And when they do make a billion dollar mistake?

Oh thanks for the millions of dollars I'll go golfing now....

Don't you see the problem with this picture?

Very true. I think there is a happy medium to be found. At times the pendulum swings too far towards the union and others too far toward the company. I don't see how anyone could say that unions are the problem in North America today. They have been largely gutted and are fading away.

I have never been a part of a union and probably never will be in my profession -- but I still appreciate the hours, holidays, health and safety etc. unions have given us over the years.

The interesting thing is that whenever I point this out people talk about how unions are no longer needed because all these rights are in the laws now. I always have to point out that things like right to work laws etc. obviously mean that the law isn't static and these rights need to be defended or we're headed back towards 19th century robber baron conditions.

Not sure if serious.

The Dems were bought as well.

The only sane solution is a single payer and they gave that up almost immediately.

Who is surprised?

That data is Google's entire business.

Right back at you.

Thank you for illustrating my point: most people here clearly have no idea how intertwined the auto supply base has become.

Your overly simplistic econ 101 recap isn't going to help in a situation like 2008.

I agree that ideally GM would have been able to go bankrupt along with the banks and all their hopelessly greedy and out of touch executives. In the real world, though, things would have been catastrophic if that had been allowed to happen.

Just so you know: There is no such thing as a free market.

how intertwined the supply chain is.. a GM failure would have been complete chaos all down the line.

Many of the suppliers to the auto parts industry supply more than one brand but losing, say, 20% of your business overnight would have shut them down.

It would have been a cascading failure of the whole industry without intervention.

Anyone saying "oh well a startup would take their place" obviously has no clue how long it takes to get these programs off the ground and running.

IT is not a part of the business model -- you most likely don't.

You're considered a necessary but unwanted expense like keeping the lights on and are usually treated like the janitor.

No one cares who you are or what you are doing until there is a mess somewhere. Then it is your fault for not having cleaned it up already.

Welcome to IT.

If I had known years ago what I was getting myself into I would never have gotten into this industry or at least I would have had the sense to work in a business where IT *is* the business. Hopefully I will be able to make that transition in the future.

For *reliable* backup and archive purposes tape never went out of style.

Windows RT, even apart from having a terrible and confusing name, was entering a market where the iPad was already running away with the mind share.

The only way Surface RT would have had a chance is to seriously undercut Apple on price, hope to get enough of them out there to foster application development, and then recoup it later.

Add in terrible marketing (what the hell is Windows RT supposed to even mean? Why is it called Windows if I can't run Windows programs? etc.) and the confusion between the Surface and Surface Pro and.... yeah... bye bye.

They can pay me half what they pay the executives in charge of this stuff and I will be happy to hold their hands and impress upon them what should have been some very simple concepts.

There are still companies that are incredibly over valued in the Nasdaq and the entire stock market (not just Nasdaq) has been inflated by the Fed QE of 85 billion a month.

It will come tumbling down and then we'll start the whole thing over again.

(that is when you buy)

Certifications are no substitute for fundamentals.

The problem with certifications is that they date so quickly as versions and products come and go.

Understanding fundamentals helps you pick up anything new.

Microsoft doesn't need to concentrate on Office. Microsoft needs to concentrate on integrating all these many pieces of the puzzle that they already have.

They could do some kick ass stuff if they could make it easy to do all the things people would like to by having settings / media ownership and compatibility between all the different platforms and form factors.

No one else has all the pieces that they do right now. If they could just stop infighting and head towards a common goal they could accomplish really cool stuff.

It should be clear that with:

a) full blown computer chipsets getting better on power usage and thermal efficiency

and

b) more demands being placed on our portable devices (phones + tablets)

We are going to end up converging down to on OS for both desktop and mobile use.

There is no such thing as security. Only mitigation of risk to an acceptable level.

The second thing to keep in mind is that, in these corporations, all goals are skewed towards short term performance and the executives milking out as much cash for themselves as possible.

If putting off the investment in security this year gets them a bonus this year then who cares what happens next year?