Yes. Obviously.

Things get better. As others have said in this thread Autism is viewed, at least in part, as a developmental disorder. My son, who is diagnosed with "High Functioning Autism" often strikes me has having the intellect of someone 1 or 2 years older than him and the emotional intelligence/behavior of someone 3 or 4 years younger than him. This leads to socially awkward moments when dealing with peers. He actually gets along quite well with younger kids. As he ages he keeps maturing, but he's just behind his peers. My daughter is PDD-NOS which is just the big "other" category on the spectrum. She's a bit learning delayed. She's oppositional. The key to success with both kids has been to find the right program/teachers. Teachers need to have autism training to know how to teach these kids. At one of the earlier schools we attended the principal actually suspended my son for a day for acting out. Later we were able to point the principal in the direction of some good autism training and now they know better how to deal with this situation. It does get easier. You need to adapt. It's not your child's fault their autistic and it's not yours (beyond genetics anyway). You need to learn new parenting skills. You need to take respite when you can. Most importantly, you need to find a support network. Other parents of autistic kids are a great resource. There's a Dad's group in my area (there a lot more rare than the Mom's groups it seems). Remember autism is a spectrum disorder. Starting with completely non-verbal nearly comatose people all the way up to people who might just be described as nerdy. Bill Gates, Isaac Newton, Einstein all had at least some of the signs of being on the spectrum. I think if you start looking at any highly successful person (Tiger Woods & Bill Clinton are springing to mind at the moment) you start to realize that they show some signs too. Non-autistics are called Neuro-Typicals (NT). I'e come to believe that NTs really are just that: typical. To be extraordinary, you are, by definition, not-typical. You have quirks. How many quirks and how large lead to your diagnosis along the spectrum. I think all men are created autistic. Some are just more autistic than others.

Sorry for being obnoxious. I guess that's the Asperger's talking. :) As for Bill Gates. He's commonly cited as being a fairly clear example of a very high-functioning (obviously) spectrum resident. I've been in a room with him. I've watched him do his rocking thing and several other tics. Maybe it's like gaydar... you have to be one to know one. And I wasn't mentioning it as any sort of criticism. As several recent Wired articles have pointed out, Autistics are going to be in high demand in the future due to our ability to focus on repetitive tasks, enhanced analytic and observation skills, etc. Most people in IT are somewhere on the spectrum because those traits are rewarded within IT.

Well far be it for me to critique the Wikipedia, but Autism is a spectrum disorder. Hence the term, ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) that it goes by. I for instance have Aspergers. My son has HFA (High Functioning Autism) and my daughter has PDD-NOS. But, no, I probably don't know anything about it. Thanks for that. Fail. BTW, sorry if this comes across as socially awkward. Cause, ya know, there's that.

What neurotypical folks may fail to realize is that Autism is a spectrum disorder. From what I've observed, most everyone who works in IT, at least in any technical capacity, resides on the Autism spectrum somewhere. From LFA to HFA to Aspergers to PDD-NOS to OCD to "quirky" to "nerdy"... etc. Pretty much you can substitute "geek" for "autistic" and be on safe ground. Bill Gates is autistic (clearly). Steve Jobs probably too but to a much less noticeable degree.

I'd tend to agree here. Buy a couple of blades. Implement vSphere with DRS and HA and possibly FT. Centralize all these core services. HA/FT will provide the fault tolerance at the core. Then spend on buffing redundant network links for remote sites and/or network capacity as needed. Simplify simplify. Minimize the number of VMs providing core services. Put as much as you can into a cloud.

Communications ("information") technology has been the biggest change in the last twenty years. Internet, cell phones, gps, wireless...none of this existed (to any significant degree) in the 1980s. Also, this list of patents by calendar year indicates that inventiveness, at least as measured by pursuit of IP protection, has a trend of increasing annually.

It is a shame as that is pretty much all I use the Wii internet channel for. My Virgin Media cable box crashes 100% of the time when I try to access iPlayer through its interface. I also don't like watching iPlayer on my computer screen in another room when I want to be on my sofa.

I'll grant you that they don't deem anyone innocent, but by those standards, we could just dream up charges against anyone we don't like for any kind of paedophilia charges, couldn't we?

Would probably be a better society if everyone had been accused of child molestation. Might make everyone think twice before judging them.

My copy and paste-fu failed me, I'll try again, this time with added clicky

china and derivatives contracts

Japan and new government promise some changes

checked, clicked, works, sorry about the other..

If you can afford a computer, why can't you afford an iPod for the store? There are lots of MP3 players that are not overly expensive that will suit your needs, and they are far more reliable than the average Linux box.