Thank you for the Cracked link. I laughed so hard my sides ache.

Not one word of your post is true...Sorry.

I thought they were in tight with the Catholics. You know "Gott mit Uns" and all that stuff.

So Elspeth Bathory was at least half right.

I think some people choose IT or Engineering because they like black and white answers to everything. You can't BS past the laws of physics. This I-beam meets the load requirements or it doesn't; this cable can carry sufficient current for the motor or it can't, this hard drive can hold all the data or it can't. No nasty grey areas.

Of course, once you add human beings and their conflicting needs and desires into the mix the grey areas abound. The problem for this kind of person comes comes when they start treating their own rules and policies as if they were laws of physics (and expect everyone else to do so also). They see themselves and their policies as holy guardians of their systems integrity and despise the "lusers" who try to work around them and violate their rules. Their users see them as rigid, obstructionist and in the way of productivity.

IT security and operational flexibility are opposing goals. If your systems are completely open you'll be down with viruses and trojans, lock them down 100% and nobody will get any work done. You can't go all one way or the other, you need to find workable compromises.

We have a mail app for our (employee owned) iphones which encrypts the message store on the phone, and can be remotely wiped. It's not quite as functional as the built in apple mail app but it's good enough. If you want company mail on your personal phone you have to use the app. You can still have your own personal mail accounts, if we nuke the company mail, (by revoking the encryption key) your personal mail is untouched. Company pays for the app. Employee purchases and owns phone, company splits cost of voice and data plan 50/50 with employee and pays for work related long distance calls. It is sensible, and works ok.

Once you have left 6th grade behind you can add, subtract, multiply and divide on paper. Why would you then want to spend any more time doing these calculations by hand when you could spend the time learning math concepts instead?

S.C.U.B.A divers with a L.A.S.E.R.

"People tend to buy the largest most powerful car they can afford unless they are trying to make a statement"

That's funny, I think you have it backwards. People tend to buy the smallest cheapest car that meets their transportation needs, unless they are trying to make a statement. I see a whole lot more civics and corrollas and mazda 3s on the road than I see chrysler 300s. There are always exceptions, like my neighboor who bought a ginormous F350 to commute to work in every day, because once a year he tows his boat from the marina to the storage lot.

"A thermostat at a town house the Chamber owns on Capitol Hill at one point was communicating with an Internet address in China".

Hey Larry, does it seem a little warm in here today?

Yeah, it is kinda warm.

Oh my God! We've been hacked by the Chinese!!!