YES! Many think that Rick Wagoner is closely linked with the the perception of GM's viability. Or lack there-of.

Others have said it, but I'll say it again because I like the beat this philosophy into everyone's head at work:

IMPLEMENT FAULT TOLERANCE.

If a service, internal or external, doesn't work right... make sure that your customers are still mostly satisfied.

It would be IMPOSSIBLE to experience "major server issues" if your damned eCommerce software was designed smartly.

Point the finger all you want. But at the end of the day, this failure is YOURS.

Web services go down, go bad, get attacked, or become unreachable. Plan for it.

Do we really need yet another analysis that talks about the same exact products on the same exact platforms?

Instead of a focus on complete information security, this kind of analysis, once again, ignores BlackBerry and Macintosh and Linux - some very common platforms that are growing in both the enterprise and home markets. How a repeated focus on the most commonly discussed platform helps anyone is a mystery. It just continues to say "all these products are different, we rank them according to our exclusive analysis." Are you going to switch AV vendor given their unconvincing analysis? Not likely.

In the end, the analysis sounds hollow; "My AV software isn't on the top of their list". Given their strategy, who cares?

The self-declared "security experts" completely miss the point by completely ignoring platforms other than Windows. Sure, perhaps the BlackBerry is only found in 70% of corporate environments, and the Mac only has 7% market penetration, and Linux is perhaps only 20% of back-end servers - but I'd fathom that nearly 95% of the businesses out there use one of these platforms and need them to be SECURE - in order to keep their corporate (or personal) data and networks safe.

All these "security experts" are failing their potential customers by rehashing the same discussion, instead of analyzing products and methods that address the mostly unhandled attack vectors of other mission-critical platforms.

I also vote for Dell. Look here at my speculation/analysis:

1. Dell is in a dire financial position for the past several years.
2. Michael Dell has attacked Apple before, verbally.
3. Michael Dell came back from retirement to try to save Dell.
4. Apple and Dell are strong competitors
5. Having Apple change its OS model would help Dell
6. If there is no change to Apple's OS model, no harm to Dell
7. Apple is taking Dell customers away in droves.

So, in short, Dell has nothing to lose and everything to win. Screwing with Apple in a public way is, in the least, fun and inexpensive. And at best, will result in Dell being able to sell OS X. And in the middle, would make Apple look silly. As long as the real puppeteer stays hidden, everything is good.

An old lady down the road from me passed away a few months ago. Her 1920's vintage house was vacant.

Someone broke in and stole ALL the copper water pipes. You think I would have noticed - it would take a truck and quite a bit of noise to remove them.

Somewhere within a one hundred mile radius is a metal recycler that is happy to look the other way.

So the Transport organization formed a new contract with the same parties that failed them before. HOWEVER, the new contract is much more robust, with many more protections for the transport authority, and many more penalties for the provider if and when they fail.

So what exactly wrong with this? That someone who screwed up got a new contract?

Let me say that there are very few organizations that have the ability to deliver ANY service in this area. Having a contractor with a track record and some history of failure doesn't mean that the contractor aren't the best choice for the job.

Is this corruption or stupidity? Likely not. This is simple business.