It handicaps Minnesota moving forward. Microsoft contracts tend to confuse the educated and intimidate the less intelligent in the government market. They constantly preach that the "only" directory that will serve the enterprise needs of the state is Active Directory, and seek to punish the kids who threw together an LDAP solution downloaded from the University of Michigan on Saturday and launched as a comprehensive directory on Wednesday. We've been anxiously awaiting the Google OS with an eye to purging our offices and labs at my university of our major security hole (converting PC's to alternative OS), but haven't seen much progress. However, we've seen a lot of MS marketing/PR types squiring our networking staff about and tantalizing management with fluffy cloud visions of a Microsoft enterprise. If Minnesota hasn't performed due diligence and made significant changes to the legal documents before signing, then the citizens of Minnesota may find they can't participate in the technology of the future as it won't be permitted under their "agreements" with Redmond.

I probably had a pool of 300 floppies destined for re-use by then. My last 3.5" floppy disk purchase showing on my tax records was 1995 in the state of Kansas. I had to inventory my collection of data for insurance purposes recently and I actually have more than 1000 8" floppies with a variety of old material that might still have some veracity in these modern times.

As much as I hate more government, someone needs to be the voice that speaks for those who can not speak for themselves. I'll have to side with the abused on this issue.

As someone who lives in Las Vegas and spent the obligatory tour of duty in a casino upon moving here, the only problem might be that a casino generally will only acknowledge your employment and dates of employment. Other than that, you need to collect letters of commendation and recommendation and keep your personal files and you'll be just fine. Although I will say that the stress level is less and life is more enjoyable and healthy out of the gaming industry. Less smoke now that I'm working for UNLV and better hours overall.

Get some experience if you're serious about making a corporate career. That way, you'll know what your strengths and interests are and can focus your masters in those areas. If you have management skills, you can double your degrees with an MBA and a Masters in your area of specialty. If you're never planning on leaving the academic environment, then you'll want the Masters as a step on the path to a Ph.D.

Is it to sell out? Is it to build a bigger, better business than anyone else. Do you measure your worth by the number of zeroes in your bank account? The kind of car you drive? Or is your personal worth measured by how many people want to work for you? To help you build your dream by buying in? It's the cusp of a new generation. I call it right-brained capitalism. You have to decide.

Middle of 1993 the Yggdrasil CD came in the mail. Took a fairly new PC (386) and dumped the Windows install and used that for Yggdrasil. Spent many nights playing around inside while learning Linux. I really can't remember but think there were five or six Windoze boxes that came and went while the old tower running Linux kept chugging along. Eventually ended up with a Sun Ultra 10 from surplus and found myself constantly wondering why Solaris didn't some of the things that Linux did. Testing some desktops to roll out at the University now. Liking Ubuntu but am letting the IT leadership team attempt to achieve the same result with OpenSolaris. For work productivity and compatiblity I use a Mac.

It wouldn't surprise me to see IBM end up owning Sun, Red Hat and Microsoft in the end.