We (developers and sysadmins) use it at the big corporation where I work. Keeping irssi open in screen (GNU screen) means I can connect remotely from anywhere with a single session, and it doesn't appear when I'm focused on something else in a different screen session. Each project gets its own channel. It's way better for collaboration than having to match schedules for each little question.

It's also very helpful for asking specific questions about OSS projects, as mentioned. The people actually developing projects hang out in IRC, not at StackOverflow.

Ignore the name - this is a clearly-written introduction to stream processing algorithms.

The most important question you should ask yourself at the end of each interview is "Do I want this person on my team?" If you're not sure, the answer is no.

Aside from that, be wary of anyone who spends too much time talking up their accomplishments - I've often found that candidates who talk a lot falter when asked practical questions.

Also, make sure you leave time for the candidate to ask you questions. That portion of the interview can really reveal to both parties whether they would be a good fit.

FYI for those interested in working with this data in a Geo-enabled RDBMS: It's pretty easy to get most of this data into a database on your own using GeoDjango. A simple non-TIGER tutorial is here: http://geodjango.org/docs/tutorial.html

Even if you're not interested in using Django in the long run, it's a quick way to get the data into a familiar system and poke around with it a bit.

A friend of mine just mentioned this to me tonight. The costs can be really insidious in unexpected ways.

My state is now offering insurance benefits to domestic partners, but the amount that the state covers for insurance (for example) is now taxable income. That means paying taxes on several thousand dollars that they never actually see.

However you feel about religious issues, or how "marriage" should be defined, It's kind of absurd that a certain segment of state employees doing equal work get shorted on benefits for their household.

"However you feel about religious issues, or how "marriage" should be defined"

I've started thinking that marriage should be defined in strictly religious terms. That is, get the state out of the business altogether and have civil union experience be the same for all couples. What you do in church is up to you.

I mean, you wouldn't expect to go to the government for a baptism license?

Yes, and then of course stick to making no laws respecting religion meaning every couple with a civil union enjoys the same tax benefits.

Many would vomit at this idea because they would fear that you are "taking something away from them." Of course, ironically, the marriage they feared would be taken from them is of course the same right they are denying me.

A better idea would be to eliminate the tax benefits of marriage. Every tax benefit given to straight couples is paid for by single people and possibly gays (depending on the future legality of gay marriage).

This is regressive taxation. Married people are better off than the single; they have lower living expenses and are presumably happier. Marriage subsidies are taxing the poor to pay the rich.

I've used log files extensively for security.

Aside from the obvious post-incident investigation, I've set up (nearly-) real-time scanning of logs feeding into programs that scan for abuse-like activity, and feed the output of those into alerting mechanisms and blacklists.

Those tools have proven time and again to be extremely valuable from a security perspective (we still log blacklisted attempts and can see what's trying and failing).

For US citizens, Peace Corps is one way to meet both of those goals. For people from other countries, there are similar organizations in many countries, and some that accept volunteers from almost anywhere (such as VSO and UN Volunteers).

Volunteers spend a long time in their host country, and really get to see things in depth (not just the tourist view).

Volunteers also get a chance to "change the world". Usually not in a particularly grand way, but a little education and inspiration can have a lot of ripple effects.

Of course, being based overseas, and having a fair amount of vacation time, volunteers also have opportunities to visit other interesting places and countries near their host sites.

Getting a reasonable living allowance and government-sponsored benefits sweetens the deal, but of course it doesn't offer nearly as much freedom as simply quitting your job and hopping on a plane.

That is not traveling in my book, though - it is staying abroad. I have no problems with working in another country.

I certainly agree that it is worthwhile to experience another culture at least once. I am not so sure about more than once, though.

IMHO "staying abroad" is the best form of traveling. You're not going to be steeped into the cultures of others until you live amongst them. Staying at the Hyatt and visiting all the mandatory sights by tour bus is probably the worst and least rewarding traveling experience money can buy.

In college my internships took me all across Canada, staying in each place 4 months at a time. All of those experiences have been invaluable to me, and taught me far more than any sort of vacation I've ever taken.

Your "better" example is almost exactly true of my car.

According to the dealer, the "Miles before service needed" that shows up when I start it is based on the number of cold starts, not just the number of miles actually driven.

There's also a large body of PHP coders who are smart and continue learning new things, but you don't hear as much about them because they don't publicly humiliate themselves on the internet, and aren't such easy targets for disrespect.

This should be a big help in writing clean server-side sorts by an arbitrary column in tabular data.

Previously we've had to do some rather ugly things with "create_function" and lots of escaping in order to make arbitrary sort comparator functions.

An example of the old style:

    private function makeCompare($field, $desc) {
        return create_function('$a,$b', "
            \$r = strcasecmp(\$a['$field'], \$b['$field']);
            return " . ($desc ? '-1' : '1') . " * \$r;");
    }

Not my proudest moment, to be sure.