Seems to be an RMS religious rant to me. SAP is a for profit company. They write proprietary software. They have interests to protect. I can fully understand why they don't want the government coming along and forcing their applications to either become open source or allow open source clones of their proprietary application. It is also reasonable that SAP likes Linux, open source development tools, and consortium's that produce open source software that extend and interact with their proprietary software. Presumably this allows them access to additional market share, cheaper development costs, etc. There is no friend or foe. Get over it.

You can make the "cloud" resilient, redundant, and highly available. They obviously did not. If the cloud is extended to two places then you don't need servers (virtual or otherwise) in two places.

1) Don't leave them turned on, especially not in the original system. If the system gets hit by lightning/surge/etc you don't want it to take your backup with it.

2) Rotate your backups. Assuming you have more than one removable media, swap them out in a rotating fashion.. That gives you multiple restore points in case you have one of the backup media volumes go bad.

3) If you use an internal drive dock, get one that encloses the drive so it has basic physical protection from handling. Store them in the plastic (usually antistatic) bag they came in somewhere away from the main system.

4) Instead of using an internal dock with multiple internal drives that all need their own dock sled, consider an external USB/Firewire/eSATA drive instead. You can even get ethernet based drives too, so they can be used on your home network. You can buy an external drive enclosure for pretty cheap and use the same internal drives saving a bit of money, making it about the same cost as using an internal drive docking solution with the bonus that you can then access your backup from ANY system, not just the one that has the dock.

If the Downward Spiral is too objectionable for the iPhone App Store, how come they still have no problem selling the Downward Spiral on the iTunes Music Store, so you can listen to said album on your iPhone? That makes no sense to me whatsoever.

Apple makes some great products but every once and a while they make some ass backwards decision that just can't be described.

Eh, people already get to watch those shows for free... Advertisers foot the bill when its on broadcast TV. Why should web viewing be any different? For now I'll just stick to Tivo and watch what I want when I want, assuming I get whatever channel it gets broadcast on. No worrying about all the crap that you have to go through to watch on Hulu or when ABC decides I should watch the show.

Yet another moron in business that thinks their shit doesn't stink and people have no idea that there is a real difference between a Mac and a PC. Sure a lot of components are the same now, since they are both on Intel but I have and will continue to happily pay more for a system that I don't have to worry about getting whatever the latest virus is, doesn't routinely crash, is well designed, well integrated computer. It does what I want it to do and more! And truth be told, you can NOT find a comparable PC for $500 less. It might be cheaper, but its not significantly cheaper when comparing apples to... well.. Apples.

I'm not arguing that that isn't the case.. just that we need to educate as many people about the "real" truth as possible.

The problem is that there are a large number of incidents where "militias" have gone out and done very bad things, for very bad reasons.

Those of us interested in the message of the founding fathers and arming ourselves for personal protection and for protection of our neighbors near and far are grouped into the same lot, unfortunately. I think our goal should be to separate ourselves from those bent on violence and hatred whenever and where ever possible. When stuff like this gets published I think the old advertisement "an educated consumer is our best customer" best describes what kind of response needs to be taken.

I don't think you are missing anything. Anybody who cancels in "protest" is just having a hissy fit.

Say what you want about Blockbuster, but they are still giving you over and above what Netflix offers since you can still return the movies and get one back immediately from the store. The original article submitter is a jack-ass.

It not just a classic.

Given my own experience, a bunch of Word docs in some central repository is not ideal from a user prospective. Having all your documentation on a Wiki is a lot easier to read and update when necessary. Its like having a giant documentation flow chart that lets you link "real time". Sub-procedures being called in one document are just a click away instead of having to go pull document # such and such.

The ONLY downside to doing it this way is having hard copies for "DR" purposes, though a replicated server works as long as you can get network access. When you start printing documentation out, people stop looking for updates!

Dominant and competitive are two separate beasts. The G1, or Android in general, need not dominate the market to be successful.

There is only one iPhone, but App developers haven't stopped producing. I like the G1 better than the iPhone since it includes a slide-out keyboard and still packs in all the other features of an iPhone. Once the G1 has been around for longer and Android gets more market share I expect the Android Market to go head to head with the App Store.

In your particular situation it probably was a shady deal... but ultimately its the company that looks bad when they send out someone who's wearing a hat that's too big for their head. It is in their best interest to fix that situation and get the right person in to deliver. I'm not sure where I read this but it was a good quote... "1st rate managers hire 1st class workers. 2nd rate managers hire 3rd rate workers."

Now... IT is a huge multilegged beast. Some types of jobs are dominated by foreign workers while others you rarely see them filled. Generally speaking I've noticed in the last few places I've worked (in three different metro areas) that usually DBA's and programmers are predominately the ones on H1B visas while most of the other types of IT jobs are staffed by "locals". Helpdesk and call center type jobs are the ones getting outsourced overseas, as well as some contract programming staff. The programming jobs are going overseas less because a lot of companies realized that paying by the amount of code written wasn't in their best interest. A lot of the overseas outsourced used to go to India but has started to go to Malaysia and other places too.

Contract outfits that are just filling seats are also notoriously shady. Not just with H1B visas but also with shafting anybody. They tend to hire people for relatively low wages so they can take a huge markup.. Some won't deal with H1B's but still lowball people until they find some sucker who doesn't know their worth or is desperate because they are out of work. The people that get hired are usually subpar, but they don't care because they can always dump them and replace them with someone else so they can keep bringing in huge markups.

Consulting firms (like who I work for now) and specialized application or function outsourcing aka Managed Services firms (like who I used to work for) tend to be the most likely to hire the best person they can with the most experience. Their reputation is all they have so quality over quantity rules. You still see offshore and H1B visa employees at these types of places but not to the extent you see in others.

Where do you get your numbers for "massive unemployment"? Recent economic downturn notwithstanding we have far less unemployment here in the US than many other countries that severely restrict non-citizen workers. The only time I hear of people being unemployed in IT for long periods of time is out in California. Given the people I've met from California its a different beast out there altogether and suspect that people are either not looking hard enough or not looking far enough away... jobs are (usually) available during good periods if you are willing to relocate or adjust your pay expectations.