While it would be lovely to have a perfect sys admin they don't exist. I would say about 1 in 10 problems in production are due to the admins not doing their part. I test like crazy but often times I find the following

- Crazy rules in production but not staging
- Mapped folders on production but not in staging or development
- Databases or Database permissions incorrectly configured
- Caching doing wierd things one does not see in staging

This only gets worse if you have load balanced servers etc.

I believe as a rule no developer should "develop" in production but having access to the production environment depends on your work environment and who would know best. Sys admins NEVER KNOW BEST when it comes to websites. They know their hardware but rarely do they know how to troubleshoot issues and almost always blame your app. However, at the same time developers often don't know enough about the technology their applications are running on so they instantly blame the sys admin.

Ideally, in a large scale deployment you have someone with the knowledge of both (that's me) who can identify and troubleshoot common issues. That individual would have access to production. Additionally, in smaller development shops not having access to production is just stupid. It doesn't make sense.

- Source Control is a great idea, but rarely used due to difficulty of use. Sometimes its not an option because someone has to support that.
- Financial limitations can reduce the ability to have shared development/staging areas. Working on your own machine is useless when testing. It does NOT test working in a production environment and thus... sometimes production is the test field.

We can play the blame game but in reality who has access to production should be limited to those trusted enough to not do stupid things without backing themselves up. Sysadmins should keep a backup of the production site at all times, developers should not mess with production unless it's urgent.

To me there is no comparison between consoles and PC's when it comes to gaming. PC gaming will ALWAYS win out to me from a performance and control standpoint.

I am a gamer... a well off gamer who likes the full gambit of experience but most importantly be able to set the controls the way I like. Halo was an excellent example for this. PC gamers wiped the floor with the xbox counterparts when xbox live allowed PC gamers to play against Xbox'ers. There wasn't a single Xboxer in the top 100 players.

PC gaming will never die. If labels leave, new competition will take up the market. Xbox's and PS3's ARE computers at this point. That's what they are. Hell both of them can run linux or windows. In fact, gaming today is heading TOWARD PC gaming, just in a controlled manner they call "consoles".

This is just like the RIAA and their fight toward controlling the environment. Focus on your customers, focus on the experience and you won't have to worry about Pirating! The people who steal generally cannot afford it, or wouldn't have bought it anyway. Stop focusing on these people as you'll NEVER beat them. It's a challenge, a game... to them to break your scheme. Every single DRM has been broken within two weeks, the only exception being BlueRay which took a little bit longer. Stop wasting resources on this.

The publishers that use DRM made the mistake of declaring war on people who love the sport of breaking DRM. It's gotten to the point they create executables that let you break the DRM so anyone can do it without any tech knowledge at all.

SHOW me a single reputable study (REPUTABLE) that shows piracy is hurting publishers. This would be a study that connects pirates who would have bought it if it had DRM. Any study that it's entire source set is that of a college campus is going to have skewed results.

The point that's being made about RFID is that the encryption method is not good enough for most uses when it comes to private information. If it becomes mainstream someone could EASILY begin to collect this information using a remote reader and collect it later without every touching the device again.

Imagine someone takes a small box about the size of sandwich. It could hold enough battery power to collect every single RFID scan for quite some time and then come by perhaps the next day with a laptop and receive it remotely as to never touch the device again in case it was found and being watched.

RFID tags are GREAT to identify you by an ID #... not hold SS # or other private information. Keep that stuff in a more secure manner. I'm no alarmist, and not even a hacker. But this is something someone with almost no tech experience could do... and make bank.

This is just storage space, not web pages/applications, or software etc. We're talking digital assets of the company such as documents, images, videos... etc. Basic, run of the mill file storage is being priced at $30 per gig, per month. It's basically just a giant network share. It doesn't need to be co-located just your typical raid array with some method of disaster recovery.

I'm interested in what other companies charge internally for file storage.

NPR is different. They aren't demanding anything unreasonable, don't take political sides and report accurate REAL news. Use Fox News as a polar opposite.

Every single media provider who started to charge for content has lost out. New York Times is a great example. They've had to reduce prices again and again and again and still have trouble.

The second a news story is out, someone reproduces it. It's no longer about content ownership, it's who can get it out, correct and in a format people like FIRST.

Look at music... who won that one? Itunes. They got it out in a method and format faster and better than anyone. Now... admittedly there might have been better services but they didn't offer the library that itunes can. (I hate itunes before anyone passes judgment).

What the market is proving is that people have a threshold for payment on content. The majority of us it's around $10 for movies (that's when sales peak in numbers other than first release) on DVD's, for music it's around $15 for a full CD, 75 to 99 cents for an individual song... and so on. News media, it's 0. There are a small few of us that then replicate this news (to the media companies horror) to the wide audiences. The author things this will stop... and of course has no true understanding of the market.

Information is easier to share than at any other point in history. News is replicated and spread in seconds now, and people, not just the young kids, are used to it for FREE. The only way this "may" be possible is if every single news media group put up walls at the same time... AND noone found a way to bypass this. It's just not feasible.

The most impact this can possible have is a lag in news release in the hours. It's like the RIAA... it's an antiquated business model that doesn't work anymore. The times have changed so that content en masse is no longer valuable, just the content itself. Good news, strong stories... well written... that's what matters now.

Welcome to the 21st century.

In short, this is being done by a ton of really bad people on the forums. This cannot be being proposed by the upper leadership as this has all sorts of legal implications.

If you have a problem with your forums, on such a large scale... it's EASY to fix.

Step 1:
Implement a ranking system. People can give you positive or negative bumps to your posts (think karma here). The longer someone holds an active rank the more "bump" they give to people. You have to be a member of the forum for at least 1 month before you can bump at all, and then give it a progressive growth scale of the strength of their "bump". (1-6 months: 1pt, 7months to 2 years: 5pt, 2+ 10pt).

Additionally, provide some incentive for activity on the forums by offering discounts of productions/services by maintaining a high activity and in good standing at certain intervals. For example "You've been active on our forums for over 6 months with a great rank! We want to thank you for contributing to our community by offering you 25% off any of our old games... or a $5 credit on your next bill!". The overall cost to blizzard is dirt cheap.

Step 2:
Ensure that someone has to been active (logging in) to keep their rank or they start over. You can figure out that time table

Step 3:
If a user gets below a certain rank they are auto silenced. They cannot post anymore but can submit for a review of their "silencing" in case of some exploitation. This is highly unlikely since to even bump you have to be a member for quite some time.

BENEFITS
- Trolls get silenced pretty damn quick
- The community monitors itself with minimal administrative intervention
- You get certain individuals who become leaders in the community from their rank
- People feel rewarded for contributing

The more people are able to see the world through the internet the more freedom's they see everyone else has and the less control religion has on them. People are starting to think for themselves instead of being sheep. The method of control that has worked for centuries is starting to erode away. The fear mongering that was once possible is much more difficult and the result is outright violence.

This is a story of desperate people who hide behind religion as a method of control who are forced to control what people can read or see in order to retain that control. Unfortunately for them it's only a matter of time before it completely erodes.

People today want to follow those who make sense with their rule, not declare they are sent by God, or "chosen".

If you write any web application and any of the above 4 fail you fail. There is absolutely NO excuse for any application to fail due to a browser. 99% of the problems are CSS related and you doing something that isn't supported in slightly older browsers.

If you want to do the latest and greatest techniques for a system many people will use either do it in flash, or make sure your techniques work in all browsers. What you are doing should has no reason to be complex. Remember your audience, remember your users... I hate base text stuff... but flash and "neat" looking techniques are not needed in any ticketing system.

KISS - Keep it simple stupid.

My sister helps run the conservators center (www.conservatorscenter.org) of North Carolina who house 40+ lions and tigers. By accident the found out how effective it is when one of their volunteers wore it. The lions were moaning trying to rub against them through the cages. Unfortunately Axe body spray didn't think it was a good marketing item as their reply to me was "We thank you for your interest but we don't accept marketing ideas from the public".

It's simple. They sell printers at a loss and ink at over 500 to 5000% it's value. That's why you see all those kiosks that will refill your ink. The problem is some of them don't use "quality" ink. You know a company is full of shit when they start to use microchips to prevent 3rd party ink cartridges. Be smart!! Buy a laser printer. Most of those are VASTLY more efficient. I've printed almost 2,000 pages off of my Samsung ML 2581ND laser printer and it's still going strong.

Color prints work the same. If you invest in a good printer, the ink doesn't cost much. If you get a $20 printer expect to pay that $50-$70 difference in ink.

Actually that's one of the best ideas I've ever heard. Companies now depend on their IP to make money. Hit them where they get the money from and this type of shit will stop.

You don't have to worry about companies pulling out of the USA as the important ones have too much vested here.

I played eve, not too seriously but I managed to be involved with some pretty epic battles. The main differences between Eve and other MMORPH are the following:

1) Space setting (100%). You are in a ship, when you move around
2) The economy is extremely advanced compared to other games. Meaning there are players who run banks, companies who produce ships, products etc, players who have to help move the product between systems... etc. It's all VERY player involved. If you are smart, you can make tons of ISK (their form of currency) easily and quickly.
3) The market is extremely advanced. Like the economy there are companies, banks, corporations, investments, shipping lanes, protection rackets, security companies, armies, etc... all dependent on player interaction. One would think it would be fragile but in fact it's one of the strongest points of the game. Think location vs supply and demand. You're in a deep system where there aren't too many places to find ammo, weapondry, supplies... things sell at a premium.
4) The skill required to play this game ranges depending on what you do. If you are part of a pvp squad or army the skill curve is immensely difficult. It gets down to tiny differences in ship equipment and configuration... as well as sheer numbers. Don't let that fool you though. Numbers don't mean squat in some situations. However if you aren't really into pvping in ships there are politics on a whole other scale than other PVP's, as well as economic. Be a banker, or trader, or manufacturer. Sounds boring but the interaction with players is pretty deep so you aren't just sitting there hitting a button over and over again.
5) Creating things - You don't sit there hitting a button or "farming items" to make this next weapon for yourself. You can buy and sell everything you need to make things...
6) What you do can affect the game. Since player interaction is so deep... what you do can often affect the games outcome for everyone.
7) Training skills does not require you to play. Just planning ahead as you can set it to train these skills over a set amount of time.

EVE allows someone to play for 10 minutes a day or 10 hours... that is why it is unique and amazing.