If my commute was longer, 45min+ and/or there was no parking I would take a small pay cut. By small I mean, savings of not driving or buying a parking pass. So probably 5%. However, I already get to work from home at least twice a week and my commute is only 20-25 min without a pay cut.

To the other guy who responded to this comment: If your DBA has to call Oracle support to figure out how to install it on Linux then you need a new DBA. It takes 10 minutes to prep a RedHat OS to install Oracle, its not complicated.

As for Oracle Linux, there is a package you can download which will install the pre-reqs called oracle-validated. From the links below:

Named after, and derived from Validated Configurations, oracle-validated also creates an oracle OS user and an oinstall and dba group. Kernel parameters are also set properly, ensuring that the Oracle Universal Installer will proceed without complaints. Very nice!

http://blogs.oracle.com/sergio/2008/08/revisiting_the_oraclevalidated_1.html
http://blogs.oracle.com/AlejandroVargas/2008/10/the_oraclevalidated_rpm_is_ava.html

Pretty simple.

I've been in the IT industry long enough, 15 years and have worked in companies from a couple hundred employees to hundreds of thousands. I experienced the IT craziness in the 90's when you couldn't hire people fast enough. I've also helped interview my share of candidates.

Maybe these 'mobile engineers' come from some super duper university. I don't know but in my experience developers coming straight out of university are pretty green. Honestly, how much real experience did they get? Most universities teach only a course or two on mobile app development. Whats that? Like 30 hours class time? Another week or so spent outside the class doing 'homework'? A friend of mine, senior developer, decided to make an iPhone app one day and within a couple of weeks working a couple hours a night, he had a pretty impressive application. They could have easily ramped up their employees.

This guy is the team lead, by all accounts doing an excellent job so there is no reason he couldn't have picked up the necessary skills. IMHO its a slap in the face and I would be polishing up my resume and looking for a quick exit.

IMO, this it another example of management failing to do their jobs. The project was needed 'ASAP', big surprise, which meant they were caught off guard and had to scramble.

I have had a PSP Slim for a couple of years. Other than God of War and maybe 1-2 more games, i've barely touched it. My son uses it most of the time now since he got Invisimals for Xmas. I have to give them credit for that game, its a pretty cool game. Maybe its me, but I don't find many games on the PSP appealing...

If they actually come out with some decent titles, then i'll buy it.. but I have a feeling I won't be.

Both myself and my son are gamers, so yes i'm biased. However, saying that the kids are all crowded around a demo ipad playing games means nothing. Its new, they most likely don't have one at home and excited because its the latest and greatest toy. When my son goes to the games store he stuck on whatever Wii title they are demo'ing... Half the time we have the damn thing at home and he doesn't touch it.

I brought an ipad home from work for 2 weeks. Both my kids (gamer son, daughter) constantly used it the first few days. 2 weeks later I was the only one using it regularly and not for games. My son quickly reverted back to the DS, PSP, XBOX or PS3 to play games. Up until I brought an ipad home my daughter had a fund saving up for one. I think she spent it on clothes since then.. I haven't heard a peep.

There are a few games that perfectly suit an ipad. I have a few puzzle games, line tracing games, etc. but other than that, any serious gamer is going to have a portable gaming device or a console. Can't wait to play me some Black Ops on an iPad, not....

I have an iPhone and yes I play games on it but they are timewasters. I've tried the ones with the virtual keyboard/buttons and quite honestly it sucks. You end up missing because there is no tactile feed back, your finger blocks the screen because you pulled the joystick to far, end up dying, etc.

These people playing games on their smartphone probably would probably never buy a portable gaming device.

How about foreign companies doing business in the USA not breaking the local laws? Maybe you should read up on the facts of the case. SAP admitted to copyright infringement and the case was just to determine damages.

Honestly banning wifi makes no sense.. If there are any residential houses in the area (which there most likely are) then the kids are being 'bombarded' anyways. In the range of my house there are at least a dozen wifi networks and I would say the majority of houses in an urban dwelling are the same. So even if there are health dangers, their kids are constantly exposed.

Lenovo's new Ideapad which will be out later this year:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/05/lenovo-ideapad-u1-hybrid-hands-on-and-impressions/

It was supposed to come out about now but they decided to replace the snapdragon OS with Android. I showed this to my manager, the IT staff and we all can't wait for it. Especially now that Android will be on it.

The price is supposed to be around 1K as well.

about all the enterprise features they are putting or plan on putting in. I'm looking for the basics such as a VPN connection that will stay up longer than 5 minutes. Why doesn't it reconnect when it fails?

Yes we talked to Apple support and we couldn't get a resolution.

I second it.. I loved AC1... I liked AC2 until they started nerfing tactician... Yeah, I realize it was pretty powerful but it was a minority which took advantage of that class and forced the dev's to nerf it.

Honestly, i've been a Turbine customer before back in the Asheron's Call days. Secretly i'll even admit that I had the most fun of any MMORPG playing AC. Anyways, I noticed the ad saying DDO was free to play and I was going to install it.

Unless the company comes clean and offers a real answer, then there is no way i'll install DDO or any future game they make.

was because I wanted a blu-ray player and as an added bonus it played games and the online was free. If they started to charge for online multiple player there is no way I would pay for both the PS3 and Xbox. One would have to go... Since we are big Halo fans here I think I know which console would win.

Should the profits from blu-ray sales offset their losses? I've heard tho that blu-ray movie sales are poor as well.. I can understand why now that I have a blu-ray player. Upscaled DVD's are good enough and personally when I see a title in both DVD and Bluray at the store and the Bluray is 5-15+$ more, then I buy the DVD.

I have the option to switch from my blackberry to the iphone... the only thing holding me back is whether or not a new one will be announced next week... Would you buy now or wait? If the rumors are true, OLED, 5MP camera, flash but the ship date wasn't until June would you wait or just get it now?

I've worked for companies from 200-350,000 employee's. There are pro's and con's to working at both large and small companies.

Unfortunately bad management isn't exclusive to large companies as I've seen bad management at both. Larger companies tend to have more polices thanks to stupid regulations such as SOX. Chances are if they are large they are public.

Internal movement both lateral and vertical can be difficult with small companies. With larger companies there are plenty of opportunities in house which means you can move around without leaving the company. I have also found its easy to branch into new roles. If you have proven yourself then they know you'll ramp quickly and be able to produce. I always liked that. However, with smaller companies you have a better chance of becoming involved in making decisions that affect the company.

I'm at a small company now and its nice to have more control, not as much red tape because we aren't public, exposure to different technologies. With large companies you tend to be silo'd to your specific skillset. What I don't like is that the systems I manage are not as complex as they were in large companies. I enjoy working with highly available, critical environments where downtime can cost the company millions. On the other hand the job isn't as stressful and there's more family time.

With the type of work I do, in larger companies your usually in a group of similar people. The nice thing about this is that there are people to bounce ideas off, different sets of eyes when looking at a problem, others with more experience in certain areas. All this can provide you with more opportunities to learn.

Anyways, i'm sure we could go on for quite awhile generalizing about the pros/cons of working in both large and small companies. Personally I wouldn't rule out working for either. As long as the job is stimulating and provides me with opportunities to learn then i'll be happy. I tend to move on if things become stagnant.

I installed Ubuntu 8 on my kids computer and they loved it... I played about with it as well and liked it enough that once it came time to rebuild my linux box I decided to install 9.04... I have to say, i'm not impressed with 9.0.4... I have had issues with using the software manager to install new applications.. I miss the popular column and thought that was great. Switching to a static IP address wasn't straight forward... It seems that if you are the type of user that will just download it, install defaults and use it, then its fine. But as soon as you want to make changes, it started to get painful.

So for now i'm switching back to Fedora.. Something i'm familiar with and just seems to work.