explain the black hole that just formed in my office and consumed my co-worker. Poor fool, that's what he gets for taking my seat!

Well, we can clearly see that it's not an iPhone 4, else holding it with her left hand would kill the signal.

The Blue Screen of Death will now cause the green cloud of radioactive fallout! Gate's is simply looking to create a rainbow of diversity for the ways that he can cause pain and destruction. Though... I'm not sure leaping from electronic to biological desolation? Might their be some anti-trust issues here (again)? Billy when oh when will you learn?

This sort've thing drives me insane. DLC is a good idea in concept but in practice? You get results like this. You shouldn't have to pay any gaming company for additional content they included on the disc, it's madness, taken to another high level. I get severly annoyed with these gaming companies that release DLC 5 days after the game's out,a nd change 15 USD for it. Or the ones that release DLC that actually just fixes bugs in their game whilst adding very very little to the experience. Its one thing to add an expansion to your game, it's another thing to take content that should've been free that was already on the disc... and charge people to play it. I don't say this often, but I hope the hacking community figures out a way to open up the extra content on the disc for free on the PC, because if I owned the game... I'd crack it.

Actually we've run into that. But That's a violation of HIPPA (Health Information Privacy and Portability Act), and if you find your users doing something like that in a medical environment? It can mean very serious action is taken. We actually had one person refuse to 'not' use post-its.. and they where let go from the organization. And I mean honestly in the grand scheme of things, you're adding one password to your daily computing life, that will ultimately save someones butt if their PC gets stolen. Where I work, most of the Doctors are grateful for that extra layer of security. They know that if patient data was leaked, on their watch? It would likely mean their jobs, a black mark on their names in the public, and a lot worse for the organization they work for. I'm sure its similar in other fields.

I really fail to see why so many of these companies fail to use common sense. The first thing we do as an IT staff in my organization with laptops is encrypt them. Use something like Truecrypt, enable full drive encryption and set a good password. Laptop gets stolen? You're out the cost of the physical hardware that was taken from you... but the data that was on the machine? You can rest easy that you took every precaution you could to keep it safe. Of course, I work in the health care field so, any laptops, tablets, netbooks etc that have any ePHI (Electronic Protected Health Information), have to be secured. We just take our security practices a step further and do it to all of them. Which is worse? Having your users gripe a bit about an extra password? Or having data stolen? It's saved us once already as a laptop was stolen last year on a business trip.

I think that the biggest problem Linux has currently is its need completely redesign its applications so often. It's not that innovation isn't the answer. The problem I find is that all too often they throw the baby out with the bath water. In order to keep on the innovation band wagon I see far too many projects throw tried and tested functionality out saying 'we'll add that back into the new version later'. KDE4 is just the most visible culprit right now. Projects like Amarok 2 are guilty of it as well. Don't get me wrong I love Linux. I use Linux in every place possible. FC10 is my Desktop at work. Ubuntu 9.04 runs on my Netbook (and runs well I might add). MythDora is my media center hub w/ Boxee integrated. My main desktop runs Arch Linux. But I digress. Linux to me is the ultimate desktop for it's advanced and flexibility, nobody else can claim that. It's also the most stable platform to run a server on bar none. However I think we like a lot of geeks suffer from the 'look before you leap' senario. We come up with an idea or see a new way of doing something and immediately rush it into the redesign of an application. Now for technically minded people that's not a big deal, we can work around a programs quirks and still enjoy it. But in order for Linux to be used by the public we need to have a more stable base line. Microsoft wins the OS wars not because they're on the bleeding edge but because they're not. They wait and let everyone else try out new ideas... then they 'borrow' them. They're successful because there's always that common tie in in Windows. No matter what they do to that OS it still has the windows 'feel' so the average joe can navigate it. That's what we're missing.

To me this would be an ultimate chance for some humor on my application. I would start writing down random sex sites (nothing illegal) and perhaps a few online dating sites, then make up some fake profiles. Hopefully that would teach these folks not to be so damn nosy.

IT Departments rarely get any respect, we're firmly placed on the 'Rodney Dangerfield' rung of the office social ladder. People seem to enjoy blaming IT for anything that goes wrong in their office. Microwave dies? IT should be fixing it (trust me, I've been ASKED to do that job... no joke). I was in your situation a few years ago. I've been doing IT for 7 years now, at first I was a happy go-lucky fellow with patients to take on the world. But... that wears thin when your co-workers treat you like another machine to do their complex tasks (or some of them do). Everyone expects technological miracle, and they expect them to cost their department $50. My advice to you is to get a good sense of humor and a thick skin, you'll need both. Make people laugh and you disarm them a bit. I always try to have some sort've amusing 1 liner to give my bosses when something is nearly an impossible task, and they get the picture. Another important thing that I've seen mentioned here is documentation. You need to document everything and anything that goes on while you're at work. Keep a log of your daily work activities, the projects you've got going, any problems that occur during the day (and the steps you took to resolve them). The most important thing to document is altercations with people that you have, and they will happen. Remember first off if someone is being beligerant towards you, keep your calm. Yelling back at them will only escalate things and get you involved in any of the negative effects. Also any witnesses available get them to write out what they saw from their perspective and sign off / date it ASAP. This is annoying, but it's saved my hide time and time again. If you've got 3 people agreeing with your side of the story, the other individual generally doesn't garner any sympathy. Lastly if all else fails? Violent video games... just don't start picturing peoples heads on your enemies and you're golden. Hope that helps -K

Perhaps this is one of the first steps in this new transparent gov't we where told to expect? Next maybe Biden will accidentally bring us alien autopsy footage while commenting on the terrible interior design of Area 51.

Absolute Power, Corrupts Absolutely.

I find that Global Warming has become less of a science and more of a religious movement. There are people whom I work with who actually have lost sleep, and become ill from worrying about it. Oddly enough these are the same people who become verbally abusive to anyone that disagrees with them. I thought the whole point of the scientific method was to create 'theories', even Gravity is a theory in scientific terms, not a fact. When you attempt to silence the scientific debate in a venue such as this, it reminds me of something from WWII. People always seek to shout down oposition rather than listening to what it has to say. I almost akin this whole situation to a new rendition of the Crusades. Don't agree with Global Warming? Well you're cast out from society in a social sense. I actually have friends who refuse to speak to me now because of my opinions on this subject. To me? That's just sad. I'm all for renewable energy sources, don't get me wrong. But do it when it makes economic sense, when the cost of the technology to produce per watt becomes comparable to our current methods, not before. If you suddenly take that competition out of this, I believe you'll find innovation in renewable energy go to the wayside. Why work to improve a technology if it's simply going to be imposed on the public anyway right?

That's the problem, due to the inadiquacies /of/ the Canadian health system I have no regular doctor on the Canadian side. I haven't for several years since my previous one retired. Even then, that doctor was an hour and fifteen minutes away. As for your generalization about not knowing anything about Canadian Health Care.... a simple slip of terminology and you jump all over me hrmm? I know enough about it, I LIVED with it (apparently just like you). I got OUT of it's grasp as soon as humanly possible, and I am the better for it. My question is how can you berate what's on the other side of the fence if you've never been on it yourself? Perhaps you should learn to not judge people but question them.