d43594

Would be interesting to validate the voting record in elections according to the DB against the outcome.

Do things you are interested in, and that you can commit yourself to spending time on consistently. Dropping things you've started without making the conscious decision to do so will foster a sense of underachievement. Accept that Rome wasn't built in a day and start small. Build yourself up gradually. Use your small successes to build momentum. Accept that you cannot change the past, instead try to guide the future. Invest the time in doing a personal development plan. Even if you don't use it, the simple act of doing it will help to give you some direction and make you appreciate what it is you really want. You can then set about making steps in that direction. Be wary of sacrifices you choose to make, particularly concerning people. Choosing to learn language X instead of language Y is easy to solve when you change your mind, but convincing the person you love to take you back after you chose your career over them is likely to be much much harder.

As any person will have observed more often than not accreditation proves little or nothing about anything. For example many corporations possess numerous different accreditations (some of which are industry specific) e.g. ISO:XXXXX, OHASA, Microsoft Gold etc etc etc. Most of these are simply seen by management functions as a box ticking exercise. The principles and most importantly mindsets evangelised by such accreditations are never enacted or held by those with the power to enact them. Perhaps this is a problem because for some reason management types aren't seen to be a collaborative discipline, but instead a ruling one. Often engineers are at the behest of management decisions which tend to be based upon ill-conceived preconceptions, and poor and/or politicised information. Ultimately more engineers need to hold management positions to ensure values are enforced and engrained within the culture of the organisation. To some extent accreditation is just advertising and brand image.

My house builder is accredited by X, Y and Z but their management and customer service is so poor that I fail to see how the business functions. I think this projects a some what idealistic view, not founded in reality.

I could buy a Firewall, but why should I have to?

Yes. How can I be assured that their mechanism has not, and cannot be compromised? I can obtain updates through their website. I should be able to register for notification when updates are available. Why would I want to allow remote access (even to my ISP) which I cannot monitor? Moreover, why would I want to (potentially) allow (whoever has access) to install whatever they want on my router?