There is a common phrase in my neck of the woods: "...a level of stupidity that can only be attributed to a college education."

It isn't a knock on the education so much as it is about the sheltered lives far too many college students have led until that point.

The 5th Amendment is yet another example of our founding fathers' attempts to curb tyranny.

I started off on C64s and Apple ][s in middle school, which upgraded to Mac LCs around 8th grade. Started off in BASIC, fiddled with stuff like Hypercard under the Mac.

That summer as I was going into high school my parents got me a Tandy PC1000. Family friends helped me with upgrades, software, etc. I eventually got my hands on a full copy of QuickBASIC, Turbo Pascal, and Turbo C. I wrote my own database app, even wrote my own mouse drivers in assembler, linked them in through C and QB, started expanding my own library of that sort of code.

My first 'paid' gig was for a friend of my father who owned a TV repair business. I wrote a program that monitored a modem to pick up caller ID info and store it in a database; searchable, printed reports, etc. Networked it to pass the caller ID info to PCs in other buildings on his property. My 'payment' was in hardware, software, and 100 packs of 3.5" floppies, which I was more than happy with at the time.

I went to college for CS, but learned more in my job at a research institute on campus than I did in the classes. I actually had a couple professors who, after the first semester with them, just came to me later with "You know this already, don't you? Here's the test schedule, just show up for the exams if you want." I dropped out after a couple years and managed to get a decent job before the first major dot bomb bust.

I did some coding for a year or two after that, but mostly moved up the food chain. Most of my coding these days consists of shell scripts, awk, some PHP, but little 'new development.' Today I effectively operate as a liaison between support teams and development teams since I have the skillset to give a better technical analysis of an issue as well as the coding background to debug issues as well as know what is and is not possible on the dev side.

And the only reason I don't have nearly this many open at work is because I use Chrome, and they still haven't added scrolling tabs; it just keeps shrinking them until they're unusable. I've tried a couple addons for it, but they all sucked. At home I stick to Firefox.

Where's the option for "Tabs have replaced bookmarks for me"? I regularly find myself at 150+ tabs, realize the browser is acting like it's going to crash, so "Bookmark all tabs" to a folder (just in case) and start culling out the ones I haven't used recently.

I'm guessing Onion News Empire is one of them, just started watching the pilot a few minutes ago. A few recognizable actors (not just a bunch of unknowns), funny so far.

Hopefully others work out this well too.

Basically it's a big "fuck you" to the incumbent ISPs and a wake-up call to the public as to how badly we're being screwed by those ISPs. Data caps, incredible markups for marginal speed increases, etc. Google is proving those are all bullshit and still profitable.

I'd gladly sign a petition, and agree it should be mandatory that it be labeled.

However, I personally don't care so much. My only major concern with GMO crops would be pushing terminator genes again and possibly spreading into standard crops.

In other news, it was proposed to put a new tax on airline tickets in order to help sustain the horse & buggy industry.

I did something like this (though more sysadmin stuff than anything), but I worked for a former co-worker who started his own full-time contracting business, mainly web design work. I got paid by the hour for odds and ends, but I was there to relieve his workload and add some fine-point expertise. If something came up support-wise it was on his shoulders to find someone to handle it if I wasn't available. It worked out pretty well for both of us. If I was doing more coding work then it would have been even better as that is where his skills were so he could fully support it himself.

Exactly. Hand someone a Mini-14 and an AR-15 and ask which is more dangerous, and I bet you most anti-gun idiots will pick the AR-15, despite the fact that they are basically the same guns with different furniture.

I'm sure this was a troll, but I'll reply anyway. In general, cops are covered by federal law allowing concealed carry when off duty. There is no need for any active duty cop (and most reserve types) to have a CCW license.

Wish list:

A real keyboard.

Actually, Linksys *used to* produce some decent gear a couple years before the acquisition. In the last 2-4 years prior their quality went completely to crap. I've always wondered what the hell Cisco was thinking basically damaging their reputation by continuing to manufacture the same garbage Linksys had been producing the last couple years.

This is one reason why I got a Nook Color. I mainly wanted an eReader, but people had rooted the NC, provided instructions on how to fully 'open up' its copy of Android to essentially use it as a full tablet, and it perfectly suffices in that role for my uses.

I've known people who have done similar getting the really cheap no-name Android-based eReaders to use as an entry-level or small tablet and have worked just great.

I was one of those who did CS in the mid 90's and dropped out after two years, in my case due to money. I was stuck working on-campus, and even the highest paying job on campus under their work hour restrictions wasn't enough.

I moved back home, got an entry level job, and advanced very quickly. By the time my friends finished their degrees I was making a good salary while they spent years working help desks for minimum wage.

To some extent, I got lucky. I found the right employer at the right time, before the first big 'bubble burst' in the IT world.

Years later after an acquisition and facing eventual layoffs, I spent at least a year looking for a job. I had two places where former co-workers were at that could provide great references and increase my odds. One was an energy company who absolutely would not even look at a resume that didn't have a degree on it. Even their cable monkeys had to have a BS at minimum. Another was a financial institution who at least granted me an interview as a courtesy to my former co-worker but had absolutely no intentions of hiring anyone without a degree.

I tried a major hosting company. It sounded like I was set for the job, though I didn't like much of what I saw--the general staffing there looked like a freshman dorm on laundry day. That didn't go--apparently they didn't want any more senior staffers, just more college kids for minimum wage.

I finally ended up with a software vendor we used who knew my work well, and advanced from there.

I've had people trying to get me to sign up for jobs at newer government data centers that opened up in the area recently. No go there--no job anywhere near my salary level without a degree.

Big Corporate America has too many unqualified screeners in HR.

Small Corporate America is far too concerned about having to pay an employee too much, and are willing to sacrifice what they get for it. Eventually this will come to a head, just like outsourcing to India. When you have to pay ten kids $8 an hour to do what one qualified person making $35 an hour could do you either learn that lesson and thrive, or stick to your ways and die.