They may help you keep the business you have, but just about nothing IT can do will sell one more unit of product, or add one new customer.

Umm, what?!?! Even if IT isn't customer facing, they can still make internal tools and resources to help the salesforce. Sure, IT itself may never make a sale directly, but when the sales person in the field is able to pull up data and information compiled by IT, or use a tool IT created, to help land a customer, then IT most certainly did in fact do something to help sell more product.

Personally, I think the bigger issue is the historical disconnect between IT and Sales. The CEO feels that and it lessens the perceived value of IT. But, when IT and Sales can work together, you can create some extremely powerful sales tools that will absolutely impact revenue. And when you do, the CEO will take notice. But that requires a CIO and IT staff that can work with Sales to help get that done.

At my company, if Sales has an ask, we talk and see how to best do what they're looking for. And if I think of something that might be useful, I'll approach Sales and ask if my idea would be of any use to them. If so, we'll hammer out details and add it to the project list. And because of that willingness to work together, we've created stuff that absolutely drives business. And that flexibility has kept my whole team employed through 4 different buyouts over the past 10 years.

Yes, IT has to keep the servers up and the desktops running and virus free, and that's not glamorous, and doesn't make for spectacular headlines. But IT can go far beyond that, and needs to if it wants a serious place in the business beyond just "janitors." And maybe if the CIO doesn't understand that, then the CEO's derision is justified.

Doesn't that render it close enough to a monopoly for the government to be able to step in and regulate it?

Natural evolution, bigger is usually better, but the bigger the spider, the more likely you are to see and squish it. Sometimes you get too big and it's all over for you.

And if 94% doesn't cut it, let's just pollute that last 6% for them.

Are you willing to admit you are wrong or don't know something? If so, how readily?

This is one of the single biggest things I look for when interviewing. I don't expect everyone to know everything, no one can. But someone who will fake knowing something and try to bullshit you will only lead to disaster later. If I am liking a candidate, and things are going well, I'll eventually toss in a question or two that I don't expect them to be able to answer. If you tell me you don't know, we're good. Tell me you dont know and ask me what the answer is, we're better. Bullshit me and I'll give you a chance to back out of it. Keep bullshitting me after the lifeline, and it's pretty much over right there. You'd be amazed how many people will bullshit. Last round of interviews, one candidate was doing awesome, and was becoming my favorite for the job until we hit this point. After the initial failure, I told him, it was okay, I know it wasn't on his resume and I didn't expect him to know it, and it wasn't critical to the job, I was just seeing if he had any experience in it. He then continued to make stuff up for several minutes until I finally cut him off. I don't care how good you are, if you haven't mastered "I don't know," you're pretty much worthless to me. I've seen the damage that crap can do, and I don't need it.

Yes, they will. My wife's iPhone was stolen, and I was able to pinpoint it to an exact address. Called my local cops, gave them the info, and they contacted the cops in the city the phone was in. 20 minutes later I had a call from one of those cops on the way to the house who asked me to re-enable it (I had disabled it via AT&T's website after my texts asking them to return it went unanswered) so if they denied having it he could call and see if he heard it ringing. As it was, before he could even speak, when they opened the door, they said, "You're here for the phone, right?" We had it back within maybe 3 hours of losing it. So, yeah, when you can tell them exactly where it is, they will go look for it. At least where I live (Chicago suburbs). YMMV.

Okay, I'll bite on this, because I just had a house fire. I won't mention the insurance company by name (if you want to know, ask me) but they have been unbelievably helpful. I've used them for years despite being higher priced than their competitors because of the service I've received and how helpful everyone has been over the claims I've had in the past. We've had a few hiccups along the way with rebuilding the house, and not a single one was due to the insurance company, in fact, they 've stepped in and helped smooth them out from time to time.

Now granted, that's not Health Insurance, but it is an insurance company, and I really have thought that they were doing heir best to do their job. Sure, their main function is to pay for everything, but they've definitely gone far beyond that. :)

But as for health insurance, no, I don't really ever recall thinking that, but then, the previous company we had was more helpful than the current one they switched us to, which is pretty useless.

Wait, did you just call Rosa Parks an asshole?

Word, even unto thy mother.

Are you kidding me? That would make sense, and we all know common sense has no place in American law!

The only thing insane is thinking you need to punish people for downloading Far Cry. Anyone who did that has punished themselves enough already.

Pointless? Have you SEEN a sharpened pencil?!?!? There is most definitely a point! :)

Sorry, but the key point here is that everyone is applying western ideals and logic into an equation where those things have no value. Yes, MAD works when we're talking about the US and Russia. It does not work when you're talking about religious extremists that believe dying while killing their enemies means a ticket straight to heaven. Add in the fact that Ahmadinejad has said he hopes to usher in the age if the third Mahdi, and knowing that according to his religion, the third Mahdi will only show up after a time of great chaos and massive world conflict, you still ask what he has to gain by using nukes? Really? Yes, in most cases, dealing with reasonable people, you'd be right. But when dealing with psychotic idiots with nukes who think by using them their religious dude can show up and take over the world, normal logic is pretty much tossed out the window.

Yeah, but the Patriot Act *was* an illicit change, so his spelling was correct, it was his grammar that was off. :)

Ha ha! That is awesome. Only thing better woulda been to send it back in braille or morse code or even better, on punch cards. :)

I agree with you in almost all aspects of what you said. However, I place the blame on the people. If it didn't sell, the media wouldn't sell it. If the voters/viewers wanted and demanded highly informative shows that were impartial and factually accurate, the media would by all means provide it, since it'd give them the ratings. But the people don't want that. And when the people become uninformed and vacuous, so too does our media and politicians. I understand the point David makes in the video, but I think it still boils down to the fact that without the public snapping up only the most salient National Enquirer style headlines, the entire situation would be vastly different.

That, really, hits on the crux of the entire problem. The other issue of course is uninformed lazy voters who simply vote for a party than a candidate, thus helping encourage just that kind of thinking from politicians.

Makes me think we should eliminate names and parties from ballots altogether and simply have a 100 question questionnaire that you simply select 1 to 5 for or against, and weight how important that issue is to you and then the system matches your answer to the candidate who most closely matches your choices, and counts your vote for them. Never happen of course since it'd gut the power of the current parties and we might actually get people in there who represent what the people truly want, but hey, I can dream...