1: The major reason for voicemail and related services (slamdown notifications where you get a text message stating that someone called you but didn't leave a message) are NOT the minutes you spend but rather call completion. You see, calls that don't terminate when your terminal is not online (a not uncommon occurance in crap networks like the US ones, you would not believe how much time a normal handset in a metropolitan area is offline) are a loss since you don't get missed call information. There is a very, VERY well understod business case for voicemail services and how they affect the average revenue per user.

2: What customers SHOULD do is require that all operators allow them to connect to Google Voice type services, i.e. a service provider that will let them govern the way they receive information and control the modus in which they respond themselves.

3: The charging model of US operators is completely insane compared to the rest of the world. How the hell can you put up with it? Seriously?

Upon seeing the submarine most of the italian army surrendered on account of being surrendered.

Use the appropriate tool. Always. There are tons.

Don't use a relational database to try to represent hierarchical data. Don't try to use LDAP to do analytics. Think of the performance implications before you have more than two users accessing your system. Data storage is a very different animal, you are often (though not always) I/O bound. This is very different from being limited by the amount of instructions you can deal with per unit of time. Don't think otherwise because it will bite you in the ass.

And still I see people making the same stupid mistakes over and over. But it's pretty simple really:

A solution designed to be generic will ALWAYS be slower than a solution that is customized. This shouldn't be surprising. If you have serious performance requirements (ESPECIALLY if they are coupled with huge amounts of data) then a custom solution is definitely something you should look into. At some point you will run into a brick wall and find out that there is stuff you can't do with the solution you have in place. This is natural. Custom solutions to hard problems always lead to restrictions in terms of future features. Always. You will NEVER be able to anticipate all features that you would like to have. (Yes, this is true for Google as well. No they don't have any special kind of magic dust that they sprinkle on their things there, they do the best they can and then they get bitten in the ass too, just like everybody else.)

Loads of geeks climb, it's fun/scary, the f/m ratio is good and there's loads of hanging out and chatting between climbs. I heartily recommend it. Plus you get a whole lot stronger, get the opportunity to learn something new and meet people you certainly would never meet otherwise.

A couple of douchebags. They should be sentenced to 25 to life in the same cell.

Our social peers? Allow me to laugh derisively. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Being different in school SUCKS ASS. At least in college people are sufficiently grown up to not be assholes 100 percent of the time.

Social peers is all to often a nice waying of saying "hang out with the half wits". There is a lot of value being put on "functioning well in groups" that for certain people mean they get to learn that they really don't want to be part of any group that they haven't selected for themselves.

You are young. Sell the company. It will be painful but useful and for several reasons. It establishes a track record, it gives you (I would assume since I don't expect you to sell it for peanuts) some well deserved cash that gives you some level of independence and in the process you will learn a lot about how NOT to do things.

Just do it.

Well, that was the lamest collection of reasons I've ever seen.
It's client-server all over again? Umm. Yeah? So? Most enterprise applications are client-server. Include document and process management and your entire network is a gigantic client-server system. Come on. Is that supposed to scare anyone? Really? Wow. Should every employee have a browser? Hell yeah. If they have a computer they should have a browser. If you have a problem with your employees doing other stuff than work then you have a problem that won't go away because you take away the browser. That should be obvious to anyone who has ever been an employer.

And saying that the web is a place that is dominated by big players is just ludicrous when advocating working on the desktop instead. (I don't think I need to spell this one out for you)

No, this is all crap. There are valid reasons why certain applications shouldn't be web based. But the article lists none of these. Too much load on the datacenter. I mean seriously. Come on!

The original crowd? Watch it there you young whippersnapper. I remember back in the old days when I was... I can't remember, I was something or the other. Anyway. Remember that there is no guarantee of getting laid just because you are in a relationship. Just a slightly higher probability. Depending on where you started out on the Bell Curve you just be fractionally better off.

Suddenly I think I will play with the Wind tonight.

Feel free to ignore this little piece of advice but:

why would you want to do that? Seriously? Sure you could probably pull something better together but you have to dislodge your previoys employer (and even if they would lose in court spending time on a court case is not only costly but pure death to business). Ideas are cheap, the ability to turn ideas into reality is expensive. If you have a group that can build stuff then build new, better and interesting stuff instead. Building a marginally better spoon is not the way to happiness.