TR Hot 5: iPad support has nothing to do with feminine hygiene

I'm Sonja Thompson with TechRepublic's Hot 5, and during this episode -- on April 23rd, 2010 -- we're going to dig into the forums and count down the hottest discussions of the week.

Patrick Gray got people talking this past week when he vented about five things he hates about corporate IT. Top on his list was defensive jargon:

"We had a protocol conflict between the WAN and the VLAN."

"This DRP solution does not provide sufficient client data redundancy." 

"The code needs to be re-written in PHP with new SQL queries."

Here's the deal -- just take a shot every time you hear one of those, and you'll be just fine.

I'll link to this and other hot discussions of the week in the blog notes so that you check out the other annoyances on Patrick's list plus see what the TechRepublic community had to say about it in the discussion thread. I especially liked Andrewv's suggestion for a follow up post that describes the corporate environment we would love to work in. I agree, Andrew, and if we do write that counter piece, I think you should get a TechRepublic coffee mug.

Ok, Chad Perrin creeped me out a little bit with all his science-fiction futuristic talk about opening up our bodies to technology to solve biological illnesses, and then what if these digital implants actually invade and infect our cerebral cortex?

That's like a horror movie, right? Well, according to JCitizen, this is already happening today. He said that DARPA has a brain implant project that helps pilots control avionics by just thinking the commands.

Hmmm... so, I could potentially just think about recording this video instead of actually doing it? Sign me up!

Justin James (aka J.Ja) also received quite a few comments for his guest post in the Career Management blog about whether or not you should go into software development. Now this post was actually inspired from a real conversation -- as opposed to an imaginary or hypothetical one -- with a high school senior who was considering pursuing software development as a career.

Now, in his response, J.Ja's good news was quite a bit shorter than his bad news, but it all boils down to this. If you want to go into this field, you have to be smart about it. J.Ja offered his advice, and then the TR community chimed in with theirs in the discussion thread. Some folks said don't go into software development, and other folks said you should go into software development. And I thought it pretty cool that a high school senior, TR member LoopyDood, participated as well, asking his TR peers for some insight and recommendations concerning his particular situation.

Well, the CIO jury's verdict is in, and according to Jason Hiner, TechRepublic's Editor in Chief, it was 8 to 4 that IT should NOT block social media sites. Jason included some quotes from the CIOs who made the jury, such as this insight from Scott Lowe, the CIO of Westminster College. Scott said, "No to blocking, but there should be a 'reasonable use' policy in place." Like  you can't stay on Facebook the entire day?

And speaking of Facebook -- yeah, here I go again -- TechRepublic has a Facebook Fan page, and we think that you should Like it! AND you can follow TechRepublic on Twitter -- that is, if your IT department hasn't blocked those social media sites. Now, I say this because there's a lot of great information that we share on Facebook, we even have some photo galleries in there, and all of our published content is fed through Twitter. It's not like we're having this friendly little competition with ZDNet, BNET, SmartPlanet, and MoneyWatch, but if we were, you'd do everything you could to help TechRepublic win, right?

And the hottest discussion of the week was instigated from a post by Erik Eckel about why IT departments should support iPad users. It was interesting, because when I read Erik's argument, I was like, "Yeah!" I totally agreed with everything he said.

But then I took a peek at the discussion thread, and I saw a slew of TR folks who disagreed, saying "It's a toy!" "Belongs in a 16-year-old s bedroom, not an office," "No thanks," and "You've got to be kidding." For some reason, I don't think these people have been drinking the Kool aid.

Last but not least, we'd like to give a shout out to the TR members who posted the most comments over the past week, and that short list includes OH Smeg, Deadly Ernest, boxfiddler (way to step it up, Boxie!), Palmetto, and santeewelding.

That's a wrap, but be sure to tune in next week for another TR Hot 5.