For the years I was working in the tech industry, I was steadily employed (I'm on a disability retirement now.)

The only certificate I ever got was a low-level Oracle 7 DBA cert. Not one employer ever asked about that cert. Instead, they had their DBAs asking me *questions* to see what I knew. And because I'd worked with some sharp people and had good lunch-room discussions with them, I knew *far* more than that certificate course ever taught me.

My experience with "training courses" is that they run you through the same material you can get by downloading the user manuals and playing with the product. Unless you're talking something like a Cisco box that you can't just download, you're far better off using the internet for training materials, *learning* your stuff, and being able to *answer questions* during the interview process.

If you think even the most bone-headed of employers is going to take your word for it that a certification means you "know your stuff", you're off in fantasy land.

Worse, claiming a certificate means that you're going to be *grilled* on that subject if they're hiring you for it, so you'd damned well *better* know your stuff. Taking a certificate course for the sake of being "employable" is as bone-headed as renovating a house in order to sell it -- you *never* get back the money you spent on renovations, and you *never* earn as much more money as you spent on the course.

Certificate courses are all about one thing and one thing only: a revenue stream for whoever is doing the training.

Talk about worrying about drips while the river floods. Hundreds of billions wasted on the F35's alone, and someone is worried about $35 million for satcom.

No wonder there are never any *real* cuts to the military budgets with "prioritization" like this.

Fuhrer Harper doesn't give a rat's ass about our Constitution or Charter of Rights in Canada. His government has spent millions fighting lawsuits challenging their illegal legislation on a Charter basis, only to "tweak" the legislation when the courts mandated that the law must change, but never tweaking it to comply with the Charter, only to meet the courts demand that it change.

Fuhrer Harper is busy threatening the entire nation with an impending terrorist-inspired doom if we don't re-elect the Cuntservatives this fall. Have no doubt, C-51 (the most recent spying legislation) will be challenged in court and will lose, but that doesn't stop mein Fuhrer from pushing it through like the jackboot he is anyhow.

Perhaps I have better things to do with my time than read documentation for obsolete CRAP.

Ask the people who wrote the software that doesn't exhibit the bug. Obviously it can be done.

This is not a "Unicode bug". It is a rendering bug exhibited by some applications.

So you're going to ban outsourcing, then?

Every single contract I worked on save for one required that you use the company's equipment on site due to security requirements of the job. Every single one.

This isn't some weird "breach of regulations" -- it's the norm.

WTF are you bothering with a lawyer for? Aren't you paid enough to just do your damned job and STFU? You think you're going to "cash out" with some big lawsuit?

Even if you do cash out, expect to be blacklisted by every agency across the country when they find out what you've done, and never to work again.

I have no problem with forcing them to install security updates instead of letting them watch more YouTube videos.

That has always been true.

Unfortunately, the people who sign the cheques are the ones who make the decisions, and they don't make their decisions based on security concerns. Their only concern is "does it work?"

Silly me. I agree with them in most cases, unless you're talking about down-level software. If current releases of software are being broken by updates, there is a problem with the updates and/or the implementation of the APIs, because API meanings should not be changed by security updates, only major revisions of the OS.

In Canada, they've had the option of placing you on a 72 hour mental health assessment for years, though usually a decision is made after the first 24 hours as to whether to hold you for the 72 hours. If you are having serious difficulties, they can hold you for up to three weeks after the 72 hours, an involuntary commital.

I went through the process, and it's a damned good thing they were able to hold me. They literally saved my life -- I was suicidal.

On the flip side, I've always applied all my Windows updates except for driver updates whenever they came out. It's only the driver updates that have proven "iffy" in the past for me.

But I am going to miss doing those updates on my schedule, as I've always figured it's good to know that the updates were done so I can blame them if any issues should arise.

They also don't mention what's going to happen if you restore from a restore point -- will the update be automatically be re-applied, even though you restored because it caused you issues?

Personally I think "truthers" are just very lonely and insecure people who are trying to boost their own egos through claiming to have "secret" or "superior" knowledge to the rest of the world. Kind of sad, really.

"Truther" conspiracy nuts don't believe in *anything* they can't see, feel, hear, or touch themselves. They probably think the very *existence* of Pluto is a lie.

You can make people go to school, but you can't force them to become educated. :(

Grocery Manufacturer's Association says it all. This is a ruling in favour of manufactured food-like products, not the production of actual food.