I was in a similar boat. But after 7 years, many background checks will not show felonies. Some use 10 year background checks. My suggestion is to find a contract company that uses a 7 year check and do contract work. In my case, one of the companies I contracted with recognized my talent and hired me. Despite having fallen off the background check time, I still disclosed my situation. However, the company recognized my talent and already knew me so the decision was easier. Although I didn't have to disclose and they might not have found out, I chose to disclose in case someone with a personal vendetta chose to bring up the matter with HR in the future and have it disclosed in a manner I didn't choose. For me, it worked out and I feel like I work for a company I can retire from.

Comcast is 250Mb in Olathe, Kansas (Kansas City suburb) right now. They are getting ready to try for 1Gb, I understand. A friend of mine is getting the full 250Mb from them now down, but only 28Mb up (if "only" is the proper term). Here in KC, the other companies are really looking at Google as a threat and starting to test their next-gen stuff here.

While many say that they don't do things that would require Gigabit, would they find a use for things they currently CAN'T do with a limited connection?

Consider: With Gigabit available (like Google Fiber here in Kansas City), your connection to the Internet is the same speed as your LAN connection. If my best friend has Gigabit as well, then we are able to send and receive to each other at a Gigabit (confirmed by friends with Google Fiber and by Google themselves at an event I attended).

When you take the concept of a LAN, and extend it out to the Internet, you need to challenge your paradigm of "Internet". Cloud storage is then the same performance as NAS. Your buddy, via a private VPN, is on the same network as you despite being miles apart (handy for LAN gaming!) Private FTP servers will be a viable option for moving files around.

Then take the concepts that businesses use LANs for, and you will see new applications available for home users. Collaboration tools become effective over the Internet. Face to face meetings with full video are ready to rock (Think a computer with multiple monitors doing a virtual family reunion with a monitor (or Window) dedicated to each person.

Finally, what does a high bandwidth, low latency connection allow? Perhaps we could finally get our robo-presence devices going (think the Episode of the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon went to work virtually via a robot with a monitor for a face at the office.)

My point is that the things people think they use the Internet for are limited by the tools and such developed in the last 15 years since the broadband introduction. But how many people would say they needed that speed when they were on modems saying "All I do is log into AOL to check my email and sometimes go to a chatroom to talk about cats? What would I need to do that faster?" Oh, that's right... until the speed was available widely, the applications weren't available to do other things. This isn't something that can be easily judged by the "Gigabit Have-Nots", because they do not yet comprehend the possibilities. The times are changing, and the demand will increase as developers find the market opened up for its use.

So, Google Fiber is offering 7 years of free internet service at current cable speeds for the $300 cost of installation (they allow $25 for 12 months, then 6 free years after that). Since they are providing the current provider speeds at significantly reduced rates, wouldn't that narrow the divide more than extend it? If you have a house with no Internet access, and you provide access, isn't that infinitely more enabling than providing gigabit to those with 10 megabit speeds?

I live in KC and Fiber is being installed down the street. We discuss what the speed increase provides, and almost universally agree that the benefits are minor, although power users will find a way to use some of the bandwidth.

There are more cmdlets in Windows 8 than ever. I don't think it is going anywhere in the Windows environment. PowerShell can interface with .NET, but isn't exclusively a .NET language.

Same. Almost completely PowerShell in my Sys Admin duties. I was able to do things like automate VM builds using VMware's PowerCLI plugin, and perform SQL queries and act on the results in Active Directory or Exchange. It is super powerful having .NET and most other objects available if needed.

There was a live streaming event on YouTube about the release of Google Fiber gigabit Internet service and TV service today here in Kansas City. No other ISP will survive here against it. http://www.google.com/fiber

As a system administrator that manages a VMware Environment for ALL employees workstations (Over 1600) as well as ALL Windows servers (Over 300), I am very happy with the vSphere product that VMware has created. They have embraced the community and provided great tools so that I can use common languages to script VDI deployments (Using Powershell with the PowerCLI addon from VMware) as well as simplify disaster recovery efforts. VMware's View product has allowed around 30% of our employees to move to work at home status without a noticeable difference in performance over being in the office. I firmly believe that VMware remains the top vendor for virtualization.

Note: I do not work for VMware, but rather a large healthcare organization that has recently achieved a 100% VDI environment for all employees.

I guess this directly conflicts with the commercial, that stresses that when they say Unlimited, they mean it! They do highlight that the other companys cap bandwidth, but Sprint goes on and on without slowing down or anything. At least the other companies aren't saying one thing and doing the opposite.

As a 2nd grader in 1987, I had a class to learn the Logo programming language. This turtle graphics based language was simple enough to present quickly, and was designed to be engaging for youth. My first class involved a game with a circle randomly placed on the screen. There was a turtle also randomly placed on the screen. I had to guess at the angle I needed to turn my turtle (right 45 degrees) and then guess the distance in pixels. The turtle would then move to the location, and I would score if it landed in the circle. Simple game, but then we could look at the code and understand how it worked. That one class engaged me enough to turn me towards IT as a career later in life. It also inspired me to try an understand how things (like games) work.