how would one go about contributing to such a project?

The exact details depend on the project, but in general:

(1) Visit the project's website.
(2) Download the source code. There should be links on the site for this.
(3) Study the code, start tinkering with it, learn how it works.
(4) Possibly subscribe to the developer's mailing list. Find out what the hot topics are for the project.
(5) Also, study the issue tracker to find out what bugs need fixing.
(6) When you feel comfortable with the workings of the code, start thinking about how you can improve it. Think small to start with. See if you can fix a few bugs.
(7) Submit your fixes using the instructions on the site. This will usually be via a code repository system like SVN.
(8) Hopefully your fixes will be accepted by the project leadership. If not, don't panic -- maybe you missed something? Maybe you didn't stick to their coding style? Whatever, talk it through with them, find out the problem, and try again. (and if you do get accepted first time, don't let it go to your head!)
(9) Congratulations you have now contributed to an OSS project.

You've hit the nail on the head with the question about relevant experience -- it's the first thing people look for when hiring; it's way more important than qualifications.

I see two ways to get in:

(a) Contribute to some OSS projects that are relevant to the sort of coding you want to get into. Bear in mind that it will take you some time to build up enough experience doing this for it to really count for anything.

(b) Look for coding jobs in the industry you were previously in -- ie a cross-over job. For example, if you were previously a sales person for widgets, and you know loads about the various types of widgets and how they work, etc, you might find that a widget manufacturer or sales company might be willing to hire you as a coder based on your expertise in widgets rather than in coding. You'll still need to know how to write code of course, but I'm guessing you know enough already to be able to get through an interview once you've managed to get one.

This whole market thingy seems to work.

You say that, but it took five years of market stagnation after MS cornered the market for anyone else to rise to challenge them.

So yes, the competition is good, and it does seem to have stung MS back into life developing new code, but it's hardly a ringing endorsement of the free market.

It's one thing to block your callerID from being presented to the end user - in that case, the intermediary telcos will still be able to see the callerID; they pass it between themselves, but just don't pass it to the final end user. That's how this system works -- because they're a telco, they get to see the callerID, but unlike other telcos, they've decided to pass the information on regardless.

But what about spoofed callerIDs? They're the ones that I feel would be genuinely useful to unmask. But sadly, this system won't work in these cases. If the callerID is tampered with at source, that tampered value is what gets passed between the telcos, so there's nothing useful that can be unmasked.

Try asking this same question in a more newbie friendly environment, such as www.linuxquestions.org.

The folk on slashdot are generally very clued up, but if this gets onto the main /. site you'll get all sorts of discussion about why Gimp is good afterall, and the actual useful answers to your question will get lost in the fuzz.

I know that there are programs that do exactly what you need because I've seen them, but I don't know them by name, nor well enough to make a recommendation.

Anyway, just a suggestion. I hope you get your question answered, but I do feel that /. is probably the wrong place to ask. :-)

All the best!

I'll give 10:1 odds that Futuremark simply compiled their benchmark with Intel's C++ compiler.

I wrote a detailed explanation back in 2005 about how the Intel C++ compiler generates separate code paths for memory operations to make AMD processors appear significantly slower, and how you can trick the compiled code into believing your AMD processor is an Intel one to see incredibly increased performance. See this article for additional details.

Our company has had to set up some email filtering and archiving. Why?

A receptionist for our company was fired for sending out bulk pornographic email, including video. He has done it for months. He's suing us, because he claims he was fired because he is gay. We only have a few of those emails that he send on backup because our backup only goes so far, will it be enough to not have to pay him big bucks and rehire him?

An accountant was fired for gross incompetance. She fouled up our main systems, needed her password reset with the Feds at $100 a pop several times a month, etc. Finally, she comes in and demands to work 30 hours but still get 40 hours pay. She was fired after a public tantrum. She is suing us, because she is black and claims racial discrimination. We need a LOT of documentation to back up our claims that she wasn't a good employee, because she can just say we don't have enough black people, and that can be considered proof of discrimination by itself.

We are heavily regulated about customer information. If someone emails out another persons personal information outside the company, and it makes the news, we all suffer. We have to monitor for that too.

We have to take preventative measures to block bad language from coming in and going out. We can get sued because an employee called a customer a f*cker in an email, or because someone saw a dirty joke on someone else's screen (sexual harassment).

Laws were written up to protect the "little guy", so now we have to prove to government agencies that we have made accurate hiring and firing decisions. We have to support our claims, and take preventive action, because there are so many ways that we can get screwed by employees I can't even count them.

This week we had to let someone go because they came up short by $750. We had two people dedicated to figuring out what happened for two days. We spent a lot on money and time, and we are looking forward to the inevitable lawsuit. We have email to back it all up, and because of procedures we have in place, the emails are professional and straightforward, instead of causal and possibly derogatory. It took us a while to get here, but yes, this is what you asked for. By increasing our risk through lawsuits and regulatory compliance, we have to manage that risk by monitoring our employees.

Go swear to your friends at home.

It's also a matter of

A) rewards. If you're going to put 10x more work into something, then you'd expect the rewards to be worth it. That doesn't mean only salaries (though that sure helps too), but also stuff like overall job quality, social recognition of your efforts, etc. I'd say that in the west, for various reasons and to various degrees, all of those gradually declined.

We went for example from a culture which put its intellectual elites on pedestals, to a culture where being technically illiterate or even outright stupid, is cool and fashionable. In fact, if you show any intelectual interests or aptitudes, it's kinda mean of you and insensitive to your below-average neighbours/classmates/etc.

In programming alone we went from being those wizards doing high tech stuff, to being outright disconsidered. Nowadays for the average outsider it's not "I don't know how to do the things he does", it's more like "I have a life, I don't have time for that crap" or "yeah, the neighbour's 12 year old can do that kind of stuff." The idea from the 90's that you can just retrain an unemployed pizza-delivery-guy or burger flipper off the street, and he'll be just as good as those snotty CS and engineering graduates anyway, also didn't do much for recognition. It was hammered in everyone's head that you _are_ no better than him, and he could have had your job too if only he could be arsed to take one of those two-week java courses.

Now not all countries are at the same point, and not all went in that direction as fast, but that was the general direction all went slowly.

That's one reason to put in the extra effort, that went down the drain right there. For a lot of people that criterion is now actually a disincentive, since all that extra effort might actually _lower_ their prestige in the community instead of raising it.

B) Rampant age-ism also doesn't help. Back then, sure, I was young, I thought I'd never get old. When 15 years is your entire life so far, and you probably remember only 10, living another 45 years to 60 seems like a bloody eternity. No point worrying about something _that_ far in the future. Now I see perfectly competent programmers pushed aside or into a corner, because some PHB learned the mantra that only the smart young kids are any good.

If I had a kid, I'd tell him to stay well away of that field. Chances are you _will_ live to _at_ _least_ your 40's, even if you chain-smoke and get to twice your idea weight and go alcoholic too. If you want a job where you start being discriminated against as early as the 30's, heck, go into prostitution or porn instead. (And considering some bosses I've occasionally seen, prostitution might even be the more dignified job.)

C) It's also a matter of, well, excitement.

In all science or engineering domains, there was a time where it looked like there's so much interesting stuff to do or discover, and only the sky is the limit. (Or in aerospace not even the sky.)

In programming, for example, when I looked at some primitive games or programs on the old ZX-81 or later ZX-Spectrum, I thought, "I can do better." Often I actually could. Heck, I could even paint my own sprites by hand, although I'm no graphics artist, and they still looked good enough at that resolution.

Nowadays, if I look at a modern game, well, there's just not the same sensation. Duly noted, nowadays about half can be modded, so you can still tempt someone to programming that way. But for a while even that wasn't the case.

Ok, so that's only games, but the same applies to any other programming domain. At some point you could have been the guy who created the next big language, wrote the OS for some underpowered mini, or did the next great maths thing with a computer, or designed the next computer itself, or whatever. Nowadays you'll be a cog in a 20-people team writing the front-end to some database app.

Or if we move away from programming, as I was saying, the same applies to any other engineering domain. At one point we had the people designing car engines be the gods of engineering, and making breakthroughs left and right, while nowadays it's a team of peons applying formulas and tweaking the injection pressures. Chances are that the designer making it visually appealing, or the marketer coming up with the ad campaign for that car, actually make a bigger difference to that car than any of the guys who worked on the engine.

It all just doesn't have the same ring to it, ya know. "If you learn and work hard, you too could be a faceless, unimportant, expendable, replaceable worker at a glorified assembly line" isn't quite as motivational as "You too could make the next big thing."

I suppose it's inevitable, and I certainly don't propose to remain frozen in the past. But then let's not wonder if people aren't as motivated to get a degree in it any more.