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Comment 366:1, but depends on industry (Score 1) 414

366:1 includes management and combined positions. Public sector (at least city, county, school, state) tends to have more systems and less techs. My shop is a public sector shop.

Our system/facility counts:
~1100 desktops/laptops
~45 network switches
~10 physical servers
~10 virtual servers
4 storage systems
1 managed wireless system
7 schools, 4 admin buildings, ~2300 students, ~500 teachers/staff

Our personnel:
1 manager/DBA/server admin/network admin (combined position)
2 FTE tech support on staff now
1 open tech support position (open since September, and open from Feb-August prior to that)

Our biggest problem is we can't pay nearly what a corporate environment can offer, even though there tends to be far more individual responsibility in our positions. If I chose to work in a corporate environment, I could easily be making twice my current salary with my experience, education, and knowledge. But then I'd be bound by constraints the education field doesn't have.

The job situation in our area is also the reverse of the rest of the U.S., if you want a job (even one that can pay 6 figures), you just need to have a pulse, pass a drug test, and be willing to work on an oil drilling rig. They even have tech related jobs that pay in that range.

We run a software/hardware management system and centralized imaging system. It saves us a lot of time/hassle, but still can't take the place of one or two people, especially a higher-level server/network admin or DBA.

When we compare to other schools our size and larger in our state, those schools tend to have a better ratio of systems:techs.

Comment Re:A question of fairness and integrity (Score 3, Insightful) 464

I couldn't agree more. The IAU has the authority to make this decision, but if the OP is correct, and only 10% of the IAU voted, that isn't even a quorum.

Two things really bothered me about this decision, and neither of them are the decision that Pluto is not a planet, but have to do with the way the decision was made.

1) When asked about applying this definition to other stars and their potential planets, the committee that proposed this definition said that the definition on the table only applies to our solar system.

2) One of the delegates said, "We would really look like idiots if we came out of this meeting without some type of decision." (I don't know who to attribute this to, but I heard the scientist's voice on NPR).

Another interesting tidbit is that the original defintion, as suggested by the committee, had the unintended consequence of removeing Neptune from the definition of a planet (it hasn't fully cleared its neighborhood, i.e. Pluto), so they added an addendum to the definition.

My thought is the IAU does look like idiots, for doing 1, and making statement 2. All they have done is muddy the waters again. They haven't come up with a definition that will be applicable to all bodies orbiting any star (even though there are bound to be exceptions). The addendum to make Neptune a planet under this new definition again shows that they really didn't think this through like they should have before submitting the definition.

If they were to act more like scientists than media-coverage hungry people (the "we would look like idiots" comment), they might have actually come up with a definition that didn't need an addendum to include a large gas giant, and one that would be applicable to extra-solar planet hunters...

Another interesting tidbit is that most of the scientists in the "Pluto shouldn't be a planet" camp also had competing missions for which they wanted funding that might instead go toward a Pluto mission of some sort.

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