Marissa Meyer's tumblr purchase strategy isn't nuts, just the price ($1.1 billion?!?!)

Meyer wants to improve Yahoo's current products, and move Yahoo to a focused social media/portal platform. She's counting on Yahoo grabbing a piece of the mobile social media pie, which no big player has right now. (Google would be closest.) This is what will fuel Yahoo's "comeback" into relevance. The problem is that Yahoo has zero product presence in mobile. She's buying tumblr as an infrastructure purchase.

The next issue is pretty cool. Turns out, Facebook will probably not grow anymore. The tweens don't like Facebook. Kids don't like to treat their social media as maintenance work. And Facebook's zeal to grab eyeballs means parents have moved to Facebook, which makes it uncool. Kids want to maintain communication with their peers, so they're gravitating towards low maintenance social media, like twitter, tumblr, and instagram (which Facebook is borging to death). So Meyer buys tumblr to get more presence in social media, and deny another avenue Facebook can acquire to fix their mobile/tween growth. The problem is there's no way tumblr is worth $1.1 billion, unless Meyer is grabbing brains as well, and sees some sort of general social media on mobile framework she can build Yahoo on top of tumblr.

Apple, back in 1998-1999, was on the brink of bankruptcy. Even the early years of Jobs return, Apple was putting out colorful plastic, underpowered computers. It wasn't until the introduction of the Ipod, and Apple's redirection into the consumer device market, did Apple dig itself out of its 1990's stupor.

Did reality prove you wrong? Hasn't the Red Hat stock grown in multiples of its 1990's value? Did she sell it in the early 2000's?

A service pack is a form of configuration management. Think of every binary in the Windows operating system as a program with a version. Microsoft wants to encourage developers to support the latest version of their patched OS. That is, of course, feasibly impossible, especially when some developers are confronted with major behavioral change in one OS program update that their application is dependent upon. So having a "blessed" minimal collection of binary versions makes Microsoft only responsible for those versions. It then becomes incumbent for the developers to make sure their application works to SP1 versions of all those OS programs, and the developers cease to be responsible for making their app work with the original OS binary/daemon that was released with the Windows 7 rollout. (And yes, this is a descriptive simplification of the issue.)

There is more going on with a service pack than just throwing together the latest version of each OS binary. Yes, I wish Microsoft would put out an SP2 already, even if they want to commit corporate suicide by abandoning Windows 7 to get customers to move to Windows 8.

Of course, no one is going to notice, since everyone will be using cloud computing accounts.

Have you taken a good look at how FIOS arranges its channels blocks? Fiber has so much bandwidth, they're broadcasting the same channel in SD, HD, and 1080i, simultaneously. (FIOS may charge extra to access the high end.) I seriously doubt the production company is compressing their signal; there's no advantage for them to do so. I suspect you're using a low-bandwidth channel to tape via TiVo. (In fact, I think that AMC only recently got a 1080i channel, here in the Northeast.)

Your question is vague and dependent on many circumstantial details. Generally, I don't see it possible to gain contract work without experience.

But the OP says he has years of VB/.NET coding experience. Then it boils down to what region of the country, what industries the programming work came from, what is his competence in what he is being asked to do, and how good are his professional networking skills.

You generally do not land "entry level" contract work from job websites from headhunters and HR departments. They will often ask for 5 years of experience in X, when the language didn't exist 5 years ago. (That's because they don't know how to properly do their job.)

But when trying to shove a foot in the door, you will get wind of a possible short-term work from old bosses, former coworkers, and headhunters (not through classifieds). The people who hire will be the (senior) project managers who only give a rats ass about getting a task completed. If you can sell *them*, and placate their HR, that's how you get contract work. But its not enough to make a living on without a previous programming jobs, and you can't be demanding the "going rate" until you develop a reputation as someone who delivers.

The OP said he was disinclined to go into project management. And MBAs now are a dime a dozen. Its certainly not worth spending a crap load of money to get a piece of paper that no one will hire.

As much as I hate to be dogmatically negative, I'd say he's too old to be retrained for coding jobs.
1) Look very carefully at what he said: he specialized in VB.NET. He never bothered to learn C#, which is a centerpiece language for .NET. If he had bothered to learn something outside his vocational concentration, he'd never be posting his question.
2) The only expense to him at this point should be a few books and his time. One shouldn't need to go back to college in to learn how to use C#; particularly if you were adept with computing concepts, algorithms, and development methodologies. If he thinks he needs to obtain paid certification to be "hireable" as a programmer, then he's not really cut out to be a programmer. If he feels the need to ask opinions over whether to make an effort to stay in the industry, then he's as good as done. A professional in his position would be learning C#, latest .NET techniques/additions, and scrounging around for C# contract work to put on his resume. The career life of a 40+ year old coder is not bright at this point, but he shouldn't have a problem finding low paying work, even when competing with 22 year olds and overseas coding shops.
3) Frankly, if he was competent at math, he wouldn't even need to retrain on C#. Retrain on F#, and get a job coding for quants, labs, and large organizations.
4) The only thing I can see him doing that is still computer related, and not programming, would be to recertify as a network administrator. That environment is unlikely to change radically, and there will always be networks needing to upgrade. But you'd have to ask network techs if that is worth bothering at this point.
5) He'd be better off (if living in an non-union state) to retrain as a plumber or electrician. I would imagine after a decade, he'd make more money doing that, than as a programmer.

Everything in Windoze 7 OS is built to the .NET API, and probably most of Vista. OS components were never meant to run exclusively off the CLR VM of .NET. All the huge legacy applications MS makes money on were never going to refactored to operate off of CLR. You don't have to run off of CLR to be .NET compatible, or run exclusively with .NET APIs. .NET isn't great for OS code; .NET is great for ENTERPRISE APPLICATION development. A large corporation doesn't have to be limited to one language while running off the same APIs, and the previous codebase is still binary compatible.

What has Pelosi done that is "bat-shit crazy"? (Please back up with news links.)
Is anything a politician does/says that you disagree with "bat-shit crazy"?
Could it be possible that Pelosi acts rationally, and you're the one with the "bat-shit crazy" notions about Pelosi?

Common sense; mosquitoes need weeks to gestate. The RV will have driven off in a few days.

Its not a matter that its "inhumane" to use ar-15 bullets on a deer. In many states, its *illegal* to use an ar-15 to hunt deer. The rationale for the law is that .223 bullets shot out of an ar-15 will not "drop" a deer dead. The bullet will fly through the deer, and the deer will run away and eventually bleed to death.

A FMJ .223 bullet shot out of an ar-15 is *not* "low power". It has enough energy to fly through a (sheet rock) wall, and through a car door. (Police and soldiers are taught to "take cover" behind the engine block of a car, not merely behind a car door.)

A military issue firearm is *not* (significantly) *deadlier* than a civilian version. The military issue "assault" rifles are capable of firing more than one bullet per trigger pull. Theoretically, it makes it more deadly than a civilian issue rifle, but NO (new) automatic rifles are allowed to be sold to civilians. The Aurora nutjob did not shoot up the theatre with a "military issue" assault rifle.

The only thing that currently makes a civilian copy of an "assault rifle" deadlier than a hunting rifle is that they can carry a 30-100 bullet magazine. I personally would not object to a law that banned selling firearm magazines with more than 10 bullets. Only police and gang bangers "need" to avoid reloading after shooting more than 10 bullets. I have no doubt that the body count would have been lower if Holmes didn't have a 100 bullet drum, and had to reload after every 10 shots.

1) The PPC code never gets inserted into other machine's architectures. So in that sense, it can't possibly "bloat" the kernel. Now there could be design issues with PPC that end up being carried into future Linux kernels, but those are much harder to root out without breaking something.
2) How else can Linux keep its reputation for being able to operate obsolete stuff, long after the commercial vendor has abandoned it?
3) Anything that's in the kernel (like PPC support), has an "active" maintainer for it. As long as there's an active maintainer, there is no reason to remove anything which was built into the kernel. When there's no more active maintainer, then the feature is deprecated. Eventually, a Cardinal in the LKML group gets motivated to eradicate obsolete stuff. Then it gets cut out of the kernel.

In which "era" do you base your impression?

The real reason HURD has moved so slowly (besides managerial incompetence) is that HURD has ceased to be a product with a deadline. HURD is now an operating system research project, with the goal of tinkering with it long enough to publish a paper on their findings or dilettante OS topic.

HURD was originally designed with the presumption that microkernel architecture would be more desirable (operate more efficiently) than a monolithic kernel (that has been the basis for almost every commercial OS since UNIX). You can't really make a breathtaking, next generation OS if the basis that it operates upon either works like crap, or requires different paradigms to communicate from kernel to OS tasks. The lost decade of the 2000's has been spent finding a "suitable" microkernel replacement to MACH. (Which is decidedly unsuitable, since it was designed in the 1980's, and is better off replaced, than kludged.) You can compound the failure with the fact that it has to conform to GNU's operating charter (translation: there might have been a suitable commercially developed microkernel, but if it didn't license it GNU v2.0 (now v3.0), it was unacceptable. That's okay; I'm only speaking hypothetically about the existence of a suitable microkernel for HURD.)

The most striking irony is that HURD may be the empirical demonstration that microkernel architecture is a research dead end, and there aren't any that can even match monolithic kernel designs. The other irony is that hypervisors, which to me seem to be a form of microkernel, have long outdistanced traditional microkernel efforts, although I couldn't tell you why they would still be unsuitable for HURD (besides the license).

Nevertheless, I was pretty shocked that the "core" developers are still actually documenting their progress. They're actually pasting in snippets of their IRC conversations into the wiki documentation (from days ago!).

So, yeah, there's a reason why the "core" people involved are telling volunteers to fuck off. If you can't speak Microkernel Chinese, they don't even want you generating background noise. I'd say the definition of clueless newbies would be someone from 15+ years ago trying to participate in HURD today.

The industry term is "features" phone. It was a gross disservice to omit them as a choice; much more so than omitting windows phones.

I can still play my mp3s, watch (some) videos, read pdfs (on a tiny 2" screen), store & transfer large data files, write notes, set alarms, take pictures, and use (stereo) bluetooth devices, just like a "smart" phone.

And as much as I would like having an android phone, I prefer spending a mere $7/month for phone service.

After looking at the article, the number is 17,352. The original poster botched the cut-and-paste.