Don't worry about the money, you'll be a hero and hopefully get rewarded later with a promotion and perhaps that higher pay grade that you're capable of. If you're really that hung up on a short term shot of cash versus a potentially bigger upside long term, by all means demand money and shoot yourself in the foot. It sounds like you have the potential to do more at this company, but when you talk about meeting all your outlined goals and you have a lot of "downtime", those are some danger signs, IMO. I've found throughout my career that the rewards come to those who go beyond their outlined goals and are humble about it. Those who just meet their goals, demand to be paid or recognized for every little thing they do, and have a lot of down time tend to be gone when layoffs happen. Good luck and choose wisely.

They might as well copy iTunes. How are those knock-offs of Facebook and Microsoft Office working out?

You're complaining about MS Office based on one item, ODF support. In nearly all regards it is a superb office suite. Ignoring your one beef with MS Office, it beats the crap out of OpenOffice / LibreOffice. Just looking at the user interface for OO, it looks ten years old. Calc is very good, but it's clearly a knock off of Excel. But Writer is like MS Wordpad on steroids and can't hold a candle to Word.

No, he puts personal *interests* above the law. There's a difference.

I didn't say life or business was fair, or law enforcement was competent, or that any of it was your fault. If you got a criminal working for your company, like it or not, you and your company just got sucked into a situation that blows and it's going to cost you something no matter what. It's your job to minimize the exposure and do what's ethical. If you decide to take the situation into your own hands with reckless amateur forensics and delayed law enforcement involvement and not engage your legal department or outside legal resources, you've just increased your exposure. Even the employee accused of the crime could come back and sue you. Anecdotes, your suspicions about law enforcement, and your good intentions to protect employees mean nothing in court. In what is clearly a legal situation, even as the highest IT professional in your company you're out of your area of expertise and risk doing damage.

Wow. You just gave an attorney the basis for the defense. Prior to calling the police you took it upon yourself to go through the evidence, possibly tainting it, wrecking key log entries, or even planting evidence. Perhaps you had a little argument with the defendant a few days before? You had a reason to frame him. Also, since you represent "the company" you also have exposed them to liability in the process and you've jeopardized your job. Not doing the right thing just to avoid equipment seizure also may expose you to legal action.

You're an IT professional. Act like one. You stop what you're doing, lock your workstation, and go to your supervisor's office ASAP. If he's smart, he calls HR and Legal. Get a coffee and keep your mouth shut and stay out of the IT system until you're asked a question by your boss, HR, or Legal.

That's one way you could improve the Slashdot for me. You think maybe 9 years is long enough for this petty bullshit you guys pulled?

Fun fact #2 is misleading. You need to divide it by GDP to get a meaningful statistic.

Conversely, I find myself bemused by the people who call the wealthy "job creators" and use that as a ploy to not raise their taxes at all then place the entire burden of the debt on the middle class, all the while totally refusing to cut defense spending. I don't think anyone wants to keep spending like we have, but there needs to be an increase in tax revenue as well. There needs to be some compromise, and the Republicans continually say "no".

They are gaining acceptance in the business world, but I think you'll find they're more an ancillary tool, not a primary computing device, at least in Windows shops. I use mine to take notes in meetings, and access email when I'm not at my desktop or I'm on the road. When I'm working on a document or spreadsheet, it's back to the laptop running Windows 7. Apple still has a ways to go until the iPad or any tablet can be a primary device for business.