But it is accurate if you take consumer to mean consumer of the network hardware that uses this functionality, which would be the ISP. Obviously the ISPs will charge more if they can find a reason.
I used to do tech support for an ISP who lost a few customers due to AOL, too. It was for a different reason, though.
They had both AOL and us (I don't remember why... probably just testing the waters of a normal ISP as they still had to dial into AOL to use it, if I remember right). Unfortunately, AOL was modifying the tcp stack so that DNS only worked when connected to them. If you uninstalled TCP/IP and reinstalled it, everything would work perfectly while connected to us. That is, until they connected to AOL again, it downloaded a forced update, and that forced updated caused DNS to only work when connected to AOL dial-up. Naturally, the customers then thought our service didn't work right and would stick with AOL.
I thought the first one was a fluke. Unfortunately, this continued to be seen by myself and others there on a regular basis for quite some time.
Damn you. I read the parent post and though "Ah ha! Now is my chance to feel old and wise and mention fidonet". Instead, you and several others already replied, so now I'm just old and late to the game as usual.
I do miss the old dial up bbs days, though. Good times.
Only loosely related, but a few years back I actually ran into someone on the internet, completely by chance, who I used to chat with on a local dialup bbs where I grew up nearly 10 years after all of the bbs' died out and I had moved halfway across the country. That was really cool.
is that frequently the books aren't even any good and are full of factual errors. I'm not even talking high level, easy to mix up stuff here.
I had one textbook explain how javascript was invented by Sun and runs in the JVM just like Java.
I had yet another textbook explain how scripting languages like perl, php, and javascript have very little functionality and primarily work by executing binaries on the computer and using the output from them (like a ksh, csh, bash, etc script). That's a big "hell no" in all 3 cases and in the case of JavaScript, is not even an option in its most common use.
Those are just the errors I remember off the top of my head. I go through each of my textbooks and usually find 3-5 errors like those in each book without even having to look very hard or research any of the information given.
Publishers are selling these to people who may not know any better for $50-$75 each, with very basic information being totally incorrect. And then, even worse imo, the schools are telling students they have to buy them and then are sending students out into the real world after having been "taught" using such low quality learning materials.
I'd agree with you, except I'm American and so have primarily American friends, acquaintances, and co-workers, along with some British friends and co-workers. Far more high school and college age (and even graduated) people spell at about what I would consider a 5th-7th grade level than you could possibly imagine. It doesn't necessarily mean they are stupid, but when using text based communication, it's the first, most common, and sometimes only hint you've got as to how intelligent someone is and whether you should trust anything they say in terms of intellectual conversations.
Also consider that when something goes wrong with Solaris or Windows, you file a ticket and come out smelling like roses when it's speedily resolved. When something goes wrong with FOSS that you advocated for, more often then not it's your ass. That would be completely true in opposite land. Fortunately, the major FOSS vendors supplying corporate America provide support contracts, just like the non-FOSS guys.
If you weren't already +5 you'd be getting modded up more. This is exactly what I came here to say. I'm a developer. Some projects I work on end up earning the company nothing. Others are worth 10s and occasionally hundreds of thousands of dollars per month - ongoing for years. I don't get paid more just because the project I worked on earned a ton of money for the company even though any 2 (and many single) projects more than pay for my yearly salary each month.
Come yearly raise time, I'll be pointing out the things I've worked on and how much of my contribution allowed them to be a huge success - not just that they were a success, but that they were a success specifically because of things I did and likely would not have been if I were not involved, and why that means maybe I should get a bit more money. Then I'll hope my boss sees it the same way. He's free to do the same come raise time for himself - his next contract.
As to TFA... I didn't read it, but there doesn't seem to be anything abnormal or surprising that some people haven't used email. I never learned to drive a car. Does that make me abnormal?
It depends on where you are, but here in America, yes, that makes you abnormal. If you're in the wilds of Africa, probably not so abnormal. Never using a fairly common method of communication which has been around for quite some time now as technology goes is also abnormal. I didn't have a cell phone until less than a year ago because I had no need for one. I finally only got one because work was willing to foot the bill. I was also abnormal in that regard, especially within my age group and peers.
Abnormal doesn't mean wrong, stupid, or anything else bad. It just means you're not doing the normal thing that the majority of people do.
You are right that I haven't been in an arcade in a long time. I'm not even sure where I would find one within 100 miles of my home. But I wasn't talking about modern games, really. I was referring more to the "retro" or classic games. The costs with those are much lower, and you can afford to charge less per play.
Ah, ok. I misunderstood you there. I thought you were comparing paying $0.25 in 1980 for a game that was current then to paying $0.50 (or really $1.00 to $2.00) for a game that is modern today.
I feel like there still could be a niche for inexpensive coin-op games to be placed in convenience stores and cafes, like in the good old days. They would have to be simple and accessible games, not big-budget extravaganzas.
I completely agree there. I know several years ago I was stuck going to the laundromat for awhile because I was in an apartment and their laundry facility was being fully replaced as it was all broken. They had a couple older arcade cabinets in there and would have made a killing off of me if they actually worked. Hell, stick one of those near the dressing rooms for when my wife drags me shopping for clothes. It seems like it would be an especially good idea with a multi-game cabinet like the old snk/neo-geo ones, or older combo cabinets that have ms. pacman and galaga (we had one of those in the break room where I used to work with free credits - it was great), or even one of those new cabinets they sell at target that have something like 20 or 30 classic arcade games - just get the manufacturer to mod them to take quarters. Those would allow the owner to appeal to a wide variety of potential customers without having to fill up a whole room with cabinets that need maintained.
Meanwhile the quarter you plunked into a Pac Man machine in 1980 would be worth about 55-60 cents in today's money. Yet, people remain resistant to the idea of putting in two coins for only one play.
I think there are good reasons for this, though. For one... 50 cents? You haven't been in an arcade recently yourself, huh? Last time I was in one $1 was pretty standard and several games were as high as $2/play.
The cost to play arcade games has gone up with inflation, but home video games have stayed the same price for 20 years now. I remember paying (ok, begging my mom to pay) $40-$50 for a NES game back in the early 90's, depending on how new the game was and the quality. Up until the Xbox 360 came out I was still paying $40-$50/game new depending on the age and quality of the game. In fact that's still what they cost on the Wii.
There's also the used game market. I don't remember there being much of one back in the days of arcades doing well, although I'll admit that could just be due to my age during that time. If I don't want to pay $40-$60 for a new game I can wait a bit and pick it up used. It'll be $5-$10 less if it's still a pretty new game, but if I'm patient, I can get that game for anywhere between $10 and $30. Hell, if I'm patient enough, I can get a game that's not used at that cost - obviously those are several year old games, of course.
Playing an arcade game has gone up 4-8 times what it cost when I first started playing them due to inflation. Home console games are still available at what I was paying for them nearly 20 years ago and at worst have gone up 50% in cost due to inflation.
There's also the differences to consider. Back when I was going to arcades they had better graphics than the home console ports of the same game. Frequently the controls were a little cleaner and more responsive, too. That's not the case anymore.
In summary, the arcade games have not stayed as far ahead of the console games as they once were, or even stayed ahead of them at all and yet the cost to play them has gone up considerably more, from a percentage standpoint, than playing console games has. That continues to hold true when you figure in the cost of buying the actual console, too.
While vertical height matters and is definitely useful, I find myself hindered more by lack of width than height these days. Try working on code in one window, with some reference code in another window, and maybe a website with the online documentation in another window without widescreen on a 15" or smaller monitor. Of course, you can mess about minimizing and maximizing back and forth, but a lot of times it's far more productive to be able to have at least 2 of those up side by side while maintaining enough width of the window to show the majority (or all) of the relevant lines of code.
Also, using a modern IDE like visual studio or eclipse on a 15" monitor can be somewhat miserable. Those are clearly designed to be used on a widescreen monitor, imo given the default layouts and how small your code window ends up.
All I know about these recommendation algorithms is that they're a bit crazy. I have had The L Word recommended because I liked Alias, 24, and Roswell.
Of course maybe The L Word is about lesbian alien spies with super powers. Huh. I'm gonna go check it out.
Simultaneously, 72 percent of those surveyed said that they find online advertising annoying when the ads are not relevant to their needs, and 87 percent of the group said that under a quarter of ads are well-targeted towards them. 58 percent said that zero to 10 percent of ads are well-targeted.
TRUSTe notes that this attitude presents a conundrum for advertisers, who are simultaneously being told that consumers want to see more relevant ads but don't want to have their activities tracked in order to make those ads relevant.
How does 72% of people are annoyed by irrelevant ads mean that those 72% are not also annoyed by relevant ads that are still tracking them? Obviously, depending on the questions, that could be determined, but based on the info given we don't see that.
I've been working as a "1 year contractor" ever since 1999 (I graduated 1997). I have no loyalty whatsoever. This is just a way to collect money for my future retirement.
I'm 100% with you. I did that contractor crap from late 2000 until early 2006. Some of it was 1 year stuff, some of it was perma-temp stuff, which can at times be even worse. For example, when I worked for Capital One as a perma-temp I was ineligible for all internal job postings because I was a contractor (although some management would work to get you into those anyway, but I saw perhaps 2% of the people who attempted it actually make it in as a full time employee). I was also ineligible for all external job postings because I already worked there. I was ineligible to move to a different position because I was a contractor. Due to a very large percentage of the IT work in the area being w-2 contract based and Capital One being the largest employer of contractors I was also unable to apply for most jobs. Contracting firms wouldn't touch people contracted to Capital One because if Capital One found out then that contracting firm would not be used and they would lose a huge amount of income.
Finally, March 2006 I landed a direct hire, full time position. In August they laid off the 3 of us they hired in March plus a couple other people. I was brough back a few months later. Things were looking up - everyone was happy, hours were good, we were even looking at hiring a few more people. Then August 2007 rolls around. 3/4 of US staff gets laid off. Since then we've seen nearly monthly layoffs. Easily 50% of the company has been let go over the last 9 months. US staff is down from 20-30 including contractors to 4.
Needless to say, the old resume' has been dusted off and I'm trying to slim back down to fit into my interview clothes.
Sadly, that sounds about accurate. A co-worker of my wife has a husband who is doing federal time and is labeled as a domestic terrorist. You know what he did? He and a couple friends tried to blow up a port-a-potty in the middle of the night.
Stupid? yep. Irresponsible? Yep. Terrorism? Only if damned near everyone I knew in highschool is a terrorist for doing similarly stupid and destructive crap.
The most likely case, imo, is that it was a 14-18 year old guy who may have had a friend or two sitting around or a script forwarding the chat to another channel or private chat (I used to have something to do that in mirc) just trying to find an old pervert to sit back and laugh at.
Conan was awesome. I played that on my grandpa's apple II C+. I think my uncle hacked something on it, though, since it had unlimited lives. I was in for a shock years later when I played it on an emulator and had to restart after 3 deaths.
As to your point, I think you're almost correct. They are different mediums and have different strengths and weaknesses. I don't think the original medium has too much to do with it. Bioshock would make an excellent book or movie imo, Metal Gear could make a very cool movie, and well, HHGTTG already did make a game that I know a lot of people enjoyed. There would be some changes, such as obviously a book about Bioshock wouldn't be "and then our hero whacked yet another splicer with his wrench, and another, oh, and another." for the entire book, but the story and setting overall could be very cool.
I think what the mediums are best for expressing are what make them pointlessly different to compare. Books more easily introduce you to better vocabulary, force you to use your imagination more, etc. TV can introduce you to new music, allow you to actually see new/different parts of culture with your eyes and hear them with your ears which is different from reading about them where your imagination could misinterpret them, and so on. Video games can do similar things to TV as far as what you can see and hear along with excercising your reflexes and coordination and excercising your problem solving skills.
The magnets don't even have to be that strong. When I used to get bored out of my mind during my phone support days I would just run the handset from my phone across my monitor and then hit the degauss button. Of course a stronger magnet makes more colors over a larger area much more quickly, but even a tiny little thing will do the trick.
1) Many of the age group mentioned were graduating college or at least old enough to start having thoughts as to their career during the.com boom. Knowing how to set an IP address in windows meant you were going to start at $50-$60k/yr if not more, a $50-$60k/yr that was worth more than the current $50-$60k/yr that you have to work to get up to, no less. They probably also new someone or in the very least knew someone who knew someone who made a ton of money in a nice cushy job during that time. Even when it wasn't the.com boom, both before and after, everyone still says "do something with computers if you want to make a lot of money". Now the people who were told that constantly and likely saw it come true at some point are expecting it to happen for them.
2) If almost everyone you interview wants more money, freedom, etc than you're offering, there's a good chance that you're not offering enough rather than the entire world expecting too much. This seems to be especially relevant in recent years (maybe I just feel that way because those are the years I grew up and fought for my entry level jobs and fought to move past my entry level jobs in). Here in the US a whole lot of people seem to feel that costs are rising a good bit quicker than their pay is.
#1 seems to be correcting itself. I've known a number of people who were going into IT related fields with dreams of big money for doing something fun who changed their minds after watching several people a few years older than them struggle to get 1/2 to 3/4 of what the world had been promising they'd receive.
#2 should also correct itself. Either employers will run out of employees and pay what is being demanded or people will decide they need to pay the bills and take the lower pay jobs, resulting in less money overall and so hopefully reduced cost of living to balance out the reduced amount of money.
That's a pretty damned good idea. I had no idea they do such things for hospitals.
Having recently been in a sort of dead zone for skills/experience vs what employers want, I could definitely see that being valuable. I found that at least where I am there's a pretty big gap. You've got phone support/desktop support and then you've got 3-5 years experience as a developer, sys admin, etc. Get to know the right people in your company and you can make the jump. Find yourself unexpectedly unemployed like I did when you're in between (I had 6 months full time perl dev experience and another just under 2 years of a sort of tier 2.5 support/sys admin/tcl developer mix... obviously overqualified for desktop support stuff but not close to the 3+ years full time developer or sys admin roles the next step up was usually looking for) and it's time to find some religion and start praying you happen upon that rare company willing to take a risk (or more likely, unwilling to pay enough for that 3+ year guy).
While I was looking I also came across a few jobs listed as entry level where the recruiter told me that the company was only listing it that way to pay less, they fully intended to hire someone with the experience.
A program like that would go a long way to reducing that skillset/experience gap and making it less risky for a company who only wants to pay for an entry level or jr developer to actually hire an entry level/jr developer and hope they can get up to speed quickly enough.
I've noticed that some people don't like Tcl as a language, but can't personally understand why. Tcl seems to be a favorite of a lot of well experienced people who can make it stand up and sing.
In my first job where I got to do any development work I worked with Tcl. I hated how it handled lists, those gave me fits because if I split them wrong I'd get { and } in my output that Tcl inserted into the lists to break them up. And below is a link to something that gave me fits the first time I came across it. What other language will let you have errors in a comment? I'm sure someone here is going to give me huge list of languages that behave like that now.
I used to think that Tcl-aversion was due to extreme syntactic simplicity, but now I think the simplicity is deceptive, and Tcl is just too hard for some programmers: you need a deep stack to write Tcl well.
This is probably true. When I worked with Tcl I was still just learning to really think like a developer and understand the process on top of learning Tcl, which really is a fairly complicated language. I'm sure I would have far less trouble with it now that I've got a few years of full time, non-hobby development under my belt but I don't see any reason that I'd want to use it and find out.
Slashdot Mirror
But it is accurate if you take consumer to mean consumer of the network hardware that uses this functionality, which would be the ISP. Obviously the ISPs will charge more if they can find a reason.
I used to do tech support for an ISP who lost a few customers due to AOL, too. It was for a different reason, though.
They had both AOL and us (I don't remember why... probably just testing the waters of a normal ISP as they still had to dial into AOL to use it, if I remember right). Unfortunately, AOL was modifying the tcp stack so that DNS only worked when connected to them. If you uninstalled TCP/IP and reinstalled it, everything would work perfectly while connected to us. That is, until they connected to AOL again, it downloaded a forced update, and that forced updated caused DNS to only work when connected to AOL dial-up. Naturally, the customers then thought our service didn't work right and would stick with AOL.
I thought the first one was a fluke. Unfortunately, this continued to be seen by myself and others there on a regular basis for quite some time.
Damn you. I read the parent post and though "Ah ha! Now is my chance to feel old and wise and mention fidonet". Instead, you and several others already replied, so now I'm just old and late to the game as usual.
I do miss the old dial up bbs days, though. Good times.
Only loosely related, but a few years back I actually ran into someone on the internet, completely by chance, who I used to chat with on a local dialup bbs where I grew up nearly 10 years after all of the bbs' died out and I had moved halfway across the country. That was really cool.
is that frequently the books aren't even any good and are full of factual errors. I'm not even talking high level, easy to mix up stuff here.
I had one textbook explain how javascript was invented by Sun and runs in the JVM just like Java.
I had yet another textbook explain how scripting languages like perl, php, and javascript have very little functionality and primarily work by executing binaries on the computer and using the output from them (like a ksh, csh, bash, etc script). That's a big "hell no" in all 3 cases and in the case of JavaScript, is not even an option in its most common use.
Those are just the errors I remember off the top of my head. I go through each of my textbooks and usually find 3-5 errors like those in each book without even having to look very hard or research any of the information given.
Publishers are selling these to people who may not know any better for $50-$75 each, with very basic information being totally incorrect. And then, even worse imo, the schools are telling students they have to buy them and then are sending students out into the real world after having been "taught" using such low quality learning materials.
I'd agree with you, except I'm American and so have primarily American friends, acquaintances, and co-workers, along with some British friends and co-workers. Far more high school and college age (and even graduated) people spell at about what I would consider a 5th-7th grade level than you could possibly imagine. It doesn't necessarily mean they are stupid, but when using text based communication, it's the first, most common, and sometimes only hint you've got as to how intelligent someone is and whether you should trust anything they say in terms of intellectual conversations.
I don't know what the hell Pelosi and the others are thinking, but the last thing they should do is capitulate to the White House on a power trip.
That's easy. "Wow, who ever knew a bed made of $1000 bills would be so comfortable?"I keep reading the title as "Stupid Head" instead of "Studio Head".
If you weren't already +5 you'd be getting modded up more. This is exactly what I came here to say. I'm a developer. Some projects I work on end up earning the company nothing. Others are worth 10s and occasionally hundreds of thousands of dollars per month - ongoing for years. I don't get paid more just because the project I worked on earned a ton of money for the company even though any 2 (and many single) projects more than pay for my yearly salary each month.
Come yearly raise time, I'll be pointing out the things I've worked on and how much of my contribution allowed them to be a huge success - not just that they were a success, but that they were a success specifically because of things I did and likely would not have been if I were not involved, and why that means maybe I should get a bit more money. Then I'll hope my boss sees it the same way. He's free to do the same come raise time for himself - his next contract.
Abnormal doesn't mean wrong, stupid, or anything else bad. It just means you're not doing the normal thing that the majority of people do.
I think there are good reasons for this, though. For one... 50 cents? You haven't been in an arcade recently yourself, huh? Last time I was in one $1 was pretty standard and several games were as high as $2/play.
The cost to play arcade games has gone up with inflation, but home video games have stayed the same price for 20 years now. I remember paying (ok, begging my mom to pay) $40-$50 for a NES game back in the early 90's, depending on how new the game was and the quality. Up until the Xbox 360 came out I was still paying $40-$50/game new depending on the age and quality of the game. In fact that's still what they cost on the Wii.
There's also the used game market. I don't remember there being much of one back in the days of arcades doing well, although I'll admit that could just be due to my age during that time. If I don't want to pay $40-$60 for a new game I can wait a bit and pick it up used. It'll be $5-$10 less if it's still a pretty new game, but if I'm patient, I can get that game for anywhere between $10 and $30. Hell, if I'm patient enough, I can get a game that's not used at that cost - obviously those are several year old games, of course.
Playing an arcade game has gone up 4-8 times what it cost when I first started playing them due to inflation. Home console games are still available at what I was paying for them nearly 20 years ago and at worst have gone up 50% in cost due to inflation.
There's also the differences to consider. Back when I was going to arcades they had better graphics than the home console ports of the same game. Frequently the controls were a little cleaner and more responsive, too. That's not the case anymore.
In summary, the arcade games have not stayed as far ahead of the console games as they once were, or even stayed ahead of them at all and yet the cost to play them has gone up considerably more, from a percentage standpoint, than playing console games has. That continues to hold true when you figure in the cost of buying the actual console, too.
While vertical height matters and is definitely useful, I find myself hindered more by lack of width than height these days. Try working on code in one window, with some reference code in another window, and maybe a website with the online documentation in another window without widescreen on a 15" or smaller monitor. Of course, you can mess about minimizing and maximizing back and forth, but a lot of times it's far more productive to be able to have at least 2 of those up side by side while maintaining enough width of the window to show the majority (or all) of the relevant lines of code.
Also, using a modern IDE like visual studio or eclipse on a 15" monitor can be somewhat miserable. Those are clearly designed to be used on a widescreen monitor, imo given the default layouts and how small your code window ends up.
All I know about these recommendation algorithms is that they're a bit crazy. I have had The L Word recommended because I liked Alias, 24, and Roswell.
Of course maybe The L Word is about lesbian alien spies with super powers. Huh. I'm gonna go check it out.
How does 72% of people are annoyed by irrelevant ads mean that those 72% are not also annoyed by relevant ads that are still tracking them? Obviously, depending on the questions, that could be determined, but based on the info given we don't see that.
Finally, March 2006 I landed a direct hire, full time position. In August they laid off the 3 of us they hired in March plus a couple other people. I was brough back a few months later. Things were looking up - everyone was happy, hours were good, we were even looking at hiring a few more people. Then August 2007 rolls around. 3/4 of US staff gets laid off. Since then we've seen nearly monthly layoffs. Easily 50% of the company has been let go over the last 9 months. US staff is down from 20-30 including contractors to 4.
Needless to say, the old resume' has been dusted off and I'm trying to slim back down to fit into my interview clothes.
Sadly, that sounds about accurate. A co-worker of my wife has a husband who is doing federal time and is labeled as a domestic terrorist. You know what he did? He and a couple friends tried to blow up a port-a-potty in the middle of the night.
Stupid? yep. Irresponsible? Yep. Terrorism? Only if damned near everyone I knew in highschool is a terrorist for doing similarly stupid and destructive crap.
The most likely case, imo, is that it was a 14-18 year old guy who may have had a friend or two sitting around or a script forwarding the chat to another channel or private chat (I used to have something to do that in mirc) just trying to find an old pervert to sit back and laugh at.
Conan was awesome. I played that on my grandpa's apple II C+. I think my uncle hacked something on it, though, since it had unlimited lives. I was in for a shock years later when I played it on an emulator and had to restart after 3 deaths.
Not sure you used the best example here.
As to your point, I think you're almost correct. They are different mediums and have different strengths and weaknesses. I don't think the original medium has too much to do with it. Bioshock would make an excellent book or movie imo, Metal Gear could make a very cool movie, and well, HHGTTG already did make a game that I know a lot of people enjoyed. There would be some changes, such as obviously a book about Bioshock wouldn't be "and then our hero whacked yet another splicer with his wrench, and another, oh, and another." for the entire book, but the story and setting overall could be very cool.
I think what the mediums are best for expressing are what make them pointlessly different to compare. Books more easily introduce you to better vocabulary, force you to use your imagination more, etc. TV can introduce you to new music, allow you to actually see new/different parts of culture with your eyes and hear them with your ears which is different from reading about them where your imagination could misinterpret them, and so on. Video games can do similar things to TV as far as what you can see and hear along with excercising your reflexes and coordination and excercising your problem solving skills.
The magnets don't even have to be that strong. When I used to get bored out of my mind during my phone support days I would just run the handset from my phone across my monitor and then hit the degauss button. Of course a stronger magnet makes more colors over a larger area much more quickly, but even a tiny little thing will do the trick.
1) Many of the age group mentioned were graduating college or at least old enough to start having thoughts as to their career during the .com boom. Knowing how to set an IP address in windows meant you were going to start at $50-$60k/yr if not more, a $50-$60k/yr that was worth more than the current $50-$60k/yr that you have to work to get up to, no less. They probably also new someone or in the very least knew someone who knew someone who made a ton of money in a nice cushy job during that time. Even when it wasn't the .com boom, both before and after, everyone still says "do something with computers if you want to make a lot of money". Now the people who were told that constantly and likely saw it come true at some point are expecting it to happen for them.
2) If almost everyone you interview wants more money, freedom, etc than you're offering, there's a good chance that you're not offering enough rather than the entire world expecting too much. This seems to be especially relevant in recent years (maybe I just feel that way because those are the years I grew up and fought for my entry level jobs and fought to move past my entry level jobs in). Here in the US a whole lot of people seem to feel that costs are rising a good bit quicker than their pay is.
#1 seems to be correcting itself. I've known a number of people who were going into IT related fields with dreams of big money for doing something fun who changed their minds after watching several people a few years older than them struggle to get 1/2 to 3/4 of what the world had been promising they'd receive.
#2 should also correct itself. Either employers will run out of employees and pay what is being demanded or people will decide they need to pay the bills and take the lower pay jobs, resulting in less money overall and so hopefully reduced cost of living to balance out the reduced amount of money.
That's a pretty damned good idea. I had no idea they do such things for hospitals.
Having recently been in a sort of dead zone for skills/experience vs what employers want, I could definitely see that being valuable. I found that at least where I am there's a pretty big gap. You've got phone support/desktop support and then you've got 3-5 years experience as a developer, sys admin, etc. Get to know the right people in your company and you can make the jump. Find yourself unexpectedly unemployed like I did when you're in between (I had 6 months full time perl dev experience and another just under 2 years of a sort of tier 2.5 support/sys admin/tcl developer mix... obviously overqualified for desktop support stuff but not close to the 3+ years full time developer or sys admin roles the next step up was usually looking for) and it's time to find some religion and start praying you happen upon that rare company willing to take a risk (or more likely, unwilling to pay enough for that 3+ year guy).
While I was looking I also came across a few jobs listed as entry level where the recruiter told me that the company was only listing it that way to pay less, they fully intended to hire someone with the experience.
A program like that would go a long way to reducing that skillset/experience gap and making it less risky for a company who only wants to pay for an entry level or jr developer to actually hire an entry level/jr developer and hope they can get up to speed quickly enough.