My entire tech team is full of people with liberal arts undergrad degrees (Classics, Philosophy, Humanities), and equally non-techy advanced degrees (International Policy, Journalism). You need to find the right team to connect with. Look in non-traditional spots for jobs; interesting non-profits who need generalists, thinktanks who could use your research skills as well as some coding skills, startups who need your psychology chops to help with marketing and your coding chops to build what they manage to sell. That being said, make sure your self-taught programming is top-notch; audit some courses and find some mentors as you go along to help you not only write beautiful code, but understand the architecture.

Overall, you just need one first employer to bite, and everything after that is built in to "or equivalent experience"

Way to drive home the stereotype that the only value for bitcoins is for anarchists and terrorists. Some of us would actually like to see a functional, non-fiat currency that doesn't raise the ire of governments such that they seek to shut it down.

That brings up another interesting alternative - don't try and get rid of pennies by having banks collect then and not provide them out as change, but simply stop producing them.

Regardless, making nickles cheaper that 11 cents per to make seems to be ... well, kinda obvious?

What Brick-and-mortar store can hope to compete with the internet for commodity-level components? It's not even fair to hope they would. I mean, cmon - Best Buy stocks even-further-overpriced Monster Cables as their entry-level cable. I don't fault the Shack for seeking higher rungs on the value chain. And I'm hardly a fan of either the Shack ("You have questions, we have blank stares") or Best Buy ("Best means most expensive!"). But, I do fear for the complete loss of generalist tech stores. A book is a book is a book, but when deciding between tablets or notebook PCs, or the like, actual interaction with the device answers a gazillion questions that don't seem to have answers on websites.

So, let me try to get this straight. Is Zuckerberg complaining about a corporation that facebook is compelled to interact with using facebook's "personal" data in ways that, while protected by his terms of agreement with said corporation, are disliked and overly revealing, and he wishes they would stop or at least have explicitly asked him first?

To that, sir, I say, suck it.

Well, that depends on your diet, now doesn't it?

Oh no, in fact, we embrace irony.

So, I have to admit I'm a hater on Unity; it really is not meeting my needs. However - I'm very excited that Ubuntu is innovating here - Apple is beginning to stagnate, Microsoft, well, let's see 8. Ubuntu is leading some exciting discussion in user interface, and even if they make some mistakes, I'm excited that they're doing something.

I'd also appreciate lower rankings for sites that have invasive pop-over ads (and surveys) interfering with my access to content. These have been better of recent at sneaking through adblock.

I'd also loooove to eliminate more of the craptastic content aggregation sites fro search.

The path this opens, though, is "google reduces rankings for sites that use non-google ad engines." I'm pretty sure google is smart enough not to do that explicitly, but this is certainly a step towards that with a hat-tip towards user happiness.

By your logic, why then do pirates get sued for the full commercial value of each copy of a song they have?

This. Yes, there's some free-speech debate to be had around this, but let's have that debate, not the rest of the thread so far which is ever-closer to fulfilling Godwin's Law at a record speed. This should be treated equally as to someone posting the same text in their front yard, and this is one of the tricky areas in US free speech laws - hate speech.

Only if you care about data integrity...

So, I was very recently in this scenario. I gave up and bought a Canon T3i. I don't think the mirrorless cameras have really matured enough yet, outside of /maybe/ the Sony NEX series. But then you're dealing with Sony. To be fair, I have some brand loyalty to Canon because (a) they have a solid service department and (b) have been decent about the amazing side-loading firmware that the folks over at CHDK and MagicLantern have put together. If you just want DSLR-ish features (and then some) of long exposures, motion detection, timelapse, and HDR auto-bracketing, then look at a CHDK-supported, high-end Canon point-and-shoot.

The huge benefit that MILCs and DSLRs have is an almost 10x larger sensor space (and the lenses required to deal with that). This gives you insanely better shots at a much wider range of light settings, as you need less light to enter to develop a good picture.

MILCs are also much, much smaller than their DSLR cousins. This is good and bad. The lenses (especially telephotos) are still going to be weighty and unbalance a smaller camera, but you could conceivably pop it off and pocket the body, which is handy for travel.

I lost my patience, and just bought a not-insane DSLR. For 830 I got the T3i, a 18-55mm lens and a 75-300mm telephoto. I love it, but I'd love something even more portable more. I actually just came across this blog post the other day, which gets far geekier than I am on the future of MILC-likes: stuckincustoms.com/2012/01/04/dslrs-are-a-dying-breed-3rd-gen-cameras-are-the-future/

(And yes, I've already rooted it.)

To be fair, I always try to work myself out of any IT-related work. If it ca be automated, it is probably boring me to tears, and I can find something more exciting/challenging to do.

To date, I've failed at eliminating my own job, but created a lot of very happy employers and had a fun time doing it.

So, I agree with your premise, that you shouldn't give out professional expertise/work for free. But you already did. You worked off-hours on a project you knew there was no budget for. It will help your team and you directly, and you've already done the work. Talk it over with your supervisor - you saw a problem, and created a tool to fix it in your free time. You normally charge X amount for clients, but you know there was no budget for this project. Still, you'd like to implement it - free of charge to the company. However, you do not want your scope of work to change without a discussion of salary re-appraisal for a new skillset. Before or outside of this salary/job responsibilities discussion, you can support this tool during work hours for 1-2 hours/week without disrupting your core tasks, and can take on further custom development outside of work hours at a discounted fee.

This one is a learning experience and a door to open a raise discussion. Next time, negotiate this beforehand, so your "client" gets a say in the product you develop for them, and you get a paycheck for said product.