If Viacom wins there isn't anything that cannot be bought.

I do a lot of remote support for my customers.
I also make sure I get face time with them.
Learning the work-flow of a company is very important when it comes to administering their network.
If the company you are hiring doesn't schedule regular visits than i wouldnt trust them to work in your best interests.
I'll add this as well. audit them periodically. Hire another company to check up on them.
My customers do this and I've received good feedback from the customer and the auditor.

i understand. i just hate to see it happen.

I think most companies these days are overly focused on the short term and on strictly measurable outcomes. Charging X customers $Y more will make use $XY more money, right now. Spending money on being nice to our customers is something where we can't really measure the return on that investment separate from anything else and, in any case, once we start working on this it will take a while for it to really pay off.

i'll pass. 2 days of this nonsense is enough without trying to keep it going

i feel lonely now

n/t

I actually am a technical writer, and I like it. Now that I have been working in the field for a while, I'm chary about getting involved with F/OSS projects because the F/OSS community in general tends to treat non-programmers as not worth bothering with or listening to, even though a lot of us who'd really like to get involved are working professionals with good track records. I don't need to get treated like shit and ignored on a volunteer project when, if I get treated like shit and ignored in the corporate world, I'm at least drawing a paycheque. (Nothing eats like food, after all.)

I've seen far too much of the attitude around that programmers should write the documentation, because the programmers know the application best (as if that's a particularly good criterion by which to create documentation!), and IME that really only accomplishes two things: It makes your programmers (who'd rather be programming, quelle surprise) cranky, and it pisses off your user base, when the documentation reads like something that has been hacked together by someone who doesn't know the first thing or care a whit about documentation. Brilliant.

Now, if someone were serious about getting technical writing students involved in F/OSS projects, I'd recommend contacting these folks: Cooperative Education and Career Services at the University of Waterloo, and the Rhetoric and Professional Writing and Rhetoric and Communication Design programme people. They do co-ops at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in those programmes, and, at least when I was there, seem to be quite open to unconventional project ideas...

I know fuel is cheap now...but will it be always?

Don't let this current downward path fool you, Lad. Energy costs will be high for at least another generation. Floor is getting sticky again already. Only way to break close to even (for a decade min, YMMV etc) is to make your own.

Side point: Like so many others have already mentioned; we read you--wherever you are.

I think the main problem with our current political parties (worldwide) is that they are focused on methods rather than outcomes. Party A thinks this is always the best way to do things and Party B thinks that is always the best way to do things.

I think there's a possibility now (or soon) of a shift to a more outcome-based approach. "We want to get these results and we'll find the most effective most efficient way to get there."

My concern is not for my own privacy (I trust myself to recognize the implications and accept or reject the system accordingly) but the users of my site. If they aren't aware of all the ins and outs of Facebook's privacy options (which were pretty confusing already) they're going to freak out when they see "Bob posted this comment on turg's blog..." appear on their facebook wall. And their solution will probably be to stop using my site rather than to actually straighten out the facebook settings

How? I might be more inclined to ask "Why!?!" [/;-)