Technology can be hacked. Cars were 'hackable' when they were just mechanical: shims or tools to unlock doors, bypassing the ignition, random fun things I've seen on TopGear. There was one care where if you pulled out a fuse or something, put it in backwards, it started the car. Now there is more tech in cars, and tech is hackable, so cars are more hackable in 'elegant' ways as opposed to using a rock or screwdriver. Not really breaking news, but good to know and keep an eye on.

A firewall between you and the outside world, yes, absolutely. If you have to open ports to your network, that is expected, and you should make every effort to minimize those ports and encrypt when possible. If you can establish a DMZ even better.

Internally you should be maintaining a secure environment anyhow, so there is no need. Between users and vulnerabilities, I can understand why people would want to turn on internal server firewalls, but generally no I don't see that happen. And that's from small to very large corporate entities. Mostly what I see is people who don't know how to manage their networks, or don't understand security, saying 'well I'm going to turn on the firewalls and now everything is Secure'. Most applications on internal networks expect wide ranges of ports to be open, and yes that is normal. If you have the time to manage every server at the port level, go ahead and enable them, but most administrators do not have enough time to handle normal day to day activities, let alone micromanaging networks like that.

I have both Verizon FIOS and Netflix. Here is what I, as a user/subscriber, expect. I pay Netflix to stream movies. I pay Verizon to provide me bandwidth and internet/web access. I don't pay either of them to throttle my connection or do what they want to quality. I pay for X amount, and expect to get it. If Verizon cannot hold up their end of the deal to provide me a pipe, then they aren't doing their job.

It's funny you think people patch their systems _now_

The question I'd like to see answered with data to back it up is how many time are officers out handing out moving vehicle violations vs. how much money do they bring in? If they weren't out spending time/budget on writing tickets, would additional work get done, or would there be superfluous staff that could be cut? I think it's important to have a well staffed police department should trouble occur, but if they are using tickets to increase their budget I question if they are just trying to support too much overhead.

I suppose someone has to mention obvious things, so you have this article. I had an iPad 2 and it was great and lasted me several iterations. I only just got a new one for Christmas this year. So... yes. People who have one already aren't going to run out and just get a new one because it's new. And there are some decent Android ones out there for people who don't want an iPad.

Same with the iPod, everything can play music now. My iPad and phone included, so sure. The idea of an iPod that ONLY plays music is sort of a dated concept. My wife loves her nano and small iPods for the gym, which makes sense for working out and instances where you only need music. But in general, things like browsing the web or running apps is basically expected now, regardless of the ecosystem or OS. Now, I don't want to _have_ to buy a phone to play music, but when I can store it all on a device that I'm already carrying around, why would I bother with an extra device like an iPod (or any music player).

I think we are just seeing the prolonged lifecycle of a MMORPG. Most either fizzle and die, or last long enough that they have to start going through these hoops. I think WoW is just one of the biggest/longest so we are seeing some of these ideas for a first time or at least publicized in a grand fashion. Every iteration has made the game easier and easier for players, pushed the upper levels, and introduced things that make players who played the first iteration sound like grandpa (we used to have to grind for days for a single level, up hill, both ways). This is just another step where content is being added, so how can you get the most out of it (business need)? You let players just jump right to it! It bugs me, but as someone working full time with a family, I can see how players may appreciate it.

All tools have pros and cons. In general, yes IDEs are good. Is it possible to rely too much on a tool, and not understand enough of the language? That's possible, sure. But that's not regarding IDEs specifically, that's just in general. I'm sure there are some old school CLI geeks out there that will thump their VI totems and say the only real devs use text editors, but that's just an extreme, of which there are many. Be a good dev, and use the tools that make you efficient. Don't use them as a crutch to shore up bad practices.

I think the problem is the same most IT professionals find about their own job. When you have a good manager, they are almost invisible and you don't realize what is going on behind the scenes. When they are a problem, then you notice and complain. It's how most of the other departments in a company see IT. Completely ignore them unless something is wrong, and then complain about them.

It's been exceedingly long lived. At one point I hoped it would die so I could buy something fancy, but it's been working for so long now I think I'll feel bad when it finally goes.

Since everyone is sharing anecdotal stories, I'll throw in my two bits. I have an HP ColorSmart C7280 and I love it. It's an inkjet, and we usually print fairly regularly, but it does still run through it's little maintenance run now and then. And photos look great usually. I use it for scanning fairly often as well, and it has a flatbed and a feeder. I wouldn't mind a laserjet, but I haven't sat down to figure out costs and determine if the quality would be as nice.

I'm surprised no mention of PowerShell was listed. It's obviously platform specific, but Microsoft has done a nice job of including it in all their major platforms and products in recent years. I've used it on site for several customers, and I've had customers who are more technical asking about help with it. I'd be interested to see what sort of growth it's seen, and how it is supplanting (one can hope) old vbscript files that still linger.

I was thinking the same. That anecdotally it is an interesting point, but we don't know for certain that a parent/child combo means that the child will be playing. And really as a game store employee, that's all they can really do: point out what they saw, and then let other people draw conclusions. I'm sure some of them don't care or fall into the bad parent category, but like parent post said, a lot of those people may be buying it just for themselves.

I've actually have to do that, and even wrote it up at one point. I hate Lotus Notes, and not being designed for a multi-user environment you had to jump through hoops to get it to run right. Which unfortunately is where Citrix gets a lot of hate from. 'Admins' who don't know how to configure the environment, poor corporate policies, and forcing applications that shouldn't be run on it, to run on it. It's one of those platforms where people think 'well I have a hammer' and everything looks like a nail.

I have seen several large organizations that think or try to plan for HA, but never test it. And in some cases there is a very nebulous 'well, we fail over' type of plan. Nothing detailed, and nothing specific. I've only had one customer who actually went through the process of a complete restore/DR test. Most seem to hope that it just won't be needed.