my background is mixed: I have 25+ years in software (started with C), I do embedded systems, I design and build hardware (some analog, some digital), I have over 20 years in networking (ip, other protocols, switch/router stuff too). techie to the core, have my own hardware lab at home. yes, I do sysadmin as well; started doing linux stuff back in the 1.1 kernel days.

but I'm in the bay area and they really hate 'old guys' like me. I've been on the east coast (moved from boston about 20 years ago) and not really interested in going back there, but at some point, I may have to give up on the bay area. the agism here is really a big hurdle. things were great up until I was mid 30's, and then all went to hell quickly after that. I'm now in my early 50's and the only companies that even call me are only offering contracts, and usually its a fake ploy when they say its 'temp to perm'. rarely do temps go to perm at my age, from what I've heard.

membership is about $125/mo, fixed price (less if you buy a special, sometimes around holidays).

housing in the bay area is $500k for a broken down POS. not kidding. rent is $2000 for a one bedroom apartment. $2500 for 2 br in many places. insane, huh?

and techshop is probably the most equipped hackerspace in the country. its amazing what they have.

but my point is still this: why are the wages at such a place so low? you can make more changing oil at a gas station!

the bay area is filled with software weenies, totally useless when it comes to anything physical that needs building or fixing or designing. so, its not like there are tons of people who even COULD effectively work there.

the ones there generally are cool, friendly and all - but I do wonder if they have another job or maybe lots of room mates. its not even close to a living wage, though, and that kind of annoys me. wonder how much the exec staff makes (sigh).

there's a local techshop near me (bay area). I have a membership there and its quite a cool hackerspace.

they have openings. guess how much they are willing to pay to be a DC (stupid term, 'dream consultant')? its a staff position where you have some mechanical skills (laser cutters, drills, lathes, CNCs, you name it) and yet you can make more money deliverying pizzas or probably just sitting on unemployment ;(

they are willing to pay less than $15/hour! for someone who has DIY and/or industrial machine skills. if that's not an abuse of the labor market, then what is? even the 'teaching jobs' there pay less than a living wage. I have no idea how the people who 'work' there get by, I really don't.

I'm out of work right now, and I'm not in the a-d catagory.

you forgot others, such as:

E. born and raise here, therefore not abusable.
F. experienced (ie, 'older person'). IT hates us, for some reason.
G. willing to take jobs I'm overqualified for, but automatically passed over.

I highly resent the notion that those of us out of work are 'worthless and lazy'.

I hope you get a taste of this. and you will, in a few years from now (bwahahaha....). see how YOU like it when its YOUR turn.

And when the museums feel this has gotten out of control, they can address it. Complain to the museum so they know it's a growing problem. Otherwise, yeah, deal with it.

We banned tripods at our exhibit a few years ago as they cluttered the aisles, and we offered the photographers the chance to arrive before hours to take their shots. If selfie sticks become a problem, we'll ban them, too.

Too many jerks who froth at the mouth when they read a headline like this instead of reading the summary, or, god-forbid, the article itself. They remember being told something about 1984 being a totalitarian dystopia, and confusing it with their lives.

Yes, we live in a camera state, and there are now even more hidden cameras than Orwell could have imagined would be possible. But no, not every camera is watched 24x7 by the Ministry of Truth. Not every camera's footage is available to the authorities on a whim.

If you're the curator of a museum, and if you think they are causing a problem for your exhibits, put up a sign and ban them. If you aren't, let the professional curators deal with them, and you can learn to not mind other people's business.

I agree completely with everything you said, and on my last vacation we took less than a dozen photos in total. And yet none of how you or I enjoy our trips should ever be applied to anyone else. If someone else wants to spend their vacation running around with a selfie stick, why should you or I care? I certainly won't dread encountering them.

I'm glad you're the final arbiter of what is right and wrong in the field of taking pictures and vacations; that people must only enjoy themselves in a manner of which you approve. You're obviously intent on curing the technological ills that plague our modern world, and for that we should all be grateful. I'd vote for you because you clearly won't allow those pretentious people to be pretentious on your watch.

In other words, "Lighten up, Francis."

Who the hell "dreads" a pole with a camera on it? You are seriously deranged if that's a clinical phobia you suffer from.

When the Indian Ocean search began, the first areas searched were the places judged to be where the plane was most likely to have come down. And those areas were searched with a pinger locator. After 30 days, the searchers moved on to other areas and used different equipment to map the sea floor.

What if the plane actually is in one of the first places they looked, though - but because it wasn't pinging, and they weren't scanning the sea floor, they missed it? Should the searchers return to those areas and look on the sea floor, or have they already?

Your average home user doesn't reinstall anything, and for many reasons.

Even if he or she wanted to, they won't have a viable consumer OS installation disk anymore. They get the "System Recovery Disk" with their new purchase, and it's likely filled with the same Lenovo image that was used to bundle the malware in the first place.

I'm pretty sure that the people who've already been impacted are enough to bring a class action suit; eliminating a few more plaintiffs won't change much.

I would be willing to pay for utorrent, it has a fantastic web interface, and now that I have it setup as a service and use the web interface instead. It also interfaces with the XBMC utorrent plug in. So for that I would buy it for maybe $30 one time purchase, instead it's on a subscription model, which is annoying. There's no one time payment option, and I have too much going on to manage a billion tiny subscriptions each month and review if I'm still getting X value out of them each month. I'm not going down that road.

It has a fantastic web front end and you can run it as a service in windows, I'm not sure how else you would accomplish this in the windows world.