But not for me when I have to keep fixing the mistakes made by the guy who doesn't understand when he's hit a wall and needs to go home.

IT is one of the few industries where a person can still work his or her way up from the bottom without any formal education in the field. Having a degree is good no matter what it is simply to be able to say that you have a formal education, but not necessary. Your friend has already displayed one of the things that IT hiring managers seek almost above anything else: initiative to learn on his own and the ability to put the knowledge to good use. That alone is going to carry a lot of weight.

Once you get to that level it's all just politics.

I'm sending you a new picture of a spider with eight legs. Please return my picture with seven legs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f2PCWYAZQc

No, but he'll know how to beat the aliens when they arrive. And they surely will now that we have technology like this.

We're going to need him before long.

You just don't get it. They defy the Federal government seatbelt regulation, not themselves. New Hampshire citizens put their faith in the state to take care of the necessary bits (think infrastructure). Yes, they are as close to a true Libertarianism as any state has reached. However, they also recognize that government is there. If it weren't it wouldn't be Libertarianism. It would be Anarchy. Libertarianism is about freedom of individuals, not self-regulation of the government.

You're still off-target. You need to realize that the government is allowed to dictate the rules under which it operates. Or perhaps you'd consider that the ethics bill that the US Senate just passed is out of line because Congress shouldn't be regulating itself.

I think a state government is well within its rights to dictate how best to save and spend its money. If a person works for a state government he or she is agreeing to work within the confines dictated by government policy. Similarly, a corporate IT department dictates what can and cannot be run on its network. Are you suggesting that an employee should be free to make those decisions without regard to what corporate or government policy dictates?

Besides that, the NH legislature isn't telling government offices that they are required to use OSS. It is telling them to consider it as part of the decision-making process in order to best evaluate the options in order to find the most cost-effective choice. Your argument is off-target.

How is it "nanny-state" that the legislature are requiring state offices to consider open source? They aren't requiring it of the citizens.

Somehow, I don't think illegality will stop people from creating the tools or finding ways to disseminate them. Call me crazy since we already know how locked down things are on the Internet and nothing illegal ever happens.

But still apropos.

In Spain, pipa is either a smoking pipe or a sunflower seed (pips). I don't think that has any relevance to the bill, though. Even in a funny way.

I definitely don't like the WSJ method. I've yet to read a full article on their site because I refuse to be lured in with partials. If it's genuinely news, I'll be able to find it elsewhere and likely for nothing more than ads on my screen.