aohtsab

I haven't talked to an immigration lawyer; and I think that they will be able to clear up quite a bit for me. Mostly I've been working through this on my own, with some help from the Australian Embassy as well. I will get in touch with one. Thanks for the tip!

My boyfriend lives in Melbourne; hence the motivation to move. ThoughtWorks has an office in Melbourne, and Google in Sydney, but it was hard to find other pure tech companies in the area.

It's a shame that there isn't a well-defined exchange program between countries like the US and AU. In all other aspects I meet the visa criteria head-on, yet the fact that I don't have a degree will slow me down by 2-3 years.

This is interesting to hear. I'm in the process of applying for an Australian visa (no CS degree). To get an independent visa, I need 2 more years of work experience, before I qualify to apply to have my skills tested by ACS in very specific (and almost esoteric) programming knowledge.

And this is only the first step to apply for an 'invitation to apply' for a visa.

What are my job prospects as a US software developer seeking to emigrate to Australia? How often do Australian companies sponsor visas for overseas workers?

When I was starting out in German, I started listening to the audiobooks and reading the German text. Knowing the small words (prepositions and other stopwords) isn't of much use on its own, but having a general feel for the plot and knowing the context of what 'should be happening' in the book helped give me a much broader understanding (and richer vocabulary!) than merely ploughing through the German 101 textbook.

tl;dr: Applaud the idea, but it's misguided. You need to focus on understanding words in greater context to derive any meaning.

A faster approach would be to spoof your user agent -- announce yourself as IE 8 on Windows XP.

A simple SOCKS proxy would have saved him a lot of trouble.

word of advice: never combine the phrase "rock star" with "hacker".

On the contrary, I found the book engaging and interesting. Maor's passion for trigonometry shows through in his clever examples and humorous stories. (Read the prologue about Ahmes the Scribe)

What's the point of this? Drinking a beer on an empty stomach will compound the alcohol absorption, and mixing a depressant with red bull puts you at serious risk of heart problems.

If it's a new diet fad you're after, you'd be much better off just drinking water for three days.

> You'd probably be arrested out of sheer spite

You're probably right, and this makes me very sad. For all the supposed rights US citizens fight to defend, both the TSA workers and air travelers are just rolling over at the threat of being called a "terrorist".

Keeping the public terrified makes for easy prey.

I suppose it's "donation-based", but you fill in the donation with the actual subscription.

NCG doesn't sound like a non-profit. I wonder what Paypal's stance is on this.

no matter how many times I read this, I'm always slightly caught off guard. The image many people seem to engender of fb is one of a public service -- ie they only "see" their friends on fb, not some abstract CEO.

With that reasoning, it makes sense that people pour so much blind faith into the Web site as they do -- they simply do not see a corporate structure to their giant online playground.

I've always been confused on this part — do ISPs have a certain bandwidth to start out with, of which they then allocate portions to their customers?

The problem with 'bandwidth-hogs', from that assumption, is that ISPs oversell pieces of their pie based on some equation of how many people use how much.

I've never understood why one can sell "up to 5 Mb/s", and then sanction your customers who used their service to that extent.

It's like dangling a carrot in front of their face and smacking them when they get too close.

I would rather pay $10 a month than have to shuffle through corporate-generated content.

I usually code 5-7 days of the week, ranging from 1/2 hr - 7 hrs. My hands are the limiting factor in this regard, seeing as my carpal tunnel syndrome dictates the amount of time I spend on my computer.

And if I'm not coding, I read about programming/implementation/software design/etc. Currently I'm working through "The Mythical Man-Month" and "Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach Featuring the Internet". For non-computer-related stuff, I run, I spend time with my boyfriend and cats. I also recently got into Rabbids: Go Home! on the Wii. Programming is my passion, so naturally most of my time is spent on related subjects. My sister faults me on spending so much time on my computer, but I am constantly amazed at the incredible breadth and depth of the topic! I wouldn't have it any other way; breaks from the subject are important, but no other interest of mine compares in scale to this one.

Don't have a startup. Setting up my personal business/front for freelancing & contracting.

I'm very intrigued by the Sans Institute; has anyone attended one of their classes?

>But, with the exception of a rare few, it seems that neither male nor female programmers give a rat’s ass about fashion.

Fantastic. My sister got on my case about not dressing up or, as she called it, 'showing off my body'. You're only young once, she said.

Which, I said, is why I don't want to waste my time thinking about clothes when I'd rather program. Sure, I occasionally like dressing up, but I really could care less about whether my outfits are new and original each day.

Also, nothing is more insulting than going to a programming meeting, throwing in my 2 cents, and having a guy come up to me afterwards only to comment on my earrings.

Does anyone have experience working with WINE? (WINE Is Not an Emulator). Also switching from Mac to Linux (Ubuntu), but have a few applications that require Windows.

I am also getting into trading, and I've been frequenting fool.com — they have great beginner/novice resources.

uh oh. Also, you have DEBUG = TRUE in your Django settings.

This just reminded me to look into online grocery/misc shopping -- my plan is to analyse my shopping/use patterns and then try to automate that. I can't agree with this post enough -- I really hate grocery shopping.

I don't mind running necessary errands, except for when I have other things (coding, projects, etc) on my mind. The 'real world' of unswept floors and dirty dishes becomes a distraction that weighs on my mind when I need to focus. I wish there was some way I could delegate these tasks, but even if I had the money for that, a lot of this stuff just seems too personal to let someone else handle.

This reminds me of the markov-generated paper that was accepted for review (or publication) at a distinguished organisation!

I don't have a link, although I think it was on HN awhile back.

Wouldn't the investors be able to see through the smoke, though? I mean, if a phony starts getting peppered with technical questions, and he balks, shouldn't that be a giveaway?

That's a really neat idea! Now I'm thinking of which short stories to frame on my wall =)

I don't think either's success can be compared accurately — one is a behemoth of a company and the other operates on a much, much smaller scale.

Besides, Ren & Stimpy did garner a sizeable cult following (not including myself) — and quantifying interest in a cult classic isn't as simple as tracking purchases.

Perhaps a better comparison would be Pixar vs. Nickelodeon.

fortunately I'd blend in because I'm Eastern European -- and its something I'll have to deal with anyway. =)