I recommend Akamai's services as a CDN for static content (eliminates a lot of load from your own servers), a proxy for dynamic content (shield/reverse proxy effect services) as well as a protection against (D)DoS attacks. They have a number of great case studies ( http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/index.html ) which are well worth the time looking through, as they have successfully mitigated attacks against small, medium and large websites. Their (repackaged) Kona Security Services are surprisingly good.

One thing to remember is that for most companies, any activities undertaken on company equipment that create intellectual property is owned outright by the company, and not the individual. So that book or game or widget that you might write will end up not being your own. Get yourself a netbook or tablet or whatever - there are just too many reasons why your post is just plain scary for the new employer.

Probably try to hook up with some younger protocol - FTP over IPv6 anyone?

By far the worst are the double-glazing companies. We dealt with one (Weatherseal) and they call us frequently, usually during dinner (or later!) and ask if we want any more work done.

Given we had every door and window replaced by them, the calls are more than just a little annoying. Especially given we have asked multiple times over the years (on telephone and in writing) to stop calling and remove us from their lists.

Persistent annoying [censored] - the lot of them.

Given the original vision of this and every other MMORPG is to see how much money they can syphon from the customers, this is totally in-line ;)

American Grads may indeed be unemployable - I've never worked in the USA though, so I cannot say for sure either way. ;)

But I have worked with HCL in the UK. The standard working week for an Indian HCL employee is easily 90 hours if you don't count weekends. There is usually a ratio of around 3 HCL employees to replace each UK employee they make redundant. By my weak math skills, I would guess that HCL (at a savings) replaces 1 UK employee with the equivalent of 7 HCL employees on an effort basis.

It would be wonderful of course if those ~7 staff gave ~7x benefit. Sadly in my experience their total sum gives less than half the quality of the 1 UK employee. Mistakes are made, decisions are wrapped up in red tape, and chaos ensues. Put an HCL employee in a situation where there isn't a blow-by-blow script on how to do the job, and they flounder. Badly.

HCL may help save money on the accountants books, but they put the company at risk if the company is stupid enough to outsource without first having everything in order. Sadly the main companies that do outsource are those that don't have a clue how their business is run, and expect HCL employees to be able to think outside of the box, and to be able to use their vast experience in the companies assets to achieve minor miracles on a daily basis. Finding an HCL employee that can think, let alone think outside of the box would be a major miracle...

At least I know which companies shares not to invest in ;)

Please note the above is in my experience only and could possibly be unique and not a unilateral standard. I've met some very nice people who work at HCL - I just wish their 'niceness' translated directly into 'quality output'. It's also possible that HCL do actually give quality to some clients (maybe they put their best on the highest payers *shrug*). Anything is possible.

It's also worth noting that I've never been made redundant due to HCL coming in to a company - indeed, I've actually got more work at a company due to them being there. For each external UK person like myself who benefited, there were at least 10 UK people that were made redundant though, and that's a ratio that I dislike moreso than a lack of quality.

Ignoring the alternatives, how many households are we talking about? Even 1 million households would create an 18 million savings overall in the first year....

At least they are trying to do something imo.