Linux talent shortage drives up salaries

@Traceyanne Ridcully

I grew up in Newcastle and we used to also get them on the back verandah rail begging for steak. Beautiful strong bird with a huge beak. It is an amazing sight to see them dive bomb and kill a big brown snake.

@Tracyanne and Montezuma.......This particular bird is one of a colony that firmly believes that our 5 acres belongs to them and we just happen to be the caretakers. It comes onto the verandah railing quite frequently and has been known to sit on my hand in order to get what it wants. Bacon rind is much the same as strips of meat; the stuff is firmly "bashed to death" before being eaten. It happily takes from your hand - but be careful: fingers are readily considered part of the food being offered. They are also excellent mouse disposal units.......instantly rivetted attention on the corpse, and almost afire with eagerness in the eyes if you go out with a trapped mouse in the morning......The colony raised at least one chick this season and the noise of a kookaburra chick demanding to be fed is something that needs to be experienced - you just cannot describe it. We rather love our wildlife on these 5.5 acres.

@Ridcully

You are making me homesick. Visited my parents last June who live north of Newcastle on a big bush block of a few acres. Just magnificent first thing in the morning even in what passes for winter there. Nothing beats the Australian bush if you grew up there.

@Montezuma.......No worries mate ! (That's a phrase I normally don't use, but since you were feeling a "bit that way" I thought I'd throw it in.) One of the nicest things about this site is one I have said before; it seems to attract what I can only call "friends of Linux", and friendships and exchanges take place all the time with good humour and terrific discussions. It's quite unique in my experiences on the web and it carries a permanent bookmark on my browser for some reason. If you really what to feel homesick, think burning gumleaves and the calls of whip-birds.

Where we are currently camped, yes camped, we live in a Motor home now, we are surrounded by bush. There is however not many snakes, just a few, and very few, for some reason, green tree pythons, you can tell bythe racket the frogs, frogs of all sorts, colours and shapes and sizes, make.

We do get the occassional Kooaburra usually looking for worms or grass grubs. WHat we do see is butcher birds in herds (yes I mean that) like something out of Jurassc Park wandering through, on the ground, scavenging anything that is unlucky enough to get in the way.

@Tracyanne......I'm sorta envious. The last time I went camping was at the edge of the Lamington NP at Binna Burra with a group of Norwegian/Danish ornithologists way back in the 90's and each morning was hit by bursts of magpies carolling, currawongs calling, grey thrushes, whipbirds, and .......lyrebirds. The only ones we don't get here are lyrebirds. However, that reminds me, have you ever heard the call of a "barking owl" at night ? I've heard one a long way off, but up close they can produce total panic. Their call is a scream becoming a gurgle and it sounds precisely what you think would sound like a woman having her throat cut and gurgling on the blood. It is dreadful and even on the web you can find it listed under screaming woman owl. It occurs in the Lamington as well and terrified my mother when we lived there.

http://www.owlpages.com/owls.php?genus=Ninox&species=connive...

I'm told there is a colony of them about half way to a SA national park and the park ranger used to stop at that point when returning home at night for a "comfort stop"......you can imagine the effect on anyone of the passengers communing with nature when one of those owls flew overhead and let fly with the scream. Poor things.....the passengers, not the owls.....

Kooaburra is a nice looking bird but ugly annoying gurgling sound. I am glad we don't have them where we live.

Depends what the context is Fettoosh. I grew up with them waking me up with that call at 7am and love it. Just like I love vegemite as well. I do know a lot of people who however hate both.

Quoting:Depends what the context is ...

I guess you are right. I live out in the boonies of Michigan and do enjoy nature. As a matter of fact, we have squirrel tenant in the attic, Wood pickers making hole in our walls, and 2 wild bee hives living in them. I guess many people wouldn't tolerate them.

Reminds me of a song we learned in elementary school...in Texas if you can believe it.

Kookaburra sits on the old gum tree, Merry, merry king of the bush is he. Laugh, kookaburra! Laugh, kookaburra! Gay your life must be.

Yes, waaay OT but couldn't resist. :)

Men At Work were sued for copyright infringement by the owners ot the copyright to "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/30/men-at-work-loses-s...

See even OT comes back round to something relevent, eventually

@trayanne

Good catch! Bravo!

Sounds like Kookaburra is laughing about MSCE's, hehe...

DrGeoffrey:

Not "Bring out your dead" but "Run away!!!"

Kookaburra's laughing about MSCE's...

Hey! ... that even fits the melody!

Thanks BernardSwiss. Lottsa luck getting that out of my head for the friggin' day.

Yeah Tom....that's the first childhood song that came to my mental wasteland.....

And no, not "run away"....

"It's only a flesh wound"

Or my personal MP favorite.....

Large group of people standing around accusing a witch.

"She blighted me crops!"

Crowd cries: "Burn the WITCH!"

"She Bespelled me husband!"

"Burn the WITCH!"

"She hexed me fortunes!"

"Burn the WITCH!"

An old man steps forward...

"She turned me into a newt!!!"

The crowd looks at him skeptically. "She turned you into a newt? You don't look like a newt."

He replies off-handedly...

"Well, it got better."

@Fettoosh......I saw the comment above about kookaburras making an "ugly annoying gurgling sound" and wondered what film/sound clips you had been watching/listening to. "Ugly and annoying" are of course personal perceptions - I don't find the noises that way...But the point I want to make is that the true territorial call of the kookaburra is not a "gurgling sound" - it is full throated laughter. The morning and evening chorus of a kookaburra family is something to be heard and relished. Usually the four or five members (can be more), all get together on the horizontal branch of a tree, begin gurgling to one another and then that changes as they burst into a group call which really does sound like extremely loud laughter. IF you go look on the internet, I am sure you will find it. The first link below is a single bird beginning a short laugh - imagine a whole family and the laughter part continuing for about 15-20 seconds at very loud volume.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0ZbykXlg6Q

@Fettoosh Kookaburra's laugh, hence the song, it's the "Barking Owl" that gurgles.

Quoting:I saw the comment above about kookaburras making an ...

@Ridcully, @TC,

The problem is I come from an environment where I used to wake up on canaries & finches singing. To me, a big difference from Kookaburra' laughter. Sorry.

I guess if I hear it in nature, I might get used to it and enjoy it.

Notice the Link I included in my earlier comment

> I guess if I hear it in nature, I might get used to it and enjoy it.

There's a Kangaroo Conservation Center in Georgia that also has some Kookaburras. They seem to be closed now though. My wife and I went there about 5 years ago or so.

@helios That's the kind of stuff you get from PhDs. :)

... how increasing pay really isn't that high on the radar for these companies (only 28% according to the survey did this; that's less than 1/3). Normally, when there's a shortage for a job skill, pay goes way up; it's simple supply-and-demand right out of Economics 101. But not with today's companies. It's just like the Dilbert comic I saw years ago, where the PHB says they want to hire top-notch talent, and pay average wages.