Slashdot Mirror
Top U.S. Tech Cities
srizah writes "Wired.com claims to have used a 'scientific methodology' to rate the top 10 tech towns in the US. They use some very reliable indexes, like 'Craigslist postings per capita' or 'Number of attendees at local meetings of dorkbot'. The usual suspects (Seattle, San Francisco) show up on the list, but some might surprise you. From the article: 'Raleigh-Duram - The jocks here may get worked up about college hoops, but the tech set is passionate about Linux distros and Mac-PC holy wars. North Carolina's Triangle is ground zero for Red Hat, SAS Institute, and an IBM center. Bonus: The area hosts two World Beer Festivals a year.'"
Come on, nothing about Provo/Orem? Home of SCO AND Novell? Nothing says tech like "Most mentioned on Groklaw".
'Craigslist postings per capita'. Because we all know the number of Craigslist posting is about as scientific as one can get.
Does the scientific methodology involve personally sampling the beer festivals? Would be curious to see an equivilant evaluation in england heh :)
The geek that actually likes Windows. I got cookies.
How did this filler article get on Slashdot?
They have icons in the article that don't appear in the legend. AUSTIN has a spot for an icon without an icon. Somehow, the Bay Area doesn't have a university rating, even though it has Stanford and Cal.
I could go on, but I wasted enough of my time, and yours.
What about places like Los Alamos (LANL), Albuquerque (SNL, LM etc.) or Batavia (FNAL).
If by tech they only mean CS related stuff, then sure, that list makes sense.
But Los Alamos has some of the smartest and best people and has a lot of "real" tech.
I mean, if particle accelerators, rocket science and weapons tech. don't constitute real technology while AJAX is counted as a technology, I must be missing something.
Surely that's a negative index. What an utterly useless franchise.
- chad
It's "Durham". Jesus, Slashdot editors can't even copy and paste now? Is that a Linux problem?
But seriously, RDU shouldn't be a surprise. We have Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, and NC State all within 30 minutes or so from each other, and we have Research Triangle Park here. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill was a great, cheap place to enjoy the dot-com boom. We've got IBM (10,000+ employees), Cisco, a small MS office, whatever MCI is now (worldcom?), Nortel, Ericsson, Red Hat, and tons and tons of start ups.
Also, UNC-Chapel Hill is home to Sunsite, which became ibiblio. So yeah, it's dork heaven, but without the SF prices.
Lots of suburban wasteland hell. Personally, I'd rather eat glass than go back to working there. So many boring IT companies doing boring stuff too. Yuck, but I guess somebody has to do it somewhere.
Assuming we can measure these, of course:
* PC boxes per capita
* Bittorrent activity
* Secured wifi networks per capita
* Wikipedia contributors
* Middle-aged men/women with same legal residence as parents
* Slashdot accounts
* Cowboyneal
*...others?
What about [insert city or region here]?! It has [insert club, university, or company here]!!! Because I live here or went to school here, it MUST be in this list!
Carl
Vote Libertarian
I assume you are talking about Irvine, California. It sucks for sure. Too many "planned communities" around there. Barf.
The rule of thumb for me is: if you have to do a U-Turn to get to a business on the left side of the street, I don't want to live or work there.
Irvine does get bonus points for the UC-Irvine mascot being the Anteater, however.
Vote Libertarian
Okay, who's next?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Portland, Oregon, had a free wireless project downtown FIVE YEARS AGO.
Is Circuit City really sponsoring this? I'd have thought they'd have chosen Fry's, instead, for a techie store.
The Portland area actually has both, actually.
And wtf is dorkbot? This seems all about promoting pet projects (or sponsors).
No way.
About the only advantage Irvine has is lots of bike trails.
Slashdot should be able to pull a majority of our IPs and figure out what general area we are browsing the web from. Then you could compare how many unique hits you got from a particular state/providence/country vs the entire population of that area and get a "geek index". Might want to toss something in there for volume as well for corporations/schools, etc. Would not be completely accurate but a hell of a lot closer then the "circuit city index".
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
While it's clearly true that Austin is surrounded by Texas, that's not actually a downside. Texas has some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen, and the close proximity of many interesting geographical features (Hamilton Pool, Enchanted Rock) is a definite plus for Austin.
Having grown up there, I'd say the actual downside is that Austin is surrounded by Texans.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
AUSTIN
Inspiration for Slacker, epicenter of the first EFF battle, home to Dell, Whole Foods, and South by Southwest. Not to mention host to the most dorkbot attendees in the country. Only downside: It's surrounded by Texas.
I'm going to have to chime in with the other people who are disagreeing. While it sure is popular to hate on Texas, I'd be willing to be that the vast majority of people who do so have never actually lived here. We've got beautiful landscapes, a low cost-of-living, plenty of space, and three of the top ten largest cities in the US. Yes, the majority of people here consider themselves Republicans, but if you're willing to get past somebody's political views, there are also lots of friendly people. About the only thing I don't like is that the summers get so dang hot.. but the mild winters (unless you live up in the panhandle) make up for it.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I found a lovebird hiding in a bush one day a few years ago, in a row of hedges just outside work; obviously someone's pet had escaped. I forget what I originally used to capture it; I think I got it into a paper bag and brought it in. That bird was freaked.
I went on Craigslist and found someone in the neighborhood who was advertising free bird cages that he was throwing away. So I emailed the guy and he replied with his address, saying he was leaving for work, but the cages would be out front with the trash. I went over to his house with a friend of mine and they were by the curb like he said. We took one and left.
With the bird now in its free cage I posted "FOUND LOVEBIRD" on Craigslist and a guy up the street responded. He said he kept love birds and canaries in cages outside his business (he ran a day care), and that he was missing one of his two lovebirds. A few people in the office who were in the habit of taking walks confirmed this, saying yes, they remembered seeing birds there, it's obviously one of those.
So case closed. We took our lovebird in its free cage, and walked over to this guy's business. Lovebirds don't like being alone; they want to be in pairs. And they use a species-specific call to find other lovebirds. So as we approached, the birds started "pinging" each other back and forth with this call, which became more frequent as we approached. And they went nuts in their cages as they became fully aware of each other. It was actually a pretty cool thing to see. We let our bird hop into the cage with the other one, and they started chatting with each other and flying around like mad.
The guy was puzzled, because it wasn't the same lovebird that he lost. But we left it there anyway. It worked out well for everybody. My friend and I got to skip work for a while, didn't pay for anything, the guy got his free replacement lovebird, and the replacement lovebird not only survived but found a good home with his other lovebird. All thanks to Craigslist. I hope his original lovebird also found a good home.
Only a true geek would describe lovebird calls as "pinging."
Well done! But you should have continued and called it the lovebird "handshake" protocol.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
The usual suspects (Seattle, San Francisco) show up on the list, but some might surprise you.
I looked at the list, and in fact it was mostly the usual suspects. I mean everyone knows there is a big tech presence in Raleigh/Durham and Austin. About the only really surprising inclusion is Orlando, and it was the most poorly justified of all of them. Substitute Portland, OR for Orlando on their list and you have basically the conventional wisdom on what the major tech centers in the US are.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre