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.'"

Comments

Nothing about Provo/Orem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, nothing about Provo/Orem? Home of SCO AND Novell? Nothing says tech like "Most mentioned on Groklaw".

Re:Nothing about Provo/Orem?

[Original Replica]

hey Mormon chicks are very frequently HOT, and tend to want lots of kids. Marrying a Utah lass might well be an upgrade and virus protection.

Re:Nothing about Provo/Orem?

[Anonymous Coward]

hey Mormon chicks are very frequently HOT, and tend to want lots of kids. Marrying a Utah lass might well be an upgrade and virus protection.

... and you can marry as many of them as you want!

Re:Nothing about Provo/Orem?

[DittoBox]

Brigham Young, Brigham Often.

Re:Nothing about Provo/Orem?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

hey Mormon chicks are very frequently HOT,

Maybe to a basement-bound geek who has somehow managed to never discover any pr0n, much less meet a girl in person.

Here's what Mark Twain had to say about mormon chicks:

the Mormon women ... these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely" creatures ... the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure - and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.

Heh, filler

[HaeMaker]

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.

Los Alamos

[metlin]

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.

"Circuit City sotres per capita"?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely that's a negative index. What an utterly useless franchise.

- chad

Copy and paste problems?

[NineNine]

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.

Re:Irvine

[doktor-hladnjak]

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.

Things I would use to measure techie density...

[joNDoty]

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?

The thing about Austin

[mogrify]

AUSTIN
...Only downside: It's surrounded by Texas.

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.

Re:The thing about Austin

[b0s0z0ku]

Having grown up there, I'd say the actual downside is that Austin is surrounded by Texans.

Dude, Texans aren't worse than people anywhere else. In fact, as long as you're not killing anyone, they're probably more likely to leave you alone and not complain than "sophisticated" Easterners and Californians. Every place has its reputation, but everywhere you get cool people and sucky people. Try to find the cool ones and ignore the others. Life's too short to do otherwise.

-b.

Re:The thing about Austin

[ArcherB]

I took offense to that too. "Austin is surrounded by Texas."

In Texas is Houston. Which contains Compaq (HP, now), Woot.com and NASA. Come on, is NASA not techie enough for you? Rice U, medical center and UofH.
San Antonio has the river walk (Beer fest!) and a slew of military bases.
Dallas... well, it had a TV show.

And there ain't nothin' wrong with Texans. Your average Texas redneck will give you the shirt off his back (not that you'd want it), have you over for dinner and offer you a place to stay if you needed it. Who was it that took in all those Katrina evacuees? I'll give you a hint: I didn't see Georgia or even friggin Louisiana stepping up to help out!

Oh, and Texas girls are some of the hottest anywhere. They qualify as Texas as well! Maybe the author doesn't like girls!

+1 Geek Points

[khendron]

Only a true geek would describe lovebird calls as "pinging."

Well done! But you should have continued and called it the lovebird "handshake" protocol.