Except volunteer experience (seriously, what do you think open source projects are, if not volunteer?) doesn't always translate to work experience (doing dev work for pay). You learn the skills either way and both routes give you equal competence but no one in business seems to care if you do it for free (even if you have something good to show off during an interview). Recruiters are especially bad at this. That's the whole point I'm trying to make.

How does somebody get over the arbitrary "5-7 years work experience" hurdle if they are trying to get their first development gig? We all know it's boilerplate horseshit. To the HR zombies, it doesn't matter if you have a stunning portfolio and cut your teeth on open source projects over the years; you aren't getting an interview unless your resume matches all the keywords on their grep list because they have no idea how to qualify what they're looking for.

Episode 3 almost made up for the other two (the key word being almost). That said, I watched EPIII again a few days ago after not having seen it for awhile. The reason for Anakin/Vader's fall has always seemed really petty to me. I guess after 20+ years of build-up I expected something more compelling than Anakin's fear of losing Padme because of a few nightmares.

It's sad, but that is the prevailing mentality in the USA right wing these days. Helping other people and generally being a decent human being is decried as "OMG SOCIALISM!!!!!11" and is looked down upon because such actions just help a bunch of "lazy moochers". How are the poor supposed to haul themselves up by their bootstraps when they can't even afford shoes? Of course, those poor people have no one but themselves to blame because they weren't born into rich families, right? The rich people who act like that are fucking hypocrites because they often get corporate subsidies and tax breaks the rest of us peons can't exploit--and then they act like they fucking worked for it!

Is that checkbox even hooked up to any code or is it just there for show?

This is why I wish at times it were possible to rewrite human nature--essentially strip out the greed, petty cruelty, and shortsighted stupidity and distribute the fix like a software patch. Society would work a lot better if we didn't have these flaws.

Here's one of mine: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/the_complete_beginners_guide_linux I haven't read Computer Power User in a long time so I really don't know if they have a Linux column or not.

Norman Chan was my supervisor. Things were great until he got reassigned to a different department. The new guy (Alex something or other, I forget his full name after so many years) didn't have much of an interest in open source so the job kind of dried up.

I used to work for MaximumPC magazine (I wrote Linux columns on their website a few years ago) and I saw the writing on the wall even then. Dead-tree magazines (especially tech-related) have been on their last legs for awile now.

KDE 4.0 was more of a prototype; it was never meant for production systems. You can't blame the KDE4 team because distro maintainers decided to replace KDE3 before KDE4 was really ready.

If we didn't interfere in other countries' business, so many people around the world wouldn't hate us and we would have no use for such a large military.

My only statement is that the weak need to remember it's a choice for the strong to help them, not a right.

So you're a social darwinist. So I guess you'd be OK with the poor ganging up on the rich in huge numbers and tearing them to pieces. After all, it's the law of the jungle and there is strength in numbers.

Of course, all the 20-somethings who can't find jobs these days are fucked because that's time lost they can never get back.They will have to delay retirement if they can afford to retire at all (or live way below their means).

Why not stamp the text into copper or aluminum tablets? Far less breakable than clay or stone. Copper eventually gets that green patina but it should still be readable if you stamp the words deep enough.

That, plus the new Gmail interface looks like it was beaten with an ugly stick. Useful text labels are gone, everything is represented with an icon. Are people illiterate these days or something? Some changes are downright impractical. For instance, what's with the tiny editor pop-up window when composing a new message? I have all this screen space, so why not use it? I really don't need to look at the contents of my inbox while I'm writing. Replies use the full-size interface, so what gives? They even manage to get that wrong since essential features like Forward are hidden in menus that are not immediately obvious. It's been over a year since they rolled that UI out and I still want the classic interface back.