Oh the irony here... um... why does Win8 want to have you login to the "Microsoft Cloud" to authenticate you?

  BING-Doh! You have just been monetized.

Becoming a "consultant" in "friend's computer issues" probably won't won't work either.

I'm 59 and now on extended under employment... I've spent the last year trying to build a personal computer consultancy... after 16 years as a network admin [Novell, Windows + Some Mac OSX and Linux]. What did I get for a years effort? About $2000 and a lot of folks treating me worse than if I worked for the Geek Squad... You cannot pay the bills that way... especially when as most of you know most IT consultants need to "Blow a lot of smoke" and make a lot of noise and lie not a little to be successful... that isn't to say that all IT consultants in a consultancy sales and project management department aren't compulsive liars... but it helps... a lot.

THe OP should Augment their skills and get into process automation [automation controllers for machinerinstallation y] / and or process automation programming where their experience as an electrician is a great help

Good Luck!

I followed the link to the article... then the link to the PDF follow the link to their "Vulnerablity Detector"... Start to install... Read the Legalese... The terms are suspicious... Click OK tpo continue... The next screen asks for personal information. Red Lights and Alarms go off. Anytime a "security vendor" lists contract terms like those and then wants my name and address when I did not want or ask to contract a service. I killed the installer.

Level7 is not preventing a problem --- it is the problem. If you installed their client you have just been pwned...

So what you are saying is that you approve of the idea that government regulation is interfering with corporate profits and you would like the wireless carriers to be able charge you multiple times for providing the same service based upon that carrier purchasing the right to use a publicly owned resource-- the wireless spectrum. Endorsing the idea that a corporation should be allowed to do whatever it wants is in effect saying you want a totalitarian corporate state...

Then I take it that you would approve and be willing to use the electric power grid under the following rules:

All electric power companies / utilities charging you extra for each item you connect to their power grid. One fee for your TV, another for your Refrigerator, one for your laptop, one for each wall wart and of course this would all be in addition to your monthly kilo-watt hours usage. and fuel consumption surcharges. and lets not forget about their putting a maximum cap on how many kW-H you can use [unless you pay an additional fee]. not to mention additional fees and charges if you use someone's power to charge or power your devices. Would you like to pay for your power that way?

Communications carriers like Verizon are "public utilities" and should legally be treated as such. The only reason they are not is that they buy the appropriate legislation or legislators. American phone companies are ripping American consumers off... *legally* because we don't head their thievery off in Congress and in State Legislatures.

In some ways it was better to have Ma Bell...

You charge $149.95 for your hardware don't you? Since you don't give your hardware away for free, then tell me why any content creator should be effectively forced give away their music or poetry or prose or photographs for free for you to use in your non-free software/hardware bundle? Since when did a CC license become a "Public Domain" license in your mind?

In open source there is a giving of equal value. One person gives this and another gives that and soon there is a whole ecosystem-- But all things being equal in an open source commons, why should you get "free content" without giving free hardware to content contributors? To be sure you'll say "oh but the designs are are free, the software is free..." then why isn't the hardware free to a content creator? The point is that you are using the moniker "open source" to get something for free that you yourself do not want to be forced to pay for and are unhappy that you can't get it for free.

When you want to give me, as a content creator, something of equal value [the hardware] I'll be happy to share in your commons but to force me or any other content creator to share their work without receiving equal value on your forced terms is nothing more than theft with a BSD license applied.

There is a difference between free culture and open source culture in this instance. I as a content creator prefer not to make my "free" culture into your "for profit public domain work" where you have put no effort into the creation of the work but bundle it into your work and charge anyone and everyone for a bundle that includes my work but excludes my possessing a copy because you charge money for owning it.

My biggest fear is not that my work will be made better... no my fear is that a monopolist oligarchy will make my work part of their "pay me" culture-- locking it away from the cultural commons. NC / ND maintains my control over how I want my work used. Just as the GPL and BSD and other "open source" licenses control the ways in which works published with those licenses control how a work is used. More options for a content creator is better not less.

free culture does not necessarily mean free profit at the expense of the exchange of "equal value" even for an alleged "open source project"

I tried to post the following comment on their blog but it didn't seem to want to take it---

I agree that culture should be free but I disagree that the NC and ND should be disallowed. Why?

As a singer / songwriter of non-mainstream works I have no problem releasing those works with a CC license as long as it is not released commercially. Why not? Explain why I as a content creator should allow corporate entities to reap a profit from my creativity with a "free license" when I have been excluded from the market by them? Why should I support monopolists that care only for profits and not for culture or cultural heritage?

The entertainment companies are not the friends of human culture except as far as it provides a profit center -- therefore the non-commercial license is an option for me. I favor shared culture but not the trend toward the theft of human culture by "corporate entities" who see only profits and exclusive property not art. Also why should I as an artist want to support those that punish listeners who do not "pay the medicorpse" for work the mediacorpse never created?

You are mistaken that NC is counter-intuitive. It is a perfect means for a content creator to thumb their noses at commercial entities. Why shouldn't I be allowed to say sorry Big 5 Record Companies but you cannot make a profit from my work? When the IP monsters roll back the copyright laws they paid for to reasonable limits [Life + 75 years is not reasonable - 50 total years is].

A non-commercial license allows the recording and performance but without corporate entities using my work to make a profit. With an NC license the works could be free for cultural purposes -- call it protected public domain...

The same kind of argument can be applied to "No Derivatives". An example: What if the content creator creates "anti-holocaust" art and releases it but their is no license option for "no derivatives" and then someone with an opposing view takes the work and turns it into a "pro-holocaust" propaganda?

Creative Commons should be about giving the content creator a full set of options. NC and ND give content creators options. Removing ND and NC would remove options which may be important to some artists that are willing to release their work to the commons. To create a commons with fewer options will make the commons smaller and possibly drive away some which might make important contributions. The bigger the commons the better the commons.

And I thank you and all who contributed to making this happen. The only thing missing to make it perfect is J.S. Bach's Little Fugue in G Minor.

  Too bad we can't do the same for the rest of our culture - arts, science, literature... and while we are at it reset the IP laws to reasonable limits.... but that isn't likely to happen is it? We have allowed our culture to be sold into the hands of evil masters.

No. Your question has no rational purpose other than to attempt to create a corner in a circular room
As a NAS a tape drive has three flaws--
Cost.
Reliability
Software.
Tape Drives are designed as peripherals that were either reading or writing the tape media. Read/Write is not an option--- ever heard of Seek Time?

Actually I was responding to the absurd statement above it...

as for Paul Ryan... he's playing political games for political purposes... which is clear by the statements quoted. He does not say what he means and obviously does not mean what he says... I won't call him a liar because every politician believes what he says when he says it... regardless if it is counter factual.

Mr. Ryan chose to replace Ayn Rand with Aquinas... so here are a few quotes from Mr. Ryan's new favorite thinker:

on women --
"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power."
[This explains the Republican war on women's rights]

on liberty --
"By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments. "
[Because some are more equal that means they with the largest endowments pays less taxes and has more political clout]

on need --
"Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need."
[This last quote of course negates the Republican Party's philosophy and platform so Ryan will probably just pretend that Aquinas didn't say it.]

Michelle Bachmann is that you?
"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009

or is it Sarah Palin?

  "But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." --Sarah Palin, after being asked how she would handle the current hostilities between the two Koreas, interview on Glenn Beck's radio show, Nov. 24, 2010

or Paul Ryan?

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

but in April 2012 he said

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

Politicians... gotta love 'em...

This seems to be the political equivalent of Microsoft's forthcoming release of Windows Vista 2.0... Pretty, but dysfunctional... sleek but pointless, rich but morally and ethically bankrupt.

Another obligatory bit of irrelevance:

Terry Bisson's story on film...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaFZTAOb7IE

1) State alleged facts. GOTO 2
2) Play Evil Laugh GOTO 3
3) Run Flying Police Box Video GOTO 4
4) Queue Dr. Who theme....

Hate the rapid release cycle of Firefox... but I like having No Script... which Chrome does not have...

  in addition I do not trust Google overly much especially since they seem to want to strip away anonymity. While I am certain Google can figure out who I am, I prefer the ability to walk down a digital street without being assailed by them or their government minions all of the time. Firefox does not have that problem in that it is the product of a software developer and not gateway to the revenue stream of a commercial tyrant pretending to be the friendly giant.

  If Google does not want to be evil then it would not love its revenue stream so much and let their browser development team become a true open source project... that is not likely...