Over any 5-year period, I hire an average of 1 to 3 IT professionals a month. The performance of each directly reflects on my ability to provide my clients with individuals whose judgement is sound, and who can accept that"at will" employment means they can be laid off at any time without a reason.

With this "little" lapse in judgement, I can assure you that he is not likely to get past HR and background checks, and even less likely to get past me.

If he left with drama elsewhere, he is probably a risk to leave with drama in a future job as well.

I want the best people I can find, and part of that is to figure out the extent to which each individual is likely to suppress personal and professional issues when it makes sense to do so.

I do my best to leave every client and employer on a positive note, regardless of what frustrating shortcomings on their part I discovered along the way.

If you can't do so, just hope you don't want your resume to be embraced by me or anyone in any company who thinks like me,

You don't have to agree with all of my positions on the issue. But if you can't disagree without being disagreeable, I really don't want you on my team.

Every morning. 180 mornings a year. For 13 years. (Year 1 = Kindergarten).

My teacher had us stand at attention, face the flag, a recite the pledge of allegiance as approved as law by the US congress.

That is 2,340 recitations where I swore "I pledge my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the REPUBLIC, for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Note that the congress did not ask me to pledge my allegiance to a democracy. In a democracy, each citizen gets an equal vote. Had we been a democracy, Al Gore, not George Bush would have been elected in the year 2000. In a republic, our state "electors" get to override the popular vote if they so choose. (And in 2000, for the 4th time in US history, that is just what happened.)

No matter what the conspiracy theorists say, GW did not "steal" the election. He played by the rules. The rules of our REPUBLIC.

That is the way things are and I don't expect either party to amend the constitution to make us a democracy in my lifetime.

The upper chamber of congress is little better with voters in small states having up to 17 times the power of voters in big states. (I.e. little Utah and big California each get 2 and only two votes.)

However, as I love my country, this is where I'll stay and exercise my right to be a curmudgeon.

To arrive at the comment above is exactly why reading /. is worth every prior moment of drivel. Irony! Humor! jkyrlach, I am now your fan!

For modern web-based applications, you are correct that there is little or no reason for the Caps Lock key.

But for the MILLIONS of people whose job requires them to use antiquated legacy systems, it is often essential.

The largely character-based systems used for accounting, order entry, invoicing, and other core functions are often accessed through terminal emulation software or first generation client-server software. These systems often have a great number of "lookup" codes for everything from SKU to client numbers that fail when using lower case. Those still using first generation client-server software are especially inconvenienced as some of these programs have no option to remap the keyboard.

The sheer volume and costs of re-engineering these systems mean that they will be with us for years to come, no matter how ugly and inefficient when compared to modern systems.

(Well, you did ask.)

I use OO as a file-conversion utility (but never for anything else), and was originally dismissive of the amount of attention this thread generated. Over the years, I have supported companies large and small. If you include my direct reports, I have supported thousands of users. Maybe twice in that time have I run into (or heard of) anyone who disclosed that they use OO at home or work.

So I did a little Googling and was amazed to find that multiple sources ". . . estimated that market share of Open Office amounts to 7% for office use and 20% for home use."

"http://books.google.com/books?id=B2Wcn_Io9B8C&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=%22market+share+of+open+office%22&source=bl&ots=GU9-1psXXG&sig=K50OV3lD3ot-PPJYa_gv2S6P6dk&hl=en&ei=hw-7TLXUE8H-8AaHntjsBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCMQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22market%20share%20of%20open%20office%22&f=false"

If accurate, this makes OO a larger threat to Microsoft than Google as each copy of OO represents a bigger threat to one of Microsoft's three significant streams of profitable revenue (Office, Windows, and Xbox) than anything offered up thus far by Google.

That this "underground" success has happened despite distro companies from Redhat to Ubuntu failing to develop marketing campaigns to bring OO to greater public attention means the opportunity for greater success for OO may still lay before us.

Right now, iPad and Android users are adopting non-MS office apps by the thousands. Perhaps forks like Libre Office will rejuvenate efforts to finally bring a cross-platform (Windows, MAC OS, MAC IOS, Android, and Linux) office that will simplify support efforts.

Stanford University's "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)" ( http://plato.stanford.edu/index.html ) has an analysis of how literature of Western Civilization has treated the subject of Zombies beginning with Descartes at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/.

If the course in question incorporates this level of discussion in the classes and homework and enable the students to improve their critical thinking and related analytical skills, it really doesn't matter if the "hook" to get students to take the course was the subject of Zombies, slasher flicks, or even a "critical" analysis of the Police Academy movies.

I have one off-spring currently in college studying to be an electrical engineer and can only hope that sometime in the next few years he can take a course that provides that type of "cross subject" context.

If an ISP built their business without special advantages over their competition, your point would be valid. However, in the U.S., most high-speed ISP's successfully lobbied for monopoly or duopoly positions as utilities where competitors were prohibited from stringing their own wires on utility poles and tunnels. In return for this advantage, they agreed to operate as regulated entities.

Perhaps as 4G and other high-speed wireless companies come to market, there will be more competition and those original companies can then lobby for removal of the regulatory environment. Until then, we will hear a lot of screaming from both sides.

This problem is not limited to "old" equipment.

My less-than-two-years-old top-of-the-line Panasonic microwave stops all wireless communications in the house when operating.