The only way that we have found for being able to assess a candidate's suitability for work at our company is to write tests that suit the job, and then ask the candidates to demonstrate their skills. We've had people with all sorts of qualifications relevant to the LAMP architecture not know the basics of regex, sql, bash, etc. Let alone what ARP is.

ARP as in ethernet ip-mac mapping ? How exactly is that relevant to a LAMP job ?

translates to: codes which was working fine in Windows 95 panic'ed in Windows 7

More like Windows Vista -> Windows 8.1. FreeBSD 7.x wasn't that long ago.

Slackware makes an awesome desktop. With FreeBSD you'll have to
compile KDE from ports (make config galore) or use the precompiled but
broken version (old Xorg) on the media.

Exactly, but what I would like to know is what are the critical SMART values to watch for in SSD's ?
Any results on that yet, should we expect them or will they vary even more by manufacturer/model making a "top 5"
list impossible.

You're absolutely right, But it's been this way for 5 years and in academia this client/employer distinction is
especially blurry.

Huh what about 196 Reallocated_Event_Count. Nothing we didn't know already but is there any data out
for SSD's, that's what I would like to know.

Just keep your Raid arrays small in number of drives if you use Desktop drives and/or
spring the extra money to buy WD Red's which do have TLER IIRC.

So you overwrite your drive with 0 (/dev/zero) and 1's (/dev/one???) but still you were able to e2fsck it afterwards ?

I'm a government worker. I have 8 bosses (actually probably more, but who cares). None of them manage me at all.

Only 8, I work at a university in a niche engineering department.
We have +12 professors. 12 Kings who only care about their "research" and prestigeprojects.

Doesn't that imply that you have a process of befriending people in interesting companies or that your choice of companies isn't that big.

If it knows how to wrap the different installers' (nullsoft,installshield,etc...) /silent options, then it's fine by me.

If Microsoft maintains an app-repo they will scrutinise it otherwise there is no point in using it. Yes there will be
attempts to subvert it and get malicious software in there. Just like with the Apple App Store.
And sometimes they will succeed but overall this is a brave move of them.
Just like their new implemention of Virtual Desktops. I applaud it.

Is this technology supposed to replace Windows Installer and MSI packages or does it built on it ?

That's not true Slackware uses SysV init (sysvinit-2.88dsf-x86_64-3).
Its init scripts are more BSD like. A few global init scripts in /etc/rc.d/
instead of specially named and numbered symlinks in /etc/rcX.d/.

I'm not talking about samba the daemon, I'm talking about the system mount utility
and the fact that you can't mount an old smb share anymore (win98/samba 2.x).