I've seen companies spend ludicrous sums on TYRING to fit square ERP pegs into their odd ball shaped hole of business processes. Keep customization to a minimum. If you can't find an ERP system out of the box to do what you need it to almost completely, then building external apps to do what you want is not a bad way to go provided you have in-house talent to manage it.

Also make sure the vendor approves of what you're doing in those external apps. You might find them blaming you for system problems and not provide support when you need it most. You can bet the odds of this go up if you outsource the dev work. It's nothing for them to blame a third party they don't have a business relationship with.

Just remember -- external tools are basically external modules that are only dependent on the underlying data. As long as the database schema doesn't change, system upgrades shouldn't have any impact on your external tools.

Chattanooga is a city that has quite a few very wealthy interests that wanted to better their community because they would benefit too. The people that you might normally think of as being against such a venture were not. The broadband is just one piece of the puzzle of investments that have been made with open arms of power brokers.

If you were to have visited it 10 or 15 years ago and then came back today, you'd swear that you were in a different city. The transformation has been nothing short of amazing. And that's why the city is full of tourists most of the year.

You're trading caution for convenience.

I have automated some things such as patch installation overnight only to wake up to a broken server despite the patches being heavily tested and known to work in 100% of the cases before only to not have them work when nobody was watching.

I urge you to only consider unattended automation overnight when it's for a system that can reasonably incur unexpected downtime without jeopardizing your job and/or the organization. If it's critical -- DO NOT AUTOMATE.

You've been warned.

Whoops it cut out part of my statement because it thought I was trying to insert HTML code. That should read:

If you're outsourcing things because it makes sense -- i.e. not every country can produce their own (insert specific niche agricultural product here) efficiently -- then that's not a problem. Doing it for the other reasons is what causes vast problems.

It's the intention and effect that outsourcing to other countries usually has. Namely:

Intention -- searching for those who will work for the least, in countries that have more relaxed environmental regulations and to avoid taxes
Effect -- increased localized unemployment, a "race to the bottom" on wages, damage to the environment and government budget crises

If you're outsourcing things because it makes sense -- i.e. not every country can produce their own efficiently -- then that's not a problem. Doing it for the other reasons is what causes vast problems.

Oh and for extra bonus craptasticness -- it's unsustainable in the long run.

Well this is rather unfortunate. I had my complaints about it, but those were allegedly being addressed. This necessarily raises questions about what's going to power the sync for Ubuntu phones.

We haven't had any major technological investments in propulsion of any type for a long time now, so going by your criteria we haven't had anything interesting happen in about 40 or 50 years now related to vehicular transportation.

That's not quite right. Fully 8 hours in advance of the storm hitting (i.e. before everyone started their morning commute), a very direct and confident warning went out that Atlanta was going to get hit. Al Roker did a timeline of the warnings and there's just no way you can watch that and not conclude that the authorities were asleep at the wheel.

At the risk of drifting to one side or the other -- I think you're oversimplifying. While gentrification is not a new phenomenon, this is one of the first times I've ever heard of people reacting so viscerally to it. I think the reason this stings so badly for existing non-Google employee residents is because it's not happening due to a new employer opening their doors nearby. If that were the case, existing residents could potentially get jobs there and afford the new normal.

In this particular instance, you have an employer that is NOT nearby making the fact that this location is not nearby a non-issue for its employees and causing gentrification in a way that mostly leaves current residents out of the loop since it's not likely the average resident could get a job at Google. The results can be devastating situation depending. Some residents might only be getting by or barely getting ahead. Having to relocate could completely upset their financial balance in a way that they can't rectify.

At a minimum, people's lives are being upended due to no fault of their own and it's quite clear where they should direct their energy.

The protesters are part of a group that are upset about gentrification. In the event that you don't know what that is, I'll explain since all the posters so far clearly didn't read the actual article (another day on /.). Quite simply -- it's when people with significant wealth and/or income move into an area of people with less wealth/income and thereby drive up real estate prices beyond what the established population can potentially afford. Hint: property taxes start going up and the established population can't afford to buy/rent a new place in their current neighborhood and possibly can't afford their current residence anymore and will be forced to move potentially far from where they currently live. For families, this is a non-trivial challenge.

They've been protesting Google buses because this has put gentrification onto the fast track by making areas more attractive to Google employees that otherwise wouldn't have been due to transportation headaches. Getting a company funded ride straight to work is not a small deal.

Note I'm not taking a side on the issue, just pointing out what's going on. Essentially you have people that can see the time coming when they will have to move and it's directly the result of Google and its employees. I won't use the word "fault" because that implies wrongdoing.

The tactics of the protesters are clearly questionable, but I'll leave that up for the ensuing discussion.

This is not strictly always true. If the company you are working for is doing well and isn't in the business of cutting for the sake of cutting, then you CAN get a raise if you can articulate the accomplishments and value you add AND (this is important so pay attention) you _ask_ for a raise.

If any one piece of that chain isn't true, your chance of getting a raise is slim. You actually have to accomplish some things and add value. You DO need to be able to explain them and why they add value. Example: "I added new automation which saves us 20 man hours per week. This has allowed us to be more productive and save the company money." You must remember that this isn't a game where everyone gets a trophy just for competing. This is the real world where if you want to be shown you are valued more, you need to add more value. Just showing up isn't enough.

The whole asking part is an art that few possess. You need to be prepared for what happens if they say no and how you will react both immediately and in the days afterwards. It wouldn't hurt to have other job opportunities you're pursuing in mind. If you can have an offer in hand, then that's even better because you're negotiating from a position of power.

This is a game of chess, so don't play checkers. Changing jobs for raises is not a good long term plan to do frequently.

The world today is so far removed from anything the Founding Fathers knew that it is absurdly silly to try to weight their intentions on current situations and necessities. Moreover, the moment the Constitution was inked, arguments about what it meant began and have never ceased. Even when they were still alive debates persisted.

But most importantly -- the fact that they created a framework of amendments means that they NEVER intended the Constitution to be a static document. So whether you agree with current interpretations of the Constitution as it is written or not, you should probably avoid saying "The Founding Fathers never would have ...". Totally irrelevant. They built the document knowing full well (or should have known) that one day it could be changed and morphed into something they would NEVER have wanted.

This assumes that the clothes are generally correct in their sizes and uniform across brands. I've found this not to be true. Seems like I read articles about that recently that some brands were making large sizes smaller in name only to make consumers feel better about buying their products.

You've never had clothes fit so comfortably than those literally custom made for your body. If you've never had a nice dress shirt custom made/fit, it's a whole new experience.

Are we really that far away from a device in your home that you can stand in front of and it take your measurements? Something kind of like Kinect (if not Kinect itself).

Then you can get size suggestions based on your preferences -- like you clothes to be a perfect fit or a little loose? Would you prefer clothes custom made to your exact measurements for a premium?

Actually I'd be pretty shocked if someone isn't working on that right now.

Not necessarily. It really depends on how they do the integration. If they set the application default behavior to always open docs with QuickOffice, then maybe. But if they leave it as an option and you have to manually select to always use QuickOffice then I would venture to guess there's virtually no chance a suit would be filed and even less of a chance of it being successful if someone does.