If there is any value left in either the oracle code base or the IBM code base, the only sane thing for apache to do would be to commit it to the LibreOffice code tree. That's where the development is happening at the moment, and I don't see why Apache would be interested in maintaining a lesser competing product when there already is a blooming open source one around.

The answer is not all that simple and straight-forward. First you have to decide what level of "cloud" it is you want? Is it platform-as-a-service (PAAS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS)? Your situation will be very different depending on what you choose. Assuming you are interested in going all out cloud and insist on going for microsoft products, you should read up on Azure and then decide if the gains are worth it. You should especially read up on the pricing model and see if it fits with your model for generating income.

I have gotten my SOE account "hacked" (using SOE's terms). So has a close friend, and several other people I know of. Ok, if it had only been me I would have assumed it was an isolated incident even though I can't even begin to guess how my password got out in the wild. When this many people got their accounts taken over in such a limited time, I do no longer believe this was a problem on my side. However, trying to get anything other than "update your antivirus" out of the SOE customer support is an exercise in futility.

My qualified guess is that the recent security breaches aren't in any way exceptions: Most likely Sony/SOE have had security problems for several months now and have tried to keep a lid on it. But as said, that's just my guess.

Having seen the "stable" 11.04 release crash simply upon booting the live-cd and noting that the list of "known issues" is four screen pages long, I'd say they have some distance left to go.

The EU area controls about 16% of the total world economy. That may sound small, but when an area like that takes a considered and coordinated stance like the one in the OP, and (knowing EU) is prepared to put significant legislative effort behind the decision, it would have a significant impact. 16% of the world market is too much to ignore, even discounting the manufacturers actually living in the EU area (for you foreign barbarians, about 500 million people lives here).

A decision like this would cause great market incitement for thinking up and selling new "green" products.

Anyone else see the death star at 01:33?

Actually they got 20 seats and a tipping point position, where they in theory could get power to deseat the sitting conservative/liberal government.

But I agree with the point... the interesting (and scary) part about the election is that I can expect that one in every twenty people I meet down town actually voted for a nazi party.

It's easy to change even within the current distribution. Steps to fix:

* Start gconf-editor
* expand in this order: apps, metacity, general
* Find entry "button_layout"
* change it to "menu:minimize,maximize,close"

The colon separates left side and right side.

Yeah... I wrote my first commodore 64 basic program when I was 10, and now I'm about to finish a phd in computer science.

Either C64 basic wasn't all that dangerous to one's mental health, or maybe it isn't a problem to be "mentally mutilated beyond hope" when working within academia.

Hrm. Actually, when thinking that last part of the statement through, it does seem like a rather fitting description of both me and my colleagues. I just never knew it was because we had programmed basic.

The DIY precautionary recipe against a hangover is: Boil one liter of water, add half a teaspoon of table salt, and six teaspoons of sugar. Let cool and drink before you go to bed. For increased efficiency also take vitamin C, either in the form of a pill or as a glass of orange juice. The scientific explanation is that alcohol affects the levels of a hormone called ADL, something which in its turn makes the kidnies less able to take up water and important minerals and vitamins. This leads to dehydration and lack of said minerals. Further, the process of breaking down the alcohol lowers your blood sugar level. Thus, the easiest non-fancy precaution against a hangover using only household ingredients is to compencate the deficits using the above recipe. In sweden it's also possible to buy more carefully balanced anti-hangover pills with a more advanced mix of minerals and vitamins. They too consist mainly of sugar and salt though. Examples of such pills are "Revigör" and "Bakis". Source of above is fraga doktorn, also as crappy google translation.

The first time I downloaded linux, I downloaded slackware on 100 floppies. Yes, you read right, 100 floppies. When I got home with the carton, three floppies had read errors so I had to take my bike back to the university and re-download those three floppy images. This was in january 1996.

The legal/mail/response page is still available here. Typical quotes include things like (in a response to Dreamworks) "It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are ....... morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons."

A middle way would be to not choose between the two, and instead combine them. That is what being a project leader in tech projects is all about: You come with a heavy tech background and thus have the know-how, and now your beard is gray enough to be credible in the role of leader. My advice would be that. From now on, spend your energy on reading information systems literature, along with business intelligence and similar. Meanwhile, offer to take charge of the tech projects in your organization and delegate most of the actual techie stuff to the people you're now bossing around. I'd say an experienced tech project leader is more employable than a pure code monkey or a pure bureaucrat. And if worst comes to worst and your hands start shaking with abstinence from programming, there's nothing stopping you from getting your hands dirty in some programming work inside the projects either.