Wasn't able to track down where the ad was from. Wife mentioned it in passing.

Absolutely.

If you've ever posted something (anything) which could be found with a search engine (ie, it was indexed, which it most certainly was), it's probably available as part of a very large dataset which is indexed and searchable, and the company is able to generate

Those reports are sold to other companies, which then combine them with other information (or do so themselves) - like financial information.

Think about it: how many things from 10 years ago can you find just on the public internet (via Google)? Hell, you can track the 'accuracy' of my job history to see when and with what my resume, etc. on my site was updated through archive.org - going back over a decade, and all they do is archive. I'm sure this isn't exceptional. With the screen name of a prolific internet user in hand and a little time in front of a search engine, chances are you can track down a known person's entire online history manually, too - even without going to Facebook or the like.

As for the OT: my wife recently saw an ad for "singles in your area" for some random site. She was kind of shocked to see a picture of me as part of the collage advertising the 'singles'. It was a picture someone (ahem me) had put up on hotornot.com years ago (close to a decade ago, before I'd met her). Anything and everything you ever post on the internet in a datatype'd field? Someone has packaged it, sorted it, studied it, created reports on it, and sold it - guaranteed.

For about $100, you can get a used HD2 and put Debian or Ubuntu on it, if you wanted...

Short of the GSM modem/voice calling functionality, you can get 200%+ of the embedded computer for less than $200 USD. I can get a used/refurb

Hell, I can get a new/refurb HTC Sensation for about $250-300 USD on Ebay (not quite as 'open' yet but twice as spec'd and much more functional), or a (used) HTC HD2 for around $100 - still more device, and markedly more capable in terms of what it can do and what's available for it in terms of free software.

I know comparing a used/refurb device to a new one isn't exactly fair, but c'mon. It's 7x+ more expensive for just the board and it's got nothing to make it appealing over, oh, say, a Pandaboard or Beagleboard, which are both under $200.

That, as well as this, is anecdotal: my wife has gotten several recommendations about plumbers from friends through facebook.

Then you've got sites like HP's, which is absolutely useless to find information (either through their navigation system or search). In contrast, 'general' searches on Google (or Bing, for that matter) usually find what I want immediately.

You say that until you've got to be at the office until 3am waiting for a backup to restore for DR.

I guess this means me. I fit the demographic. I was born in the early 1980s.

There is something 'missing' in the digital remasters of films, though arguably it's of a non-quantifiable aesthetic. Arguably, it's something of nostalgia, and I'd grant someone who argues it that way.

I remember, as a child, watching The Lone Ranger. Not the black and white, but the movie made in the 1980s (or early 90s). It'd come off television and had the start and finish of the ad segmens; my grandfather had recorded it for us, carefully stopping/recording at the appropriate parts - but we still had parts of he "We now return you to USA's Friday Night Movie".

My brother and I also had an VHS 'copy' of the original Batman serials from television in the late 1940s ( I think). The cars were big, there was no color, and the "Batmobile" was no different than any of the other cars. (Much better than the 1950s Batman, IMO.) The same goes for the b&w Superman, which we recorded off of reruns off TV, at some point. The Batman serials, we'd somehowmanaged to record about 20 seconds over the middle - some Micromachines commercial, right in the middle of a fight scene.

Flashing forward, I saw most of my favorite movies first on VHS: Die Hard, The Saint, Braveheart, Terminator, Commando. A favorite VHS had character, of sorts. You could tell it was well watched when the colors had started to fade and there was static or muddled audio. There was no jumping around randomly for favorite scenes. Many of them had been recorded off the TV by one person or another and passed around amongst friends. It wasn't until over a decade later that saw the full, non-edited-for-TV version of Commando (awesome!).

And then there was rainy days, snow days, or really-bad-storm days. You'd sit at home with the generator on (if you had one) and maybe watch movies while someone made food. You'd sort through a dozen different movies to find one that didn't suck, and you'd look for something to like or something to make fun of: it'd end up becoming a favorite for one reason or another.

That said: most of these people need to get a life. :) While I will grant you that the 1980s was the last great decade of America (for some time to come, at least), if you get too wrapped up in 1980s VHS films, you've got something wrong with you. I believe the term is "reality avoidance".

A union with the Indians?

Surely you jest. There is no incentive for them to join in a union with Americans.

If you're in IT and unemployed, it's probably because they're doing the work over there cheaper - or over here doing it, living in a crowded self-selected cultural ghetto to make ends meet. What is there for them to gain by saying "sure, we'll standardize on wage"? They're competing on price now. Unless you're a complete idiot, you're more competent than they are without even the slightest bit of effort (DeVry graduate? you're more awesome than most of them).

Personally, I live in America, part of the Western world where we have working municipal sewage and running water to almost every home. I don't want to bring Indian culture and living standards here; that means I'd like to keep the wages above welfare rates, thanks.

Is it hard, or are you looking for the wrong thing? Finding people based on resumes in information technology is, I've found, hit or miss: sometimes, you've found the perfect candidate but his resume gets discarded out of hand; often, a good resume yields a completely worthless candidate. The failure here is not that there aren't enough of the right kind of technical people, it's that you're looking in the wrong place.

In my experience, the 'best hires' for positions have been people found through word of mouth and human connections. The 'best fits' I've found have been word-of-mouth referrals (though higher ups usually frown on such candidates actually getting picked for fears of cronyism). Of course, I'm sure HR would typically have a problem with this, as it runs around their infallible process, and hiring people you know instead of going through the full process probably breaks the law in a number of states as well, so there's not much you can do about this.

But does that test even matter? I would argue that it may not. Hear me out here. I have interviewed a number of people recently, one of which had a very impressive resume. He was pre-interviewed by a favored 'rockstar' developer who the owner regards highly. (I question the veracity of this individual's actual ability and chalk his esteemed status up to being fluent in Synergy.)

I interviewed this individual once in person and got a feel for him. He grated on me, but that may be due to the fact that he was likely being pigeonholed for my replacement, not as my auxiliary or subordinate. I, admittedly, have multiple reasons I wanted to trip him up on the interview: first, I wanted him to be a useful person, not a lout who can tell a good tale about what he has supposedly done.

He impressed me at the initial interview, as he was able to talk about what he'd done in broad terms. He dug in and mentioned specifics on some topics, but he did have a way of taking a while to say it. He was well spoken. But then I realized he didn't fully answer in some cases, providing vague answers. So I asked for a follow-up interview.

Here were the questions I asked him on the follow-up interview (on the phone). I should note, these questions were for a "senior sysadmin" type role - someone who claimed in-depth LAMP and broad Linux experience, as well as broad experience in implementing different network topographies in highly sensitive environments.

* Using iptables, in which chain would you preferentially use to drop a specific TCP port?
* What is catalina? (re: Tomcat, which he claimed to be a God with)
* Which specific tool or tools would you use to properly back up mysql databases? ('file level copy' was his answer)
* Do you have any cups or samba familiarity? (If so) what have you done? (nothing aside from what his mac did for him)
* When is RAID5 better than RAID6?
* Where is the correct place to install 3rd party, or non-system packages?
* Describe the linux boot process, from POST to "login:"? (not a clue, muttered something about the boot sector and then immediately jumped to "applications start")
* What is the general criteria used by the kernel's OOM killer?
* Using a crossover ethernet cable between two gigE connected servers, what is the real, or practical realizable throughput of rsync and/or transfer over NFS? (didn't even have a clue where to start, blustered for a while about switches, even after I clarified/restated that no switches were involved)
* What is your approach to web infrastructure backup while not breaking the running web applications? (a misdirection, which he answered poorly)
* What is your familiarity with desktop linux? (none - went on for about 5 minutes about how Linux wasn't ready for the desktop and how Macs were best for users)
* What are the primary differences between sendmail and postfix, and why might you prefer one over the other? (got this one correct, which is good for him, because 'mail awesomeness' was half the meat of his resume)
* What is the difference between SSL and TLS? (had no idea, hadn't really 'used' TLS)
* What do the acronyms PKI or PKE mean to you? (nothing)
* You've got two gigE switches connected using two ports from each switch, using LACP. You have a server connected to each switch, on a gigE port, with gigE ethernet cards. What is the maximum throughput you can achieve between these two machines? (Honest to god it took him 2-3 minutes to figure this out. LACP is extraneous, but he should've known what it is, since he's got a shitload of cisco/juniper/routing/switches/vlan/etc. on his resume.)
* How many root DNS servers are there? (He said he'd done 'everything' with BIND; he didn't know)
* Why are there only 13 DNS root servers? (he didn't know this, either)

All in all, he 'correctly' answered 3 of the 16, or liberally he got 5-6 correct. He "failed". He did not demonstrate the knowledge - but at the same time, the guy didn't strike me as an idiot. The question I have is: do I know he didn't actually have the skills to back up his resume? He may have interviewed poorly. It may have been a communication problem that led to us

I later asked the same questions of someone I know is a competent sysadmin (or at least has the knowledge to do so, being a competent person with fairly eidetic memory). He made comment that he had to look up much of the information to effectively answer the questions. Now, the individual I interviewed did not demonstrate the ability to try to figure out/postulate about the answer when he didn't know it, but my friend made a valid observational point: what if the 'tests' posed to interviewees are testing for the wrong thing - or, more accurately, not effectively determining someone's competency for a position? The intent of my questions was to figure out how the interviewed individual thought through questions (I wanted to stump them) more so than to determine if they had a preset of knowledge, but s/he was unable to demonstrate either competently.

I believe there needs to be some levity given to interviewees to prove themselves, particularly for the lower level technical positions where the person may not be intimately familiar with what they'll be working with or when their comfort level with the level of knowledge/experience they have is somewhat in short supply (You can thank a generation's worth of poorly worded technical requirements and job postings for this, at least in part.)

Face it: when job postings say "requires 10 years of experience in a technology that hasn't existed for 5 yet" with fair frequency (even today) and everyone is expected to be an expert if they want a job doing something specific, this can sometimes be hard. In short: employers need to stop expecting employees to be a fucking cog, with a very specific subset of knowledge. We are knowledge workers, not dictionaries. Ask us how we think, and then try to see if it's true. Give us problems, and ask us to solve them. IT workers in general are expected to be productive on day 1, with little to no training or familiarization with the environment. In contrast, nurses (RNs) often have several months of environmental familiarization, and they have similar levels of pay, skill, education, and professionalism as career requirements.

Expectations of what is reasonable need to change. We are humans and are all different, even when we have the same set of acronyms on our resume as the next guy.