basking shark asks: "My company is trying to institute a new policy where an employee who takes a training course but leaves the company within a year of the class must reimburse the company for the full cost of the course. The exception is where the course is mandated by the company to fill an immediate need. While I understand the need of the company to protect itself, it also reminds me of the now-despised "company towns" of the early part of this century, that retained employees by making them carry debt to the company that paid them. Is this sort of policy becoming standard as management suggests? Is it fair? Are there alternative plans that would satisfy both employer and employee?"

Below: More comments spawned by Jon Katz' columns on the events in Colorado. These words speak for themselves.

rubyred writes: "With all the fuss surrounding the launch, SEGames has some PS2 coverage by several of the editors who had vastly different experiences on the launch night ranging from actually getting a PS2 to standing outside of a Wal-Mart in the pouring rain with a blow-up Shark and not getting one. Other features include "the first 24 hours with it""

eoPh asks: "I recently aquired myself an Avatar Shark, a beautiful little portable 250meg removable disk drive. I only have one slight little problem. The company that makes these suckers has gone bankrupt and I need some linux drivers or even some good information so I can begin coding my own. Maybe an ex-employee of Avatar reads /. and is willing to help, because I don't think that I'm the only person to have run into this problem. " This is the classic case as to why I feel companies should open their specs. When I buy a device, I want to know what I'm getting and how it works. I don't want to become utterly dependent on the company that makes it, because it might not be around forever.

mrwiz writes "According to this article at Appleinsider, it looks like Apple may be removing the upgradability of processors even further with their next generation logicboards, codenamed "Shark", by moving the boot ROM off of the logicboard and onto their processor daughter cards. " Update: 09/07 07:56 by CT : The Happy Blues Man writes "MacOS Rumors has an update on the "trojan" firmware upgrade for Blue & White G3s. It seems that even in Apple itself, the issue was hotly contested and the proponents' reason was to stop 3rd parties from shipping G4 upgrades before Apple's G4s were shipping. Apple sources have confirmed a fix will be available. " Update: 09/07 08:54 by H :I've been told by numerous people that this is NOT true-more to follow.

Zach Garner writes "IBM is introducing a new line of harddrives, code named "Shark", that will start from 420gig and go up to 11 terrabyte." Now thats what I'm talking about. This kinda stuff has got to make the film industry as nervous as the recording industry. But mainly it just makes things like digital audio and video mixing a lot easier. (Update: 07/27 01:32 by CT : Course a few people noted that these things are the size of refrigerators so its not like their gonna be desktop toys any time soon either)

Randy Scott asks: "Since Avatar went bankrupt and liquidated their assets, the Shark drives are being dumped all over the place. Been considering getting one, tho I know I'll be hosed when it comes to media or troubleshooting. Syquest is faster than the Zip, but they also filed Chapter 11 recently and the media is expensive. The main thing Zips have going for it is that everyone seems to have one (good for file sharing). My question is should I get an Avatar drive, Syquest drive, or play it safe and go with a Zip?" Hmm...decent choices...but what about Jaz, too?