Being in Webdev for 15 years I can say that getting the job done quick is all that counts. Most of the web is run by the bizarest of contraptions in software you can imagine - but they get the job done. Take for instance Wordpress: It's a prime example for bad software architecture and the inner platform antipattern.

        But it works. It delivers, Any idiot can download and install WP, pop in a theme and start fiddling. The webev gets called in when the system is all gummed up and feature x,y or z has to be added with magic programming trick (i.e. dirty hacks) quickly.

Same goes for PHP as a PL. Strange, bizar and hilarious, but it get's the job done.

        That's what counts.

        All that been said, it's precisely because of this that your skills as a webdev determine wether you'll have some freedom to pick your job and a fair salary or if you'll be treaded badly. I've been through so many projects that I can tell you even the crappy devs don't mean it. If there's a crew of 5 coding without versioning, that's because their to dumb to know any better and they won't listen to you if you're not ready to walk out of a job that only pays you a McDs salary.

        If however, you've got the skills and the tools, most people will think you're a demi-god. Use whatever technology you want, but be able to deliver. I've started building my own toolkit a while ago - it involves bash-cli snippets and PHP code - and dive into any mess my client/boss requires me to work with, be it Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla or whatever. I've since become good enough that I can make some demands, but I have no illusions about my outlook in the webdev world. It is a volatile occupation and unless you move into Java/Oralce, SAP or MS territory, it will stay that way.

        The upside is the freedom we have. We get to use FOSS most of the time as primary tools of trade and get to try out new things 5 times a week - neat. You can't have it both ways.

In a nutshell: If you want to stand your ground, you have to be good at both: Overall problem solving experience and proficient expert knowledge in the current tools of your trade. If you stick to building those mostly from tried-and-true FOSS technologies, you'll keep pointless learning to a minimum. For instance, I make a point of using grep to search for snippets of code in a project. My IDE may be dead 3 years from now, as may be the system I'm using. grep will be around until I die.

My 2 cents.

This looks like snake-oil all around to me.

However, it has me wondering: What if there were BTL chips like in the Shadowrun RPG (Pen & Paper) or those simulations like in the novel "Altered Carbon" were real?

In the Shadowrun RPG BTL ("Better than life" (sic!)) chips are *highly* adictive. Which raises the question: Would you give it a shot? ... I'd probably take a very close look at BTL junkies first. ... And then say no.

As for those simulations in Altered Carbon - I wouldn't mind trying one of those. :-)

I've met people who think I'm sort of crazy. Aspergers and ADHD are mentioned.

Here's my take on it:
I do have concentration problems. I am absolutely positively 100% sure that those are due to bad/suboptimal diet and stress during my time in the womb and during early childhood. There is solid scientific evidence that stress in early childhood influences the brain, the perception and self-esteem/perception. That influences behaviour and social standing. No two ways about it. I consider quite a bit of my fellow humans behaviour bizar, unexplainable, pointless and silly. I'm a hunter gatherer in a settler/farmers world. I have a range of choices for my life: Rebel, Leader, Visionary, Terrorist, Criminal, Artist, Specialist.

Being a "normal" person by todays standards is *not* one of them.

I also suspect that I am above average intelligent and thus a lot of what I do or say, although smart, may actually appear crazy to people around me. The problem is that smart people look like crazy people to normal people.

>>>It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. - Jippu Krishnamurty

My last years of school I spent in Waldorf School. It was a Godsend. Art, Manual Crafts, Stagecraft/Performing Arts, Music and vivid practical scientific education. Not a dull moment in School - ever.

I would strongly recommend that you see to it that your kid gets a broad education, and not just the brain treatment, but practical skills and a solid foundation in arts. He'll learn to express himself, he'll learn that there is more to life then the wreckage we often call society and he will also learn humility towards people who fly under the radar in other way - doing manual work or 'unintellectual' labor. Send him to the scouts.
Watch out for nutrition, minimalise media consumption and have him do adventure sports.

And he will also learn to turn the fact that he is a little different into a huge advantage.

My 2 cents.

I've got a mac mini hooked up to a logitech speaker system with a subwoofer and speakers. I use the MacMini remote and frontrow (one reason I won't update Snow Leopard!). Best home player UI ever. I run it over my 22" monitor.

As headphones on the go I now mostly use my new ones from Monster. My new mobile player is my new Yoga 2 tablet with n7 as softwareplayer. Great player, 5 bucks well invested. The search function, the touch UI and north of 6GB of music on the go in a player that can run 25 hours on one charge - that's all magic compared to even the best Aiwa money could by in the 80ies. ... Is that mid-range by todays standards? I would think so. I remember fiddling with cassette tapes and crackly records - that was high-end back then.

My current setup is lightyears ahead of all that. In the nineties when I could finally afford the portable top-notch walkman I had always wanted as a kid and youngster I bought a Sharp MD700 MiniDisk player/recorder which was state-of-the-art. Still works. Also very good and lightyears ahead of anything that we had 12 years before. However, my wristwatch has 10x more memory than one of those disks today and any 5$ mp3 player-stick will run circles around that MD700 in every aspect.

So relative to the past, my entire audio equiment is nothing short of magic.
But I guess I could spend orders of magnitude more money - only wouldn't I get that much out of it.

In short: I voted mid-range, despite being well under 500$ for my entire audio equipment (not counting the Mac Mini).

Simplicity needs to be the new goal in a FOSS OS project like Linux. 20 years ago it was all about getting an alternative to systems that cost north of 100 000$ up and running to be able to do the stuff we all wanted to do but couldn't afford to.

Today leading FOSS solutions and extremely powerful hardware is available in abundance, as are network and cyperpunk-working-coding-and-collaboration resources. It is now that we need to push for simplicity and perhaps even an own hardware standard.

To be honest, putting emphasis on FOSS hardware might even provide the right incentive for exactly that simplicity. Apple won all the Unixers over a decade ago, because it offered exactly that. Zero-fuss out-of-the-box FOSS-*nix functionality. It started losing them ever since the golden cage starting to close and lock. This is a gap the FOSS community needs to fill.

It is, in my opinion, high time for FOSS hardware to move into the limelight. We need to start crowdfunding our own NixBook Airs, flashy pro desktops and servers. ... The librem 15 is a step in the right direction - we need more of that.

If sites like those are your primary sales vector, you're better off at a counter at McD's. Seriously.

As a freelancer, a website (your own!) is mostly or even - most of the time - *only* an amplifier for contacts established in person. You want to do projects for people who couldn't be bothered to look into the internet. You talk to them, give them your card and when they check you out on the web they find this awesome site that underlines and emphasises every positive impression you made. Then they grab the phone and call you. That's what you want. Anything else is non-sense.

Project websites are scooping territory for shady headhunters at best and at worst and most of the time the software developments equivalent of a used-car-sales lot or a flea market.

Exception (sort of) / When registering with a project site might be feasible:
There is one thing were some of the more respectable sites - often those that cost a monthly fee to joing - are a good sales vector: When you are a specialist who's exotic or rare field can easyly be searched for. For instance, if you're particularly good as a Java Developer for some specific environment like JBoss or an SAP ABAP developer or some ultra-certified Oracle person, then the more professional project sites might get you the one or other Gig and the one or other stream of projects going. But even then, these are only a side-orchestra.

Never rely on such sites as your main soucre of income. Stretch out your feelers and get in contact with folks in the real world, that's where the money is anyway. As a specialist freelancer - and in IT you always are a specialist - networking, paperwork and relations is at least 50% of the work.

Good luck from a fellow (former/semi) freelancer.

... Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.

Thanks for the feedback. My conclusion is, that I'm going to look into a few variants of solutions, one main track being ready-made VMs of my favourite installation, the other being Debian FAI. ... I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with Debian for this task, so FAI is probably the way to go. I will look into Puppet aswell, although I'm not sure yet if it's usefull for speeding initial installation and setup of individual systems.

I wasn't aware of the Turnkey Linux stuff, so thanks for that tip aswell.

I also understand the notion that setup and configuration is bascially our job as devs and IT experts, nevertheless, I suspected that the strong presence of LAMP might have brought about something ready-made that speeds up the task a little. ... I'll start rolling my own solution and perhaps put it online some day for others to use. ... Scratch your own itch, they say, don't they?

Once again, thanks for the feedback.

Searched for the link again, found it this time ... ... ...

The last time I had that sort of a chill run down my spine was in that one short shot in "The Ring" - were you see the girls face. ... That was a *long* time ago. No, I don't watch horror movies.

Summary of the videoclip:
The pilot is chaged in a well built cage, as if on display for this exact purpose. It's smack in the center of a court among combat ruins. Roughly 10-20 soldiers standing around in a Mad Max aestetic setting, some further up on open floors of what looks like a half-bombed building. With very clean and neat combat gear, resembling a solid desert-spotty-camo US armed forces ripp-off. ... Very well funded indeed. Or they all "dressed up for the occasion". Probably a bit of both.

You hear the cheasy allah sing-sang whawha pop chanting we've heard so much of lately build up as the clips soundtrack and see composited videosnippets and "news-bulletin" effects flying about. ... Don't know if that was Fox or not ... wouldn't be suprised if it was the video makers though, because:

What instantly strikes the viewer - me and anybody else I bet - is that the video is *very* well made. No shaky-cam stuff, but what appears to be corrected and composited top-quality HD footage, perhaps even 2 or 4HD. Cut together in a sort of MTV-videoclip aestetic, with extra room for the camera man to move about. A cut-up of closeups putting the victim front-and-center, to allow the viewer to get close to im and build a relation ... very smart. Think "Britains go talent" style personal engagement. The whole video is a barrage of quotes on western news/reality TV and action movie style quotes. ... These guys have done their homework and their message is for us, no two ways about it.

He's wearing clothing that pretty much resembles the orange/red clothes we see on all those Guantanamo pictures. Mmmmh, could this be a little "wave with the telegraph mast" as we say in Germany? ... I wonder. Anyway, the clothes are wet, obviously from the inflamable liquid they sprayed on him. He's pretty calm, standing in the center of the cage. Note: We're still seeing all this in a montage of shots in MTV/reality TV aestetic.

They show a shot of him praying, then a fighter in desert ski-mask (all of them have one) lighting a wooden torch and holding it to a stip of flammble. Bad guy action movie style it very much is. Intended, I bet ... After a few moments the man starts burning, waving his arms in pain, then flailing and running to and fro in the cage bumping into the bars, completely engulfed in flames. He goes down and unconscious after about 10-20 seconds. Couldn't really say exactly, it seemed like an eternity, and I sure as hell have no intention watching that again.

They give it another 10-20 seconds with a close-up to his face/head crisping in the fire - he's not feeling it anymore.
We do the same thing with dead animals on the barbeque, so if you think me putting it that way is cruel, think about your eating habbits.

They stop the fire and bury him with a wheel-loader dumping a load of debris and dirt onto the cage, crushing it, extinguishing the fire and burrying him all at once. The wheel loader is filmed with what looks like a seperate cam, shots change throughout the action. The whole procedure from start to finish looks very well rehearsed

Conclusion:

This stuff has happened throughout history. We know it.
What's new is that anybody - that includes the scariest of religious fanatics - can take a high end cam for a few bucks from a convenience store and make this sort of video of it.

My judgment is out:
These guys are serious. Not Nazi Germany serious - praise the heavens not - but like 14th century serious. Curely, fanatic and not to be reasoned with. A few more of these videos and I'd vote for two dozens of Neutron grenades to be deployed to turn every inch of their territory into even more of a wasteland. ... This reminds me of the exile Germans who decisively spoke out *against* peace with Nazi Germany - their reasoning was to once and for all eliminate every last bit of fascism in Germany, and not stop an inch short of that. Right now, after seeing this, I'd vote for pretty much the same thing with the Isis folks. Bomb them to chunky kibbles and don't let a single one get away is my word of the night after seeing this. ... I will calm down again, I know, but right now that's my call.

This definitly put a dent in my weekend. But now I once again know what humans are capable of.

My 2 cents.

In software development, especially server-side web development this is called continuous integration (CI for short). I have nothing against it, if automated testing, instant rollback and other things are in place. And if the distro has solid quality control and feature management. ... Somehow I doubt that though.

If a distro crew knows what they are doing, I'd trust them with rolling releases. ... Maybe I should try this Arch Linux thing out. Any experiences? Any advice?

This *is* a suprise. I knew MS would learn the lesson eventually. Probably to late, but eventually. That they are this serious about it actually honestly suprises me.
It still is to late, IMHO. FOSS toolchains, especially those web-centric ones, are deeply entrenched with developers already. And those teams deliver software and solutions orders of magnitude cheaper than anything MS has to offer - even if they runtime tech is now all FOSS.

But, who knows? MS might just become the FOSS services company Linuxcare alway wanted to be. They've should've started 10 years ago. If they make a few more smart moves they'll be in the limelight again.

My 2 cents.

If you're well and broadly educated, teaching your child at home - if it is allowed - isn't the worst option, especially if the public schools available suck.

Sidenote: In Germany, homeschooling is illegal - the reasoning being, that children should be introduced to society and a broader perspective, even if advantages it migh have by being homeschooled are mitigated. It's also a mechanism to prevent fanatics, like religious ones, from raising children with a one-dimensional perspective. While prohibing homeschooling if the child does regular exams to prove its level of education is debatable, there is some reasoning behind this.

That said, maybe you can do a mix: Find likeminded parents and found a mini-school. Your children get the special treatment *and* a broader perspective on things aswell. 10 Families willing to pitch together and a few parents willing to participate can work wonders. You get small classes with the special care and attention and the social interaction all in one box. I remember my days in a private school with 16 students in the class. It was awesome.

If that's not an option, homeschooling done well can be a very good thing. School itself can be hell. I know regular school would have been for me. ... But I also know my father probably would've sucked at homeschooling, so it can be a bit of a tradeoff. ... What does your child say?

There is only one kind of systematic prejudice in today's institutions. And it is against white males. And if you happen to be heterosexual too, no one will target you for any favoritism.

Oh, come on! Cry me a river.

Look at any movie in the west - the hero is a white heterosexual man 99% of the time. Look at most any culture and men are heroes and lead in every important aspect of society, super-models aside. Of course, in all these cultures there are also more dropouts on the male side, but that's how evolution wired the sexes as we know today.

Women get aided in MINT, come out of school an avarage of 2 or more gradelevels better than boys (every since) and yet it's still men who get the higher salary and end up in boss positions.
Why?
Because we (men), evolution and our culture wired us to not give a shit about grades and some dumb-ass teacher! Because we know better, don't we? But we *are* wired to seriously give a shit how much we get for our work. Especially so if we want to impress the ladies. A man is way likely would rather be a bum or at least a dropout than work under circumstances he considers below him. I know I am. He is also way more likely to grab a Kalashnikow and take what he thinks he deserves when pushed far enough. Examples all around. All the time.

Get it into your head: The most successful men don't even need a degree. It's white male college dropouts who've built the most powerful companies in the world.

Women end up having to weigh their desire to habe children against optimised career moves. In a classic society they are way less likely to completely drop out of society and also way less likely to rise to the top.

In my opinion any law that tries to curb those tendencies of gender inequality is welcome. That some of them are debatable, mostly because they are as ineffective as they are unfair, is obivous. But your statement is a blatant over-simpification and, to be honest, a tad whiney. If I may say so.

Get a grip, grow a pair and find a cute lady to have some awesome sex with - you sound like you could use some.

MS gained critical mass as the PC market boomed - that's the only reason they are around. Until a few years ago they were also able to help hardware vendors sell new stuff by deliberately turning each new OS into a performance hog, helping vendors justify selling new stuff. Vendors in turn helping MS push their new OS because of reasons.
That aside, MS is mostly known for stifling innovation rather than bringing it on. The odd kinect or something aside.

Apple on the other hand always did well when the control-freak Steve Jobs was in charge. Say what you want, but the man knew what he was doing. His analysis of the market and his reflection on end-user computing in general were and still are fun and enlighting to listen to. Apple never, or very rarely, wastes your time with broad-strokes and/or half-assed bullshit. When they make a statement on their position or product line and why they have it that way it's usually spot on. With Gates and Balmer it is either boring or bullshit.

Steve Jobs was personally interested in building computers that don't suck. He truly wanted devices that he would use every day. His tantrums when someone delivered crap were feared and his persistance in pushing his people to better output was legendary. MS compared to Apple is like American cars compared to German cars. The German cars where all driven by the CEOs of the companies that built them themselves - in motor city each boss had a chauffeur. Ferdinand Porsche would notice instantly if a product he had was shit - because he used them every day. Crysler? Not so much. Look at Detroit today, and you know where that attitude lead them.

As much as I dislike a company having so much power, Apple deserves to be on top. They've turned tech-stuff into fashion and can ask 800$ for a new iPad from the next guy (and girl!) on the street. I won't fall for it - my Lenovo Yoga 2 is way better in every aspect and cost less than half - but most people will.

How MS can even remain in the market that strong is beyond me. Subscriptions for an Office Package? An OS? You've got to be kidding me! ... I personally expect MS to be squished a little in the next few years, if not crushed. Apple from the high end, Google+Huawei+Xaomi etc. from the low end. No, no, sorry folks, my bet is on Google and the fruit crew and MS losing ground is long overdue IMHO.