The 3-year lease cycle has to do with being able to deduct the full amount of a leased item over a three year period. If ypu purchase you can only deduct 20% per year. If you run your own business you probably know that.

I've never been into RPG much; but I remember playing this one. The 3D maze was somewhat cutting edge at the time and it was quite fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons:_Treasure_of_Tarmin

The Forbes article is hardly any longer than this summary. It also does not substantiate the claim of patent troll for either MS or Apple (as mentioned ad nauseum by other posters).

Pretty sad attempt to generate some discussion. At least provide some substance.

FYI: MS no longer holds any of that initial 150 million investment; http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/apples-stock-rise-could-have-meant-5-billion-for-microsoft.ars

In addition, Sony put in some new DRM trojan that will delete all your Bobby Brown mp3s.

In a large organization, I see other folks behaving the same or worse as IT managers:
- Human Resources, ever try to reason with one of them that their policy needs to reviewed or does not help in attracting talent?
- Finance; yes, once I have the PR, the sole source agreement, the market analysis, I'll get a PO and the invoice will be paid in six months after the vendors berates and tells me that they'll never do business with us again
- Legal or Privacy department; seriously, never ever try to disagree with them or propose a different point of view
- Researchers; full of primadonnas; the leadership is even worse ...

The article is BS; most of the items could apply to any other area or field

No man, I don't vote Liberal or Conservative, and you're confused.

The Liberals FEDERAL governement committed to Kyoto without provincial backing. I suggest you add a "Fuck you, Mr Chretien" as well.

At this point, I rather see the Armed Forces getting something. I take it, you never served? We have crap resources compared to poorer nations. Hard to be a peacekeeper when you spend six hours maintaining your vehicle for a two-hour trip.

Kudos to them for organizing this, but this looks like an affair that could be held in a school's gym or a local legion. Half-dozen vendors and the same number of presentations.

I loved my c64 and even though i have the time to kill, i will most likely not cross the gta to make it to mississauga.

May have been better if this was a larger retro-computing thing ...

Technically; Hamburg is a city-state; just like Berlin and Bremen/Bremerhaven. Kiel, Luebeck, Rostock, et al, are also free and Hanseatic cities, just not states in Germany (anymore).

Very good observations.

You're 100% correct on the budget. There's no incentive to save money. If you don't spend it all, you would be penalized by having the amount deducted from your operating budget. Everyone around January there would be a mad dash to think of ways to spend/waste money. Couldn't give raises or performance bonuses to my staff though. I certainly could burn money on consultants though ...

I hear your dilemna about taking that hefty paycheque and the potential guilt. One of my motivating factors to work in government is to keep people honest, because at the end of the day I'm a taxpayer as well. It's certainly not to be rich. If I was a government agency hiring someone, I'd rather hire someone like you over 99% of the folks I've encountered and you would be much better value for my tax dollar.

It's crazy, I know. I work in government as well, although not defense.

The reason for the prices and the hassle is that the 3rd party in question is contracted to provide the service. They have assurances that the work will be done at a certain level, and more important the contract will have clauses for liability. They in turn will have to have certain items in stock (which costs money), have the qualified staff on call (which costs money), and have the proper insurance in place in case something goes wrong (which costs even more money).

While you were probably more able and more responsive, the truth is that it would have made the brass nervous and set a dangerous precedent. I'm sure they've done their checks on you and that sort, but there was probably no binding contract that governed your activity related to that HW replacement.

80% of the activity at the government is CYA.