I have not read all the comments, but it seems like most regards the scenario: Company A (somewhere in the high-salary parts of the world) employing a (different) company, B, (somewhere in the cheaper-salary parts of the world) to do something for them. This can be very difficult for all the reasons stated above, but there are actually alternatives that -- to a certain extent -- make sense.

I used to work for a very large, multinational consultancy and they did what other, large companies could do: They established a subsidiary in India and used that for a multitude of activities including software development and hosting.

They obviously established a management structure in India that reflected the company's goals and values, but they also did the very smart thing to second the Indian employees to other subsidiaries around the world like USA and Europe. This gave the Indian employees a practical insight into the culture and corporate culture of these places, and provided them with a much valued network of colleagues around the world. It was a learning experience for the American and European people too, experiencing these (often extremely) hard-working and frugal people.

I have no actual figures to back this up, but I got the impression that the initial turnover of people were fairly high as some of the Indian people could not readily adapt to the somewhat different work ethics in America and Europe.

From what I know, this scheme seems to work well. It is not as cheap as a pure outsourcing solution to one of the really low-priced providers, but on the other hand, it is substantially cheaper than using local people in America and Europe.

I used to work as a consultant for a very large, global computer manufacturer/consultancy as Solutions Architect. More than once I had to quickly find an available system to implement a customer's outsourcing solution as the normal lead time for a new system was 1 month+! (And before you start yelling "Virtual Servers", these customers required independent physical servers.)

Sometimes I had to go through a list of servers on a specific subnet, match that up with a list of servers from the routine network scans to see if all were accounted for, if not, I would try to find the server in the server room, get its ID from the chassis, go back to the inventory system, try to find the server there and hopefully an owner too.

Occasionally I could either not find the system in the inventory system or no owner was assigned. I would then have a private chat with the hardware people responsible for the area the servers were placed and suddenly the relevant servers would have an "unscheduled network outage", i.e. the operator would unplug the system and we would wait for somebody to start screaming. If that did not happen within a day or so, we would dump the system's data to the backup system and reassign the server. This time properly documented.

I work as an IT consultant and sometimes have to bring home more or less sensitive information -- all such information (actually all customer information) I keep in an encrypted container, with one for each of my customers. And no, I do not use the same password for all containers!

For what it's worth: I use TrueCrypt as it is cross-platform and I back up my whole containers to two off-site locations in another country. And to manage passwords I use KeePass and KeepassX.

Anything else, you inquisitive so-and-sos?!?

Does not mean you must.

This goes for about anything you can think of, not just the invasion of privacy.

Isaac Asimov (the creator of the three laws of robotics) actually added a fourth, which took precedence over the other three -- and that law is the scary one that basically allows anything to happen:

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Think about it: If, as the "robots" see it (i.e. are programmed), NOT killing a few gazillion people would harm humanity -- well, then we'd better kill them! No?

The morale of this: You cannot program morals! (At least not easily.)

What's more to say?

My experience from a similar situation is that the most expensive part of a cloud-based solution is the data traffic cost. I had to choose a hosted solution with unlimited Internet bandwidth, which came out much cheaper than a cloud-based solution. I must say, though, that the system had a constant high level of traffic independent on the number of users.

If you virtualise from get go, you should be able to choose whatever solution is the cheapest at any time by moving your image around.

OK, I am going to kill whatever goodwill (and karma) I may have had with these statements:

* I actually liked Jar Jar Binks -- he was the not so bright, but well-meaning, comic sidekick
* I think Jake Lloyd performed much better than Hayden Christensen
* I think the chemistry between Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen was as hot as the chemistry between gold and nitrogen at 0 Kelvin
* I do not think that Anakin's shift from good to evil is very convincing

But no matter what, the movies are not worth another ticket to me, 3D or not.

I am adding momentum to the proces of saving paper by scanning most incoming documents I need to save for some reason or other, which allows me to recycle the paper. The only documents kept in the original form are contract-type and official documents (like my birth certificate, passport, etc.).

I recently got a load of documents to fill in. I scanned them, used a word processor to fill in the forms, added my scanned signature and returned the result as a PDF for each document. Result: Paper recycled; plus I have copies of the filled-in documents and I managed to send it off without involving the MailMan (TM), which saved at least a day.

Oh, and did I say that I now have the documents archived on my overseas server too? Well, I have! (My thanks go to rsync and the people behind it.)

Following Sony's rise and fall is rather interesting, I think.

They started off by making tape recorders and became famous by producing small, transistorised radio receivers that were affordable but rather poor quality. I remember my first one that after a few months developed the most scratchy volume control (metal wiper on a carbon path -- I took it apart in the end).

After WWII (not, I'm not that old :-) the Americans introduced the quality movement in Japan and in 1968, Kaoru Ishikawa outlined the tenets of TQC (Total Quality Control) management:

* quality comes first, not short-term profits
* the customer comes first, not the producer
* customers are the next process with no organizational barriers
* decisions are based on facts and data
* management is participatory and respectful of all employees
* management is driven by cross-functional committees covering product planning, product design, production planning, purchasing, manufacturing, sales, and distribution

Akio Morita, the founder of Sony, was a proponent of this quality movement and worked hard to make Sony products fairly affordable and good quality, which was the hallmark of their products for many years.

After Morita's brain hemorrhage in 1993, he was unable to lead the company and stepped down as chairman in 1994, at the height of the company's glory. After that time, Sony seemed to slide slowly downwards in its respect of customers with a marked disregard for the second tenet of the TQC "laws".

Sony has been -- and still is -- very innovative, but they have gone down the slope quite a bit since Akio Morita's time with regards to affordability and respect for customers.

... or follow them and display the final addresses instead?

I organise my information in four ways:

Whatever I need to keep hidden (passwords, PIN codes, ...) in KeePass.

Meetings, birthdays, days to put the rubbish out and whatever else time related in my calendar(s). I actually have a few calendars on computers and phones that I keep synchronised.

Names, addresses, telephone numbers, E-mail addresses, etc. in my contact list on my phone. I synchronise this with my other systems too.

Everything else goes in a hierarchy on the file server: Anything trade related, for example, in a trade folder organised by date, provider and type (receipts, contracts, proposals, warranties, policies, terms & conditions, ...). Anything related to my children's schools in a school folder. Recipies, downloaded literature, programs, photos ... And so on.

I find this system works well for me and I can always find things (sometimes to my wife's surprise ;-) even several years later.

Many years ago I worked at a mainframe installation (IBM S/360 to give you an idea of my age ;-). The computer was installed at the back of a huge room with plenty of space for expansion. For some incomprehensible reason BRBs (Big Red Buttons) were placed along the skirting board every ten feet or so, which had hitherto not been a problem -- with all the space nobody came near during daily (and nightly) operations.

Every morning at around two AM a guy came with a load of cassettes containing cheques from the banks for clearing. He usually just opened the door to the room and shoved each cassette in to slide, like curling stones, across the floor to the cheque sorter.

And one morning, well ... A cassette decided to slide all the way across the room and unerringly triggered one of the BRBs square on. Half a night's work to be redone.

I would have thought the studios would consider this a "trade secret" ;-)

On a more serious note: I hope the studios will not reduce their games to cater only for the 90% as most gamers love the possibilities in a game and would probably not buy a "limited" game. (Just like I love a good tool, despite using it only once or twice.)

I want my non-technical books to be Printed and Bound and Gilt-Edged to compensate for the Guilt-Edged feeling I have reading them.

Wife: Why haven't you ... Nag, nag nag!
Children: Can you give me a lift to ... Nag, nag, nag!
Rabbits with big brown eyes: When do you clean my ... Nag, nag, nag!
Customers: When is the ... Nag, nag, nag!