F*ck you broadband stimulus.

That was such a rigged process we went through. We even had the governor sign our petition that was submitted to the fed (promising matching funds and loans) to extend broadband to TRULY rural and unserved (not underserved, UNSERVED) areas and lost out to the big boys who went and did stupid stuff like this.

$22k would buy us an entire base-station that will serve 100+ users.

Grrrr..

To do this we need to stop the 24/7 news info-tainment cycle, totally agreed. But I don't agree that asking people to vaguely comprehend the scientific method is a case of 'everyone should be at the top'. People can drive cars and do any other number of complex things with minimal education. They can do this.

Increasingly people have been taught to trust only certainty. Science is anything but a certain process and people take that uncertainty as false or, worse, a wasted investment.

Until people are more scientifically literate with the process and the value of failure scientists will be driven towards only success and, ultimately, the positivity bias.

You thought kickstarter was bad? You will REALLY enjoy the JOBS Act which formalizes into law all the bad things of Kickstarter and MORE.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57409949-250/jobs-act-5-things-to-look-forward-to-and-5-to-dread/

Finally, after years of repression, scammers can come out of the shadows and legally screw you over. With the intrusive government off the back of scammers they can now be realized as the job creators they are and drive our economic engine forward!

Sigh.

Oh is that why AdSense nailed me for $1800?

Charity my ass. It was fraud.

Raise your hand if you had to sign a document stating you were a researcher or a gov employee when you got your first SLIP account.

[raises hand]

At a recent convention some researchers demonstrated a proof of concept hack they developed that allowed them to control many aspects of correctional facilities. Things like, oh you know, opening cell doors but showing them as closed on the guard terminals. Things like that.

Interesting preso : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7O7HxHSHE0

This is our methodology as well. We start with a phone screen, usually less then an hour and basically not-technical. Just screening for basic 'Can talk about these topics' 'am I likable' 'am I coherent' and a resume overview.

They then come in for a 1.5 hour interview. We do a single session group interview and find it much more insightful since the interviewers can riff on each other a bit. It also ever so slightly increases the pressure level and forces the candidate out of the 'tell the same story to 4 different people' mentality. Its a real engagement that happens in this longer format. In this interview we assess basic skills by sticking the person in front of an ssh term and doing some basic tasks. This weeds our a LOT of people who don't have our skillset. This is 'open book/open google', life is open book, I don't care if you can't memorize things.

The candidates that get through this get a simple project to solve that is usually some simple CRUD app with a bit of AJAX and are asked to solve a specific business task in our domain with this. Usually no more then 5-10 hours of work. It is obvious that this is not something we would use in production so they know we are not taking advantage of them.

They then come in and present their solution to the entire technical team they will be working on. In this session they demo the software, do a code-review and then discuss/defend/explain their choices.

Overall this process lets us assess our critical skills:

Sociability
Technical Skills
Referencing Skills
Presentation Skills
Communication Skills
Schedule/Time Management (You can always tell who waited until the night before)..
Go The Extra Mile Skills

The devs we hire this way do amazing work and tend to stay for quite some time. It may seem arduous but its really not so bad and its just our requirement. We've lost a few candidates who felt it was too much but that is another part of the hiring process, bouncing bad cultural fits..

The Smart "pure" model starts out at "under $12,000" according to their site. Also, to test your theory, I went to toyota.com and configured a Corolla. Once I added in an automatic transmission and power windows/door locks (which is a $500 option on the Corolla!), my MSRP was $16,325. I would imagine that the Corolla will still be a more popular car -- but it's certainly not cheaper.

I use cari.net for 3 dedicated servers and its been quite reasonable. For around $120 a month I get a Core 2 Duo, a gig of ram and pretty ok service. On this I run VMWARE and 4 instances (3 linux, 1 windows) and there is never really a hiccup.

One of my customers specified their box to be behind Cari's hardware firewall. Turns out in this config Cari charges an extra $50 month for 'multiple MAC' support (ie: VMWARE). We just pulled it from the firewall and all was well with the world.

So, cari is a nice ,reasonably costed and reasonably well-supported service. I recommend them.