I'm sure I have no idea....

You've outlined the pros and cons pretty well - the cons are all financial and concrete ... the pros are emotional and insubstantial. Your Belgian children (Flemish?) have no ties to the US of A - they won't feel that connection simply because they are citizens of a country they've never been to.

How will this new ranking system assess pages which contain lies strictly for the purpose of debunking them?

This post gets repeated about once a year here.

News Flash Developer types -- you are never going to see this in your lifetime. Estimates are a fact of life. Deal with it.

If you are in an organization that has a problem with turning WAG estimates into hard deadlines and then bitching when the inevitable unfolding of the project changes the situation is a large way, then protect yourself by learning to speak to the project managers in their own language.

Define some rough "degrees of certainty" around your estimating, and guidlines to the degree of accuracy you feel.

Class "0" (when the project is in the approval stages) +200% / -50%
Class "1" (when the requirements have been documented) +100% / -25%
Class "2" (when the work packages have been built out) +50 / -10%

... or whatever your particular organization and SDLC model supports. And then, when asked to provide an estimate, communicate clearly as to which class of estimate you are providing. This isn't rocket science.

It seems to me that getting and releasing this data requires a hack of the Harris Corporation.

And that it would do a whole lot more social good than the "high school quarterback rapist of the week" that tends to be their high profile targets. While those scumbags are good targets, and certainly deserve to be brought to justice when there is some sort of cover-up or injustice involved, in the end ... they are small potatoes, local targets whose impact is extermely limited in scope.

The Harris Corporation is a partner in the systematic stripping of rights of all citizens by it's so called protectors. THAT's data that needs to be free. Find it, steal it, release it into the world so that apps can be developed which can combat it. If you want to be a SJW ... at least pick a target that will do some good.

Thirded. He's one of only two I would have nominated (Musk being the other) who have done much to advance the issues of science being "cool".

Seconded. Demonstrably making science cooler by making money at it. Fighting the good fight against protectionist industries.

I voted for me!

And yet Canada - geographically the largest part of North America - is nearly universally known as a punchline for being unfailingly polite.

As someone said above, the so called "logic" being thrown around this thread is appalling.

 
Ah, home sweet home.

Go directly to your Change Manager (not the CAB, but the person who is invested in the day-to-day management and running of the process).
Utter the following sentence "I wish to get regular patching of Windows Servers defined as a standard change, what do I need to do?"
Follow those instructions.

It might seem like more beauracracy for the first run through, but it'll be smooth and seamless after that. As a Change Manager for years, I can tell you that the people in that position are far more worried about project managers trying to push through craptastic updates at the last second than they are with competant domain support people. They'd love to get you off their radar just as much as you want to be off the CAB's radar.

About 10 years ago I left a fairly established consulting gig with a company that was winding down operations / being acquired.

Had to make a decision to move to the new company & stay in the same becoming-boring job or strike out again and search out the small internet startup / potentially rich-making / more exciting and hugely more risky gigs.

I chose the latter.

End up getting screwed on the IPO on both of them (one went private instead of public and screwed everyone but the founder), one reneged on the handshake deal I had with the president (since he left before the IPO happened - he'd been outsted by the founder). With my kids getting a bit older, I then went and hid out at a big company where the money was stable for 6 years to trade on benefits instead of income potential. However, I wouldn't trade the experience of working for those small, nimble outfits for anything because I've carried the "of course we can change that - what's to stop us?" attitude that you build up in that environment everywhere I've been since.

It's made me a better consultant, no doubt.

Someone above questioned where you are in life and that to me is a huge factor. Are you married? Do you have children? Are you the sole breadwinner in your family? What financial obligations are going to be there whether you are working or not (like a mortgage or retirement savings)?

The choice between a small company where you can make a difference every day and decisions are made in the president's office in an afternoon (but "the money" can vanish overnight) and a large company where it feels like you are trying to steer the Titanic (but the money will be there all day every day) is somewhat about what makes you tick. Are you an adreneline junky? Are you risk averse? How about the other people who are counting on you? (if there are any)

Perhaps this was the actual experiment. "Postulate the different take-up rates of a poorly configured fake science experiment. Measure the difference in the overall takeup rate between media classed as "Left Wing" and media classed as "Right Wing".

See, that whole "unperson" thing is already working...