Uncool but best value. I'm amused at the college graduates who walk in here every day with the 4$ coffees and haven't done the math ($4 x 5 days x 50 weeks = $1000 a year)

First, my apologies for the childish and immature responses.

Second, congrats on the kid(s). They're way more fulfilling and rewarding than any paid jobs. If I could I'd quit now and be a SAHD.

I've met other parents at our local park with a similar dilemma. Many of the mothers had (prior to kids) better jobs than mine and are very driven and business savvy. They have signed up for various work-from-home/sell-from-home web franchises that sell all sorts of products and services - kids clothes, books, hair accessories, product reviewers, mommy-blogs (want to do a tech version of thepioneerwoman.com? ) etc.
Do you have a neighbor hood association? or local mothers/parents/schoolparents group? We recently got signed up to nextdoor.com and a lot of neighbors have listed their occupations/jobs/skills/workplaces. Almost every business needs someone to update their website with fresh content, articles, SEO changes, proof reading, link checking, promotions, groupon landing pages, facebook pages, tweet writing, social media etc. Or sales support work like searching for potential prospects to give to their sales people. It can be done anytime so you can work at night when the kid(s) are asleep. Either volunteer for (or try starting up) your neighborhood/association web site or get to know local people, then start asking around for anyone that needs help with their website. It's a lot less risky than finding leads on websites like elance, craigslist etc and you're more likely to be paid if you are local.

We have former employees that are SAHMs still working on an hourly basis on some tasks. They're reliable and can do work for which we can't justify a full time job.

I had to read the TFA to figure out I didn't have to send $4.19 to help a phone company from some remote country

Those new phones interfere with everything and it threw off the radar. Isn't that what happened? No, all you have to do is clock one person at the beginning of the shift and don't reset it all day. Much easier than actually using it.

Tried renewing our partnership membership today. After jumping through several hoops (and wading through too many conditions, clauses, initiatives) finally was able to qualify to join. But wait, we would be better using this option in the same partner program! let's join that! it is more money but it's worth it. Click to join, more hoops, more agreements to click on, more questions and answers and finally we qualify for it. But wait! there is another membership!? you can't do that! Impossible! So go read the support forums, here is a list of 20 you can read to get help. Each link 'access denied'. You want Google GWT? download it. Java? go download it? PHP? apache software? linux? click a link and you get it. Microsoft is stuck defending their huge government and corporate accounts and have a bureaucracy to match. And by eating their own dogfood (everything must use Active Directory/IIS/Sharepoint/Exchange) they have become a monoculture of technology. Maybe it's time for the Baby Bills model.

What would happen if a Microsoft Bing van were driven past every Google building and parking lot, photographing every person and car that arrived and departed? How many minutes before the police would be called or a lawsuit would be filed? Then we would know how much Google liked street photography.

Here we go again - 'lets computerize this mess and hope to improve it!' All you get is a computerized mess. But seriously, what does the poster expect his/her bosses to do? Create a razzle dazzle multimedia presentation that highlights your new tasks and responsibilities? Not likely. 'Get this done, and get it done fast'. Clickers during a business meeting? I don't think so. You are there to work, not be entertained or play games. I've seen 30+ years of technology in education and most of the time they prevent learning because there aren't enough computers, the server is down, it takes 15 mins to get everyone started (that is a huge chunk of time for a teacher/professor) Or, being the cynic that I am, maybe colleges will embrace this to recruit more students and charge higher fees. All they care about is their revenue, not whether the students are employable.

But let's get serious folks, the politicians love that newspapers are failing. Less serious investigative journalism, less scrutiny, fewer FOI requests etc. but what about bloggers, you ask? Bloggers only write about what they find on the web, how many of them are pounding the pavement? eavesdropping in bars? cultivating the next 'Deep Throat' source? You like your job and your pay check, journalists like their pay check too. Unless you are going to your boss on Monday and say 'all our products and services should be free and I'll work for free too' then be prepared to pay. BTW: this announcement is no surprise. Last year he gave a speech on this topic. Then NY Times announced pay-only access would start in 2011. They allowed plenty of time for other competitors to also announce similar plans. If no-one else followed then they could drop the idea. Similar to how US airlines collude when they announce fee and increases. So subscribe and support the press! or at least click the banner ads when you see something interesting.

Probably it will go through the same paranora that people had over cookies and eventually most people will give up and accept how much can be tracked about themselves and their web browsing.

A customer just run their $10k scanner on our software and only found 3 problems. But it turned out the vendor had grabbed every 'security vulnerability' ever reported on any discussion board/mailing list and listed it as a problem. e.g. 'I tried this URL and my computer slowed down a bit. I think it is a denial of service attack.' Took a few days to research and disprove their claims. Meanwhile, how many other such claims is it making? To me, it is analogous to switching on 'Show all warnings' - I've worked with managers and developers that want to eliminate all the warnings in the source. Apart from just rock polishing, I think it distracts them from focusing on the real issues like security and performance. Like any job, you need to have the right tools and know how to use them. We do use Java Findbugs and network scanners. But poor use of any tools only leads to cuts, bruises and visits to the emergency room.

WeirdStuff is selling UPS cases without batteries IIRC $60 for a 3000VA unit. Add new batteries and you'll save a ton of money. With any used UPS you will want to put new batteries in anyway. We have 6 UPS, all from craigslist. We replaced the batteries and have had no problems.

Which of the following is a better password: "v6@!Tt3#" or "The name of my dog is Spot." ? 8 chars vs 27 chars The *length* of the password is more important than the complexity of the password. And users are more likely remember (and not write down) a pass phrase.

If SPs can sniff the data to detect and block copyright material then they will also be able to detect malware, spam and all the other attacks going in and out of their networks. Maybe it is just easier to blame end users (including grandma) for not installing fixes to crazy security bugs and to charge them for the bandwidth when they're attacked than cleaning up their networks

Lies, damned lies and statistics. Us programmers are too busy dealing with the first two to ever reach the third..