You think an hr rep knows and has access to a second set of ip's to route Skype calls? On top of that you obviously were being interviewed for an entry position and were disappointed they didn't ask you harder stuff? Sorry Stephen hawking maybe next time they will purchase a solo oc3 to route your interview across the world on and ask you quantum computing questions. I could only imagine what working with you on a team would be like.

All this company has to do is OUTPUT a product they already have in production. I know stuff isnt done overnight but just cut the BS from the projects and ship already. It's painful to watch the decisions of RIM, they have such an iconic name and really nice hardware, just friggin ship OS updates like mad. build interest again. sheesh.. painful...

Things to consider:

1. How many "guys" (people) are you talking about when you say they are "MS guys at heart" == (amount)
2. How much will they have to learn to be as proficient at option X versus what they are good already (MSSQL) == (time)
3. How much will they be annoyed that option X "just doesn't do this the same way" == (more time wasted chatting about how dumb there boss is for making them change)

then run that through the ol' PERT analysis (shortest time + 4xlikely time + longest time) / 6, and see if that comes up to be more than your 20k initial expense..

so lets say 3 "guys"? and the project seems rather large and its doing something new, but lets guess 6 months (960hrs.. 40hrsx4x6),

lets say they on the conservative they waste 8 hrs a week learning/complaining/whatever, 10 likely and 12 if they are really mad at you for making them learn some new stuff.. ( pert says 10 after that )

so we'll say they'll blow 10 hrs a week learning the new SQL db, 240 total hrs a piece, and we'll guess there pay at $20 being non-profit and all, but probably paid more I would hope.. $4800 per person, times 3 is $14,400. so its getting in the warm zone of $20k.. would be interesting to see real numbers..

After working in telecom, there are reasons the copper is solid. Do you know how many splices, nicks, stretches, & bends there are from a CO to a home/business? Many many more than are fixed, to put it mildly. "the company" just hopes the copper in the ground never moves around so much that is causes a disconnect.. which only really happens because it is solid copper from one end to the other, not just a skin. (when the skin is breached you would lose the higher freq required). Once copper is laid its paid for, the maintenance is the nightmare, this would just introduce an infinite more possibility of more areas that could cause problems.

Copper thiefs cost $60 million a year.. if a company, like AT&T, took that burden alone, it would be 60 million from like 19 billion profits, which is like .003%

I think the cable industry is more overburdened with social media experts (Hi Marketing company for a NEW cable design!) and bored reporters than meth heads actually stealing cables. (not that it doesn't happen, its just not worth researching/buying/testing/teaching people how to properly repair new cable vs industry standard = $$$$$$$$$ vs $)

The question isn't "How", its "Why".. money doesn't seem to be the big issue here, so why not spring for Server 2008R2 and manage all the boxes from there? it does all this updating/registering/etc your hacking together, and for around $800, versus your hourly rate x hours hacking, seems less expensive and the result is a heck of a lot more manageable. I'm all for the do-it-yourself type, but managing disk images? Yeah I can spend my time better elsewhere

When the linux community asked for software I don't think they knew what they were in for. Cheers mates, you can crash your browser like the rest of us.

Back in November last year:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1874644&cid=34278914
- Sometimes this crap is to easy

So, we can hope this bill is harmless and holds up in court for real copyright infringement cases (if it passes the house which I hope it doesn't), or we can assume lawyers will use this to basically shut down the internet, or at least the search part of it, I mean, Google is an information company, which provides a massive search for illegal files, I can see it in court now

Google Lawyer: "But your honor we do not target these rouge servers with illegal files, they are just massively linked and our engine lists them automatically"

DA: "No sir, I did a search for "warez" on Google.com and it said displaying 25 of 5,019,193,012 sites.. which proves they just provide illegal software"

Judge: Point taken, shut them down! Who's next!

This is so obvious it hurts..

Look, don't feel bad, when we say Russia we typically mean all those other misspelled countries near Russia, the best hope they have is that we divide "Russia" from the EU with Czech Republic and typically that's with some college education and an interest. Heck if we didn't have a conflict in Vietnam they would be called Thailand by default, so on the bright side at least those are friendly countries you have for neighbors and they don't f with our oil addiction so I'd say be happy our we will come spread democracy and "unify" your country(s), your on notice!

Maybe they should incorporate in a different country, I mean, at worst were looking at around $400 for a regular corp and $800 for a non-profit (US States), at the currently ran operation needing eu 50k to start up I would seriously doubt the legitimacy of the management at this point.

So, we can hope this bill is harmless and holds up in court for real copyright infringement cases (if it passes the house which I hope it doesn't), or we can assume lawyers will use this to basically shut down the internet, or at least the search part of it, I mean, Google is an information company, which provides a massive search for illegal files, I can see it in court now

Google Lawyer: "But your honor we do not target these rouge servers with illegal files, they are just massively linked and our engine lists them automatically"

DA: "No sir, I did a search for "warez" on Google.com and it said displaying 25 of 5,019,193,012 sites.. which proves they just provide illegal software"

Judge: Point taken, shut them down! Who's next!

This is so obvious it hurts..

Funny, when Firefox went to the new style of annoyance (three step process) I made a post on the message boards to go back to the older style where it just prompted that it was invalid, click okay and you kept going. The devs/admins/users blasted back about how it was needed, how it helped, etc, and just as told them (a year + ago), finally research shows that most certs are invalid and out of date, but thats allllright because I quit using FF. It just scares me that the people that are smart enough to be involved with the programming and management of one of the most used web browsers have no insight to how the web is operating beneath them, don't they ever surf outside the mozilla domain? Weird.

These were people coming to see a remake of Wrath of Khan, how hard is it to impress them when you show them a new Star Trek film? I mean it would be like going to a Republican convention and finding someone that would enjoy Rush Limbaugh's newest book, your not trying very hard. I would go as far as to say

FAIL.

Much like the banking industry I think the software one is living in a bubble that is poping.

let just take what they said above as right: they need $10 million (previous console version) and usually sell 150,000 copies.

well 150,000x59.99=$8,998,500

so that's 9 million of the "first line suckers" then I'm sure you can dig up another few million as you decrease the price to something more sane. so that was easy.

Now they need $25 million, I guess somehow Dakitana 2 was that much better, Now let's see the time frame.

(using XBOX) released in 2001 discontinued in 2006

(using XBOX360) released in 2005 , still going.

now we are talking an increase in cost of over 2.5 times, in a time frame of around 10 years.

Fellow Slashers, This is some BS if I ever smelled it. What other industry do you know of that is basically an oligopoly, and the price of the goods they produce has INCREASED over the life of the long run, and their cost to manufacture has "Somehow" Increased over the same time?

Right-o chaps, I'm glad everyone in California drives Bentleys to go to work and sit in a cubical and code a game all day while doing a Nerf assault on the next guy, but don't whine that it costs to much, you just have no idea how to control spending just like the rest of the bloody market and your bubble is about to pop. (or is in the process)