Every time a thunderstorm rolls through.
The worst parts of comcast is due to them having a government sanctioned monopoly in many of the areas they are in.

Should I wish to leave them and switch to a another government sanctioned monopoly with slower access speeds, I can switch to Uverse.

I don't want a DMV experience when I need to adjust my service or get support, and all other options having been priced out from government competition, leaving only government monopoly in place.

No Thanks

On top of that, in such an environment, you have companies taking advantage of uninformed politicians to sell them craptastic products and services to 'improve' the local municipal net.

And within a short time period of a few years or less, the government will be injected page breaking "announcements and reminders" into pages, like certain telcos have experimented with.

Finally, you get censorship, bc you know for the kids, in the only remaining provider in town.

Next is the ability of any elected jackass to change policies to benefit his interests regarding content and usage rules, speeds, etc. And there will be no competition.

Hell No. Bad as it is at (most) times, I'd rather have comcrap.

They are only worth as much as someone is willing to pay them to do a given job and/or retain there services; and the person accepts.

Any perceived worth beyond that is measurable in pixie fecal matter.

Practice makes perfect, so try it out on Venus first.
At the same time, try out warming techniques on mars, so that when inevitably used on and screws up earth, you can attempt to reverse and make it even worse.

This would have been so useful to know how to use back in the olden days of yore.

What do the kids use these days for the various languages?

He sadly passed away :(

Give me a nuke, Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, and Sad Batman, and I'll make sure that asteroid is good and proper disintegrated!

So, is missile command a dumping ground, or a proving ground where one has to show they've taken enough shit and learned to kiss the right asses and the test is an arbitrary hurdle?

If it's just an arbitrary hurdle, fine, however, I would still believe that when handing out limited promotions, as unscrupulous as the process is made out to be, it seams that having the better score makes it easier to justify on a form why x is promoted over y. I can easily believe that the equiv of HR dumping resumes that don't have the right buzzwords on them or masters vs bachelors vs decade of experience is occurring.

Then do enlighten us, what sort of things are on such a test where the difference between 93 and 95% is immaterial? I'd be very curious to know.

It most certainly is the entire point, and I do love me some good blackberries and fishing.

However, when times are tough, and one needs to stand out from the crowd to get paid and advance, the best prepared is oft likely to achieve their goals. Too many are content to live a subsidized lifestyle and too many more are content to subsidize instead of getting the subsidized off their posteriors.

In my particular case, I'm approaching in 15+ years or so when my age begins to count against me. Therefore, I ensure through my own hard work and self learning that I am versatile, experienced, and able to adapt quickly and better to newer technologies than the little (cheaper) snots coming up under me expecting praise and adulation at every turn so their 'feelings' don't get hurt.

I disagree entirely. One question when dealing with the operations of a nuclear missile site is not statistical error if that question involves verification procedure for a launch order, or anything else that involves a life or megadeath decision.

tl;dr: Make your professional opinion known politely to the client in writing, with your advice, them let the client decide, and have records of this decision.

While I agree with you that security should be paramount, in reality, it is often trumped by adhoc business needs and costs. The owner/C-level want this or that to be able to happen, even tho you know it's bad security. You explain it, recommend alternative, then go with what they decide, no matter how asinine, provided you like receiving money. Document the decision so that when the inevitable happens, you've covered your posterior.

From the outset, it doesn't seem like the client is taking things too seriously when it comes to data, they are using sql express after all. The client typically doesn't want to be bothered with our techno babble of how they are doing it wrong, they want it to just work and on budget. They purchase service contracts and warranties so that when something does go wrong, they pick up the phone to get it fixed or point fingers of blame towards when legal gets involved. It's all about passing responsibility. That's why you document and get signed off that the client is aware of these shortfalls and that you work doesn't cover any breach due to the shortfalls. The client sure as hell doesn't need or want a pissing match between you and another vendor, even if you are correct.

Don't piss off the client. Call it a day, cash your check, have some beer.

If that is all one aspires towards, so be it. Being able to enjoy one's free time is a wonderful thing.

I, however, was instilled with an ethic to "always be better than the other guy in what you do".
It's served my family well for many years, even in hard times.

Your last paragraph raises valid points, however, it's based on insufficient information of the promotion process on both our parts.
Provided everything else is equal in qualifications for promotion, then yes, 95 is better than 93 when selecting for a limited supply of promotion.

However, this does not exist in a vacuum, and in your example, the lazy disorganized book retention specialist would be passed over for their disorganization if it hindered there performance in other areas.

Additionally, not toward you, but in general, I call Bull on people dismissing that the difference between 95 and 93% being a single question as not that crucial to the selection process. If that question happen to be order of procedures for verification protocols for a launch command, I want the person who got that correct promoted. If it's about security protocols, base operations, food or launch fuel logistics, targeting calculations, etc, I want the guy that got the right answers.

When nuclear missiles are involved, I want to be certain the most knowledgeable are being promoted.