Often a company is looking for some specific skills or experience and this is often described in the job listing or can be inferred from the product or services the company provides.

If the job listing mentions Linux, you better have lots of stuff on your resume about Linux. If the company makes network products you better have lots of stuff indicating networking knowledge.

When you come into the interview you should review these topics, if you need to learn a new programming language or subject matter, do it, and even it was obvious you just learned it for the job it would reflect very well that you have the aptitude to learn the skills you need to contribute.

Assuming you actually have an interest in what the company does, demonstrate that, learn about their products before you come into the interview. Demonstrate your curiosity by asking questions about things you don't understand about the products.

Should we start with Bill Clinton?

In 1993 President Bill Clinton made changes to the Community Reinvestment Act to make mortgages more obtainable for lower and lower-middle class families. In 1998 the Federal Bank of Boston issued a report entitled “Closing the Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending." The 30 page document was intended to serve as a guide to loan officers to help curb discriminatory lending [10] "Closing the Gap," instructs banks to hire based upon diversity needs, sweeten the compensation structure for working with lower income applicants, encourages shifting high risk, low income applications to the sub prime market, by saying "the secondary market [Subprime Market] is willing to consider ratios above the standard 28/36," and "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortgage_discrimination

The taxes on gas and diesel fuel seems to dwarf any subsidies that the oil companies receive. According to wikipedia it is on average almost 50 cents per gallon . Not that I agree with subsidies, I think we should get rid of them, but I think the oil industry subsidies is a small thing trumped up by both sides for for political purposes. I don't think the oil companies would notice if we got rid of them, other than raise fuel prices a couple cents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/if-oil-subsidies-went-away

Oddly enough the loan program was established under the Bush administration.

From wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Motors http://www.drivingtoday.com/news_this_week/2009-07-17-4337-driving/index.html#axzz2U4akRe2c

The low-interest loans are not related to the "bailout" funds that GM and Chrysler have received, nor are they related to the 2009 economic stimulus package. The Department of Energy loan program was created in 2007 during the George Bush administration in order to get more fuel-efficient vehicle options to U.S. consumers and to decrease the country's dependence on foreign oil.

Or a subscription to the site or group of sites might work. However for any of this to take off, I think it has to be more convenient and secure to do transactions. This includes the security and anonymity of the transactions and ease of transaction including login/password/key management. PayPal like solutions help some with this, but transactions are still risky, inconvenient, and login/password management is still another account that you must create and remember. I look forward to the day where we have a comprehensive and convenient security solution that involves a secure device and secure network infrastructure , that manages your IDs/keys, transaction verification, secure connections, heavily audited, open solution, can be lost or stolen with out worry, and even if someone had a gun to your head asking you to transfer money, you could limit the ability to do the transaction with a number of security safe guards. I should be able to visit the most malicious site, get my computer compromised, and still not be at risk of losing my money or password. Until then, I am going to be very selective of who I give money to.

Yes, actually I do think people give money to conservative think tanks because they believe in conservative principles and right wing issues; including denying climate change, but not exclusive to this issue. The article is akin to the conservative media that exaggerates and generalizes to make a point. Sometimes there is truth behind it, but often it is inaccurate or conjecture, and makes for bad journalism. You or I or the article can't say whether rich billionaires give to these conservative think tanks to support climate change denial, because it is not easily measurable (they apparently gave anonymously).

Your comment is not much better when you say "Rich billionaires fund them, because they help to get sheeple to the polls in order to pressure congress critters into protecting them from economic disappointment. This is crony capitalism in action". Your statement sounds a lot like propaganda to blame crony capitalism on rich conservatives (maybe your the sheep?). When we start attacking motives, versus the problem, we seem to lose sight of the problem itself.

The article is misleading. Donations were giving anonymously to conservative think tanks. Many conservative think tanks are skeptical of human impact on climate change. These donations were not given directly the cause of deny climate change. This article seems to exist for the purpose to incite controversy where there is very little. Based on the comments on this site, I think it has been successful.

In 2009, the top 1% earned 14% of all income, but paid 36% of all income taxes. This is more than what you claim they *need* to pay. Please check my math, maybe I made a mistake. It is based on AGI, so maybe there is some big deduction I am missing. http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0

Your point maybe correct on the wealthy getting a greater share of the wealth , I don't know, but please cite some statistics. I think your blame is somewhat misguided. I put more blame on bad policies and unrealistic expectations for our recent economic troubles.

A video game company using a bootable solution would likely keep the OS distribution up to date, so it is always using the latest stable video / sound / network drivers.

That may work to some extent, and that is what is often done in Windows, but there is still the matter of the libraries being compatible with the hardware architecture, frameworks, and drivers. If the later is not compatible, and the user has to figure out how to get the right components or even update their distribution, that is a problem.

As far as a game company rolling their own distribution to play the game, I am not sure that is something a game company would want to do, unless it is for dedicated hardware (i.e. like what Valve is planning), but it is an interesting idea. Its akin to treating your computer as a traditional gaming console where each game contains the entire OS it needs to run the game. I could see that working. It may even have advantages of greater stability for users who use Windows or Mac, and has the advantage of working on any hardware platform.

Windows software is generally written with backward compatibility in mind. Microsoft and software companies have a strong economic incentive to keep backwards compatibility. Good or bad, with free software, Linux does not have that incentive (at least in many cases) and so they are ok with breaking things and telling the users to update. If Linux wants to become a popular consumer platform, for games or business software, something needs to change.

Submit a problem report or get the latest updated driver from the vendor. I like Linux, but when I want to upgrade some buggy software, it is unclear what I need to do to fix the situation. You can try getting the latest software, but will it be compatible with the distribution you are using? Will updating the software break the distribution update strategy? Will it work with the windows manager and libraries that you are using? With Windows I can update each component until the problem is fixed. While far from ideal, Windows is still much easier to support for the vendor, giving better results and ease of use for the consumer.

What do you do if your video card does not work well with the game you are trying to play for the distribution you are using? If your distribution does not have the time to back port the driver or the framework it uses, you are forced to upgrade your entire distribution if you want to play a game. This is a major inconvenience. Either dedicated supported hardware like what Valve is doing or some stable rolling update distribution is needed. Is there a good stable rolling distribution?

Why can't mod points be undone? I accidentally hit the down key and now I have to reply to undo.

A stylus is great for taking notes. Try writing an equation with keyboard, mouse, or finger. It is not fun.