From the previews that I saw earlier this year, it was obviously intended to appeal to high school and fraternity boys. So, it'll have one good weekend at the box office. Then unkind word of mouth will spread

A vague question posted to Slashdot isn't a _strong_ indication of anything other than perhaps being new to Slashdot. No doubt, more details will garner better responses. But, there's no reason to be harsh.

I suggest heading to a large city where there is more competition for IT professionals. In those cities, non-profit organizations have a difficult time competing for talent. You would likely have a better opportunity to resume your IT career in that sector. Then, once you have some stable years behind you working in IT, you can merge back into the general marketplace. Another good suggestion mentioned by another commenter is picking up jobs via Craigslist. Many of my own projects have been gained via that avenue. Good luck to you.

Tons of online books and tutorials. See https://wiki.python.org/moin/P... . Python is my go-to language for just getting stuff done. I use it for damn near everything these days, except mobile apps, which I code natively.

I'd appreciate hearing from Google employees about their impressions of Mr. Armstrong while he was an executive at Google. Is this a case of a competent upper level executive proving themselves too flawed to run a company as CEO?

At this point, I see little evidence that the U.S. citizenry has perceived the clues that are very obvious: free-market religion is destroying their country. Which also happens to be my country, alas.

Once we have universal healthcare provided by our government, this problem goes away. Perhaps in my children's lifetime.

Before jumping into iOS development in a very big way, I stuck a toe in the OSX waters by converting my old Toshiba notebook into a Hackintosh. It's been a few years. As I recall, it worked pretty well; but, would sometimes crash at inconvenient moments. My primary computer is now a three-year-old Macbook Pro. There are enough used Macs on the market to make Hackintosh less useful.

I briefly worked for a small grocery chain a few years ago in Bellingham, WA. IT personnel were of a much lower caste. Never mind that the whole operation would have almost immediately ceased to function if the technology folks took a walk en masse. Grocery operations culture placed a very large value on antiquated rituals, rather than useful new industry approaches. I recall how the clueless CEO and his direct reports would gather every few days in the BIG MEETING ROOM to strategize about next week's coupons -- coupons printed in the junk mail flyers that most folks probably just tossed directly into the recycle bin.

From a slide that promotes MarkLogic's appropriateness for the health exchange's particular set of challenges:

• - Highly complex data in many formats that change often and have varying quality
• - Massive amounts of data at high velocity; highly transactional
• - Highly structured data, but multiple and changing schemas

See: http://assets1.csc.com/innovation/downloads/LEFBriefing_MarkLogic_031512.pdf (slide 23)

My two cents:

• When faced with a very complicated software project, use what's been proved to work.
• Why would the CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) dictate this particular less common technology? Very strange.

Sully may have been able to ditch successfully without it; but, William Langewiesche makes a strong case that the Airbus A320's fly-by-wire software was an important factor in the favorable outcome of the procedure. See http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/06/us_airways200906 and the expanded account in Langewiesche's excellent book, 'Fly by Wire: The Geese, the Glide, the Miracle on the Hudson.' I'm an instrument-rated private pilot who is in awe of both Captain Sullenberger and the Airbus engineering team.

And it's a stone's throw from Last Concert Cafe -- a great place for a quick lunch. Used to go there years ago before relocating to the Pacific NW. http://www.lastconcert.com/

During flight training, pilots are drilled very frequently in doing essentially exactly that. The instructor will suddenly decrease the throttle, then announce "Okay, you just lost your engine. What are you going to do?" In my experience, this simulation will only happen when "at altitude" -- safely high enough to disallow any real risk in case the engine fails to spin up again. Airline pilots are fortunate enough to have very realistic simulator training that can reproduce the situational context effectively. But, this isn't the case for primary flight training. So, no instructor is going to execute the above drill immediately after taking off when still low to the ground (the situation that led to Appleton's crash).