I have a bust of Darwin tattoo on my upper arm surrounded by animals from the Galapagos. Darwin is a personal favorite and we share a birthday.

FIRST

Happy birthday Thursday Big D. I hope I am still pissing people off as much as you do over a hundred years after I am gone.

Accountability will not happen until Data Security becomes easy enough to understand by the people who run things. Many companies think they are doing things the right way because the decision makers are not properly schooled in best practices or vulnberabilities. Do you really want the government to get involved in this? Does anyone think there is a government agency capable of the oversight necessary to decide when the hackers were just too smart? If you punish companies for data loss, that is akin to fining people for getting their house burgled. Hackers will always be one step ahead, especially with no good method of securing data assets for a cost that will allow businesses that are struggling already with a lousy economy to be protected. Ultimately there needs to be a task force of actual IT professionals who set standards for securing data and pursue cyber-criminals and malicious hackers. Keep it out of the hands of any existing agency because there is not one that has this sort of proficiency. Creation of a new agency would create a small boost to the IT sector as people would regulated into complying with some sort of standard. Just dumping fines on someone for gettting hacked is not a good business decision. It would be like giving billions to companies that had already shown they were not capable of sustaining a profit...

Hosted Exchange costs $10 per month per mailbox or so and you get all the features of an Exchange server plus the virus loading.....err features of Outlook. It is pretty cheap and I was wondering why I do not hear about more people using this type of service?

That seems to be the motto here where I work. Supposedly, we are audited by a partner but I amazed that we have not had a major breach of security yet. Default admin password on all the windows images used for desktops, no complex password requirement, passwords changed on a phone call with no challenge to the person's identity, and the list goes on. I have reported each thing I have found but no one responds, so I am officially just waiting to watch the train wreck at this point.

First, let me be up front and say that I think t sucks that we have become a two party government. This has eliminated competition in the place where it is most needed. I doubt our government will ever bring itself up on antitrust charges so I guess we have to make do. I found it amusing to read that the Republicans are socialist because most of the Republicans I know swear that Democrats are socialists. Socialist has become a dirty word that the two parties use to try and stir up hate to hide the fact that both just look for ways to make money off of the people. I do not understand why socialism is viewed so negatively, the worst thing about it in the USA is tha tnothing good is ever socialized.

I am currently employed in a medium sized business' IT department and I have started to look for a way out. I have wanted to get out of IT for a while and this place has been the final nail. I make less per hour than a factory worker and I only get paid for 40 hours even though I have not worked that few hours in a week since the middle of last year. Currently I am on my ninth straight day without a day off, and I have 5 days more before the possibility of having a day off. Recently, I started looking into contracting again and it is tempting with the higher pay and getting paid for the actual hours worked but I am pretty scared of what the economy might do in the next 18 months. I would love to go back to school but the cost vs. the change in my salary would not make sense for my field of choice (advanced degree in biology). I am old enough now that I missed my chance to pick a career that I love so I am stuck in the IT pit. As someone else pointed out though, it is generally good work compared to what I could be doing. I have relatives that work in coal mines, and IT certainly is nice compared to that.

The bigger issue for me is the god awful support they offer if anything goes wrong with your console. I did not get the red ring of death so there was no way they were going to help me, essentially. They claimed that my console (registered the night I bought it) was sold 3 months before I bought it. It quit reading discs but they would not agree that my warranty was still good 10 months after I bought it. Thankfully Office Depot replaced the thing after 10 months since they never sold the only other one they got in stock.

When I think of games and torture I almost always think of WoW. Sheer torture to sit through that snore fest of a game. Yeah, that is grade A prime troll bait.

I have played almost all the MMO's that have existed up to Burning Crusade. I cannot honestly fathom what posessed me to play those games. I took up guitar (not guitar hero, the real thing with strings) and spend more time playing with my kids. I tried to play WoW again a month or two ago and before that temporarily reactivated my LOTRO account, and I honestly do not see what is supposed to be fun about those games. WHen I get the bug to do some gaming I fire up the Xbox 360. No need to wait for a group to form and no worry about leaving early if the mood strikes to go play the guitar or the kids get bored with what they are into. Even better I save about $45 per month on no game subscriptions (used to play three or so of them at a time, or at least pay so I could). EVE online sounded really cool, then I logged in and it was just so ridiculously boring. Last log in for WoW I walked across a piece of Shattrath City and cancelled the account before I could even make up my mind where to go. The old school games seemed to have a lot more challenge, or maybe it was just that they were new. Anyone else find that they were once hardcore MMO fans and now totally do not play them?

I see a lot of talk about people who are refused treatment and such, but I have seen no mention of the people who refuse to get treated or to stop spreading the disease. My wife worked as a case management RN and set up an AIDS/HIV clinic intended to supply free treatment to those who could not afford it. The issue they had was that a lot of these people do not want to be bothered by treatment. They seem to either not give a shit because their lives are already hell or they assume that because they have it they are going to die so they do not want to be bothered. To me the biggest problem with HIV/AIDS are the people who still go out there sharing needles and engaging in unsafe sex. I think that needs to be prosecuted a lot more vigorously. I have seen spouses who were dying because their significant other was going out on the DL and brought home a nice case of HIV/AIDS (I used to be a MLT/phlebot). The guy that did that should be prosecuted for murder.