I think it kinda takes a sociopath to willingly work for the NSA these days...

The "worth" of a polygraph lies in the subject's belief in its ability to judge his truthfulness. Basically it's a psychological tool. It's ability to discover lies relies on the subject's belief in the operator's "professional" ability and his faith in machines making no mistakes.

One has to wonder whether that trick ever worked on someone in IT...

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States..."

Whoopsie, wrong questionnaire.

Then you've been working for the wrong people.

The aforementioned situation actually came up a few months ago with a board meeting. And yes, the board member did want my security person fired.

Asking whether I should write that he wants him to be fired for following security protocol (one should maybe know that security is paramount in our company) while said board member in turn wanted him to bypass security and allow him in unidentified closed the case pretty quickly.

Aside of a rather tasteless joke that comes to my mind...

Do you really want them to rip?

Wait 'til the big networks pick up the story.

Disability? Hardly. The webpages are just bloated, fat, loaded with useless information and pretending they know better what you want than you do.

That's not disabled, that's the current standard of the western world.

That's not fair. I really don't feel like defending Verizon, but I am absolutely certain they don't discriminate against the deaf and blind. They rob everyone without prejudice.

Also Israel. Another successful socialist state in the European/American/Canadian/Australian model.

Or how the citizens of Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden actually do pay their taxes without demur.

Don't just rely on the anecdotes that confirm your preconceptions.

I'm honestly surprised we don't hear a few managers getting offed now and then.

My trust in the 2nd was premature, it seems...

Dear Sir/Madam,

We found out that from your IP address someone downloaded our stuff. You may now either admit guilt and pay $inconvenient_sum or spend the next 10ish years in court in a legal battle against a company with more funds than dear God himself over $ridiculous_sum. You'll probably win the suit, but for sure it will cost you more than $inconvenient_sum, and you can bet your ass that if you dared to try getting it back from us, we'll drag it out 'til the red guy from the basement complains about heating problems or you're finally totally broke.

It is of course entirely your choice.

Of course you can! It's even easy.

For-sale content of course cannot compete on price with free stuff. That's a given. But there are two areas where you can very easily compete with it: Convenience and quality.

Of course, if you're like the content industry and artificially lower both for the sake of "fighting piracy", you only shoot your own foot.

That's just the tip of the ice cube.

Imagine you're living in a country where movies are dubbed. Dubbed BADLY, I should probably add. I would PAY to get movies that run on public TV if I could only watch them without the atrocious dubbing!

And don't think that buying the DVD would solve that problem. Because of course you can ONLY get the dubbed version, while importing any media is of course outlawed. I tried to ask some politicians around here why it's ok for companies to manufacture abroad and import them for zilch while it's not ok for me to buy DVDs abroad. So far no sensible answer...

Personally, I'd consider a token ring much cooler.