Mac & Linux:
Xonotic (excellent FOSS FPS Multiplayer), Wesnoth, Warzone 2100 (neat FOSS 3D RTS)

Nintendo DSi:
Prof. Layton (the Time Machine Story (can't remember the exact title)
Advance Wars 'something' (DSi Edition of AW)
Zelda Spirit Tracks ... etc.

PSP 1:
GTA Chinatown (hilarious and fun)
Patapon
Ratchet & Clank
God of War (the PSP titles)
Wipeout ... etc.

Android Tablet (HTC Flyer
The Bards Tale

I've been playing very rarely though in the last 10 years, so all of those games I've been playing for a few years now. F.i. I've been at that specific title of Prof. Layton for roughly 2,5 years now. I'm something like 2 or 3 titles behind in the Layton series now. In GTA Chinatown PSP im at the 5th mission or so. ... The Bards tale for 3 Euros on Android illustrates to me where gaming is headed. Rough times for the console makers ahead, portable and stationary, that's my take on the situation.

Yes, but you have limits on who can attend, right?

Yes, you have to have basic brain functions. And your A-Levels. Which you can get "post-schoolum" in public GED 'evening school' programms which can take 2-3 years. Also basically for free, btw. Though you only get student support (basic monthly sustenance + some extra as an interest-free (!!) loan from the government) up to the age of 30 or so. A little later in some cases (if you've raised children in the mean time for instance you get up to 9 years added to the agebarrier).

There also are NC barriers for popular fields, so f.i. to become an MD you have to have a good or very good average, depending on the college you want to attend, but it's doable for anybody who put's his mind to it. The important part is that you don't need any money whatsoever to go to college , beyond the most trivial amounts of fees, the cost of living and such.

And it pays off for everybody.
Those who make it and get the paying jobs pay taxes, those who aren't there yet allways have a real chance.
Contrary to the situation in the U.S. where that isn't the case, no matter what they tell you.

Whoops. It's "Semestergebühren", with a 'b'. Sorry.

How about no tution at all? It works great for Germany. ... Just sayin' ...

(Cue "Nanny State!", "OMG SOCIALIZM!!", "Obviously won't work because of reasons a,b,c and d", etc. remarks below, thank you.)

Allthough we do have Semestergeühren. Something like 150€ per Semster (GASP!) of enrollment fees. ... This is outrage! I'm going to protest tomorrow. ... Oh, wait, you get the public transport flatrate for that ... and student benefits (cheaper access to public events, etc.) ... Scratch that, I guess I won't protest after all.

Seriously, you guys should move out of the middle ages allready. Healthcare, tution-free college and metric system. It works. Get with the programm. :-)

My 2 cents.

I've come to compare our field with that of doctors. Everybody has something bad to say about them and their field, yet everybody needs one at one time or other and will consult one then. At the same time, whilst everybody is commenting on the field, very few people actually really know anything about it or are confused by the fields complexity.
That makes it very easy for charlatans to gain traction and the trust of unsuspecting novices and puts a burden of an ongoing bad-reputation-influx on the useful workers in the field. That the field of IT is constantly moving and is still quite young on top of all that doesn't help much either.

This is a problem we'll have to deal with as the industry moves on. It's one of the downsides of the job. Just like being a MD and getting all kinds of BS from everybody all the time *and* having the odd quack, fraud or charlatan inbetween spoiling the reputation of medicine.

Professional organisations, advisery boards, certifications and tried and tested regulations and procedures are what helps lawyers and doctors deal with this kind of shit. ... Maybe we need more of that sort of stuff too? ... Just sayin'.

My 2 cents.

The Wall has an Architect and a detailed Plan. The bricklayer knows what to expect from the foundation and the material and he knows exactly what the wall is supposed to look like when it's finished. And everybody involved knows what time and work it takes to build the wall, unless a flood or earthquake or something other happens. The bricks and mortar are delivered and up to spec. And the wall is built on ground that has been surveyed by experts and is considered stable enough to hold the weight of the wall. ... and so on ...

If all that is in place when you develop software, yes then of course you fix your own bugs on your own time. ... In fact, there shouldn't be any bugs at all . Everything is spec'd out, so of course your first order of the project is to set up viable testing structures as to test the stuff you're building. You should know about your bugs before anybody else does.

If, on the other hand, your boss refuses to invest in a tried, true and working software development pipeline and expects you to solve every problem in 5 minutes on a shoestring budget without him or his customers knowing what they want before they tell you when it's supposed to be finished, then your boss or the customers pay for bugs and their fixes.

We both, and everybody else here on slashdot know which scenario is more likely, sadly.

Show your boss this post. If he wants some input on how to build a software dev pipeline, I'm glad to help him / you guys out. Just reply here and I'll get back to you for my contact data and we can talk about some remote software dev consulting. It's what I do for a living, partly.

My 2 cents.

That's why it's good (for Apple) that Woz isn't and never was CEO of Apple. He obviously has absolutely not the faintest idea what he is talking about marketing and business-wise. I use Android for my phone and tablet, just recently backed off of buying an iPad Mini for development because it was to expensive ... and even *I* get the value-add that the sophisticated iOS devices bring along.

Apple should stick right where they are, perhaps move in closer with the opinion leaders a little again. Like XCode for free and without registration, direct access to iOS devices and filesystem, direct deployment of apps to iOS devices and some other stuff that's pissing of the top 0.2 % expertlayer of computer users, i.e. us, with Apple. That would be about all the changes I would make if I were in charge.

The rest is going absolutely perfect for Apple, a fashion mindshare Google, Samsung, MS and others would kill for and bizar gros margins of 30%+ on post-PC devices included. Thinking of bringing Android into that picture makes me cringe - and I'm not even an Apple Fanboy.

My 2 cents.

I personally am about as interested in fashion as I am in programming. I write my own software and sew my own pants. (Hakamas to be precise) The last two christmasses me and my buddy spent the holidays talking about FOSS, playing Wesnoth, watching movies and sewing. Last year I fixed my favourite tango jeans (jea, I dance too, imagine) and he sowed his living room curtains. No joke.

Remember that scene in Taratinos "Death Proof", where the guy at the convenience store sells the chica "this months italian vogue" from his private stash for some steep premium? That scene is about as spot on as you can get. Seriously. Two fashion nerds striking a deal. I found it hilariously 'straight from life'.

Why am I interested in fashion? Couldn't tell exactly. For a lot of reasons.
Well, for one, as they say in Paris: Fashion designers dress the women they'd like to have. Or, more precisely, want to be, if they had a choice. ... And that's not a queer thing btw. I'm about as straight as you can get. But I enjoy looking good, I enjoy looking at cute & well dressed women even more :-) (dancing with them even more so, f*cking them even then some :-)) ... you know the drill) , and I hate the cheap quality that breaks after one year of usage. ... So I sew and repair my own. ... Extra sturdy pockets is a big deal too, as you can imagine. (Nerd Alert! :-) ) ...

Oh, and another cliche: A button a man has sewn on himself *never* comes of again. That's because at one time we get so pissed at them coming off all the time we do it ourselves - and then the right way. Ever since my mom screwed up sewing lost buttons back on I've been doing it myself. Since the age of 15 roughly. The first time I did that I used dracon kiteline to sew metal buttons back on to my jeans jacket. They too never came off again.

In my opinion being a male geek/nerd and into fashion design goes very well. And the girls dig it a lot. Especially those who like to look cute and do the hookeypookey with guys they can connect with. *grins very wide*

My 2 cents.

Last time I checked life on earth and thus us is possible because it *isn't* space. ... They needed a science crew for that?

Captain Obvious strikes again.

Just get a cheap netbook with a browser and use audiotool. ... No matter the OS, as long as it has Flash (Chrome has Flash built in).
Honestly, I'm only joking a little here. The stuff these people did with audiotool is amazing right up to flat out insane. You really should check it out. I wouldn't be suprised if it fits *all* your needs.

That aside, you get tons of tools in the closed and FOSS space. I'd go with what fits best. It may be that the available midi/audio to usb interfaces are most sophisticated for the mac vs. windows or x86 Linux.

You also want to consider the hardware. The new Mac Pro (the round pipe-thing) has gotten raving reviews from audio professionals for its silent operation (1 fan only) in relation to its power and speed. Some even use it directly in the studio. If your on a budget, a linux laptop with supported audio hardware (supported seperate USB audio interface strongly recommended!!) will do just fine. Supercollider is one of the many FOSS audiotools (it's a synth) that are really great. There are ready-made Linux music+audio distros out there, even a specialized ubuntu variante, IIRC.

Then again, do check out audiotool. Some musicians use it exclusively. A webapp. No shit. A friggin webapp. ... As I said: Quite amazing.

My 2 cents.

Nice one. Neatly shaped, sits snug and improved sensation. ... Yet sometimes I don't want to much sensation, so I can stay in the game longer.
I often also use two. Had 2 breakages and one loss in the past. Nasty and scary that is. (queue condom usage stories below please :-) )

Conclusion: Improvements in Condoms is not the worst thing for the super-rich to invest in.

My 2 cents.

That's an easy question to answer.
Top of the list and second to none:
Seneca - Letters from a Stoic

Then the works of Epicurus, Diogenes, Socrates & Aristoteles, in that order. Confuzius is a nice addition to that aswell.

Everything in our society and/or entire world that involves correct usage of basic brain functions goes back to what these people have written down.

Fallbacks to that:
Simple modern Zen Literature, perhaps condensed by Alan Watts or some other western advocate of Zen philosophy. ... But then agian, stoicisim is nothing but the wester variant of that, and one that's partially more fitting to western mindsets or perhaps even more refined than some eastern variants. .... Although eastern variants can be more poetic, if that's your thing.

Sidenote: People are recommending the Bible as a top-list must-read here. I really don't know why - probably some USA thing (watch me getting modded into oblivion for that half-sentence) ... anyway, stoicisim/zen will make you happy for the rest of your life, no matter what and will most probably also make you a better person for it. If you feel better when including the bible, add Jesus of Nazareth teachings (and *only* those!) later, they are *much* easyer to understand and apply when you have become a stoic!

BTW: Most of those books are public domain / copyright free and downloadable as PDF for free.

Good luck and have fun.

Ruby has, since it has become popular, mostly been used for webdev tooling and frameworks. In that department it combines the crappyness of PHP with a communities arrogance of C and the toolkit variety of Perl. So it could be that traction won't hold as long and good as some would like it to. PHP is deeply entrenched in serverside web development and the new kid on the block definitely is JavaScript with Node.js offering Serverside development in the turing complete language that also drives todays web frontend logic.

New serverside web projects I'd personally do in PHP or - if time and resources allow for experimenting - I'd use Node.js. For the simple reason that it offers the same PL on the serverside that we use for Ajax.

Bottom line:
With Node.js on the rise and JS offering basically the same features that people rave about in Ruby I would be suprised if Ruby loses traction again.

My 2 cents.

Amazon must realize it cannot export its anti-union labor model to European shores. ... ... powered by lobbying machine KPMG Consulting, their shill Gerhard 'Let's wrap him in barbed wire and shoot him into the sun' Schröder, Hartz 4 cheap-flexible-workforce-supply powered by German taxpayer and so forth. ... There, fixed that for you.

As much as I love shopping for stuff at amazon, I'm totally with these strikers. Kick them where it hurts is my vote on this! Go, workers rights, go! Voll in die Eier! ... I hope this spills over into the US, a notable signal no-holds barred neo-con corporate-socialism disguised as free market capitalism desperately needs. Here and across the pond.

My 2 cents.

MS Stack software developer

says it all. I almost stopped reading at that. MS stack is going bye-bye. And if there's one thing that is *not* lacking in *Seatle* it's MS 'talent'.
Try this: Advertise yourself as a Linux stack guy of same skill level, and look how many interviews you get with that. I'd bet measurably more.

Good luck.