IBM-Oracle Pact. I wonder how long this non-aggression pact will last? This sounds suspiciously like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. If you look it up, it had a really bad ending.

"Pioneers usually end up with arrows in their backs" I wish you all the best.

As Thomas Watson said: "Nothing happens until a sale is made". Your engineer might have to work late, but the reason he has work is due to the efforts of the sales person. I know a lot of people that hate sales work, they just want to do the technical work. Some people are great with sales work and all that goes into it.(Including some off-colour behavior) They are the people that are bring the work through the door. Sure he got paid a lot of commission, but that commission is a small fraction of the overall value of a project. His $1million dollar commission brought in tens of millions of dollars of work for dozens (maybe hundreds) of people.

Some years back I worked for a government agency and the laptops had to be fully encrypted. There was a bit of a performance lag, but it was quite stable and there were no issues. I've used Safeguard by Utimaco and again, no stability problems.

Amen. I believe the book 'Peopleware' had a section on this comparing places where employees could control their distractions vs. those who couldn't. It was no surprise that the people who had a quiet workplace were far more productive. I need quiet and I've gone in on Saturday mornings when no one was around and go more done in 5 hours than I did in the previous 5 days. I just don't get this idea that you need to be in constant collaboration with people. If the specifications and documentation are that bad, send it back up the line for clarification. You need a place to think and if you need a break, get up and walk around. Get outside and get some air. Don't sit back and waste time watching Youtube or getting on the web.

Sadly, there is this notion that people need to shove into a pile and work in some kind wide open area. I'd like someone to try this: Give 1/2 your people a real office with a door they can shut and control over distractions like turning the damn phone off. Put the other 1/2 in the typical dog-kennel style arrangement where you can hear every goddamn noise and distraction. Do this for 6 months and see who is more productive. I'll bet you can guess the answer. I just can't effing stand the wide open office cube farm. Just how much collaboration do you need?? Are the specs so lousy that you have to discuss every case or sequence? I'll bet there are a lot of people who work late or come in on weekends just to get a couple quiet hours to get some work done. If those people had some peace and quiet they wouldn't have to be at work 90 hours a week to do 25 hours of productive labor.

Who the *&^% wants to work for free?? The motivated young developers I've met lately want to code games (XNA et al) or mobile apps, especially the iPhone. I've met very very few young developers who are really motivated to develop open source programs. I can't say I blame them. Regarding Linux the OS, what's left to be solved? Does the core Linux group really need any help? Can anyone really make a meaningful contribution to Linux anymore? People want to go where the action is. And that isn't Linux.

Thank you! I keep telling people: When it comes to business DON'T F*CK AROUND! Get the RIGHT advice and the the tools from the pro's. If you do anything else, it will just look home made and no one will take you seriously.

http://www.junauza.com/2009/12/free-and-open-source-cad-software-for.html You can also try VariCad at www.varicad.com Honestly, I think it's better to pony up the cash and get version of SolidWorks. See if you can split the costs with someone else. Then you will know for sure that is can handle the file formats of the other products.

Absolutely correct! I use VMWare images of Win2k Server et al and we had to use NewSID to avoid problems. Your images have one SID so when you try and run multiple copies, (especially with a Parent/Child DC's) you get problem. For us, it happened about 50% of the time. For some reason, some students could make all kinds of copies of Win2kserver, run them and have no problems.

I run VMWare at a college and we typically have the students run a scenario of Primary and secondary DC's. Unless we used NewSID, we had problems. The weird part was, it was intermittent. Some students would create multiple copies of the same image and had no problems, others would have nothing but grief unless they used NewSID.

I've noticed some great deals on computers lately but, with all the grief surrounding Vista, I just could not be bothered to by a new PC or a laptop. I supposed I could have just blown away the OS and reloaded XP, but I honestly just can't be bothered to piss away a day trying to do this. And Linux is not an option because some of the apps I'm using are not available on Linux. I wonder how many people have felt the same way.

There needs to be a PUBLIC Parliamentary Inquiry and the first question should be: What high priced idiots did you hire to build this? Seriously, some very high level people need to be kicked out the door for this.