Walmart used to do (and probably still does) this to their suppliers. The only difference is the consumer never knew their was a coercive price negotiation going on because the product simply never appeared on store shelves, and usually there was a substitute from another vendor.

but his history is pretty weak. Up until the rise of the internet in the '90s (or possibly the "Weird Science"/"Revenge of the Nerds" era in the 1980s), nerds/geeks/otaku were right up there with gays, women and ethnic/religious minorities for being bullied, harassed and abused by the crueler edges of the mainstream. And this kind of harassment still goes on in certain areas/communities - try being a geek in a gang-ridden slum sometime.

That certainly doesn't justify a nerd perpetuating the cycle of abuse onto women or any of the other groups. But it does mean that there are better ways to engage the "nerd community" than by claiming that they aren't the subjects of abuse themselves.

In my experience a CAB usually gets introduced in a small organization if something really got screwed up under the old process. There are exceptions - you could get a CTO who is gung-ho for ITIL, or you may have a new, important customer who insists on "process". But a CAB is an attempt to manage change and prevent problems in the working environment. So unless you have a better solution that will prevent negative impacts from your change process, go do the paperwork, with special attention to any risks or issues associated with the change (extended maintenance window, complex install or backout process, partial or incomplete fixes that still leave issues open). You can probably half-ass the CAB and get your work done almost like the old days, but when the next failed change occurs and they find out you hid risks or didn't do proper research, your ass could be out the door.

OTOH, if you really hate bureaucracy that much, hauling your ass out the door could be your best option - as long as you have a different career in mind besides sysadmin.

What I get for not scrolling down before posting. Being a millionaire ain't what it used to be: it's definitely middle class now.

If you earn $80k+ a year, you need to be a double millionaire just in retirement savings to maintain your income when you retire. I guess this means 44% of developers don't expect to retire at age 65?

This isn't just randomly going after relatives to pay a debt. The chain is
1) person A (allegedly) receives an overpayment
2) person A dies. The overpayment is a liability of the estate of person A.
3) Persons B and C inherit from person A. If no reserve is left in the estate, the IRS will come after the heirs for recovery.

While NSA was hunting sysadmins, they were being pwned by...a sysadmin!

Yet another example of how NSA is too focused on offensive network capabilities (breaking into target systems) and doesn't pay enough attention to defense (strong crypto, open security models, etc.)

...
Caalll for Super Chicken!

Ba-buck!

Or maybe it's Baby Huey.

1) Rollback Ukraine to previous "territorial integrity", possibly with some bargaining over the structure of a new government.
2) Russia annexes Crimea after their puppets declare independence and the remainder of Ukraine joins EU (and possibly NATO), starting a new cold war. Ukraine gets screwed over in this case because they don't really have any guarantee that NATO would back them up any more than the current coalition fails to.

This is all part of a cunning plan to have Android and/or Chromium enter the desktop/laptop market. Start by denigrating your target.

As an add-on to this, could you put covers on the control panels that only unlock after an RFID or badge swipe? That would help confirm use of a particular piece of equipment.

How many concurrent users do you typically get in the common room? If there are a lot of people that hang out waiting for equipment, or kibitzing, RFID would be less effective. But in that case, you would have witnesses as to who did a particular f-up. So I suspect you're dealing with small numbers of people in the room at any given time. This would make RFID more effective.

To further elucidate:

- This presupposes that general acceptance of Google glass is a desirable outcome.

In that case, the time he's wasting trying to justify jQuery to the app reviewer should be taken into consideration. If he's going to lose 10 hours in multiple email exchanges trying to get them to accept it, he'd have been better off coding manually and testing the hell out of it.

HP wrote: “This type of support provider may appeal to budget-conscious procurement managers, but the support doesn’t match the breadth and depth of HP’s support expertise or global parts supply chain nor does it give our sales reps and partners the added loyalty that comes from an ongoing relationship built over time between HP and the customer, an attribute which often goes unrecognized.”

So among other reasons, they want to squeeze out or get a cut from the non-partnered support providers who are freeloading off of HP HW patches and making money from their own customers. Customers without any support contract at all are getting caught in the cross-fire. Another issue is that customers who don't _need_ a full-service support deal, but do want access to patches and parts don't have that type of option available from HP.

All in all a pretty dumb move: Not much immediate financial gain, and loads of customer ill-will.

Except this seems to be a silicon valley bandwagon: IBM, Cisco and Sun/Oracle have similar paywalls for their HW/firmware patches.

Software patches still seem to be wide open in most cases.