Please be sure to read up on the concept of jury nullification before you go. You have more power in the jury box than any other individual in the justice system.

Monitoring the use of some systems is required to ensure the end user is abiding by the Acceptable Use Policy. Examples I can think of right off the top of my head:

* Keeping personal use of company resources to a minimum
* Not being used for fraud or embezzlement
* Not being used for illegal or illicit activities
* Evaluating and scanning for security threats and vulnerabilities

You are bound to stumble upon some sensitive information in the performance of some of these duties. There are probably plenty more examples. Anyone else want to chime in here?

You have a lot more faith in the government to do the right thing than I do.

My wife and I each have Password Safe (or Password Gorilla on my Linux boxes) installed. You can download it at http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/. We store our logins and sensitive digital information inside the encrypted password safe. The password safe files are stored on our hard disk drives and a cloud service (Dropbox). Inside the password safe is instructions on how to access each others password safe. These instructions are also stored in a physical safe along with other important documents and a list of where we keep our wills, birth certificates, etc. The combination to the physical safe is stored in each of our password safes. The combination to the physical safe is also shared with relatives we trust to take care of our affairs should both of us die unexpectedly or be otherwise incapacitated.

I tried Unity. It cut my productivity, so I switched to Xubuntu. Now I like it better than I did the original Ubuntu Classic.

OK, now I really feel old. The 90's were mostly a blur, but Slashdot will always stand out for me as a key part of the "forming" years of the dot com era.

Thank you for everything.

When will it be on ESPN8?

After my time, but I was happy to see them step up to the plate and call their colleagues out for their illegal actions.

Thanks for the feedback, but it is spelled both ways.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/extrovert
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/extravert

"The spelling extrovert is common in general use (Merriam-Webster has extravert as a variant of extrovert), but extravert is more typical in psychology (The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology and Corsini's Encyclopedia of Psychology use the term "extravert")." http://bit.ly/p0wLlK

Don't forget these gems of confusion:

* your vs. you're
* their vs. there vs. they're

Cheers!

Q: How do you know who the extroverts are at the NSA?

A: They look at other peoples' shoes.

All kidding aside, the NSA does have quite a powerhouse team of mathematical geniuses, computer scientists, etc. and from everyone I talked to who worked there (I'm no longer in the intel game, so it has been a while), it is a great place to work with a lot of flexibility and innovation.

... were easily solved with four little words:

"Ubuntu Classic (No Effects)"

I don't need eye candy. Perhaps I should give Xubuntu a look?

Four digits... 36... gamer. Taking a bit of a break right now from gaming due to business / family / life / etc. piling up tasks. Hopefully things will smooth out here in the next few months so I can get some more fraggin' in.

Interesting note: When I was in my prime, active duty USMC, and had cat-like reflexes, I played FPS games. Now, in my old age, I enjoy MMOs more. Food for thought.

If you look at the process that starts with a freshman's first CS class in college and ends with that individual starting a paying job at a company, there is another kink in the process: the HR department. Companies need to stop saying they want to see a CS degree for jobs that focus on networking, information systems engineering, computer hardware help desk support, systems administration, CTO / CIO positions, etc. The two just don't match up.

One other comment mentioned that CS is not a "vocational" degree. I agree. I dropped my CS degree and went with an IT-oriented business degree instead. The CS professors weren't teaching me anything I did not already know and use regularly at work. From what I see, just about everything you need to learn regarding programming and math can be learned for free off of the Internet. Teach people to learn and educate themselves.

When I interview programmers, I approach CS degree holders with an abundance of caution. We had a handful work for us in the past, and only one proved to be worth the money we were paying them. The rest had no idea how to take an idea and turn it into a working software product. I would rather hire a self-taught programmer any day of the week (and have on many occasions).