Softlayer was founded by Lance Crosby, the COO for The Planet.. They forced him out of the company, so he left and started Softlayer. Shortly after The Planet merged with EV1, and then about 5 years later Softlayer and The Planet merged and kept the Softlayer name.

I had servers at The Planet the entire time.. it's a good company.. and they have the revenue and profits to actually be worth $2B.. unlike some other recent acquisitions.

there's another corporate scam: sending fake compliance notices that look like they are from the state w/ an official looking seal, citing some state law, and demanding $X for compliance. I've received 3 of them over the past few years.

If I'm willing to risk tossing a state notice in the trash, then the trolls letter has no chance.

This guy posted an image of one on his blog:
http://parasec.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/screen-shot-2013-04-05-at-9-23-41-am.png

Q1 2013 - cars sold
    BMW Group (BMW + Mini + Rolls Royce): 448,200
    Audi: 369,500
    Mercedes: 341,511
    Tesla: 4,750

http://beta.fool.com/sarfarazis/2013/05/08/audi-vs-mercedes-who-is-winning/33384/
http://www.bmwblog.com/2013/05/02/bmw-group-reports-first-quarter-revenues/

GIMP an alternative to Photoshop? Don't make me laugh. I used to believe that.. then I bought a copy of Photoshop... GIMP is not even close.

you fail at reading comprehension. 1) the facility is being EXPANDED by 300000sqft to total 1.4m sqft. 2) a data center is obviously more complex and has more power and cooling requirements than an office tower.. and 3) the article mentions apple's 500k sq ft datacenter that cost 1billion... so this facility is not more expensive than other data centers.

That made me laugh a little.. but seriously.. I don't think that would do it. There's no place on earth that comes close to the conditions on Mars (for example).. even if an asteroid hit earth, it would still be the best place for us to survive.

I wish you were right.. but the answer is no. What those rockets are used for has not changed. The missions are still the same; the customers are still the same.

We have to discover something valuable in space.. then the space age will begin as everyone capable goes into space to claim their share of whatever it is.

2nd breach in the past 13 months. If you're ok with that, then you're nuts.

You're recommending Linode? Are you fucking kidding me? They just had a data breach a few days ago, that they completely fucked up. Lost credit card data, passwords, etc. Originally claimed a single account was attacked, so they reset EVERYONE's password... if that wasn't dodgy enough, then they announced the breach days (a week?) later. The hacker says the public AND private keys were stored on the webserver.. so if he's telling the truth, you'll need to get a replacement card soon from your bank.

Like CLEP?

Both terrible examples.. because the dessert cups were paid with after tax dollars, and the dinner was also paid with aftertax dollars. Only in the Google example is someone receiving a gift that was paid for with before-tax dollars... meaning no tax was paid on it at all by anyone.

It appears you're unfamiliar with a common practice: regularly scanning and auditing computers on your internal network to catch comprised hosts.

Since they are doing part of your job for you, send them a nice Thank You card for helping you out.

Hmm... my figures come from the annual reports filed by the company and include links to the reports... someone with no references says my figures are off... wonder which one of us is wrong....

Sorry to destroy your little fantasy, but Google has 60b in short term assets (cash and equivalents):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=GOOG+Balance+Sheet&annual

Disney has 39b in stock holders equity:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=DIS+Balance+Sheet&annual

NBC Universal has 29b in stock holders equity:
http://apps.shareholder.com/sec/viewerContent.aspx?companyid=cmcsa&docid=8075925

So there goes 113% of Google's short-term assets with just those two companies... and they would have to take on 55b in additional liabilities. So they would have 0 cash, no short term assets, and over 75b in liabilities.

In other words.. never going to happen.