In the past year and a half, I’ve traveled outside of the U.S. seven times, and each time I’ve stepped out of an airport terminal into the air of the city I’m visiting, the first thing that has struck me is the stink of car and truck exhausts. American cities, even huge ones like Los Angeles and New York, smell cleaner and fresher than small cities in other countries, such as Veracruz, Mexico, and Port of Spain, Trinidad. And this is entirely due to action by that favorite whipping boy of conservatives and libertarians, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The terms “offshoring” and “outsourcing” are often used as if they were interchangeable, but they aren’t. As business tools, they each have advantages and disadvantages that wise managers need to consider before they start thinking about using either strategy — or both at once.
Read the rest @ NewsForge.

I’ve posted my first draft of the Table of Contents for you (and others) to look at. Please feel free to suggest changes or improvements. The intro will be along shortly, with chapters coming at a rate of one or two per week, not necessarily in order. Now I’ve got to finish this thing by mid-June in between all my other work — and shoot the video, too. Sleep is for the weak, right?

I’m a married heterosexual male, perfectly happy to be this way. Sadly, President Bush and many Republicans seem to be afraid that unless we have a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage, they’ll leave their wives and marry other men. Or perhaps they’re worried about their wives leaving them for other women. Either way, I think they’d be happier if they admitted they (or their wives) were gay instead of pushing a constitutional amendment to keep themselves from following their inner desires.

This is an unusual Slashdot Interview. Instead of using email I asked all the questions in person either at LinuxAsia2004 or in casual meetings with local (New Delhi) LUG members and other techies I met during the conference. Some of the questions were answered quite well by other Slashdot readers in the “Question” post. (Slashdot has many readers both in and from India.) I also inserted a number of personal observations, which I usually don’t do in these interviews, because it seemed to be the best way to answer some of the questions.

Stacy Holland is a California-based executive recruiter who specializes in finding people with Linux-related skills. Her business card has her photo at the top, and beneath her photo it says, “The Linux Lady.” She started working with Linux people (and using Linux) in 1999, and decided to concentrate on Linux because, she says, “It’s a very exciting, close-knit family of technically-motivated, interesting people.” This doesn’t mean every NewsForge reader should immediately send Stacy a resume. She only recruits management types. But she has plenty of career advice for coders (and others) who want to become top management, along with tips on how to ride the waves of today’s shifting IT job market. Read the rest @ NewsForge

href="http://www.informit.com/title/0131879928?aid=d1760229-e177-4b97-82fe-59b8f659bef7"> style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px; height: 264px; float: left;"
alt="P & C OOo Cover"
src="http://www.roblimo.com/gallery/albums/Point-and-Click-Linux/OOoCoverSmall_001.jpeg"
hspace="10" vspace="10">I now have an
affiliate deal with my publisher, Prentice Hall, that gives
you a massive discount — usually around 30%, sometimes as much as 40%
– off the cover price and still gives me a little more money per copy than I’d
get if you bought this same book from either an online or brick
& mortar retailer.

You can click on the Point
& Click OpenOffice.org cover illustration or href="http://www.informit.com/title/0131879928?aid=d1760229-e177-4b97-82fe-59b8f659bef7">this
link to make your discount purchase — and get free shipping,
too. Even better (at least for me), if you href="http://www.informit.com/bookstore/index.asp?aid=d1760229-e177-4b97-82fe-59b8f659bef7">buy
other Prentice Hall or Pearson books after you follow my
link, I get a tiny commission on them, too, and you get the same big
discount!

I started messing with (and first wrote about) Linux in 1996, and have used it as my primary desktop operating system since 1998. I am or have been a member of the Internet Press Guild, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Online News Association, in case it matters to anyone. My “Roblimo” nick was originally an abbreviation for “Robin’s Limousine” back in the days of eight character screen name maximums. Now so many people know me by it that I can’t let it go, even though I no longer own or drive a limousine.

This is my formal “author and speaker bio.” It has more puffery in it than I really like, but the facts are correct.

Much though I love receiving unsolicited bulk email, I am now so overwhelmed by the number of people who want me to look at their email offerings that I am forced to charge $50 for each unsolicited bulk email or offer to “buy this report” I receive, plus an additional $100 bandwidth fee per email for HTML or attachments, charged on your behalf to your ISP if you do not pay within 30 days or, in the case of non-US companies or individuals, to your country’s US embassy. I also charge $50 for testing your “unsubscribe” utility, which is a great bargain since so few of them work, and I know you want yours to operate properly.

Washington DC, January 31, 2014 – Riot police have finally managed to beat back the milling throng of displaced Visual Basic programmers who attacked the courthouse after Judge Cotter Kathelly announced that Linux was not an illegal monopoly and that neither Linus Torvalds nor his company, Linux Development, Inc, owed damages to former employees and shareholders of now-bankrupt Microsoft or to any of its business partners. Read the rest @ NewsForge