I get a phone call, Pull to the side of the road on a public street, and take tall call. Am I still driving?

This is like saying that because the only restaurant in town is McDonalds I should suck it up and accept that shit as food. Fuck that, I'd rather keep fighting the good fight and driving to the next town hoping one day my town will get a Taco Bell.

You are advocating security though obscurity?

And if Obama gets his way those community colleges will have less funding. Why? Because of low graduation rates.

Many kids don't graduate from community colleges, they transfer out to 4 year schools. Further more, many community colleges do not have strict admissions (if any) and allow anyone to attend. So they reduce aid to schools like this because their rating declines due to low graduation rates. Students are forced to look at 4 year schools and pay more for their education or can't get admissions at all.

Doesn't seem like a good plan. I'm all for putting more information into the hands of the consumers. Let's post transfer rates, graduation rates, graduation rates of people who transferred from or to this school, job placements, etc. Let's also talk about average salaries for people on a degree path at the 1 year, 5year, and 15 year timeline.

Let's also start talking about trade schools and apprenticeships as alternatives to college. There are many careers and students that I think would be better served this way.

While we are at it, let's push more self starter education. WGU has a great program for students who are self starters and can learn online. There are other colleges and universities doing the same. The cost of these online courses is trivial compared to traditional education.

If it costs at all it's not worth doing.

I get paid for my cans, so I recycle them (but not though the forced city recycle program I pay for). So if recycling paper and plastic was worth it I wouldn't have to pay for it.

I'm not against recycling, I'm against being forced to pay for the privilege of recycling. I'd much rather buy paper containers made from renewable trees or use bio degradable products. I'm with Penn and Teller on this one.

Actually, I have well and septic. So I shit into my own backyard.

The county I live in charges me for a mandatory recycling bin. They can sort it. They are just lucky I even bother to put stuff that 'looks' recyclable in it.

Not to mention all the new connections that will need to be installed as companies have to shutdown their p2p vpns.

On the upside, if VPN's become illegal there will be less remote workers. This could be a big boon for the IT market as companies scramble to bring IT back in house.

In the end it's probably for a 3 month contract on the other side of the United States anyway.

I did just that a few years back. I would get nothing but letters spouting FUD about X,Y,Z. They would then of course ask for a donation to stop whatever big scary fear they just imagined.

Some gems:

1) Obama not trying to pass laws to take away our guns in his first term is PROOF he wants to take away our guns. So don't vote for Obama.
2) Obama is working with the UN to take away our guns all over the world.

I was willing to give them my money when I thought they were trying to encourage training, education, and firearm ownership. I also liked that they would be a voice in the process of government for the rights of gun owners. But they have moved beyond that and I can't say their goals align with my own goals. I just want to own my guns, shoot at ranges, and see the encouragement of proper education. I guess that's too much to ask.

I understand that. And yes, there is benefit to asking basic questions. And yes, I can talk fairly extensively about the basics of the languages I've worked in for years. The problem comes from one off specific questions. Ask me a php/python/javascript question and 9/10 times I'll know the answer. Ask me a question about built in array key sorting functions in php and I don't have a damn clue. I'd just go to php.net and look up the api in question. I know what they do, but I don't know how they work off the top of my head (order or arguments, return types, etc). I just don't need them that often.

Another example is that many parts of a job are done rarely. For example I have written some pretty nice shell scripts for automation. However I am not scripting in bash daily. So when you ask me to write some script in bash on the spot I probably will fail. Give me 5 minutes and a browser so I can get my head back into bash mode and you will get a script. I have far too much in my head to remember the syntax of every language I've worked in.

To be clear, I'm not complaining about losing jobs due to the interviewing process. I just think the interviewing process can dismiss many good candidates. One of the best interviews I had was totally non-traditional. I was given a soap api, specs to a web app, and access to a database. I had the weekend to create the web application and submit it to them. They called me a few days later to defend my project. They grilled me and pointed out tons of flaws. I learned a lot, they learned exactly what kind of developer I am and how I respond to criticism, and I got the job. I don't really have problems securing well paying work. But I do feel like I've blow quite a few interviews because of the interviewing process and my inability to spout things off the top of my head.

I was using the example to point out that a lot of interviewing techniques simply fail at finding anyone except those who can answer interviewing questions.

Do you want a guy who knows a textbook answer or a guy who writes solid programs? Does it matter to you if he leverages the internet while programming (not code copying, but looking up reference docs, patterns, etc). The questions in the post above were not important, but rather a avenue to the point I was making.

And yes, I have bombed simple questions. Sometimes because I over thought it, or others because I simply have never ran into the situation. I've been a linux admin for the better part of 10 years and recently in a interview was asked a very simple question that I had never encountered and didn't know the answer to. The guy challenged my experience based on the fact I did not know the answer. The truth is I had never encountered it and thus really didn't know. A 3 second google gave me the info I needed with my background to know how to solve the problem. This guy discounted my job exp because I didn't know how to do something and my guess wasn't close enough.

Some people interview poorly. Give them a problem to solve and a few hours alone and look at the output. It's probably a better way to interview.

I honestly fail at interviewing for programming positions. I just fail at being asked the difference between methods, or what arguments X function takes, etc. I'm a plotting, methodical, researching, developer. Give me a weekend to write you a small application and then spend the interview asking me to defend my design decisions and I think you will see the real level of my skill (for good or bad). Dump me in a meeting and fire questions about obscure (I know your questions above were not that obscure) like most interviewers do and I come off like an idiot.

I did the opposite. I took double my pay to get back to market rate and in exchange I wear a monkey suit, lost my office, and work in a cube.

But at least I can afford to live now... I'd gladly take a small pay cut though to go back to wearing tshirts and having my own private area to work.