Here's the thing. Part of the problem is that they're not really beating Chromebook on anything, just matching the price. I still am going to need to load an anti-virus program, still going to have to sit through a long startup, and still have to sit through Update Tuesday. Yeah, I know Chromebook isn't perfect, but for most of what I do, it's really good enough and with my Macbook covering the 10% of things I can't do with my Chromebook, I'm really not seeing the need for Windows at all. Office? Please. I've been using OpenOffice and/or Google Docs for the past 4 years and no one has even noticed a difference so long as I save to .doc format.

No, I just stop visiting websites where trolls dominate the conversation (CNN, I'm looking at you).

Get a Moto G if you want a cheap-ass phone. Much better.

This is yet another stupid security theater thing, yes, but the headline is overwrought. First up, this is only for flights to/from very specific places and secondly, it's really not hard to figure out a way to not be caught up by this one. Find an outlet and plug it in for a while....or carry one of those spare charger thingees.

IBMPC / IBM Forums no longer exists in its old VM form. They've now been moved to the w3 version of connections. The internal IBM connections community gets quite a lot of content, contrary to what this article says. It's pretty much the standard way to set up any kind of shared content team room now.

....which, btw, doesn't just happen in startups. I'm working in a company that's been in the tech industry since there was a tech industry and we still do the "OMG! Trade show coming up, better be able to code quickly!" thing all the time, complete with other, competing deadlines. The only difference is the ending. In the established company, you get laid off with maybe a severance.

I think it makes sense if you consider that Microsoft and Google are starting to make peace with each other. Microsoft recently officially gave their blessing to using office.com on Chrome and ChromeOS. So, imagine now that maybe you'll be able to save and edit actual word docs in Drive using Office and that perhaps Microsoft will also be opening its own Skydrive (or whatever they're calling it now) up to other document types? I admit it's a stretch, but given the new focus on the cloud from Microsoft, it could happen. This also makes more sense from the "merging Android and Chrome" point of view as well as mobile tends to favor smaller, single purpose apps.

Given that I just did that, I'm not sure where you're getting your information from. We live in New York, just bought a MotoX off contract, popped a T-mo SIM in it and are good to go.

If you're already talking about unionizing to "fix" the problem of finding and keeping work for unemployed programmers, you've already lost.

I always thought a better, and in some cases, more real life test for a programmer would be to hand them a chunk of someone else's code, something real and in house but obviously not something that is proprietary. Ask them to recommend ways to improve it if possible, or explain why it is good, sound code if not. Good programmers will recognize good code (even in languages they haven't worked in) and recommend fixes where they see problems. Someone you want to hire will be honest about whether or not they've worked in the language and will almost immediately spot things like potential null pointer exceptions, potential leaks of connections, unhandled exception possibilities, etc. or even just poorly structured code.

No. You don't have to be a manager, but you do have to do more than sit in your office and code your little chunk of the universe because any kid out of college can do that. Heck, an awful lot of people out of high school can do that and don't necessarily require even a living wage. Older programmers should be mentoring and leading. You don't have to have "manager" in your title to do that. The best programmers are the ones who can lead teams of more than 8 programmers, orchestrating the whole product life cycle. Generally, they contribute code too, but they also worry about repeatable testing, providing a release plan, code hygiene and standards, integration and customization points, and testing. I've been on both sides of the fence, hiring and looking for work as a programmer. This has always been the reality. Your skill set should be commensurate with the years of experience you've had, which means that you should show a certain professional maturity. If you haven't advanced your skills beyond code monkey in 30 years, you've got a problem.

If you don't like office politics and nonsense then you need to get the heck out of an office that has any more than 2 people. Work for yourself and be your own boss. But then you have to make peace with the fact that you're not likely to make as much money as the guys/ladies who do deal with office politics.

You know what? I don't ignore all of headhunter notes I get. The ones that sound a little interesting, I send a little note thanking them for their interest, tell them I'm currently employed but if that changes I definitely will keep them in mind. Usually, I throw in some small talk asking how the market is for things that are more my current "hobby" than my job (I've been dabbling in a lot of mobile, noSQL and cloud programming) just to get an idea for what my Plan B, C, and D will be should I get laid off or finally decide to retire from my "real job". More than a few recruiters have engaged in conversation this way. Those I keep in my Contacts list for a later date.

Agree on your points except that Google Docs also works offline.

Actually my company regularly asks its employees to do this. I guess that did sound funny though.