What would happen if a Microsoft Bing van were driven past every Google building and parking lot, photographing every person and car that arrived and departed? How many minutes before the police would be called or a lawsuit would be filed? Then we would know how much Google liked street photography.

Here we go again - 'lets computerize this mess and hope to improve it!' All you get is a computerized mess. But seriously, what does the poster expect his/her bosses to do? Create a razzle dazzle multimedia presentation that highlights your new tasks and responsibilities? Not likely. 'Get this done, and get it done fast'. Clickers during a business meeting? I don't think so. You are there to work, not be entertained or play games. I've seen 30+ years of technology in education and most of the time they prevent learning because there aren't enough computers, the server is down, it takes 15 mins to get everyone started (that is a huge chunk of time for a teacher/professor) Or, being the cynic that I am, maybe colleges will embrace this to recruit more students and charge higher fees. All they care about is their revenue, not whether the students are employable.

But let's get serious folks, the politicians love that newspapers are failing. Less serious investigative journalism, less scrutiny, fewer FOI requests etc. but what about bloggers, you ask? Bloggers only write about what they find on the web, how many of them are pounding the pavement? eavesdropping in bars? cultivating the next 'Deep Throat' source? You like your job and your pay check, journalists like their pay check too. Unless you are going to your boss on Monday and say 'all our products and services should be free and I'll work for free too' then be prepared to pay. BTW: this announcement is no surprise. Last year he gave a speech on this topic. Then NY Times announced pay-only access would start in 2011. They allowed plenty of time for other competitors to also announce similar plans. If no-one else followed then they could drop the idea. Similar to how US airlines collude when they announce fee and increases. So subscribe and support the press! or at least click the banner ads when you see something interesting.

Probably it will go through the same paranora that people had over cookies and eventually most people will give up and accept how much can be tracked about themselves and their web browsing.

A customer just run their $10k scanner on our software and only found 3 problems. But it turned out the vendor had grabbed every 'security vulnerability' ever reported on any discussion board/mailing list and listed it as a problem. e.g. 'I tried this URL and my computer slowed down a bit. I think it is a denial of service attack.' Took a few days to research and disprove their claims. Meanwhile, how many other such claims is it making? To me, it is analogous to switching on 'Show all warnings' - I've worked with managers and developers that want to eliminate all the warnings in the source. Apart from just rock polishing, I think it distracts them from focusing on the real issues like security and performance. Like any job, you need to have the right tools and know how to use them. We do use Java Findbugs and network scanners. But poor use of any tools only leads to cuts, bruises and visits to the emergency room.

WeirdStuff is selling UPS cases without batteries IIRC $60 for a 3000VA unit. Add new batteries and you'll save a ton of money. With any used UPS you will want to put new batteries in anyway. We have 6 UPS, all from craigslist. We replaced the batteries and have had no problems.

Which of the following is a better password: "v6@!Tt3#" or "The name of my dog is Spot." ? 8 chars vs 27 chars The *length* of the password is more important than the complexity of the password. And users are more likely remember (and not write down) a pass phrase.

If SPs can sniff the data to detect and block copyright material then they will also be able to detect malware, spam and all the other attacks going in and out of their networks. Maybe it is just easier to blame end users (including grandma) for not installing fixes to crazy security bugs and to charge them for the bandwidth when they're attacked than cleaning up their networks

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Us programmers are too busy dealing with the first two to ever reach the third..

Forget the presentations and the tours with all the impressive blinking lights tapering off to the horizon. It's all about what happens when things go wrong! We've had Alex answer the phone on a weekend and refuse to do anything with a windows server because he only likes Linux, wait for the Windows guys on Mondays. No help, no escalation. End of contract there. Failed mirrored disk? - don't be surprised if they replace the good one. Be aware that the fancy network status websites only include a sample of the actual errors, power outages and faults. Rebuild a simple server? three shifts to do it and the last guy left without leaving the root password. Ignore the data center review sites. They insist you provide a URL that they can track back to the hosting company's network. A brilliant way to ensure happy reviews only because no current customer is going to let the world know their servers are at a horrible hosting site. Make sure the escalation process works. Use fire drills on them to figure out if it really works. Another great question to ask - is their phone system VOIP? If they get a DDOS attack then you can't call them because it takes out their phone system too. The above mentioned analysis of power and cooling is wonderful but if the NOC manager decides not to pay overtime then maintenance gets done in business hours. These are not bottom-feeder companies, these are mid-range or higher price ranges. Either you have to deal with these problems and set the right expectation in their minds, or be prepared to have plenty of backups and be able to move to another company when required.