was a rough year. Been a couple of years since I last worked and I lost my home and a lot of other stuff.
I will say all the charity support I've received this last year was from friends and family - but last time I needed help I got some from Salvation Army.

I've used this on various servers. A couple had high rates of forged email before and it was reduced after. Mind I also put a lot of other email security in place so it could have been that too. We had hard requirements for validity internally and soft for external - which helped a lot more in tracing down some internal computers that had been compromised.

A lot of people (including me) hasn't worked since the beginning of the crash. For those of us who want to work in the commons - be it open source or open documents such as this - there are insufficient personal resources to handle these in addition to trying to find work and ensure food and shelter.

At this point, barring some strange legal international gambit on information control (ACTA? *heh* *ducking*) the commons will survive and some will be heavily involved regardless.

Me - I'll be continuing to try to find a future and the commons can wait, as it won't put food on my table and - that problem takes my excesses of time.

The computer is your friend. Why are you not smiling, citizen?
All citizens must be happy
The computer is your friend

- Paranoia ;)

A lot of this still comes up in video coding and working with complex rendering environments. ... even cards. *cough* (although more in a "this object has to be X size sense rather than 80-column limits) ... but then I've only been coding since the 80s so what do I know ;)

OpenFire is the tool we used at the last shop I worked at - for exactly this. (it's a java-based server and will run on many server types including but hardly restricted to most Linux distros and Windows) They've got some great commercial tools as well.

for something requiring more technical workings of the software - jabber2 and ejabberd both are superior - but take more configuration.

For clients - there's the Spark client also from IGN software - which works well enough. otherwise a wide variety of opensource clients support Jabber/XMPP. You can firewall out the ports externally to lock people into being able to only sign into the local net as well, easily enough.

note: I currently do not work for anyone so I do not speak for any agency.

I've lots of experience working with hardware with borderline drivers or borderline conditions that crash a lot.
Fault tolerance is still not 100%.

gnome-session doesn't save or restore sessions entirely yet (but it's improved)
sessions do not keep track of state.... but most recover nicely. (gnome-terminal does not and used to)

KDE saves and restores sessions well, but is not particularly fault tolerant either - and doesn't recover nicely.

both are more fault tolerant than windows or MacOSX though. (although both architectures provide easier APIs for providing fault tolerance *heh*)
I think I'm going to continue to develop with and around gnome. Of the alternatives, it's the one that's adapting best to industrial architecture - as well as making large-scale developments easier.

however I run cast-off, old and frequently not entirely functional equipment as I haven't been reasonably employed in quite some time. It isn't that easy for someone who'd prefer to work open source to find an income.
it also means I'm going to prefer the environment that crashes less and uses less resources.
At this point, that's gnome. (qt is fairly low load but kde developers seem overly fond of flashy stuff and excessive monitor resolutions)

With higher online education and easier access to breaking tools - and a certain amount of social support for it (popular) - I think it's the folks who have too much time on their hands doing it. Now my experiences were working with ISPs in a small town with high income rates - and nothing for anyone to do - so everyone had computers and did online stuff. Hacking attempts were higher there than I've even seen working for a stock-exchange feed company (which got hit at the same level, scale and pressure as an international bank).

I think it's firmly in the hands of a populace with too much time and not enough to do - a populace who's gotten tired of TV and wants to do something with a "concrete" result but without too much in the way of repercussions (as they understand it). A little feeling of empowerment and a society that suggests there's nothing wrong with it.

The basic tools are widely available and most people (especially younger) have access and sufficient education to use them. I don't see any reason to blame high-tech workers for something that does not need high-tech worker education.
(what real e-crime I saw on an internal level were from people who worked sales, management and related - not tech. I've seen this in a few companies btw so no one read any specific organization out of it)

I personally consider it comparable to breaking and entering - but then it's harder to identify who's doing it so it's hard to have any consequences.

I'm free and hungry now.... *frustrated sigh*

to be entirely honest - license violations of windows and the like is one of the reasons they still rule the roost.
(my old company was ... mostly... complient as of when I left. Almost entirely actually - and possibly entirely. Very expensive)

goal for this : an immersive technology that doesn't overtly stand out (like the transparent glasses in the show)

I would suspect there's a great deal of possibility in some of the parts of that show interface coming about, but I wouldn't be suprised if it takes longer. We "have" the technology (or close) - but implementing it on a large and cheap level is still a ways off.

Speaking as someone who would like to implement this stuff and frequently throws up hands trying to guess...

I think that your last paragraph is close. I think a new type/category of games will come out of left field - possibly with new technology but just as possibly with new interpretations of old technology - and become supreme. I see the first hints of it with the Wii successes and with the oddly personal games for the Nintendo DS and similar hand held devices.

I've been told I'm like that (a little). I like being sociable, I think documentation is necessary - and helpful to people outside of developers.... but I have PTSD and occasionally have troubles because of it. (made far worse at my last job because russian ex-military "programmer" threatened my life at work)
it's been a while since I've worked. I miss it. I'm apparently really bloody good at what I do - but apparently I undervalue myself.
(yes, some people still do that)

I just need some quite ethically nice (relatively) job again. (I'm not that picky - but I can't work with spammers)