doh - fixing post.

I also read this as well, and agree with your sentiments. How exactly any of these is an alternative browser to IE is beyond me when they are using the trident rendering engine.

Actually the summary is awful - of the 7 lesser known browsers - Avant, Maxthon, Slepnir are using trident (MSHTML). Appreciate that they may well be individual legitimate projects and not meaning to cast any aspersions on them, but having an additional 3 options which are how MS renders the web and whatever fobiles that entails, just seems wrong.

In his Glitter and Doom tour, Tom Waits pioneered an effective anti scalpers scheme.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glitter_and_Doom_Tour#Tickets

SQL parser/generator in the database driver

You don't need a full SQL parser: you just need to keep track of quoted strings, and you can do that with a four-state DFA.

They didn't rob the bank.

They didn't print fake dollar bill.

Every single dollar that they paid good money for purchasing the tickets are REAL money.

What's illegal about what they have done??

While we all like to laugh at stupid user tricks, the real problem is a lack of communication.

no. the real problem is that the user is stupid or ignorant or both.

communication is the workaround solution, not the problem....the support person has to continually rephrase the same question in several different ways so that the user understands the question and answers honestly (while interpretation and understanding are often part of the problem, in many cases users understand exactly what you are asking and will flat out LIE - "no, i didn't do X", "yes, of course i did Y", "no, there's nothing on the screen", "no, i haven't installed or changed anything").

ditto for explanations and instructions. keep rephrasing until the user understands and is able to follow the instructions.

One thing I have learned is don't think the other person understood what you said - their frame of reference may be different and you need to consider that when communicating.

yes. i agree with your conclusion if not with your premise (and remember: quite often their frame of reference is that of a stupid or ignorant person)

a good tech support person will try to teach the user - even if you know it's futile, even if you know they'll forget it 5 seconds after the problem is solved because you've already taught the same person the exact same thing many times before.

Watch out for the tall poppy syndrome.

If you put me in a secluded environment for six months with no video games, I'm pretty #&%$ing likely to become violent.

No, he's *buying* an apartment. "Apartment" is used for ownership, apparently more often on the East Coast. (Most of us use condo for that, like you did.)

That was the point I was going for. No idea why the mods have moderated my initial post as flamebait - makes no sense. As you say, was highlighting that the specs are the same as many phones out there - im genuinely interested in how win 7 mobile plays out - but this article offers nothing at all on that. Meh, meta-moderation is a great thing ;)

The SMB market is tough, but you can definitely make a living at it (Full Disclosure: I'm a partner in a very small corporation that provides SMB outsourced IT in the US).

It requires excellent people skills (politics and feelings, arg!), technical skills, sales skills, discipline with your time, and... Well, you end up getting to wear about every hat you can imagine. So if you're talented in multiple areas and intelligent, you'll do fine!

The really tough part is laying out money for Managed Services tools, since you can't really make much of a steady living doing break/fix work anymore. If you can't afford something like Kaseya (or a less expensive Manged Services system), you're pretty much boned. Smaller-Medium organizations stick with you because you provide enterprise-class IT support at a monthly rate that is lower than a salaried in-house IT guy. Between our group of guys we have a ton of expertise that most organizations couldn't get for under six figures.

For all you guys that have worked in enterprise IT forever, just imagine your team, but pretend that everyone is competent, friendly, and working towards the same goal as you. That's a good SMB IT provider.

All digression aside, the market is there, but you have to bust your ass every single day to keep your customers and make new ones. Good luck ;).

I keep reading about those daily reboots, but I have owned 6 different windows mobile phones since 2002 and I never had such problems.