Or remove the drive, put it in another computer, install the boot loader and off you go.

Without physical security, you may as well have no security.

If you've ever worked for a software development development company, it goes a little more like this:

CEO: "Are we going to meet the release date?"
Project Manager: "Most of the work is done, but we still have some bugs to work out"
CEO: "Release it, we need the revenue"
Project Manager: "But it's still pretty buggy, users are going to notice and not be happy about it"
CEO: "Release it, we need the revenue"
Project Manager: "I really think we should push the release date out a couple of weeks"
CEO: "You're fired!!!"

CEO: "Head lead developer, we need to release this software ASAP"
Lead Developer: "Yes Sir!"

Well that truly sucks. Maybe time to consider VOIP phone service. I really do not want to have to deal with Bell again.

I sure hope it doesn't affect home phone service. I have mine with Teksavvy (along with my DSL) and I'm quite happy. Long distance in North America for $20 flat a month. And on top of that, really good rates to Europe (as cheap as most calling cards, but without the stupid rules that eat away the remaining balance).

Maybe they want to buy GM?

Not to be rude, but that is somewhat shortsighted. Today != 15 years from now. With the masters, you likely have a better chance of bigger $$$. Of Course, your mileage may vary.

Disclosure: I'm a CS, but don't have my masters and have been working for 10 years. I don't think that's limited me so far, but I have 30+ years left in the workforce. So I may hit this ceiling someday.

Think of the Children!!!

My previous boss told me this once, and so true it is:
It'll never be cheaper to get more education, so if you're going to do it, do it now.

In a few years, you'll likely have a spouse, kids, mortgage, car payment. Those things will be a huge factor if you ever wanted to go back and do your Masters.

And if the economy is in the tank for the next year or two, then it's probably the best time to be doing more education.

A wise man once said:
He who was self taught, was taught by an idiot.

I'm just sayin' :)

Maybe the malware infected machine had a hacked hosts file and he was connecting to some site in Russia? Or some other way of redirecting the supposed chat session with "Symantec Support"

Tell that to playboy: http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNewsAndPR/idUSN1841769320090218

I heard a story about a cop in Rochester NY who shot a copier (the home of Kodak)

I guess it was many years ago (70's or 80's) and they got their first copier from Kodak. Huge piece of equipment. The tech gets called to repair it one morning because it wouldn't make any copies. Needless to say that the bullet hole in the side of the copier didn't go over too well with the Kodak tech.

I remember my first install of slackware back in maybe 1996. That was NOT for the faint of heart. I still get cold sweats thinking about it :)

I've always thought that Debian was a great Distro. Stable, lots of packages that can be installed, and lots of resources on the web.

Ubuntu (based on Debian) ties it all together with a nice, easy to use installer and GUI. Great choice for desktops, but I'd stick to Debian for servers.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT

Microsoft paid out $0.46 per share last year