There may be differences between the continents here but at least in Europe I don't see a future with enough staff to warrant an IT department. Consider that most of the stuff we do today are actually being done by computers: robotic assembly in industry, online retail, digital video workflow in journalism & entertainment, online learning, learning algorithms on big data replacing analysts with spreadsheets, bureaucracy moving from people to algorithms and databases with web front-ends, hell even driverless cars replacing taxis and goods transports. We will need the "common Joe" to be as proficient with a computer as the baseline in any IT shop today. Sure for old companies stuck in the pre-internet world that have to answer phones, do spreadsheets and carry crates - there will be a place for an IT shop but a company starting up today has to vacuum up the able people so IT shops in old companies will experience brain drain. If you start a company today and think you need a fax-machine, a printer, a mail-server, a laptop per employee with the office on it - you are looking at it the wrong way. Hell if you need employees you are probably not thinking it through. Sure history is cyclical. Everything will happen again. But the internet and the huge dent it has made on every possible business out there - we are just seeing the start of a transition to another way of structuring companies. People say that "ze cloud" is too expensive for IT. That might be true for an old shop. But if you don't have whitespace, techies, cables, a good power deal, servers or even a building - that's a hefty price tag right there to get to a place where scaling the sucker is an even bigger investment. Buying IaaS and SaaS makes sense in the same way as not creating your own electricity and not building your own servers. Things are going to change but for most people it just means being employed somewhere else doing the same thing but for more customers.

seriously - have you seen windows 8? It's at best a shadow of XP and at worst an utterly horrible mess based on a brilliant idea that nobody wants. It's like ubuntu's unity - it's shit and it's the final nail in the coffin that is MS. Sure they'll be around for non-tech management types to buy crappy products from - but for the web-generation they don't really mean anything anymore. When I was a kid I had a poster of Bill Gates in my room. Then I listened to Linus pronounce Linux Linux and then I basically stopped worrying and now do most of my off-work stuff on iThings. Bill Gates was a long time ago - and kids today don't really care about it anymore. Linuxish things will be around for a while until somebody does that proper and then it will probably dominate - come on - it's unix - it was the best idea - only the suits and the marketing made MS - the plan was crap the minute they stopped xenix.

It's sad to say it, but considering the crap they spend the next 10 years on building I'd rather bet on continued support after the supposed 1000 days. If people seriously believe that XP won't be the majority amongst the MS desktops - even in 2014 - then think again. It's a good OS - the only one that's usable. The other crap is as pretentious as it is error-prone. We even have real serious systems running XP instead of 2k3-server - just because it's more stable. 2k3+,vista,win7 are jokes - utter travesties. If I where given 10$ every time I saw a Microsoft Server blue-screen-of-death.. XP right now - never see it anymore. At last it's a proper OS.

The story is full of fud. 1: DVD-burner? Who needs that now - really - come on. 2: Get a bluetooth keyboard won't you 3: Start streaming from your NAS-box or from the Web - use home sharing to play your music from the computer 4: Ports for what? AirPrint or what it's called - mouse on a touch screen? My mother syncs here DSLR with the iPad so I guess that can be done 5: It does multitask 6: The "limits" of the iTunes is backup, restore and update - he can have his 200$ laptop for that and be happy. 7: The battery is so much better on the iPad compared to the run of the mill laptop's that replacing it isn't really going to happen.

Get a small (4-5 piece) lockpicking kit. That way you don't have to carry any keys with you :)

Considering the hardware I find it peculiar that they kill so many civilians. I guess the people meant to limit the amount of false positives are basically hillbillies. I guess good hardware has no effect as long as you do not train your forces to fight fair. No amount of "freedom" or technology can explain away the fact that the largest army on the planet are still basically just killing for fun / at random. I hope those stupid oil-/gass-wars end soon. I wonder if they would have if we invested all the money we currently invest in those wars in alternative energy. Considering that they evidentially have the needed technology to avoid civilian casualties; I guess not. :/

I hate flash for burning my nuts to a cinder. That is all it really does. In the winter it can be a little cozy to have a laptop running full speed ahead, burning a hole in my pants, but now spring is coming and it is time it died and left something equally closed-source but more effective in it's wake.

I couldn't agree with you more. I used to have a wintel-box at work and it demanded to be booted almost daily. That boot effectively stopped me from working and the machine was slow running system-specific closed-source crap that I basically have no interest in for a good 15 minutes after booting (often just to produce another forced reboot). I replaced the thing with ubuntu - just to be able to work (have booted ubuntu twice in 6 months). Linux works for me as I do mostly coding. But for a home computer I don't really code so I use a Mac because what I do at home is listening to music, watching pictures (arhem..), editing home movies, surfing the intertubes, record some music. Sure I could use linux for that - but that would suck up a lot of time I could be spending on my primary activities.

How long till they hax0r /. ???

I remember starting back in the old days where a modem connection would require days of downloading just to get a bootable system. Back them I bought a CD with Slackware 1.0 (accompanied by a book). After fiddling around with that for some time (to get it booting I guess) I was hooked and started using Redhat when that eventually came out. After that I have been on and off the linux bandwagon (having a seperate wintel-box for all those nasty games and BS needs). For me that all ended with the arrival of Mac OS X. After that I bought a Mac and have used Macs as my primary computers ever since. I kept the wintel-box around until the Mac's started appearing with Intel-processors. After that the only time I ever use windows or linux is if I dual boot or run them in VMs. At work I have always upgraded the wintel-boxes I have been handed to ubuntu or Kubuntu or Fedora. I don't really see why people would need a physical wintel-box (except for gaming). So now I am a ubuntu user at work and mac user at home. Perfect combo. Before going mac on my private boxes I tried a myriad of linux-based OS's at home. I would guess I am in the >100. Now, when doing IT-stuff at work, I tend to stick with Fedora for server-installations and ubuntu for workstations. Don't really know why but I liked a flavour of ubuntu called Workbench. Just another OS in the pile of burnt CD/DVD's now.

Put up good scripts that simplify managing user accounts. Put up good scripts for restarting databases and other services. Put up good logon-scripts run remote jobs on their machines while they are un. Implement "always on" clients. Cut their local admin privileges. Set up a PXE-server so you do not have to install operating systems manually. Try to implement some sort of system for automatically distributing software updates. This frees up time for taking the users seriously..

Draw a list of applications you support. Refuse to help with applications not on that list. Then try to make a list of what problems the users have. If a majority of the users problems are related to VPN - you attack that by buying a new system. If the problems are related to printers - you try to find a solution (cut back on the number of printers or put the ones you have on the network). Virtualize your servers and put up virtual application clients that the users can access remotely.

Remember that you work with machines. Machines can be programmed to do most of "the machine work". The more of your time you can free up for thinking - the more perfect the automatic solutions will be. Automation is the only way to go. If that means coding for a couple of evenings - so be it - it will pay for it self after a pretty short time. That free time can then be invested in freeing up even more time. You go like that until the shop almost runs itself. If the users - by this point - starts bugging you - delete every single script - destroy the backups and then *get a new job*. ;)