If you have time to wait, see Republic Wireless. My Verizon contract has gone month to month and I'm just waiting for these guys to open enrollment again. For $19.99/month you get unlimited data and service, although RW does want you to use VOIP when possible.

>>> As a further note, right now there's no way to trace that serial number to me

Do you ever load a driver for that printer from media in the box or from the printer company web site? How about the Printer Control Applet that tells you when to buy cartridges adds duplex and custom paper options? Unless you're printing from from a system without a network connection, it's trivial to associate printer serial number with IP address.

The FDA does no review of the software at all, but their review of the hardware means that the manufacturer is completely immune to lawsuits if someone dies as a result of a bug in their software.

Once again, untrue. As a Software Quality Engineer for a major medical device manufacturer, I can tell you the FDA does review software and has regulations and guidance surrounding software development. In recent years the scrutiny of software based device has increased so much, that companies are having a difficult understanding exactly what the FDA excepts.

The FDA provides minimal guidance on software. I'm working with a Medical Application Vendor now who insists that we install MS SQL Server 2005 SP3 (which is out of support) for their new released product. This is what the FDA approved. The FDA also has guidelines for commercial off the shelf software that require vendor comply with security updates. That isn't really a priority once something is approved, you see. Strictly speaking, the FDA considers devices using commercial off the shelf software to be end of life when any software vendor ends support. Medical Application Vendor's take is they have FDA approval, don't worry. We'll wind up installing this, but with enough conference calls and meetings to point auditors and lawyers at the vendor.

'We should not expect something to work just because it is declared supported, . . ."

Why should IPv6 be different than any other feature a vendor documents?

He's probably a new hire at t-mobile supporting Sidekick cloud storage. Or the last person quit after having his team rightsized down to a single person from a dozen.

Same situation, except it's from a Bunch of A**hats calling about a VISA card bill. Never heard of this guy, but I know his name, balance, last payment and previous address. I called the Privacy Compliance Office of BoA without resolving the calls. Since they managed assign my cell phone to Joe Deadbeat this was a a little annoying. Eventually, I filed a complaint with State Attorney General, Jerry Brown at the time, and the calls did stop.

I also got a letter on lawyer's letterhead denying that they ever called me, that personal information had been given out on phone calls which never happened, and that no record of inappropriate contact information existed.

Be well aware of what you don't know. There are good comments about security and reliability already. Outsource things such e-mail and web services to a reliable, willing to be audited vendor. Ensure DR plan and testing is included.

Now the big point. You have greater than 6 TB of storage. Is there a backup and recovery plan in place? RAID is not equal to backup. Is this information important to the business or is someone unwilling to learn "delete" options? Does the backup plan include off site media migration? That can be as expensive as Iron Mountain, a company safe deposit box or just someone takes a tape set home on Fridays. Test your recovery on bare metal. Cloud backups are one option, although you're now betting that another company will survive and maintain any privacy requirements you have. Warn the decision makers, ensure that the "when Drobo raid controller burps and scrambles all disks" there will be no recovery is a possible scenario. Granted that may or may not happen this year or next. It's more likely that Bart the intern will purge the Drobo so he can save DVDs he's ripping all afternoon. Now you have redundant movies.

Document the warnings and the decision to not spend money and accept the risk(s). As management amnesia sets in, this keeps you from holding the bag.

Jerry Pournelle, generally well known rocket scientist, technologist and big name writer was science adviser to Congressman G. Jerry writes about getting a call from somebody "calling from congress." Turned out to be Newt, having read A Step Further Out, personally calling to recruit. That led to a long term staff gig and ears to whisper in. I don't tend to agree with Newt's latest directions, but I'm willing to listen to anyone willing to to give Jerry Pournelle a microphone and input into space and science policy.

There are always options. One, scrounge available RAM from another unit. Two, spend the 20 or thirty dollars and add your own ram module. It's worth it in time, just make sure to have some sort of inventory control documentation. Three, take option two and turn in the reciept.

The 37 remaining Vista users were polled. Does the lack of IE 10 impact your use of the workstation?
6 are waiting to buy a new PC with Windows 7
12 need a vendor to certify the business critical application on Windows 7
2 installed Ubuntu
9 didn't understand the question
8 asked Cowboy Neil to take of their computer.

I used to work for a company that provided real estate database services. We were pulled into court by a patent troll claiming their mapping search patent was being infringed by our search applications. We had to pull together a PDP chassis and enough cards to boot, but we were able to read 15+ year old archive tapes. The prize, we offered mapping based searches in the 80's on dial up terminals. Source code, written in MACRO-11, PDP assembler, showing prior art. Historical contract files documented selling this feature to customers.

The moral, even when you retire a platform and application, holding backup tapes can have value. Second, keep some way to read the silly thing around.