This isn't just in the US either, we have the same problem here in the UK.

Over the years I've seen loads of youngsters who straight out of university think they know everything until they get the sharp shock of reality.

Businesses go for them as they are cheap but it's those of us who have been around for decades that end up cleaning up the mess or attempt to train them.

There are some are so arrogant they don't want to accept they are wrong, they are the worse.

Nb: I'm self taught, didn't do university & still overworked in my mid forties!

I've not used an actual landline phone in years now.

At home I have a landline but there's no phone attached, just the VDSL modem for my fibre connection.

For phone calls I always use the mobile or VoIP so no landline phone there.

Even in the office it's a VoIP connection.

Yes they have as one of my sites using PhpBB suffered from at first.

What I do to get around the scripts is:
1: Have a captcha - although not too complicated as I've found some disabled users have problems with it
2: Restrict posts to be moderated for the first few posts made by a new user. Once they hit a certain limit then their posts go live immediately.

No 2 is important because some people from India, Korea and China are paid to post to forum sites so doing this also captures them as well.

Initially there's a burst of spammers but this falls off as they find out which sites are pro-active in killing them. I still get the odd burst of spam, usually on a Monday morning but it's manageable.

Have they sorted out the dodgy keyboard problems?

My 10 year old HP48G was really bad (to the point of almost being unusable) when it came to the 0 & 1 keys

yes, probably down to them thinking that implementing s2s would devalue it somehow - facebook chat doesn't have s2s either

I wish I could retire my msn account but unfortunately it's still the preferred IM system for most here in the UK.

Personally I have my own xmpp server running for IM. Not only is it open but it's also means that I'm in control of my contacts & know that, if it fails it's my own fault ;-)

If I need to talk to someone on Google Talk or other xmpp severs its no problem as its federated correctly so I'm pretty much covered.

I'm just wondering what those insisting on msn will do now or the chaos when this happens next year.

I think it must have been 97/98 but saying that I can't remember anything about no logins etc :-/

Tube + the infamous Southeastern means 2.5 hours each way on a good day :-(

I see the same thing in my forums. The capcha gets the spam bots but the mules (humans being paid pittance to spam) still try to get through, strangely they tend to post on a Monday morning.

What I do to catch them is:
* moderate the first X posts from any user.
* don't allow posts from certain countries, usually India, South Korea & China.

There's no automation on this as its low volume anyhow but it does work.

I currently have 2 isp's one for home & one mobile one for when stuck on the train. The latter I change a couple of months ago but the home one I've been using for almost 4 years now.

As there's fttc cabinets out I the street now I'm now waiting for those to come online & then switch that one.

yes same here. I have my passport at home & rarely use it - sometimes if I have to collect from the local sorting office (I don't have a drivers licence) or if I go abroad.

I do have a rail photo card but that's not official in any means - but is acceptable at some london data centres as ID which makes security a joke!

Pity I can't vote twice. I first re-purpose it then hoard it once it's past even that - I still have some hardware dating back to 1979!

Definitely not my most productive time of day... especially after a liquid lunch ;-)

More so on a Friday

In the office it's 100Mb/s but at home it's 3G as I refuse to use BT after the fiasco of trying to move by old broadband connection 3 years ago - all they wanted to do was flog a new service rather than move the line 3 miles & yes it was an Indian call centre involved.

Most of the time speed doesn't worry me so happy with 3G