He never claimed to have it all figured out. He was criticizing those who claimed to have it figured out: "If only we could give computers to the disadvantaged for free, then...".

He has a very legitimate criticism. When the government spends "our" money, then there'll be hell to pay, when it's wasted. He's probably not talking about 1 student falling through the cracks of a bureaucracy. He's probably talking about systemic hand outs.

Typically it's to avoid annoying the System Administrator who is already working there with the idea they are hiring a peer or over his head.

-- Terry

Unless you are, IT workers are already exempt from overtime pay; you are exempt IFF:

(a) Paid at least $23,600/year
(b) Paid on a salary basis
(c) Perform exempt job duties

IT workers fall under the "Exempt Job Duties - Professional" umbrella, just like computer programmers:

(a) Employees are performing exempt professional job duties if their work involves the application of advanced, usually specialized, learning or credentials of the type commonly associated with the "traditional learned professions" such as medicine, law, accounting or engineering.
(b) Computer professionals are exempt if they are paid on a salary basis, or hourly at a rate of at least $27.63

See here http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html and here http://www.overtimelawyer.com/areyouexempt.html to further educate yourself as to why you probably do not deserve to get overtime pay if you are an IT person.

-- Terry

Given that Java has only been released for 17 years, you are basically asking James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, or Patrick Naughton to come to work for you for $40K/year.

-- Terry

If companies don't have enough time to figure out the job requirements, then they ought to fail. I would feel tempted to point out to them that 2008 is too new, but they don't deserve it.

What really ended it was all the FUD from the cable modem companies about "Terrorists and Child Pr0n0graphers are going to Steal Your Access and you'll get blamed and Go To Jailz!", which was really about "Don't share service with your neighbor - that would mean some of you wouldn't be paying US!" It was before most of them had adopted the annoying Australian meme about putting usage quotas on service, but they still hadn't totally relaxed from the "one cable/DSL modem, one computer" model that got abandoned when everybody had routers that did NAT and anybody with kids had multiple computers active (typically new one for the parents, old one for the kids, before gaming reversed that order.)

It's also changes in customer router equipment. In my apartment complex, I can typically see 6-10 Wifi signals, and back when we had 802.11b, they were almost all open, with 802.11g half of them were closed, and now that everybody's got 802.11n, they're all closed. (And 802.11n was loud enough that once a couple of people got it, everybody else needed to use it to get a consistent signal :-) I used to keep mine open as a guest account (even after the one time that my neighbor's work laptop got virused and used my wifi to send half a million spams, which my ISP blocked and gave me a phone call about. I closed it for a couple of days until she got her virus fixed.)

I also used my neighbors' access every year or two if my DSL was down, and when I was travelling, I used the free mobile Wifi access provider "Linksys". :-)

Unfortunately, the Wifi security model doesn't give you a way to do encryption without also blocking access, which may make sense in a corporate environment but typically doesn't for home users.

I heard that James Gosling is pretty excited. 3 years from now, he'll finally have enough experience to apply for those entry level Java programming jobs!

But after he asks your name and your quest, then he asks for your favorite colour to pick what chalk to write it with. Is your answer consistent?

Why would a spark be dangerous? The atmosphere, being 100% oxygen, contains nothing combustible.

I'll posit this - either both CO2 and O2 are pollutants because they are excrement of life (either plant based or animal based), or *neither* CO2 or O2 are pollutants because they are the engines of life (either plant based or animal based). Making the case that one is a pollutant, while the other is not, is difficult.

It's not difficult at all, really. The CO2 released by animals and consumed by plants is just a metabolic fact of life. The CO2 released by massive coal-burning power plants and fossil-fueled vehicles is a choice that humanity has made. These are very, very different things and quite easy to categorize.