Nope. He's making beer commercials for Coors Light.

Whether he knows it or not.

Don't believe me? Try going three days without your computer. Then try going three days without a toilet.

I was smart enough to use an interactive CRT session to debug everything first

I had a punch card assignment as well (circa 1979 because "in the real world, everybody uses punch cards") but my preferred machine was a TTY. Part of it was because none of the engineering students knew the thing existed. It was in the basement of the dorm and it was mostly a commuter school. But it also meant I could get printouts any time I wanted. The tubes only had line editors anyway, so the teletype machine wasn't a big step backward anyway.

So...you're saying we should charge for EVERYTHING to maintain interest?

Welcome to to Leon Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance theory. In a nutshell, people try to justify their own decisions. If you paid for something you perceive it as having more value than if you got it for free. Otherwise, why would you have paid for it? Likewise, if you do something dull and boring for free you are more deeply invested in it than if you got paid.

Sneaker companies found this out long ago. The hideously expensive sneakers are no better than the cheap ones, but they are perceived as better because you paid more for them.

Yes, but where? We've done a huge amount of hiring in India, Argentina, and Brazil, and have been laying off US employees left and right.

From TFA:

Loughridge said IBM planned "some acceleration" in what he called "work force rebalancing" in 2009. By rebalancing, Loughridge referred to IBM's practice of reassigning workers or hiring workers in other locations, such as overseas, while displacing current employees.

While companies are supposed to look for onshore talent before hiring overseas, many companies -- including IBM -- find it easier to skip that step and go straight to petitioning Congress for more H1B visas. It's not that the workers brought in from overseas have talents that cannot be found in the US, it's just cheaper to ship the talent in from overseas, with predictable results: record profits for IBM, resulting in big bonuses for the execs, more layoffs of the U.S. rank-and-file, followed by more petitions to Congress for still more H1B visas.

What's wrong? Mostly that every week or so someone comes up with another article claiming cold fusion or gas made from dirty sweat socks or some such. The article seemed a bit thin to me so I did some googling and found an Edmunds article claiming the car would be out next year. But that article came out last year. See any cars around yet? Then I cam across this one that says the car won't be available around here until 2011. And then there's a Bloomberg article that claims that, "The government may subsidize hybrid cars to cut costs for consumers." So is the $22k price tag with or without the subsidy?

For comparison purposes, I've been following the saga of the Chevy Volt and I think the BYD offering falls into the too-good-to-be-true category. The best guess seems to be the Volt will cost around $35k to $40k, mostly because of the expensive lithium-ion batteries, and the all-electric range is about 40 miles. But the BYD says they're using the same batteries and selling around $22k with a 62 mile all-electric range. And while the Chinese model is allegedly "here" you and I won't get to see or touch one until at least 2011. Until I see better specs or more detailed plans I can't get excited about this.

Mind you, I think plug-in hybrids are the way to go, but cars like the Volt and Tesla never recover the extra cost of the vehicle in fuel savings. I suspect the answer is to ditch the fancy batteries and stick with cheap lead-acid packs and a limited all-electric range of about 20 miles for a basic two adult and two kid car. It still means that half the forty mile range will be all electric. The last piece of the puzzle will fall into place when parking spots (malls, office complexes, parking structures) offer recharging for a fee. How many people drive to work, then park for eight hours? Until then you're in a chicken-and-egg trade off. The rechargers won't be put in until people are buying plug-ins, but not many will buy plug-ins without the rechargers.

Is there hope for computer enthusiasts who didn't go to college?"

I've been working professionally with computer since 1981, but with no computer degree. I took one course in college and then, several years later, went back for two more courses. At the time I heard the interesting statistic that the majority of computer programmers had undergrad degrees either in English or Psychology. Being a Psych/English double major myself, I assume it's because they found out that real-world jobs in those fields were few and poorly paid compared to the lucrative field of computer programming. Companies were so hungry for computer folk that they were willing to give you a shot if you claimed the necessary skills, whether or not you had the requisite paperwork. Even now, you'll find that later in your career nobody pays much attention to your degree if you have enough experience.

The trouble now is in getting that first job. There are plenty of folk out there with computer degrees and many of those have experience as well. On top of that you have the various "certifications" that are also supposed to imply competence on the part of the bearer. I suppose it's theoretically possible to work your way up under those circumstances, but nobody's going to give you a job just because you know the difference between a GOTO and a GOSUB.

Before you make any moves, you're going to first want to gather together your employment contracts and take them to a lawyer along with a description of what you want to do. Non-compete clauses are one concern, but some are not enforceable since they would prevent a person from earning a living. Even without a non-compete clause, you could be hit with a lawsuit based on the inevitable disclosure doctrine, where a company can argue that their trade secrets would inevitably be compromised by the new employment. Finally, there could be wording in the contract that says that anything developed while you work for them belongs to them. If that's a concern, you need to make sure that any serious work on the new project doesn't start until after you terminate the old. A lawyer can help you deal with these issues in such a way as to keep your new company from being shut down.

Once you know what your options are, you need to make a plan. Who is going to be available? What's your new target market? When will your product be available? When will it be profitable? And how are you going to live in the meantime? You're going to want answers to all those questions before you make any moves you can't take back.

Good luck.

I somehow doubt that Halliburton is trying to get the patent as a way to block others from patent trolling.

Actually, I'm not sure what else it could be used for. A patent on patent trolling can only be used against other patent trolls. If Halliburton wanted to be a patent troll, they wouldn't need a patent to do it. Besides, patent trolls typically don't have any other source of income that can be threatened by their "business", so Halliburton wouldn't really qualify.

Looks like someone's stab at a defensive patent to me.

The neighborhood we lived in had a lot of new construction, hence, a lot of wooden forklift pallets used to deliver the bricks and which the workers discarded. Four pallets (three sides and a roof) made a serviceable kid-sized "fort" and you could make it bigger by adding more. Throw in some scrap lumber, sheet plastic (for the roof) and my dad's big barrel of six-penny nails and you had a kid's dream construction set.