Afraid I have to disagree with you there. In the UK at least, there are many bloggers whose output is verifiably more truthful, better-written and more apropos than that of most "professional" journalists. While the journalists are concentrating on how many women Tiger Woods has slept with, how breakfast is good for you and generally toeing the corporate party line, there are bloggers like this chap: Anton Vowl who writes coherent (if occasionally profane) and well-researched articles about important issues - often pointing out where the "proper" journalists have got it wrong and then admitted it later in very small writing.

The quality of bloggers is just as variable as the quality of journalists. From the many examples of cut-and-paste journalism that have been seen lately, it would appear that "following up on leads, research and fact-checking" are far less of a priority than publishing the latest celebrity scandal or product press release.

In 2009, I:

-Got married
-Got separated
-Changed jobs
-Moved house

I'm hoping for some peace and quiet in 2010, to be honest.

Much of the damage of rape comes not from the actual act (unless it was particularly violent) , but from all of the stigma and media circuses surrounding it

Um....no. Really no. Much of the damage of rape comes from the sense of violation, of powerlessness, of shame and humiliation that someone has used your body without your permission - in fact in direct opposition to your wishes and you couldn't stop it. There really are very very few experiences in life that compare in terms of horror and emotional destruction.

Rape is an emotionally-charged subject - it's one of the worst experiences anyone can go through at any age.

He didn't "steal" the passwords. He knew the passwords.
He was the network admin in charge of the passwords.
There was a dispute at work, and all of a sudden he wasn't the network admin any more.
Between being an employee and getting fired, he didn't raid a bunch of drawers and creep out with a sheaf of papers tucked into a sack marked "SWAG".

When asked to provide the passwords, he refused to divulge them to people not on the "authorised to know" list, which means that although we was heading towards not being an employee, he was still conscientiously following department policy. The fact was that the clueless idiots who were demanding the passwords were themselves violating policy since they were not authorised to have them.

Admittedly, he sounds like a bit of a paranoid loon (keeping all the users' VPN passwords at home and not letting anyone else touch his precioussssss network was not a smart move) but I'm sure that there was no requirement to be a perfectly well-balanced, emotionally mature and prescient individual on the job application. Just as well, or most geeks would never get jobs!

The best pizza I ever had was in a tiny Italian family-owned restaurant in Luton, England (Villa Ada on Guildford St for anyone who's nearby!). Mmmmmmmmmm......kicked Pizza Hut, Domino's, Pizza Express and all the other big chains firmly in the buttocks

So very very true

As one who works for a large service provider, to whom a couple of branches of the UK Govt have outsourced IT operations, I see this an awful lot. It is widely recognised that the purpose of outsourcing is to offset liability.

We have a constant battle to try and get the customer to define their requirements properly so that we don't run into precisely these situations - getting a straight answer is like getting blood from a stone - they'd rather just mutter then point the finger when it (inevitably, considering the lack of proper specs) goes wrong.

Classic case of the major IT outsourcing company's telling IT illiterate officials what is technically possible (and massively understating the costs/risks) and the officials turning around and saying " we will take everything" without once stopping and asking "just because we can do it does it mean we should do it?"

Ahem - not entirely true (from the perspective of one who works for one of said IT outsourcing companies)....more likely scenario

Illiterate Govt official: We want a system that does this, this and this
IT Company: Erm, afraid that's not really possible
IGO: But we *want* it! Now! Waaaaaah! Give it to us or we'll go to your competitors
ITC: Well, here's a design that tells you what is possible with today's technology. Oh and by the way, here are the recommendations for using it properly, responsibly and legally. Also, it's going to cost a bloody fortune and take years.
IGO: We want all of this right now at bargain basement prices, we want it all to work first time and we want to be able to expand it indefinitely without any major changes or cost increases. Thanks for the recommendations, but we don't need them - we're the Govt, we can do whatever we like
ITC:

Ants don't like blue

Citation needed!!!

Old joke:

What do you call the useless flap of skin on the end of the penis?

-The man

I can't believe no-one's mentioned this one. An alien species, more technologically advanced but with much less depth of thought, compassion or empathy than displayed by (some) humans. Technology doesn't necessarily equate with moral values that we would recognise. Hell, geographical distribution on Earth leads to some serious disparities in ideas about "right" or "wrong".

Time to call in the Men In Black.....

I have worked on UK Government networks as a security auditor and have never seen any evidence that "bulk licensing terms ensure security fixes". [emphasis mine] We get the same security fixes at the same time as everyone else.

Plus the usual issue of having to fork out £200 to get MS support for a problem and only being reimbursed if we can prove that the problem is caused by a fault with MS software.

We are also using a large number of Solaris and Red Hat servers. Oddly enough we have far fewer problems with these. Especially when it comes to integrating updates.

Just my £0.02

Off-topic I know but...

As clearly demonstrated currently in Israel