Out here in the midwest we can't get enough educated and experienced people. Kids just out of college with a CS degree are getting $30-40K starting around here (would be about $60-$80K in the bay area). I make significantly more than that and I have no degree at all (though over 10 years experience).
I went to a large college and still live near it
Big mistake. College towns have oddly upset job markets (there are too many overeducated people trapped there due to SO in college, etc). I grew up in and attended college in a mid-sized university town (about 50K population, about 25K enrollment). I couldn't make 1/2 there what I make where I live now, only about 45 miles away in a town of about 300K population.
More like a few jobs and a few lucky winners, and the winners are too blind to see how lucky they are.
Nothing lucky about my situation around here. I could easily change jobs if I wanted to (I've had offers and headhunters call on a regular basis).
Yikes. I thought it was highway robbery the other day when I filled up and it was $1.18 a gallon.
It sucks working 7 days per week 12+ hours per day to just make ends meet
If everyone is so rich, why are most of the cars on 101 5+ years old and falling apart
I've got three cars... One brand new one, a pickup that is about 8 years old (but not falling apart, its got only about 70k miles on it), and an early 70's muscle car. One reason I can think of why you wouldn't want a nice car if you were commuting into downtown SF, is that you'd have to be worried about it getting stolen/vandalized. A crappy commuter car is worthwhile having in such an area.
I never work much more than 40 hours a week, and I am making ends meet O.K. I live in the midwest. I tried moving to the SF Bay Area in the late 80's, but I couldn't find anything there that could make ends meet, so I came back here.
health insurance. Not a single person there that had a technical degree, had it
Out here even places like restaurants and convenience stores offer that. I have no degree (only went to college about 3 years), and I work as a software developer making what would be equivalent to around $120k in the Bay Area according to the online salary comparisons I've seen. I wouldn't consider a job that didn't offer free or cheap medical insurance coverage, and I haven't seen any non-contract jobs that didn't offer it recently.
Frankly, I don't feel too sorry for you, because you could definitely do much better if you wanted.
Personally, I prefer to stick to 'genuine' Creative Labs cards (they are better supported even under Windows -- or so my Windows using friends say). I have been able to successfully get a couple of generic clone sound cards working under Linux, the first being a "Digital Research Labs" (free after rebate from CompUSA) which uses the ESS 1869 chip set. I used the isapnp utilities to initialize the card, and then the RedHat sndcfg utility could be persuaded that it was a SoundBlaster and it worked. The second card is an old (pre PnP jumperless) Aztech Sound Galaxy 16, which I was able to get working with the OSS drivers supplied with SuSE. As far as I can tell most sound cards can be made to work with Linux with a little bit of research. Being impatient, its generally easier for me to just get a Creative Labs card...
Actually I don't believe that is correct at all. From what I remember, the person who filed the original trademark that prompted the court case that ended with the trademark being assigned to Linus specifically claimed the trademark on "computer operating system software" and then tried to hold up the Linux distributers and book publishers for money. You may be getting the "Apple Records" vs. "Apple Computer" case confused with this one here. As for having to "vigorously protect" a trademark, IANAL, but I don't see Debian, Red Hat, SuSE or Slackware (or any of the other distros I know about) as having tried to usurp the trademark. They are not calling something that is not Linux, "Linux". Furthermore, every Linux distro I've seen has specifically acknowledged Linus as owning the trademark, and as being the original author of the Linux kernel. I don't believe that you necessarily need a contract, written or otherwise, for using a trademark provided you do so within the framework of the trademark law. So therefore I'd say that no enforcement action on Linus's part has been necessary, so there would be no reason to assume that his trademark has been relinquished. At any rate, if a trademark is relinquished because of falling into general use, it means that nobody else can claim that term as a trademark. If someone has good reason to believe I'm wrong (especially a lawyer), then let's hear why...
Not really, it is mostly just a simple statement of fact. I imagine a lot of (for example) Mac owners could say the same thing. Although, unlike them, I have had to go out of my way to keep from buying any copies of Windows (like buying mainly only used hardware or building it myself). It would be a much bigger feat for a Mac owner to be able to say they had no copies of MacOS, since it is even more difficult to buy Mac hardware w/o MacOS than it is to buy PC hardware without Windows. It wouldn't be much of a statement if I said I owned no copy of OS/2 or BeOS, or whatever, since it is easy to buy hardware without them. If it weren't for Linux and/or the *BSD's, I probably wouldn't own any x86 PCs.
I think that you mean Softway Systems. While this sort of product (Cygwin32, MKS Toolkit, etc) probably make NT more palatable for some *nix orriented power users as a desktop OS, I don't see it as doing too much to help make NT a more viable enterprise solution in the server room. Call me crazy, but adding more stuff (especially from a 3rd party) to an already bloated environment doesn't seem like a good way to reduce bloat or improve stability. Those are two of the main things that Microsoft is getting beat up on in the server world.
I'm not so sure that running as a separate subsystem instead of on top of Win32 is necessarily that great a thing (at least not if its exclusively so), as that is one of the great failings of the built-in POSIX subsystem of NT (not being able to mix and match *nix and Windows stuff easily). Licensing the NT source is kinda a dangerous thing for a small company like Softway. They should closely at what has happened to companies like Citrix and Bristol who based their future on such agreements.
If I get some free time, I will be working on a companion library to GTK that does all the non-gui support tasks like threads and sockets in a portable, OO way.
Cool. There are already a few C++ wrappers around POSIX threads and Berkeley Sockets which you might be able to use as a starting point. If you can build on something else, then all you have to do is make it fit within the GTK+/Gnome architecture.
That is a valid point, however, I would think that they would also want people to test installation on machines w/o Windows installed at all. I know I certainly would have no interest in purchasing their distribution if it requires Windows in order to install, especially since it would effectively add $90+ to the price given that I don't own a copy of Windows. I know I can't be the only person out there who doesn't have Windows.
Actually, I think that is just a generic page that is used for all of their Beta programs. I don't think that Corel Linux requires Windows. I can't think of any legitimate reason it might.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvolds, at least in the U.S.A. Technically Corel is a Canadian company, but I suspect that they will abide in general by U.S. trademark laws, since a large percentage of their business is with the U.S.
The DoJ actually brought out the real issues very well.
Actually, I think that the issues the DoJ brought out were presented pretty well, I just think that they spent too much time talking about browsers and didn't bring up or didn't spend enough time on some other things (OS license agreements, databases, etc) that were as, or more important.
The other thing is that it is Microsoft who's largely the only one (Except for the "microsoft" press) that's claiming that the DoJ did a poor job bringing out the real issues.
Well, it looks more to me like Microsoft (and their apologists) is/are claiming that there either are no issues to be brought up or that the issues that were brought up aren't important (and that isn't what I was saying -- I just believe a lot of important issues didn't get covered). The last thing Microsoft would want to say is that there were relevant complaints against them that weren't brought up.
Microsoft's defense was *really* bad.
Here you are absolutely correct. I'd be really upset if I was paying what Microsoft was for legal fees and I got such poor defense. Microsoft seriously bungled things and seemed ill-prepared, which they should not have given their resources. I would tend to concur that Microsoft must not have taken this whole case very seriously. Unfortunately, I think that they may be justified in this because I suspect that the judgement against them will lack enough teeth to make any real difference at this late date.
That means that those of us that would oppose Microsoft (or at least want to see them kept in check to a certain degree) must remain vigilant.
Cool! Score one for the spirit of cooperation! You sound like someone who could really provide some positive feedback to the GTK+ and GTK-- developers, so please make sure you send back any ideas/patches/comments you have to them. I am hoping that they will take advantage of this if you do.
Nah, its not really flamebait (at least it is put politely and coherently). I think there is room for rational discussion, including disagreements. What we don't need are the "'huh-huh... **** sucks... huh-huh huh-huh' 'heh-heh, yea, and it sucks too. heh-heh-heh'" type of comments.
I am not really that familiar with QT, and am only familar with KDE from the end-user standpoint so I can't say for sure, but would it be possible to make a more QT/KDE like C++ binding that worked with GTK+ as the underlying widget set? If not, maybe you can come up with your own C++ bindings for GTK+ that you were more comfortable with than GTK--? Maybe you could just suggest some improvements to the GTK-- bindings?
If the QT/KDE and GTK+/Gnome communities are going to start working together, whatever we can do to facilitate compatibility and communication between us is a good thing, IMO.
I wasn't suggesting that SCO would be a big Linux competitor (because I agree with you there -- I don't think there is any good reason why a home or most small business users would choose SCO over Linux anymore). I merely think that if Microsoft decided they wanted to get out from under contractual obligations to SCO in regards to their entry into the *nix market, they could easily afford to just buy SCO out and make it a non-issue.
Microsoft obviously believes that they will either win the current case, or that if they lose the case, the penalty will be negligible, or that they can afford to fight another case should one come up (or when one does).
Given how poorly the DOJ brought out the real issues that should have been used against Microsoft, I can understand why Microsoft seems to feel so little threat from them.
If Microsoft decides they want to play in the *nix world, its more likely that Microsoft would just buy out Novell, AT&T and the Micheal's shares of SCO, which would give them pretty close to a controlling interest in SCO, if not outright majority ownership. They could then do whatever they wanted when it came to attempts at co-opting the *nix market. Or they could just try to screw around with the licenses of the commercial *nixes. Or they could kill/maim the Monterey project (64 bit UNIX for IA-64). Or they could do all of the above.
What about gtk-- (gtk+ C++ wrapper) as an option for C++ development in a Gnomish environment? I haven't tried it yet, as I am just as comfortable using straight C, but it seems like something worth looking into if you want to use C++.
Four, actually... Burlington Coat Factory also signed a fairly good sized support agreement with RedHat yesterday.
Re:I predict a huge market for linux laptops..
on
On Linux Laptops
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· Score: 2
I've gotten conflicting information on what models have MWave and which ones don't. There are just too damned many slightly variant ThinkPad models I think. The exact model I have is a 355Cs. If this model doesn't have MWave, I'd like to know what the heck the RJ11 jack with a phone/data icon next to it on the lower lefthand rear corner is. It sure doesn't look like a normal 16*50 UART based modem. IBM's web pages have (a tiny bit of) information about an updated 'Crystal' sound driver (for Windows probably) for the 355. If memory serves, 'Crystal' made a chipset used in some cheapo sound cards, which sounds similar to what you are talking about for the 750/755C/755Cs models.
The ABC (Atanassoff/Berry Computer) was definitely before ENIAC, and some of ENIAC's design was cribbed from the ABC. UNIVAC's patents were overturned in court in 1973 because of this.
For probably 99.9% of people, it is pretty silly. Most people/companies can't afford that much memory even if they had a motherboard that could handle it (most motherboards are limited to somewhere between 512M and 2G). This limit matters strictly for the very highest end 32 bit systems. I think it is mainly being done to eliminate one of Microsoft/Mindcraft's 'checklist' items, and there is certainly a level of justification for doing that sort of thing. However, there is also always that 0.1% that it really does matter to, I guess. In general, I would imagine that this probably just won't matter to most of us, but it will remove one of the percieved barriers against high end Linux deployment. The difficult thing may be getting people/press to realize that things have changed. Witness the ongoing examples of people who still claim that Linux can't support multiple CPUs at all, when it has had at least rudimentary SMP support for quite some time. And of course they would never mention that Linux SMP support has improved some recently, and is going to be improving further in the next couple of major kernel versions.
Re:I predict a huge market for linux laptops..
on
On Linux Laptops
·
· Score: 2
I would agree that used laptops are an excellent alternative for many of us, even those of us who probably could afford a fancy laptop if we wanted to, but would rather spend money on something else.
I have an old ThinkPad 355Cs (33MHz 486SX) which I run Linux on. It has a few setup quirks (goofy floppy drive, wonky video chip, etc), but once set up it works pretty well except for the MWave sound/modem, which I've been told only does 9600bps on the modem side anyway. I use a 3Com MegaHertz (Gateway labeled) combo 10b2 Ethernet/33.6 modem PCMCIA card, which works great (I picked it up cheap as a closeout when the 100bT/56k models came out).
Its not a screamer, but I added 32M of memory (taking it to 36M total) and replaced the original 250M hard drive with a 2.1G drive (no problems, the ThinkPad found the geometry automatically). It is a workable, luggable machine for about a third of what a decent new laptop would have cost me.
If anyone is interested in details on how to get one of these things running, let me know. BTW, most members of the ThinkPad 355, 360, 750 & 755 families are very similar hardware wise, so the same info that works on my 355Cs will also work on a lot of those models.
Java has yet to overcome the drool factor needed to beat Visual Basic
Actually, in many of the large IT shops I am familiar with, it already has, in that VB is already considered a "legacy" programming language and new projects are generally being done in Java. While it won't happen overnight (just like all the COBOL and C++ code out there won't go away), Java is already starting to replace VB, PowerBuilder and C++ for a lot of things.
There is no way I would be reading this flame war if "SoftwareJanitor" weren't magically privileged.
I didn't ask to be 'magically privileged'. I'm not even sure what the mechanism is for getting auto-moderated up or down. Maybe there needs to be a facility that you can specifically exclude an account if you don't want to read them (maybe there already is -- I don't remember, as I haven't looked recently). Maybe there needs to be a way for those of us who are 'magically blessed' to choose to post at a lower level if we want, or maybe instead of 'auto-blessing' every post, we should get a pool of self-moderating points we can spend on posts to make us decide which ones we think are most important.
However, if you really don't want to read 'flame wars' (and this really doesn't qualify as such in the scheme of things), then you can always excercise your browser's scroll bar or your down arrow key. Nobody forces you to read on once you get to the first message in a 'flame war' thread.
Well, anonymity isn't easily legally accomplished on the Net. If one is willing to resort to illegal means, it is fairly easy. If one is willing to find a publicly accessable computer (such as a university lab, public library, etc) and use an email service that doesn't strictly check info, then it could be pretty difficult to trace, but not very convenient. This may or may not change as 'internet kiosks' become more common.
However, as I was saying, what all this really means is that the original poster is off base in thinking that anonymity on the Net is so much worse than what happens in real life.
Slashdot Mirror
Where? Where? Where?
Out here in the midwest we can't get enough educated and experienced people. Kids just out of college with a CS degree are getting $30-40K starting around here (would be about $60-$80K in the bay area). I make significantly more than that and I have no degree at all (though over 10 years experience).
I went to a large college and still live near it
Big mistake. College towns have oddly upset job markets (there are too many overeducated people trapped there due to SO in college, etc). I grew up in and attended college in a mid-sized university town (about 50K population, about 25K enrollment). I couldn't make 1/2 there what I make where I live now, only about 45 miles away in a town of about 300K population.
More like a few jobs and a few lucky winners, and the winners are too blind to see how lucky they are.
Nothing lucky about my situation around here. I could easily change jobs if I wanted to (I've had offers and headhunters call on a regular basis).
$1.75 per gallon for gas here
Yikes. I thought it was highway robbery the other day when I filled up and it was $1.18 a gallon.
It sucks working 7 days per week 12+ hours per day to just make ends meet
If everyone is so rich, why are most of the cars on 101 5+ years old and falling apart
I've got three cars... One brand new one, a pickup that is about 8 years old (but not falling apart, its got only about 70k miles on it), and an early 70's muscle car. One reason I can think of why you wouldn't want a nice car if you were commuting into downtown SF, is that you'd have to be worried about it getting stolen/vandalized. A crappy commuter car is worthwhile having in such an area.
I never work much more than 40 hours a week, and I am making ends meet O.K. I live in the midwest. I tried moving to the SF Bay Area in the late 80's, but I couldn't find anything there that could make ends meet, so I came back here.
health insurance. Not a single person there that had a technical degree, had it
Out here even places like restaurants and convenience stores offer that. I have no degree (only went to college about 3 years), and I work as a software developer making what would be equivalent to around $120k in the Bay Area according to the online salary comparisons I've seen. I wouldn't consider a job that didn't offer free or cheap medical insurance coverage, and I haven't seen any non-contract jobs that didn't offer it recently.
Frankly, I don't feel too sorry for you, because you could definitely do much better if you wanted.
my PnP sound card setup runs only on Windows
Personally, I prefer to stick to 'genuine' Creative Labs cards (they are better supported even under Windows -- or so my Windows using friends say). I have been able to successfully get a couple of generic clone sound cards working under Linux, the first being a "Digital Research Labs" (free after rebate from CompUSA) which uses the ESS 1869 chip set. I used the isapnp utilities to initialize the card, and then the RedHat sndcfg utility could be persuaded that it was a SoundBlaster and it worked. The second card is an old (pre PnP jumperless) Aztech Sound Galaxy 16, which I was able to get working with the OSS drivers supplied with SuSE. As far as I can tell most sound cards can be made to work with Linux with a little bit of research. Being impatient, its generally easier for me to just get a Creative Labs card...
Actually I don't believe that is correct at all. From what I remember, the person who filed the original trademark that prompted the court case that ended with the trademark being assigned to Linus specifically claimed the trademark on "computer operating system software" and then tried to hold up the Linux distributers and book publishers for money. You may be getting the "Apple Records" vs. "Apple Computer" case confused with this one here.
As for having to "vigorously protect" a trademark, IANAL, but I don't see Debian, Red Hat, SuSE or Slackware (or any of the other distros I know about) as having tried to usurp the trademark. They are not calling something that is not Linux, "Linux". Furthermore, every Linux distro I've seen has specifically acknowledged Linus as owning the trademark, and as being the original author of the Linux kernel. I don't believe that you necessarily need a contract, written or otherwise, for using a trademark provided you do so within the framework of the trademark law.
So therefore I'd say that no enforcement action on Linus's part has been necessary, so there would be no reason to assume that his trademark has been relinquished.
At any rate, if a trademark is relinquished because of falling into general use, it means that nobody else can claim that term as a trademark.
If someone has good reason to believe I'm wrong (especially a lawyer), then let's hear why...
Not really, it is mostly just a simple statement of fact. I imagine a lot of (for example) Mac owners could say the same thing. Although, unlike them, I have had to go out of my way to keep from buying any copies of Windows (like buying mainly only used hardware or building it myself). It would be a much bigger feat for a Mac owner to be able to say they had no copies of MacOS, since it is even more difficult to buy Mac hardware w/o MacOS than it is to buy PC hardware without Windows. It wouldn't be much of a statement if I said I owned no copy of OS/2 or BeOS, or whatever, since it is easy to buy hardware without them. If it weren't for Linux and/or the *BSD's, I probably wouldn't own any x86 PCs.
Safeway Systems
I think that you mean Softway Systems. While this sort of product (Cygwin32, MKS Toolkit, etc) probably make NT more palatable for some *nix orriented power users as a desktop OS, I don't see it as doing too much to help make NT a more viable enterprise solution in the server room. Call me crazy, but adding more stuff (especially from a 3rd party) to an already bloated environment doesn't seem like a good way to reduce bloat or improve stability. Those are two of the main things that Microsoft is getting beat up on in the server world.
I'm not so sure that running as a separate subsystem instead of on top of Win32 is necessarily that great a thing (at least not if its exclusively so), as that is one of the great failings of the built-in POSIX subsystem of NT (not being able to mix and match *nix and Windows stuff easily). Licensing the NT source is kinda a dangerous thing for a small company like Softway. They should closely at what has happened to companies like Citrix and Bristol who based their future on such agreements.
If I get some free time, I will be working on a companion library to GTK that does all the non-gui support tasks like threads and sockets in a portable, OO way.
Cool. There are already a few C++ wrappers around POSIX threads and Berkeley Sockets which you might be able to use as a starting point. If you can build on something else, then all you have to do is make it fit within the GTK+/Gnome architecture.
That is a valid point, however, I would think that they would also want people to test installation on machines w/o Windows installed at all. I know I certainly would have no interest in purchasing their distribution if it requires Windows in order to install, especially since it would effectively add $90+ to the price given that I don't own a copy of Windows. I know I can't be the only person out there who doesn't have Windows.
Actually, I think that is just a generic page that is used for all of their Beta programs. I don't think that Corel Linux requires Windows. I can't think of any legitimate reason it might.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvolds, at least in the U.S.A. Technically Corel is a Canadian company, but I suspect that they will abide in general by U.S. trademark laws, since a large percentage of their business is with the U.S.
The DoJ actually brought out the real issues very well.
Actually, I think that the issues the DoJ brought out were presented pretty well, I just think that they spent too much time talking about browsers and didn't bring up or didn't spend enough time on some other things (OS license agreements, databases, etc) that were as, or more important.
The other thing is that it is Microsoft who's largely the only one (Except for the "microsoft" press) that's claiming that the DoJ did a poor job bringing out the real issues.
Well, it looks more to me like Microsoft (and their apologists) is/are claiming that there either are no issues to be brought up or that the issues that were brought up aren't important (and that isn't what I was saying -- I just believe a lot of important issues didn't get covered). The last thing Microsoft would want to say is that there were relevant complaints against them that weren't brought up.
Microsoft's defense was *really* bad.
Here you are absolutely correct. I'd be really upset if I was paying what Microsoft was for legal fees and I got such poor defense. Microsoft seriously bungled things and seemed ill-prepared, which they should not have given their resources. I would tend to concur that Microsoft must not have taken this whole case very seriously. Unfortunately, I think that they may be justified in this because I suspect that the judgement against them will lack enough teeth to make any real difference at this late date.
That means that those of us that would oppose Microsoft (or at least want to see them kept in check to a certain degree) must remain vigilant.
Cool! Score one for the spirit of cooperation! You sound like someone who could really provide some positive feedback to the GTK+ and GTK-- developers, so please make sure you send back any ideas/patches/comments you have to them. I am hoping that they will take advantage of this if you do.
Nah, its not really flamebait (at least it is put politely and coherently). I think there is room for rational discussion, including disagreements. What we don't need are the "'huh-huh... **** sucks... huh-huh huh-huh' 'heh-heh, yea, and it sucks too. heh-heh-heh'" type of comments.
I am not really that familiar with QT, and am only familar with KDE from the end-user standpoint so I can't say for sure, but would it be possible to make a more QT/KDE like C++ binding that worked with GTK+ as the underlying widget set? If not, maybe you can come up with your own C++ bindings for GTK+ that you were more comfortable with than GTK--? Maybe you could just suggest some improvements to the GTK-- bindings?
If the QT/KDE and GTK+/Gnome communities are going to start working together, whatever we can do to facilitate compatibility and communication between us is a good thing, IMO.
I wasn't suggesting that SCO would be a big Linux competitor (because I agree with you there -- I don't think there is any good reason why a home or most small business users would choose SCO over Linux anymore). I merely think that if Microsoft decided they wanted to get out from under contractual obligations to SCO in regards to their entry into the *nix market, they could easily afford to just buy SCO out and make it a non-issue.
Microsoft obviously believes that they will either win the current case, or that if they lose the case, the penalty will be negligible, or that they can afford to fight another case should one come up (or when one does).
Given how poorly the DOJ brought out the real issues that should have been used against Microsoft, I can understand why Microsoft seems to feel so little threat from them.
If Microsoft decides they want to play in the *nix world, its more likely that Microsoft would just buy out Novell, AT&T and the Micheal's shares of SCO, which would give them pretty close to a controlling interest in SCO, if not outright majority ownership. They could then do whatever they wanted when it came to attempts at co-opting the *nix market. Or they could just try to screw around with the licenses of the commercial *nixes. Or they could kill/maim the Monterey project (64 bit UNIX for IA-64). Or they could do all of the above.
What about gtk-- (gtk+ C++ wrapper) as an option for C++ development in a Gnomish environment? I haven't tried it yet, as I am just as comfortable using straight C, but it seems like something worth looking into if you want to use C++.
Four, actually... Burlington Coat Factory also signed a fairly good sized support agreement with RedHat yesterday.
I've gotten conflicting information on what models have MWave and which ones don't. There are just too damned many slightly variant ThinkPad models I think.
The exact model I have is a 355Cs. If this model doesn't have MWave, I'd like to know what the heck the RJ11 jack with a phone/data icon next to it on the lower lefthand rear corner is. It sure doesn't look like a normal 16*50 UART based modem.
IBM's web pages have (a tiny bit of) information about an updated 'Crystal' sound driver (for Windows probably) for the 355. If memory serves, 'Crystal' made a chipset used in some cheapo sound cards, which sounds similar to what you are talking about for the 750/755C/755Cs models.
The ABC (Atanassoff/Berry Computer) was definitely before ENIAC, and some of ENIAC's design was cribbed from the ABC. UNIVAC's patents were overturned in court in 1973 because of this.
As for me, this 4G thing seems pretty silly. :)
For probably 99.9% of people, it is pretty silly. Most people/companies can't afford that much memory even if they had a motherboard that could handle it (most motherboards are limited to somewhere between 512M and 2G). This limit matters strictly for the very highest end 32 bit systems.
I think it is mainly being done to eliminate one of Microsoft/Mindcraft's 'checklist' items, and there is certainly a level of justification for doing that sort of thing.
However, there is also always that 0.1% that it really does matter to, I guess. In general, I would imagine that this probably just won't matter to most of us, but it will remove one of the percieved barriers against high end Linux deployment.
The difficult thing may be getting people/press to realize that things have changed. Witness the ongoing examples of people who still claim that Linux can't support multiple CPUs at all, when it has had at least rudimentary SMP support for quite some time. And of course they would never mention that Linux SMP support has improved some recently, and is going to be improving further in the next couple of major kernel versions.
I would agree that used laptops are an excellent alternative for many of us, even those of us who probably could afford a fancy laptop if we wanted to, but would rather spend money on something else.
I have an old ThinkPad 355Cs (33MHz 486SX) which I run Linux on. It has a few setup quirks (goofy floppy drive, wonky video chip, etc), but once set up it works pretty well except for the MWave sound/modem, which I've been told only does 9600bps on the modem side anyway. I use a 3Com MegaHertz (Gateway labeled) combo 10b2 Ethernet/33.6 modem PCMCIA card, which works great (I picked it up cheap as a closeout when the 100bT/56k models came out).
Its not a screamer, but I added 32M of memory (taking it to 36M total) and replaced the original 250M hard drive with a 2.1G drive (no problems, the ThinkPad found the geometry automatically). It is a workable, luggable machine for about a third of what a decent new laptop would have cost me.
If anyone is interested in details on how to get one of these things running, let me know. BTW, most members of the ThinkPad 355, 360, 750 & 755 families are very similar hardware wise, so the same info that works on my 355Cs will also work on a lot of those models.
Java has yet to overcome the drool factor needed to beat Visual Basic
Actually, in many of the large IT shops I am familiar with, it already has, in that VB is already considered a "legacy" programming language and new projects are generally being done in Java. While it won't happen overnight (just like all the COBOL and C++ code out there won't go away), Java is already starting to replace VB, PowerBuilder and C++ for a lot of things.
There is no way I would be reading this flame war if "SoftwareJanitor" weren't magically privileged.
I didn't ask to be 'magically privileged'. I'm not even sure what the mechanism is for getting auto-moderated up or down. Maybe there needs to be a facility that you can specifically exclude an account if you don't want to read them (maybe there already is -- I don't remember, as I haven't looked recently). Maybe there needs to be a way for those of us who are 'magically blessed' to choose to post at a lower level if we want, or maybe instead of 'auto-blessing' every post, we should get a pool of self-moderating points we can spend on posts to make us decide which ones we think are most important.
However, if you really don't want to read 'flame wars' (and this really doesn't qualify as such in the scheme of things), then you can always excercise your browser's scroll bar or your down arrow key. Nobody forces you to read on once you get to the first message in a 'flame war' thread.
Well, anonymity isn't easily legally accomplished on the Net. If one is willing to resort to illegal means, it is fairly easy. If one is willing to find a publicly accessable computer (such as a university lab, public library, etc) and use an email service that doesn't strictly check info, then it could be pretty difficult to trace, but not very convenient. This may or may not change as 'internet kiosks' become more common.
However, as I was saying, what all this really means is that the original poster is off base in thinking that anonymity on the Net is so much worse than what happens in real life.