Business is driven almost entirely by profit. If you're a highly paid person who has skills that aren't in the critical areas I'm at a loss for why any company should feel compelled to keep you on, regardless of your age. Knowing one or two languages, IMHO, is a suicide move. Besides, as one who helps technical and business folks achieve their goals, I don't want single-skilled people like programmers. Like it or not, I can get those a dime a dozen overseas. The needs for the organizations I've been with have been a mix of business process, design, and technical knowledge. Evolve or be unemployed. Or relocate. People bitching about there being no jobs often haven't explored relocation and there are jobs, just not in your locale perhaps.

I'm severely disappointed that they gave in to Tea Partiers again. They should have let the super-conservatives/religious right drive the country into the ditch. Giving into the side that refuses to compromise is like buying your 5-yo candy every time he throws a tantrum at the checkout. You will never be able to avoid doing it once you've started.

At least defense will get decimated, I hope. As an independent, I want 50% to come from tax increases and 50% to come from cuts, the latter proportionally hitting defense and entitlements relative to their funding.

Over time I've found myself being shoved politically "left" as the substantial movement of the country continues right. I hate it. Its been nearly impossible to find a Republican to vote for in the past 8+ years.

A relative is an employee and showed me an article from an internal newzine talking about this kind of development too. They have deeper pockets, I bet, too. Anyway, I recall it showing an auto moonroof application that I presume is oriented at electric/hybrid vehicles. But the company has many large building contracts so that would be a presumed application as well. As has already been noted, the question is value.

Pressing for certification is double-edged, as many have presented here. I am astounded at the frequent lack of response here which misses the ideal way to keep such candidates, though. Simple, quality leadership is what keeps most in their duties (aside from love of the work). Its not usually about money, its about who you work for and with. If certs are suddenly compulsory and management isn't paying then its my view that they're probably not quality management to start with. That's what causes the high turnover, not necessarily the credential itself. Contracts are a complex, poor way of substituting for providing a quality work environment.

Yes, I've seen people leave once they got some cert or some specialized experience that is in high market demand. Guess what? They often tried to return and depending on how badly they burned their bridge on the way out, they might or might not have a shot at getting back in.

Incidentally, as has been covered here at length, management who thinks certs create wonderful workers are delusional. A cert is usually just a recognition the person understands the best practice being pushed by vendor X. Actual practice is proven in the proverbial pudding and the onus is on management to set expectations those best practices are followed.

I don't agree. The change in music being driven by the Internet suggests performances is how artists will survive. Journalists can't do that. So once they have sold their article once, it will be replicated without control and the journalist will have made, what, $2? As with the Parent to your response, I too fear the repercussions of the impending failure of traditional news outlets. My take isn't that the sky is falling, but the trend in ideologically-driven US politics will only be driven further and faster with fewer real investigative journalists doing work. Its unclear what new model might come about, or when. What happens until then?

One interesting new direction is Dan Rather's change from traditional evening news at CBS to HDNet and investigative journalism interesting to him. This is what I'd like to see more of.

This is unrealistic. When you get onto an airplane to cross the country or an ocean, do you know how to change the airplane's oil? Or rotate its tires? Computers are only a tool for all but those specialized to deal with them. If the computer doesn't work, the masses take it to a specialist to get it back into working order.

Probably a dirty word in these technical bits, but I'll say it anyway. Owners should be leading their business and the decisions they make. What they publicly do do impacts the morale and actions of all employees. I would probably suggest to each of them individually that a public demonstration of them following a new IT policy is a good way to cement its importance company-wide. This achieves two ends for you: getting the C's to follow-through on their original approvals and level-setting for everyone else.

My pagefile.sys is >2 GB and I suspect anyone using Windows has a similarly sized file.

Back to school time means lots of campus traffic.

Why can't students mind the jaywalking laws? Meandering across a highly traveled road is counter to the reason you're at an institution of higher education, isn't it?

There was a leader in my organization at one point who liked "shiny object" names. He liked to use terms that were getting some press in whatever way seemed useful but they never mated up to the real meaning of the term. Scrum is one that is abused and is so far from the three (or four, depending) question, 15 minute, stand-up meeting it's sad. So no, you're not alone.

In related news, Xinhua news agency reported that games involving corruption were being added to educational curriculum.

Its not clear to me if you're asking how to vet an idea or how to get it commercialized. The former is my guess, but if you're interested in commercialization, I suggest this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Commercializing-New-Technologies-Getting-Market/dp/0875847609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248437892&sr=8-1

As for vetting, if its an actual invention, then you're talking patent and you can't really discuss it with anyone publicly, requiring the aforementioned NDA at the least. If its an idea that might not be patentable, I have used my wife and trusted colleagues as sounding boards. A trusted colleague is someone with personal moral standards beyond reproach and who I want to have involved with the development of the idea.

And I've never lived in a basement before, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express.

Probably too late for me. I kept a Windows box to work from home but now that I've been using a spare Linux machine am deciding I can do without. Worst case I could create a dual boot and move on from all future Microsoft products.

I guess I'm tired of the hardware rat race and given the recent issue with DRM on Spore, it would seem I will stop looking at mega-commercial games and start checking out independent shops instead.