Your sudden wheat allergy is probably a nocebo effect....

Maybe, but I think an ASCII art is quite a bit more difficult to break, even if directly targeted. There is enough font and size variation that you would have to get an image and then use OCR. That's a lot of extra work.

I recently started getting hundreds of spam signups a day on my site. So I installed a CAPTCHA to prevent that. I setup a standard image CAPTCHA with a plugin for the CMS. More then 80% of the spam sign ups just walked right through it. Then I changed the type of CAPTCHA to an ASCII art CAPTCHA. I haven't had a spam sign up since. The ASCII art CAPTCHA is also much easier to read then weird image CAPTCHAs.

You can use a credit card without a paypal account proper if you donate less then $500. So if you actually want a phone perk, you're going to need to create a paypal account. You can however just use the paypal account on top of your credit card, no need to move money into the paypal account or anything. It's pretty simple.

http://support.indiegogo.com/entries/20501786-How-to-Contribute-via-PayPal-without-a-PayPal-Account

Extreme claims require extreme evidence. All available facts are not in your favor. The Concorde was canceled due to combination of economic and "age" problems. I can not find one citation "against" the Concorde for "ozone worries". Due to the high operational costs of the plane, and high fuel costs, the price of the ticket did not scale linearly with the Mach number. Even if it did, I don't think large numbers of passengers would be willing to pay more for the same flight. Would you pay $3000 dollars instead of $1500 to fly to France and back in 3.5 hours instead of 9 ? That's $270 for each hour saved.... I don't think a large percentage of the population would see that as a positive cost benefit. In reality the Concorde was more like $10,000 dollars instead of $1500 dollars.

How has competition NOT been allowed? There are multiple development efforts happening right now for supersonic transportation planes. It takes a HUGE investment to design and build an SST that can compete for economics ( even at the first class level. ) with newer super fuel efficient planes.

Option (b) is correct for nano-tech. The most promising "industrializable"(scalable) nano-tech I've seen in recent years is Rice University's recent breakthrough on wet-spun carbon fibers. That is a "true" invention. It will likely be in data cables within a few years.

I won't beat on you because I don't know exactly "how" you attempted to get a job in your field, or what your requirements were. Maybe you couldn't move very far or something. Let me continue my advice for others... and maybe, maybe you, if you're looking to start over again.

I will say this. Getting a job is a very _human_ endeavor. I find a lot of younger technology oriented people, especially in technology fields, want to land a job the same way they get everything else. Online. This can work for someone with all the right experience, and just the "right" resume. sure it can. However, if you want to beat that guy with your lesser resume, you walk in the front door. You network with current employees. ( Use online information to find them. ) Build rappor. You call HR, you ask if there are any short term contract type positions available so you can see if the company would be a good fit for you. If they say no, or, we don't do that, you say, "Oh, you should ask your technology managers if they could use a program like that. You get a lot of value for your money, and it almost eliminates bad full time hires."

If you are capable of software development, why the hell are you working a job with manual labor for $10 an hour? There are lots of software development jobs open out there. Go beat the pavement. Walk right in the front door with your resume dressed up. Make it happen. I'm not sure if this article is about "IT" or "Development", the media tends to confuse those things. However, if you are capable programmer, go make a living out of it.

Now, you might have a bit of learning curve to go from "coding" to getting the skills to be a good developer. However, you can find a place that will pay you less to start since you have no real world experience. Learn fast, and move up. It's not going to happen unless you try!

Just as an aside, "Plumber" hourly wages are a little different then an employee's hourly wage. It's like a car mechanic garage's "hourly rate". It's a business rate, out of that comes expenses before anyone gets paid. That said, they make a good living.

Not really. There are just a lot schools teaching a curriculum now that they call "CS", that isn't CS. I graduated in 2002 and my experience with college appears to be similar to yours.

When I'm filtering applicants. I first make sure their degree is from a place that actually teaches CS. Then I move on to experience if it's not an entry level position. An applicant isn't likely to make it past the interview if they don't have an outside interest in technology or programming. Even with the CS degree, I need people who never stop self teaching.

Is that you're programming in Ruby on Rails...

That would be how corporations behave in a perfect world, yes. However, the board of directors are likely other executives of other companies. The CEO is on their boards. They also travel in the same social circles, and are members of the same country club. They are getting the most money possible for their "friend", just like he'll do for them. It has nothing to do with ability anymore.