Sorry, but I do this for a living, and nobody who has a clue is using Java for low-latency application development. All the benchmarks and whitepapers are fine and dandy, but in the REAL WORLD, Java simply can't handle (very) heavy loads without falling over.
I don't know why that is, but suspect that it's simply a matter of too many frickin' layers.
The other issue is that Java performance is simply not deterministic because of the GC -- everything is fine for a while, and then you have a 100ms spike when the VM decides to do GC. And yes, I know that there's a lot of work going on to address that, and some of it is promising, but it simply ain't there yet.
I have no idea how much of this is also applicable to .Net, although I suspect at least some of it is. I also suspect that the bigger problem is that the whole project ended up being a gigantic clusterfsck, between Microsoft and Accenture (and who the heck thought Accenture knew anything about designing trading systems anyway?)
Last point: you think that was bad -- the volumes in UK are WAY lower than here in the US, so one can only imagine what would happen if they tried to roll out something like this in a really high-volume environment.

If you read about this you'll find that he was intrigued by the idea of creating a 6-second piece of music that would actually be... well, music. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno#The_Microsoft_Sound) Some of his other "innovations" include "oblique strategies" (http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000914.php) and "Frippertronics" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frippertronics).

I once had an early morning job interview that I really didn't want to be late for. As I'm a heavy sleeper, I was a bit worried about it -- my solution was to plug a vacuum cleaner into my clock radio (which had a switched outlet on the back). That did the trick!

++ to BC! (http://scootersoftware.com/)
If you only go in one direction, automated or semi-automated tools are great (e.g., robocopy on win). But I've never trusted automatic bi-directional replication -- just because one file is older than another doesn't mean it doesn't contain info that the newer file doesn't.
BC makes reconciliing different directories and files as pleasant as possible.

Depends on whether you want to "manage" the docs, or just be able to find them. The google thing looks promising (http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1264509&cid=28285635), and is probably a LOT cheaper to get going with. Then, if you think you need more you could look at some of the more heavyweight solutions.
"Perfect is the enemy of the good" -- Voltaire

You can run a network over it using something called "homelink" -- runs at 10Mbps, and is apparently similar to DSL. I had one for a while, and it mostly worked OK.

Geez -- I think I may actually hold the patent -- at least I have prior art that goes back to 1995 at least. (Oops -- the idea was old even back then).

That may be the case with other Adobe products, but not Flex:

• Flex (incl. ActionScript) is free and open-source;
• so is BlazeDS, the server-side component;
• FlexBuilder (the IDE) is $250.

The other thing you want to check is support for clock sync between host and guest OS's with your vm of choice. For instance, Vmware has had lots of issues with this, esp. w/AMD chips and/or Windows hosts (e.g., http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=916&sliceId=2&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=10148667&stateId=0%200%2012087601)

Well it doesn't hurt to expand your horizons a bit. My son has a Logitech 5.1 speaker system, which he loves because it has "good" (i.e., loud) bass, but the muddy sound drove me nuts.

So I bought him a pair of monitor speakers for his birthday, and he couldn't believe the stuff he was hearing for the first time. Short version is, he's really happy with the new setup (monitor + surround).

Hear, hear! One of the H1B's I worked with (great guy, really smart) HAD to live in company-provided housing (that was part of the deal).
He was paid substantially less than market wages because he was in reality an "indentured servant", AND he paid back a substantial chunk of that in rent to his employers (a large Indian consulting co.).
" You load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store... "
- Merle Travis, "Sixteen Tons"

then things might be different.
As it is, the H1B program has merely managed to feed the "fat cats" without improving the lot of US citizens.
By all means, encourage immigration of hard-working, talented, intelligent people.
But allow them to control their own destinies and compete without handicapping them or US citizens by institutionalizing a system that unfairly depresses wages for all.
Maybe we've just reached a sort of equilibrium here, where US wages have stagnated while the rest of world's has grown.

Add scarab/collabnet to the list of junk. It seems designed solely to give PHB's (not-so) pretty reports to look at.
Sheesh -- can't even do a text search (I guess that's why God gave us eyeballs).

Concur. Have had this happen to me. It's easy and quick to check.