jollojou

In Finland there has recently been quite a lot of public discussion about open data in daily news papers (http://bit.ly/sWb6ZA). The government has also agreed that all official data should be made public. However, the government has not stated anything about the means to make such data public.

What do you see as the main obstacles to open data?

Recently Amazon made Oracle database available an AWS service. What advantages Oracle databases have over MySQL? How about disadvantages (excluding the pricing, of course)?

I have a master's degree in social science. My minor is in business administration. In addition to that degree, I have also studied about a third of a BSc degree in computer science. I currently work as a programmer.

I'm having hard time deciding should I continue with my BSc degree or just continue with the programming job. The job in its self feels just fine to me, but I'm concerned about the long-term perspectives of my career. Will it limit my potentiality if I keep on advancing my IT career without a degree on the field? Or will it hurt my options more if I now drop out of work for a couple of years to finish my studies?

I'm less than thirty and financially I'm quite well of; I would not have to fund my further studies with loan. I have over five years of experience on my field of programming, and I'm comfortable with the basic cs stuff. I don't know how to write a compiler but I can reason about algorithms and discuss programming languages rather well. The programming I do does not require advanced cs knowledge, even though it never hurts to know them.

What insights would the HN community offer to this kind of a situation? Thank you in advance!