"If you aren't directly managing employees and/or it isn't necessary for you to have physical access to equipment, there is no reason why working from home won't work."

It depends upon what you mean by "necessary to have physical access to equipment". I was recently laid off from a technical support call center for a large voip provider. We had a work at home program for a certain percentage of employees. In theory it works out fine as you say but that is just that, in theory. The huge hurdle is successfully getting it to work on a technical scale, or at least it was for us. Most of the time a large percentage of folks working at home either had issues staying connected to our VPN, or actual PC problems. Since our company provided the PC's there was nothing a work at home employee could do if something went wrong. If your PC had technical issues, one of our IT gurus couldn't remote in and just fix it, the employee would be required to physically come into the office with that PC, within 30-45 minutes of when it stopped working (if you were late that meant some form of punishment against you, but that is another issue).

And each employee at home, had to provide their own ISP service. So all the ones having issues connecting to the VPN, it wasn't just on one local ISP, it was across half a dozen or more. Either you couldn't connect at all to the VPN or so much packet loss would have you drop off in the middle of work. The office and VPN only existed on a rather bare bones T1 line, that was shared between a thousand or more employees on site, and all the ones working at home as well. Maybe it was just this company and it's own technical issues but working from home does not always work out. Sometimes there is just not a technical infrastructure there to sustain it on the company end, whether it's hardware issues with the PC's or connection issues with the employees trying to remote in, it doesn't always work out. Thankfully I never worked from home and every time it was offered to me I declined, if I accepted it I would have spent most of my time requesting PC repair from the woefully under cared PC's they had or banging my head against the wall hoping the VPN would connect (if not I'd have to juggle interstate traffic to get there within the 45 required minutes if I could not log in).

Link for the cheat sheet appears to 404. The video was great though, "Blow on cartridge to fix bugs" indeed.

I know exactly how the guy feels. I went to an accredited trade school to learn computer hardware and networking. When I graduated I didn't get a degree, but they did offer further courses to obtain the degree. The length was ok, it was just another six months of classes but it was all Gen-Ed. Literature.. Art.. Biology. Courses that I already took in high school. Now granted they aren't "college" level classes in high school but still, I had to pay more money to take classes I did not want, that would not help the subject my career was going to be in? No. I just said no. I barely afforded tuition for what I had already passed, not only could I no longer afford further classes (nor get more loans) but how was dissecting a frog or learning more in depth insight of Plato's works was going to help me fix a networking issue for a computer? It wasn't. So to this day I still do not have a degree, even I could afford the classes by saving up some now I still don't want nor see why they are necessary. Are they going to compensate me for the waste of time? I may not be able to get the best of jobs without a degree but which seems better, wasting all that time and paying to do it or continuing to work making money and not wasting time? (yes, spare me the "well if you do it now in the future you'll make more money so its not a waste" arguments).

Degrees are nothing but a racket created by what passes for an educational system in America. Life isn't about what you know or how good you do something but how many fancy pieces of paper with your name on them you grinded out. It's like an MMORPG.. but with paper. Spend X years getting Degree Y, earn awesome Reward Z ...

It does not matter. Terms of Service. Trust me I'm a customer of an ISP just like the next joe schmoe, and sure a cap can suck. But ya know what? I got myself into this. Every ISP, cell phone company, land line phone company, etc etc etc all has a Terms of Service, and one of the key things in pretty much every ToS is that the ToS can change at any time to reflect any changes the company wants, and you agree that it is ok with you that they do this and that you agree they are allowed to do this. Do caps suck? Yes. Does having sporadic speeds at times not reflect the advertised speeds suck? Yes. You however are the consumer. It is your responsibility to decide, if the service sucks do I continue to use it or do I move on to another ISP? Complaining to the ISP will not solve anything. Canceling service, and telling them this is exactly why you are canceling service, will not solve anything. For every one customer that cancels, AT&T and other large ISPs have dozens and dozens of brand new customers signing up. It would take mass droves of people leaving which, simply will not happen. Your options are as follows; Deal with whatever terms the ISP hands out. Discontinue service with that ISP and find service with another ISP. Most ISPs are going to have the same terms if not similar terms. And sadly some people WILL live in areas of the country where you may only have one choice of an ISP due to location and services offered in that area. That sucks and I can understand the hassle but unless you are willing to move, you can't really complain too much about having just one ISP in some out of the way boonies rural area, if it bothered you THAT much, you'd relocate. Do I think things should be better? Yes, they should. But this is the country we live in. You make due with what you've got.

I for one welcome our Apple over... OOOOOOH it has Angry Birds!

I know technology changes all the time, old stuff becomes obsolete, I work in IT in a minor way so I'm not a complete tech idiot. With that said however, Blu Ray is simply too expensive. You figure that if you really want to use it to it's potential, you need an HDTV. Yes they are much more common these days and cheaper than they have been in the past but considering how you'd really need two major pieces of equipment (an HDTV and a Blu Ray player) to really truly use Blu Ray, that's a hefty investment upfront. The real kicker after the fact is Blu Ray movies and tv shows cost a good bit more than DVD. Again prices have lowered some over the years but when a Blu Ray new release movie is $30 and the DVD of the same movie is $14-16? Yea it becomes expensive to buy them.

I also have a Naga and I love it. The 12 buttons on the right thumb side are a good size, so even fat fingers like mine and press them. It definitely has a very nice natural ergonomic feel to it and the rubber top and in-groove left/right click make it a dream to handle. A fully remappable 17 keys, was worth the price.

hail our new submarine octopus overlords

Boxer is friggin epic. I've never even come close to a competitive level in Starcraft but he truly is the Terran Emperor is there ever was one. The strats he came up with weren't just game shattering they were revolutionary.

No one feels alienated.

Um, I do? The one reason I don't use facebook or myspace etc is both A) I can count the number of friends I have on one hand (none of them use these either) and B) I know no one who uses these. There is no purpose for me to use it. I'm a nerd, a geek, a social outcast. I do not fit in with the normal crowd of people who use these. I work a full time job and when I'm at home I'm usually playing mmorpgs while watching reruns of some science fiction tv show on tv, eating ramen noodles or a hotpocket. Not everyone, fits in. Not everyone wants to fit in. Facebook and Myspace are not "for" everyone.