Only 10% deaths due to distracted driving? Then what are the other 90%? There was a news article recently claiming 65% of the deaths were due to daydreaming, and 15% to phones etc.

I would take those stats with a bit of skepticism. After all... people may be too embarrassed to admit the real cause.

Many accidents are a result of driver error as well, or intentional inconsiderate behavior/flagrant rule violations, such as yellow/red-light running, speeding, right turns on red without coming to a complete stop and checking all directions -- misbehaviors with an unintended (but very likely ) effect.

If the goal is to prevent incompetent driving, we need to institute some serious driver testing and retesting, and take away licenses from people who fail it. But that means that the vast majority of the elderly would have their licenses taken away, and they vote.

Perhaps there should be an annual mileage tax for holding a driver's license, the proceeds of which, could be used to subsidize for X miles of mass transportation and public taxi service for those that don't get to have licenses.

So that those people can purchase their transportation at a similar or lower cost than car and driver's license ownership.

Then you could make the rules required to hold a driver's license very strict, and require a detailed road test every 4 years; with very strict standards, required minimum reaction times, accident avoidance skills, and understanding of the law, required; at a level of that sufficient to indicate that driver is an absolutely minimal risk of causing an accident. The average driver today might or might not qualify.

The elderly would still be just as fine getting around, by relying on the transportation service. They wouldn't need licenses -- they would be safer, and be less likely to die in a car crash. The roads would be safer.

Just; because instead of 'everyone' having licenses; everyone pays a qualified driver -- you have a new industry as a result.

Because of the taxes required, it becomes of the benefit of every qualified driver to transport multiple people per mile driven.

If you need to go somewhere, it makes sense to buy the cheapest transporation arrangement available that suits your needs.

Logically... the more stuff you need to transport with you, and the faster you need to get from point A to point B; the higher the cost.

People would feel the pain of paying more -- than paying that cost of transport up-front by purchasing a car and gas+maintenance over time, which is disconnected from the experience of travelling a certain distance with a certain load.

As a result, energy usage goes down, and the environmentalists should be happy as well.....

If you can't text and drive at 10MPH without having an accident (on a three lane highway has been my peak hour experience, no kids chasing balls onto the road) you shouldn't have a license and probably need to be strapped into your chair to have dinner.

The government should be nipping this behavior in the bud, which means it must not be tolerated at any speed, other than a complete stop. If you are moving 1 MPH, and looking at your phone or typing on your phone, then there should be a penalty, and law enforcers should be looking for you.

First of all... 10MPH cannot be excluded; if people are allowed to think that it is OK, and start doing it, they will get into this habit. It's like a gateway drug.

Due to self-herding. You text enough times going 10MPH, then you begin to think to yourself "I'm the kind of person who texts when I am driving, when I feel a need presents itself"; OR "I have accepted that I can text and drive".

Then it's just a matter of a slippery slope, or scope creep, before the person self-realizes OK... 5MPH is OK... then 10MPH must be OK, and 15MPH must be OK, it's just a little more.... then after getting into that habit... 20MPH must be OK, it's just a little more.... after becoming acquainted with that.... 25MPH must be OK, "It might be dangerous if other people do it -- but i've become skilled and experienced in this naughty habit of texting and driving, so it's OK for me"...... 30MPH.... 35MPH....

If you are texting, then your attention is not focused in front of you.

You may be going 10 MPH, but that doesn't mean a pedestrian isn't going to run out in front of you.

That doesn't mean a car in another lane going 15 MPH, isn't going to pull in front of you, and then suddenly stop.

If you don't react in less than a second due to texting, then you are at fault.

In the meantime, I agree with your first two solutions, the third is too drastic. Jail time if you cause an accident while texting perhaps but I don't think someone stuck in walking pace traffic who texts their wife they'll be late deserves jail time.

5 - 10 MPH: ticket, $200 fine

10 - 25 MPH: $500 fine, license suspension

25+ MPH: 2 years in jail and $1000 fine for every 20 MPH of speed they were travelling, when caught texting.

They're doing it all wrong. You can't solve a social problem with technological features.

There's no way you can make a car that will stop someone from tapping on their ipad, or putting on their makeup.

If you try, they'll just get pissed off, disable the feature, and do it even more to spite you.

The solution is to fix the culture to make it socially unacceptable.

Have the law enforcement officers doing their job.

Jail time for any driver caught texting while in motion.

Since you'll be called upon to make it play ("nicely" is not in the books) with the rest of the world, again, start from principles. Learn how to set up an MTA, know how SMTP and IMAP work. Send yourself an email by telnet. Know what the various headers do.

Those are things to learn, but not essential. If you learn how SMTP and IMAP works, and how to send an e-mail over telnet; you will have abilities that 90% of the enterprise Exchange admins don't have. :)

Once you have anything real on the resume drop the A+ and Net+, they are resume stains for anyone over about 22 years old.

Unless they started late in life in the industry... perhaps after moving in from an unrelated field with no prior experience in IT? :)

Other government agencies and large corporations often have minimum certification requirements that include some of the entry-level CompTIA certs.

See.... i'd just leave the A+ off my resume, and put the CISSP, or other non-puny certification that I would have obtained on there. :)

To get the cert you actually have to take TWO exams now, and in the newest version they added some stuff for mobile devices, though I haven't seen the material for this version yet.

See... I don't know who they're trying to appeal to by requiring two exams, and adding a few mobile things.

It doesn't make me more likely to hire someone who holds the certificate.

And as an IT pro if I were looking for a certification to add... two exams seems like an inconvenience, they limited the duration the cert is good for before requiring renewal, and the whole A+ thing just appears totally unappealling; I can't fathom why anyone would still be going for it.

Offtopic, but I'd drop the A+ certification from your resume.

Yeah.... OP should work on going to get a cert that matters, such as CCNP or MCITP Enterprise messaging administrator :)

Network admin should be someone dealing with Networking devices.

In a small company, the network devices are often all unmanaged, except for, perhaps firewall (if there is one). The "Windows network" is the network, for all intents and purposes.

And "network admin" is the generic title for the professional cable monkey who maintains all the network systems and hardware (including the network cabling and devices).

Because SMBs don't hire separate network teams -- they want an all-in-one guy, because it's cheaper.

Either that, or they hire consultants who get to report to the all-in-one guy.

Wait till you find one in the 23rd normal form (or basically past the 3rd). You will long for the day when all you had to deal with is missing primary keys.

High-numbered normal forms are for masochists. Stick with BCNF or 4NF. Go no higher.

You get access to full (evaluation only) products including MS SQL Server 2012 and some online training materials.

You do... you get access to evaluation products that will never expire.

You don't have to have a technet subscription to download evaluation editions of SQL, Exchange, and Windows, though.

It's perfectly feasible to download and use these for evaluation and self-training: as long as you understand, the limitation being they timebomb after 90 days to 4 months, depending on product.

That would be a killer annoyance for someone needing to do a proof of concept, demonstration, or pre-deployment testing, but for self training...... re-installing everything over again just gives you more experience, right?

Maybe an opportunity to learn about automated methods of installation, and command-line/script-based methods of installation.

Its exactly THIS sort of question, which I'm getting a bit, which trips people up who self learn.

If you experienced with SQL extensively enough in a test lab: you should be able to answer the question, without necessarily revealing that this was all lab experience.

Heck, your competitors for the job are probably bs'ing their way through questions like this. Exchange and SQL are mission critical applications. Few people really deserve to be able to say they have experience with them, and reach any level of expertise ---- most admins will just be relying on product vendor support, as in no troubleshooting abilities -- just relying on calling Microsoft right away, if they run into any problems or need to make changes to their deployment.

The average exchange admin out there can reset passwords, create mailboxes, and run the GUI wizards, but couldn't tell you what "SMTP" is.

The average SQL admin out there can use the SQL management studio, and do all sorts of things in the pretty GUI, which you can learn on a long weekend, but they couldn't write a line of T-SQL, if it slapped them in the face.

There are plenty of programmers/developers with a large amount of SQL background, who don't have day to day DBA responsibilities, and maybe only worked with the development SQL servers used for their application testing work.

SQL server, and VMware are not complicated software applications.

You just need a few thousand (3000 to 4000) hours working with them in a reasonable lab setup, and a lot of patience, to get a base level of experience.

However... some desktop PC running SQL or Vsphere does not a reasonable lab setup make.

You really need components and equipment similar to what a large company would use for their deployment; real servers, SAN, etc, AND to run test workloads at a scale, with demands comparable to what an organization's production demand would be - and ways of simulating real-world workloads, spammers, performance requirements, and how well your servers are performing --- otherwise, you only really have 'limited experience' (that is: experience limited to the artificially small conditions imposed by small requirements).

The cheapest way to accomplish that, is probably to work in IT for a large company that is able to allow you to use test lab equipment; or rent lab time.

but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.

Rules can be changed at will as soon as the eye of public scrutiny decided to overlook their abuse due to "a promise that under current policy", the data won't be used to make dragnet