You either use a cloud service like Microsoft's or Amazons so you can scale quickly to meet demands, or go all hax0r and build your own farm out and 'stick to open standards' blah blah, which you'll most likely get so side tracked administering your servers your project will slip into the background. Who cares if your code is some type of 'open standard' when it doesn't exist. If this bazinga idea will be used 'world wide' and make buckets of money, make the money and then open all your stuff up like all those other corporations do

a Guest account on windows can't install software, throw chrome/firefox with adblock or IE with a good TPL/adblock list, dont install java and keep it up dated, you could browse the most gross sites on the internet and be fine. you could even go as far as enabling "Only allow signed apps" to run (secpol) and thats a done deal.

Enable BitLocker on your drives. When you connect a drive for backing up, bitlocker it then use any backup mechanism (win backup or file history in 8) problem solved. Everything's encrypted and backed up.

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..