The Rules say that the only thing you can do is to ceaselessly lobby your Senator and get your friends, relatives, and that weird guy who asks you for change for a dollar every time you go into Dunkin' Donuts to do the same.

See my comment below, as the damage has been halted by the same person that halted a similar bill last year, a Senator from Oregon. The only way to stop this is the raise money to buy off enough Senators to keep the bill stopped.

The damage has been halted for now. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon put a hold on the bill, meaning that the Senate leadership is on notice that he will filibusterer it if the bill moves to full debate and vote.

Makes a lot of sense to me. You answered essentially the same as I answered below: "The cloud" makes sense when you have no other infrastructure to leverage (or do not want to buy any). With growth, it becomes an interesting question: When do you move away from "the cloud"? I'd say it depends on your business model. If what you are selling is CPU-cycles and you only own the billing data, while you might never move your product out of the cloud, you just might own your billing platform and build your own gateways to the "rented" servers.

That looks more like a business decision to me: paying one hosting provider vs another. I'd also question how much data is owned by your service versus your customers. If this is a "hobby", as in you're not doing anything that you might leverage with the data, then it doesn't matter one way or the other. You simply choose the least expensive hosting operation that gives you the most services. If you do need to leverage the data, I'd at least build a periodic off-siting method to own the data. That way, when you move to another site or the "cloud" evaporates, you still have data that you can turn into cash-flow.

Easy... You use "the cloud" for speed: When you need to turn an idea into a product in a *very* short amount of time and you have no other infrastructure to leverage. A lot of businesses have IT staff and have already sunk costs into the needed infrastructure. The sales pitch is that "the cloud" is better than owning infrastructure. And that's where the real arguments start.

I worked in Clemmer's lab at IU a few years ago as a programmer, and to be honest, what we used was a mix of proprietary, University owned, and open source software. Me? I was the person writing the University-owned software. The real answer is that there isn't time to find open source versions of everything and, frankly, it doesn't exist for the commercial equipment. The project I was working on was building a Mass Spec (IMS^n-MS) and it used a mix of software from various sources. What matters is the reproducibility of the results, and the details of exact code versions are better left footnoted, so that when someone attempts to duplicate the results, they aren't tempted to use the exact same software. This allows gauging to see if someone didn't "cook" the software to get the results expected.

This goes into philosophy of how a business profits from the Internet. There are basically two ways: creating content for people to buy, or telling people how to get to content and selling the re-direction as a service be it to advertisers or any other buyer. Theoretically, someone could charge directly for Search itself.

Google built the most successful business model of telling people how to find stuff. And that is why Microsoft thinks that Search is so important. Microsoft makes money on selling people their content. That business is old-growth and stable. Which, in business, means that it is subject to atrophy and decay. To quote Ray Kroc, the man who understood business as well as anyone (He bought McDonald's from the McDonald brothers and grew it into the behemoth it is today), "When you're green you're growing. When you're not, you're not."

Microsoft has to keep trying to find ways to grow their business. Owning a piece of the search infrastructure, even if it's not being used but is available, is part of their growth strategy. Microsoft doesn't have to dominate. They just have to offer a compelling alternative to Google. Whether they do or not is beyond the scope of this comment.

I know nothing of your budget or what machines you are running, so take what I say as a "I'm running a Microsoft shop" centric answer. Bugtracker.net is a pretty good solution that will allow you, with some fiddling about a bit, to empower your users to submit requests and for you to assign tasks and priorities for little or no cost on top of what you already have invested.

If you aren't a Microsoft-centric shop, any good bug tracking platform will do. Think of them more as issue trackers. Add a wiki, if needed.

Just to add an argument to support and abet:

OSS (I'm not going to call it free because, cost-wise, it ain't) actually creates a Free Market in software. What OSS does is increase by orders of magnitude to a prospective buyer the amount of information available to her about the transaction of buying software. And yes, I'm saying that OSS software is bought. If by the amount of time used to implement it, if nothing else.

Therefore, OSS is even more important to the market as a device the reduces the costs of entry and increases the perfection of available information than it is as an actual good or service. The fact that much of it is of high value as a good or service is simply a bonus.

This argument also, by the way, demonstrates how OSS increases the value of a proprietary platform. The value of a proprietary platform is equivalent to (at minimum) the value of it's OSS equivalent. Therefore (using a cost example) if Microsoft Office costs $679.95 for the Ultimate Edition, that price is, in part, informed by the value of OpenOffice as a competitor.

168 comments in, probably no one is going to read this. Still, I'll say it anyway.

I wouldn't hire someone who had no interest what-so-ever programming in their spare time. That said, I also wouldn't hire someone that does nothing else but program in their spare time. I'm not looking for someone that can solve a general problem (what do I do when I'm not working?) in a specific way. I want a hint that the person I'm talking with during an interview has other interests. I don't want to know what they are. That leads to information I'm not supposed to know during an interview. I just want them to give me an assurance that they are a well-rounded person with other pursuits.

Myself? Of course I program in my spare time. I also collect books, smoke and collect tobacco pipes, play RPGs (the pen and paper kind) with my friends, play computer games, cook... the list of things I do in my spare time is endless. That's what I'm looking for, because someone who doesn't lack for things to do in their spare time most liely comes with several approaches to solving new problems and that's the type of person I'm looking to hire.

Okay... I'll see your "Expand the current program!" and counter with "Will you pay the higher taxes to expand said current program that offers services that are not available to you?"

Note: I'm not saying what I think the solution is. I'm just poking holes in your solution. I'll concede your point that health care is a clusterfuck and that the real solution is to take down the 60+ year built-out infrastructure, replacing it with different efficiencies. The US has the best rescue care in the world. If you need an organ transplant or you have cancer; if you can pay for it; you can get the best possible care in the world. Maybe we need to instead leave that infrastructure alone (you buy insurance for the big stuff) and figure something else out for the rest.

Adamatzky I'm already familiar with, citing his Chemical Computer in a senior paper to finish my CS degree. This is no more crazy than using electrostatic foam to compute.

You bored me. And if that's the face you show to an employer, you bored him, too.

First of all, go ahead and sit for the certifications. If you are at all good at what you do, you'll pass them.

Second, you don't have to lie, but you do have to tell a story; a compelling narrative. I am not interested, as an employer, in whinny stories of how hard you worked, or how you worked for depressed wages and unpaid overtime. In fact, that that does tell me as an employer is that if I need cheap help,you're probably going to be a pushover for the job. What you have to tell me is what you did. What you accomplished.

I was recently unemployed for five months. I learned to get good at telling my story. I went through countless drafts of my c.v. and presentation. I learned to adapt to fit in whatever situation I was in. And I knew my worth. It is possible to succeed, but you have to be diligent and compelling.

And finally, forget about this "dream job" thing. Unless you are in business for yourself and successful. You will never find a "dream job" working for someone else.

Government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation. Deep-throat said it in the 70s. Just follow the money. Milton was right. We've gotten the government we deserve. One ruled by corporations the use acts of Congress to gain competitive advantage.