I completely understand the desire to rid oneself of excess physical artifacts, but Jeff, you CAN NOT get rid of the CDs that you ripped. When you rip a CD, you're shifting the format of the music, but since you still own it, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If you then sell or donate the CDs, then you DON'T OWN THE MUSIC ANYMORE. If you rip then sell, you're a pirate just as if you'd pulled the album off a torrent. Think of it like this: Would it be OK to copy the CDs with your burner and then sell them on? Of course not! But if you rip and then sell them on, how is it any different? It's not! Or think of this: You buy a CD new and then rip the CD and sell it. The next guy buys it used, listens to it. You've just created extra copies of the music. Not cool. If you really need to minimize the physical artifacts, then just dump the discs on a couple of spindles and throw the cases in the trash.

#2 isn't generally applicable - I've generally worked for corporations, and they've paid me for my skills. They don't want that code walking out the door with me, and between kids, a wife, and a life I haven't always had time for doing programming on my own. And anyone who asks specifically for code that I've done for a previous employer is asking me to act unethically, and I'm not working for people who ask me to violate my ethics. #5 is a 'no-go' for me as a candidate. I've had people try to do this before, and I told them no thanks. If I'm job hunting, then I'm looking for a real position. Offering me consulting work says to me that you don't actually want to hire - you want to pay me less than I'm worth for a while, without all that hassle of having employees and paying unemployment, etc, etc. Now I understand why you want #5, I really do. But from the candidate's point of view, you look like you're trying to take advantage. Instead, state up front that you're hiring the employee for a trial period (my present position says 3 months) and if they don't work out DO NOT HESITATE to send them packing. If you can't fire people who don't belong at your company, then you shouldn't be running a company.

You've hit it there, Wil. The Windows experience on a slate is horrible. I suspect that the iPad will do well just because it's the first usable slate! I'd prefer something a bit more open, myself.

The thing I remember having the most fun with in MtG was sealed-deck tournaments. I loved those because it totally took the 'look how many suitcases of cards I own' element completely out of the picture. There was a luck element, of course, in that you didn't know what you might end up with, but I found the game much more enjoyable that way. Even though I got completely stomped every time I played (I was never a good player).

Neat. Having nothing to do with the film industry myself, I find it's operations quite fascinating. Thanks Wil!

OK, now here's something about movie making that I DO NOT understand, and would like to - why did they need someone to do voices for these guys? I'm assuming they didn't manage to accidentally hire a troupe of mutes for these roles, so what's the deal? Is the stage just too noisy to capture audio well? Given that there must be some reason to do audio separately, why did they have you do it, instead of having the actors do their own off-stage audio? I mean, getting you means that they also have to do a bunch of effects work to make it come out sounding like not-you. Are the actors just generally no good at doing voice-only work? And lets go on record as saying you did a great job - I just want to know why?