Don't use Chrome, or pay the Chrome tax.

100 tabs on Safari and a Mac doesn't flinch.

... Not to mention that when you vote on paper you do not get a receipt of your vote so you can check later if your vote is registered correctly. I'd for one would like to be able to pull up a receipt after voting that tells me who I voted for, so in case of doubt we can pull all receipts together and do a manual recount on paper anyway.

Like I said, I have seen this paper-based voing scrutiny and was not impressed. At most, they were happy that by the end of the day they had still the same amount of ballots as in the beginning, but that was for some people even optional. And if ballots go missing, how sure are you all votes are counted?

Not that electronic voting is not open to manipulation, but you would cancel out the manipulation because of apathy with the process for random people who are called upon to perform the counting, or manipulation done by obviously biased people because of their political links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia

Seems it works out for them. I wouldn't mind.

I have done counting on paper ballots, and don't assume that this is in any way more correct. In the end you are working with people, and over a day of managing voters and counting votes you develop leaders and followers, and most of the time the leaders are affiliated with candidates anyway.

So, personally, I'd prefer Estonian style voting.

When it comes to government workers, only this part of your opinion is true, and only because they want to keep receiving the paycheck.

I'm one of a few contractors working in between government workers. My predecessor got kicked out because he adapted to the life the regular employees were living: 7 hour days, long coffee and cigarette breaks, long lunch breaks, lot of bitching and no work done.

The problem is: most of it you can do in Linux without any problem. But the issue is that there is no single point of configuration, and it takes alot of manually setting up.

Linux is free as in beer, but when it comes to setting up an equivalent of a forest and domain, and attaching desktops to it with the features you mention, I cannot see how you would be able to do that in less than a day without preparation. Setting up an AD environment including desktops and laptops with suitable policies would take half a day, with half of that spent on looking at the installation progress bar.

Windows isn't cheap in licensing, but I don't think that Linux is currently cheaper if you need three expensive Linux consultants to do the same one MCSE can do in one day, and continue needing them to do simple tasks as adding a new machine to the domain.

Microsoft's documentation may be bug ridden, but at least it is instantly available, easily searched and covers all their products.

I've had the chance to work with other closed-source and opensource vendors, and none of them come even near the amount of documentation that is readily available on their website. Veritas' documentation just lacks the bugs their software has, and CA never heard about documentation.

... but I would advise against it.

I am living proof that it is possible, but that was right in the internet bubble, when I got media attention for designing a website and was hired as a web designer. I learned programming Perl and PHP on the job, together with basic sysadmin and this experience let me apply for a job as servicedesk employee, get more experience doing sysadmin stuff, getting my MCSE and ending up being a consultant, coÃrdinating 5 people in releasing software packages over 4000 machines working in a bank and insurance environment. And this within 10 years.

I suspect however that if you don't have any experience, you'll have a tough time getting a sysadmin position. Try to find a position as service desk calltaker, study hard on various certification exams and then go for junior sysadmin positions.

But remember employers will favour degree+experience over just experience... And in a tough economy with an overflow of available IT people with degrees, you score low.