Yes, Microstation is primarily Unix based. Unfortunately they limit themselves to the commercial Unixes. The only CAD program they offer for Linux is the crippleware Student Edition of Microstation. I have no idea how well or poorly it works.
Actually I don't think that the student edition of MicroStation is crippleware. The downsides of it are:
Support (or lack thereof)
License restrictions
Availability restrictions
People from Bentley have been asking for support getting Intergraph (their marketing partner) to let them do a commercial release for Linux, but so far they haven't gotten enough solid interest to move Intergraph. Then again, Intergraph is a solidly pro-Microsoft company.
I love linux, but cannot find an ISP that will give me the same kind of access that I can get under Windows.
What kind of access can you get for Windows but not for Linux? Even if they don't explicitly support Linux, most ISPs actually use UN*X of some sort for their services, so Linux has no trouble connecting to them. Even for those few that use proprietary systems like NT, it is almost always possible to connect with Linux, as it supports many of the proprietary protocols. Unless you live in a really backwater area, I find it difficult to believe you can't find an ISP that can give you the connectivity you need with Linux.
...then there's the other extreme
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Crap. I should have previewed... Forgot a closing tag.:-( I'd love to have a pet again (not since childhood) but it would be too cruel since I really don't have time for one at the moment. I would get a traditional dog which would require movement to the country because chaining one up I also consider unethical.
I only consider it unethical to chain up dogs for extended periods of time. For short times I don't have a problem with it, although I consider even a small enclosed dog run to be much preferable to a chain. Where I live, yards are large enough that it is feasable to have a fenced in yard and allow a dog to have considerable freedom of movement. Even at that, I have a small dog that stays indoors most of the time, which seems to work out better in town.
I'll do this when I'm older.
I guess I am the right age for it (early 30s).
Also, buying a house is also flushing money down the toilet. You just don't know it yet.
Actually, this is an area I am very well studied in, since I work for a company that is in the financial services business. While you throw a lot of money down the toilet in interest over the course of a loan, you are far better off in the long run buying a house than renting. If it is throwing money down the toilet, it is far less than renting.
The only way to come out ahead is to build a house, like my sister and husband did. It cost them 60K and is worth a cool $200,000 easy. Wait until you try to sell it.
Unlike the coasts, which have seen big ups and downs in their housing market, things are more stable around here. I expect that my house will continue to slowly rise in value over time, not too far paced off the general inflation rate. I also don't expect to sell my house for a number of years. You can come out badly if you have to move frequently, but it is less likely the longer you stay in a house. At any rate, given a few years occupancy, you at least come out less far behind buying than renting.
I keep a regular schedule, this doesn't effect me at all.
I don't like keeping a regular schedule. It is begrudging enough for me to maintain an 8-5 workday. That is one area that I'd have to say that contracting actually might have some potential benefits in flexibility. All too often in reality though, I found when I was contracting that I didn't get to exercise that because I was still dealing with companies that wanted to see people around 8-5.
This will just confirm what you've already said, but I think most people are idiots.
Well, I would agree in general, albiet likely for slightly different reasons. I also believe people have the right to be idiots if they want to. And if they are really stupid, its not worth arguing with them about it.
Materialism is the biggest waste of money ever. Of course, a materialist society is the best society to live in if you are a non materialist. Everything is cheap to me.
Again, I agree with you up to a point, but I am a bit less idealistic about things than you are. I like having a certain number of things, but I don't go for the level of extravagance that too many people do. I can often do nicely off the cast-offs of others.
It's anything but irrational. I'm an atheist, I'd be killed, trust me on this one.
I don't believe that. A friend of mine who is a militant athiest, and almost as vocal about it as you managed to live for two years in Provo, Utah without getting himself killed. Mormons may be overly zealous, but they don't strike me as the kind that are predisposed to violence. At any rate, my friend didn't like Utah, but he complained about it a lot less than Jersey City, NJ, where he lived for a year.
If you cannot exchange idea's life is boring.
For me the important thing is to find people who are worthy of exchanging ideas with.
I'm a totally different person than I was just 10 years ago (I'm still young) and I like to challenge my own beliefs. I don't believe in taboo's and do not respect them. If you cannot defend your position it is a pretty safe bet you're holding a bad opinion.
I don't have any trouble defending my opinions. If anything, I can be too good at it, something I would suspect you may run into, whether you realize it or not. Some people are just not capable of arguing logically, and they tend to 'melt-down' when their positions are threatened. I've found it isn't productive to argue with these people. I only enjoy debating with people who are of reasonably like mind, anything else is a waste of time. Since I am a permanent employee, I also have to exercise a little more care in how I deal with coworkers than a contractor has to.
Surprisingly, I "fit in" quite well, because I can discuss many topics as a result of my being brash. Pursuit of knowledge is fun, and what better way to do it than challenge assumptions?
There is a time and a place for that. As I have gotten older I've decided that it is better to pick and choose what things are appropriate to discuss. I am also reasonably comfortable enough in my opinions to no longer need to constantly challenge them.
Then let me put it this way: The things I enjoy doing in a group, a lot of other people enjoy doing to, so it's easy to get a group together to do anything. In the midwest, people seem to want to go see movies, or go to the mall, or other things which I consider boring - at least that is my experience. Nobody ski's out there, nobody hikes out there, and NOBODY hang glides out there.
You might have trouble finding people who hang glide in Florida, for example. You'd definitely have trouble finding people there who ski, unless you count water skiing. I'd dispute the hiking argument, but as you said before, you don't like hiking without mountains.
It is hard to find fun people, simple as that.
Well it is for you because your definition of 'fun' is different. You can either try to expand other people's horizons, you can try to expand your own, or you can give up and leave.
Actually, he's from Buffalo. I worked with somebody that knew the family. It was a cheap shot I admit.
Apology accepted.:-) Nobody should have to take responsibility for a wonk like that. If anyone is to blame, it is probably the army. McVeigh was probably a bit off before he went into the army, but they managed to make him into a very dangerous and disgruntled person.
Yeah, no people. That isn't my kind of place.
Well, Montana isn't my cup of tea either. It also isn't really a part of the midwest. It has more in common with the desert southwest (like New Mexico), except being very cold in the winter, than it does the midwest.
The Midwest has a disproportionate number of wacko's, I'm sorry but this is true.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one. In my experience this is not true. I also think we might have difficulty in coming to a general agreement on who was a 'wacko' and who wasn't.
The less social interaction a human being has with peers, the "wierder" they are.
I don't know if I can buy that. Some of the wierdest people I've known are nothing, if not highly socialized. Of course my time living in SF may color my view on that point.
This is partly why I discuss so many topics, I grew up in a tiny hick town and boy did I hate it. I want to understand different points of view so I move around a lot. The midwest has no unique views as far as I can tell, that's why I consider it "50's" - it's mostly the same views I grew up with and out of.
I grew up in a small midwestern college town with a population around 50,000. I now live in a town of about 300,000. My experience is that what you are saying may be true of Podunk Center, Population 300, but it is an unfair characterization of the whole region. Just because you didn't like Indianapolis is not necessarily reason to think you wouldn't like the Twin Cities or a town like Madison, WI. You might find the diversity of people in those towns could force you to re-evaluate your opinion that the midwest is entirely homogenous.
I never said anybody that didn't contract was an idiot,
Well, one could have misinterpreted what you were saying as that. My apologies if that was a mistaken interpretation.
I may have said anybody that wouldn't contract for "moral" reasons was an idiot though.
That I wouldn't and didn't argue that much. There is nothing unethical about contracting. Conversely there is nothing wrong with being a permanent employee if you know what you are getting.
Value judgements like that are incorrect because large companies do not return the favor.
Then again, unless you are a totally independant contractor, the contracting companies I've dealt with are just as morally challenged as any other company.
Also, I said the midwest sucked. I like both coasts, the entire length of it.
The company I work for has an office in Maryland about 45 minutes inland from Baltimore. I've visited there on occasion, and we regularly have people from the Maryland office here. Furthermore, several people here moved here from there and vice-versa. I don't see a lot of difference between the people there and here, or the country there or here.
Yes, and Indiana hasn't changed a bit.
If most of the country has changed in the past 20 years, it in general doesn't seem to have been for the better.
Burton will be re-elected. Nobody in his district has any sense of, well, sense. There isn't a more corrupt official in government than Burton both morally and professionally.
You may have more personal knowledge of him, or he may be getting more press of late than other politicians, but I doubt he is really that much worse than a lot of other politicians. I am more convinced all the time that they are all hypocritical scumbags.
California plates everywhere, constant talk about "those damn Californians" and the "homo's moving in", tracts of housing built in the middle of nowhere with 4x4 foot lawns. You might have to live there to notice.
Perhaps that is true. I've never heard any of my friends or relatives that live in CO complain that way though, but perhaps that is because they are 'carpet baggers' themselves. I see a surprising number of CA plates around here, despite the fact that CA is over 2000 miles away. Tract housing such as you describe is a blight on most of the country these days I think. You even see it popping up in any wooded area of the rural countryside around here.
Mormons don't take no for an answer in Utah.
I haven't found that to be the case, but perhaps in tourist areas, even the most zealous know it doesn't profit to bother the tourists.
...then there's the other extreme
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I'd love to have a pet again (not since childhood) but it would be too cruel since I really don't have time for one at the moment. I would get a traditional dog which would require movement to the country because chaining one up I also consider unethical.
I only consider it unethical to chain up dogs for extended periods of time. For short times I don't have a problem with it, although I consider even a small enclosed dog run to be much preferable to a chain. Where I live, yards are large enough that it is feasable to have a fenced in yard and allow a dog to have considerable freedom of movement. Even at that, I have a small dog that stays indoors most of the time, which seems to work out better in town.
I'll do this when I'm older.
I guess I am the right age for it (early 30s).
Also, buying a house is also flushing money down the toilet. You just don't know it yet.
Actually, this is an area I am very well studied in, since I work for a company that is in the financial services business. While you throw a lot of money down the toilet in interest over the course of a loan, you are far better off in the long run buying a house than renting. If it is throwing money down the toilet, it is far less than renting.
The only way to come out ahead is to build a house, like my sister and husband did. It cost them 60K and is worth a cool $200,000 easy. Wait until you try to sell it.
Unlike the coasts, which have seen big ups and downs in their housing market, things are more stable around here. I expect that my house will continue to slowly rise in value over time, not too far paced off the general inflation rate. I also don't expect to sell my house for a number of years. You can come out badly if you have to move frequently, but it is less likely the longer you stay in a house. At any rate, given a few years occupancy, you at least come out less far behind buying than renting.
I keep a regular schedule, this doesn't effect me at all.
I don't like keeping a regular schedule. It is begrudging enough for me to maintain an 8-5 workday. That is one area that I'd have to say that contracting actually might have some potential benefits in flexibility. All too often in reality though, I found when I was contracting that I didn't get to exercise that because I was still dealing with companies that wanted to see people around 8-5.
This will just confirm what you've already said, but I think most people are idiots.
Well, I would agree in general, albiet likely for slightly different reasons. I also believe people have the right to be idiots if they want to. And if they are really stupid, its not worth arguing with them about it.
Materialism is the biggest waste of money ever. Of course, a materialist society is the best society to live in if you are a non materialist. Everything is cheap to me.
Again, I agree with you up to a point, but I am a bit less idealistic about things than you are. I like having a certain number of things, but I don't go for the level of extravagance that too many people do. I can often do nicely off the cast-offs of others.
It's anything but irrational. I'm an atheist, I'd be killed, trust me on this one.
I don't believe that. A friend of mine who is a militant athiest, and almost as vocal about it as you managed to live for two years in Provo, Utah without getting himself killed. Mormons may be overly zealous, but they don't strike me as the kind that are predisposed to violence. At any rate, my friend didn't like Utah, but he complained about it a lot less than Jersey City, NJ, where he lived for a year.
If you cannot exchange idea's life is boring.
For me the important thing is to find people who are worthy of exchanging ideas with.
I'm a totally different person than I was just 10 years ago (I'm still young) and I like to challenge my own beliefs. I don't believe in taboo's and do not respect them. If you cannot defend your position it is a pretty safe bet you're holding a bad opinion.
I don't have any trouble defending my opinions. If anything, I can be too good at it, something I would suspect you may run into, whether you realize it or not. Some people are just not capable of arguing logically, and they tend to 'melt-down' when their positions are threatened. I've found it isn't productive to argue with these people. I only enjoy debating with people who are of reasonably like mind, anything else is a waste of time. Since I am a permanent employee, I also have to exercise a little more care in how I deal with coworkers than a contractor has to.
Surprisingly, I "fit in" quite well, because I can discuss many topics as a result of my being brash. Pursuit of knowledge is fun, and what better way to do it than challenge assumptions?
There is a time and a place for that. As I have gotten older I've decided that it is better to pick and choose what things are appropriate to discuss. I am also reasonably comfortable enough in my opinions to no longer need to constantly challenge them.
Then let me put it this way: The things I enjoy doing in a group, a lot of other people enjoy doing to, so it's easy to get a group together to do anything. In the midwest, people seem to want to go see movies, or go to the mall, or other things which I consider boring - at least that is my experience. Nobody ski's out there, nobody hikes out there, and NOBODY hang glides out there.
You might have trouble finding people who hang glide in Florida, for example. You'd definitely have trouble finding people there who ski, unless you count water skiing. I'd dispute the hiking argument, but as you said before, you don't like hiking without mountains.
It is hard to find fun people, simple as that.
Well it is for you because your definition of 'fun' is different. You can either try to expand other people's horizons, you can try to expand your own, or you can give up and leave.
Actually, he's from Buffalo. I worked with somebody that knew the family. It was a cheap shot I admit.
Apology accepted.:-) Nobody should have to take responsibility for a wonk like that. If anyone is to blame, it is probably the army. McVeigh was probably a bit off before he went into the army, but they managed to make him into a very dangerous and disgruntled person.
Yeah, no people. That isn't my kind of place.
Well, Montana isn't my cup of tea either. It also isn't really a part of the midwest. It has more in common with the desert southwest (like New Mexico), except being very cold in the winter, than it does the midwest.
The Midwest has a disproportionate number of wacko's, I'm sorry but this is true.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one. In my experience this is not true. I also think we might have difficulty in coming to a general agreement on who was a 'wacko' and who wasn't.
The less social interaction a human being has with peers, the "wierder" they are.
I don't know if I can buy that. Some of the wierdest people I've known are nothing, if not highly socialized. Of course my time living in SF may color my view on that point.
This is partly why I discuss so many topics, I grew up in a tiny hick town and boy did I hate it. I want to understand different points of view so I move around a lot. The midwest has no unique views as far as I can tell, that's why I consider it "50's" - it's mostly the same views I grew up with and out of.
I grew up in a small midwestern college town with a population around 50,000. I now live in a town of about 300,000. My experience is that what you are saying may be true of Podunk Center, Population 300, but it is an unfair characterization of the whole region. Just because you didn't like Indianapolis is not necessarily reason to think you wouldn't like the Twin Cities or a town like Madison, WI. You might find the diversity of people in those towns could force you to re-evaluate your opinion that the midwest is entirely homogenous.
I never said anybody that didn't contract was an idiot,
Well, one could have misinterpreted what you were saying as that. My apologies if that was a mistaken interpretation.
I may have said anybody that wouldn't contract for "moral" reasons was an idiot though.
That I wouldn't and didn't argue that much. There is nothing unethical about contracting. Conversely there is nothing wrong with being a permanent employee if you know what you are getting.
Value judgements like that are incorrect because large companies do not return the favor.
Then again, unless you are a totally independant contractor, the contracting companies I've dealt with are just as morally challenged as any other company.
Also, I said the midwest sucked. I like both coasts, the entire length of it.
The company I work for has an office in Maryland about 45 minutes inland from Baltimore. I've visited there on occasion, and we regularly have people from the Maryland office here. Furthermore, several people here moved here from there and vice-versa. I don't see a lot of difference between the people there and here, or the country there or here.
Yes, and Indiana hasn't changed a bit.
If most of the country has changed in the past 20 years, it in general doesn't seem to have been for the better.
Burton will be re-elected. Nobody in his district has any sense of, well, sense. There isn't a more corrupt official in government than Burton both morally and professionally.
You may have more personal knowledge of him, or he may be getting more press of late than other politicians, but I doubt he is really that much worse than a lot of other politicians. I am more convinced all the time that they are all hypocritical scumbags.
California plates everywhere, constant talk about "those damn Californians" and the "homo's moving in", tracts of housing built in the middle of nowhere with 4x4 foot lawns. You might have to live there to notice.
Perhaps that is true. I've never heard any of my friends or relatives that live in CO complain that way though, but perhaps that is because they are 'carpet baggers' themselves. I see a surprising number of CA plates around here, despite the fact that CA is over 2000 miles away. Tract housing such as you describe is a blight on most of the country these days I think. You even see it popping up in any wooded area of the rural countryside around here.
Mormons don't take no for an answer in Utah.
I haven't found that to be the case, but perhaps in tourist areas, even the most zealous know it doesn't profit to bother the tourists.
...then there's the other extreme
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I got rid of my car (although I plan to buy a "new" $1,500 car next week), live in a studio,
I could never go back to sharing walls with other people. I like the room that a real house offers. I like to have pets, and that just isn't feasable in most apartment situations. Not to mention that, but an apartment big enough for two people plus pets would probably cost as much as my house payment. Besides that, renting is like flushing your money down the toilet. You build equity for your landlord instead of for yourself.
and commute by train at 7 dollars a day.
I don't like being dictated when I can come and go. I like my 15 minute commute from my door to the office door.
My monthy expenses total about $1,500.
Most people can't live like you. If I lived in Boston, something comparable to my modest house would likely have a payment of around $1,200. When I lived in SF, you could barely get a studio or efficiency apartment for $1,200 a month.
Probably. I prefer to get out of the company when they aren't doing anything rther than being chained to a desk playing "let's make a project that we will never build" or "hey you, do this useless task".
I've seen other people have those sorts of frustrations, but I have rarely run into them myself. If anything, I always seem to have more than enough to do. The reason for my nick 'Software Janitor' is I am the guy who gets brought in to 'clean up' after projects who had staff or contractors bail on, or whatever.
I tried full time, I hated it.
I tried contracting, and hated it. My whole original point was that contracting is not for everyone. It is also a valid point that neither is full time employment.
It true you could probably make as much as I do, but I've only been working for 4 years. I expect I'll be making more soon.
I've been working for more than 10 years. I've seen my income more than quadruple in that time.
Cars, boats, and motorcycles aren't materialistic or luxury? You have to be kidding.
I have two cars and a pickup, none of which are extravagant. One of the cars is relatively new (and being traded in on a new one next month), but is what I would consider basic transportation (I.E., it is an under $25k car in this day and age). The newer car is pretty much for the wife. My pickup is also pretty much basic transportation, with the side of being able to haul around junk on occasion. It was a reasonably priced used vehicle and its not a 4x4 or anything fancy. My other car is an early 70's muscle car which is my hot-rod fun car. But its got more sweat equity in it than $$$
I decent car (say a AR Spider rag top from the 60's) will run you 10 K,
You can buy or build a car that is fun for a lot less than that, especially if you place the emphasis on functionality rather than appearances. For someone who claims not to be materialistic, you seem to have champaign and caviar taste when it comes to any material items.
a boat 10K,
You can buy a decent used boat for a lot less than that. I don't have a boat at the moment, but I have friends and relatives that do (my parents have a sailboat).
and a decent cycle at least 5K.
My motorcycle is a '78 Honda CB550. It cost me a lot less than $5K. Its nothing fancy, but it works, and its fun. Actually for the most part I prefer off-road riding, for which decent bikes are far less expensive than street bikes. On one point having a motorcyle at all for me is somewhat of a luxury - because I don't use if for commuting or anything like that. But I don't consider the cycle I have any more of a luxury than owning a television or a stereo, certainly a lot of people spend more on electronics than I did on my motorcycle. For that matter, I spent about as much on a bicyle as I did on my motorcycle.
That's 25 grand. Of course your wife is more materialistic, it's the nature of woman.
Don't I know it.:-(
3K is 3K no matter how much money you make.
I know too much about Joseph Smith ever to feel comfortable in Utah.
Well, I don't know that I would want to live in Utah either, but an irrational fear or loathing of Mormons wouldn't stop me from taking a skiing vacation there. Religion shouldn't make much of an impact in a ski lodge.
I lived in Colorado for 6 months. I once got a woman to quit her job while discussing evolution versus creation "theory". She was a religious fruit.
It seems like your rather abrasive style may be more responsible for your inability to fit in than anything else. Frankly, I just don't discuss religion with coworkers. And I've found that if you don't mention it, in general most people around here won't either. In most cases even the occasional religious nut can be brushed off once and ignored. I just don't see much point in being confrontational about that sort of thing. At any rate, I actually ran into a lot more religious fruitcakes when I lived in SF than I do out here in the midwest.
Hiking and skiing are not usually solitary activities for me, although I do occasionally do them alone.
Hmmm... perhaps solitary is not the right word. I meant that they are things that don't necessarily require interaction with other people. For the most part, they are things that if done with other people you can usually select the people with whom you choose to participate. There are many other activities that require you to interact with a lot more people.
Timithy McVeigh's favorite place?
Actually, as far as I know, he spent as much of his time in the south or southwest (Oklahoma and Texas) as in the midwest. At any rate, one wonk like McVeigh is certainly not representative of the midwest any more than Willie Horton is representative of Boston. Throwing out the name of one of the most heinous mass murderers of our time as if he was the poster boy for the whole midwest doesn't seem to me to be a constructive way to engage in conversation.
The Midwest is the land of extremists.
Extremists? I don't think that is a fair statement at all. For the most part, I've found most midwesterners to be fairly moderate. I certainly ran into a lot more extremist cranks when on the coasts or in the deep south than I have in the past few years.
Why not just tell me to go to Montana.
Actually there are so few people in Montana that you can literally drive for hours without running into anyone, let alone an extremist. Most people I have met from Montana are not really much different than anywhere else. The press tends to make them out to be all wackos because the only time they notice Montana or Wyoming at all is when something bad happens there.
Whose insulting?
Well, you started out by implying that anyone who wasn't working as a contractor was some kind of an idiot. Then you proceeded to more or less say that just about everywhere but the northeast sucks...
I tried the midwest and I tried to make it work. Indiana is the current HQ for the KKK, birthplace of Jim Jones and his church and is
Hasn't Jim Jones been dead for over 20 years?
where Representative Dan Burton is from.
Well, I don't much like Ted Kennedy or Charles Schumer, but you don't see me condemning the whole northest just because of them.
When I explore a place, I explore everything about it. Chicago is a city of people trying to emulate NYC right down to the gangs. Colorado is a war between the natives and all the people that moved from California.
I never got that impression when I was there, but perhaps that might be because I was there from the midwest rather than from CA at the time.
Utah is a bunch of lunatics and if you want me to elaborate I will since I've studied the fruitcake that started the religion.
I really don't care that much about religion. At least mormons will generally take no for an answer when they are out and about, unlike some other groups who aren't nearly so polite.
You might consider this insulting, but it's not as if I haven't gone there and saw for myself. None of the places are pleasant to live.
For you this might be true. But it is a personal opinion, and there is no need to be condescending to everyone who might happen to feel differently.
The good news is, since 1945, a few things happened. Ever heard of EEC? Drive to a bookstore and get yourself a history book. Might be useful!
Eh? WWII was only one incident in centuries of conflict between the germans and french. The EEC doesn't do anything to change people's feelings when it comes to pride in their heritage, etc. Besides that, my relatives left europe in the late 1800's, so that sort of thing kinda got frozen at that point.
I think every "first world" country suffers from xenophobism. By far, the most xenophobic culture is the American one. Try to convince one american that a good non-US product is better then a crappy US product...
Bullpuckey. So many americans have the attitude that any product with a japanese brand name is superior to any american product it is not funny. Even when the product is also sold with an american brand, the market favors the japanese branded version of the product. When studies were done by Chrysler on this subject a few years ago, they found that for identical model cars with the nameplates visible, testers overwhelmingly preferred the japanese branded cars. For tests where the nameplates obscured, testers preferred the american branded cars by a small margin. These days most japanese branded electronics isn't even made in Japan. It is funny to look on the back of a product with a big japanese brand name and see "Hecho En Mexico".
Its not just japanese xenophilia which afflicts a lot of americans, the same thing seems to occur with german products like BMW and Mercedes, and products of other northern european countries such as the U.K. and Sweden.
...then there's the other extreme
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I did some work with Diba and Oracle, and that wasn't my experience. You must have blown a lot of money.
Actually I had very little money when I lived in CA. I am doing a lot better now but I still live fairly frugally even now. The differences in cost of living in SF versus the midwest are pretty staggering, especially in two areas, the cost of housing and vehicular costs. For what a 700sq foot 2br bugalow in South San Francisco in "fixer-upper" condition sells for, you can buy a new construction 3500sq ft house in one of the best suburbs around here. Not only do cars cost more in California, so does insurance (its about double) and you have to have your car inspected and smog checked twice a year -- staying in compliance usually costs hundreds if not thousands a year. We have no inspection or smog check here ever, we do auto registration by mail. A lot of the things that are more expensive in CA than the midwest are largely unavoidable. You have to have a place to live, you have to have transportation. You have to eat. You have to pay taxes. It is actually the luxury items in CA that aren't really all that much more expensive than the midwest. At any rate, if I wanted to do contracting, I could probably make pretty nearly as much out here in the midwest as you do in Boston, and assuming I spent my money the same as you do, I should have more money left over given the differences in the cost of living. I've done contracting in the past, and I didn't particularly like it. It certainly isn't for everyone.
It all depends on whether you are a materialist or not. I'm not. I don't need nice things, I need to do things.
I am not very materialistic, or at least not into expensive luxury items. Things I enjoy doing just don't seem to rely as much on the outside terrain as yours. I enjoy outdoor things like motorsports (cars, boats and motorcycles), which while somewhat weather dependant, are possible in just about all of the country. I also don't spend an excessive amount on any of those things, although it is certainly possible to do so. Unfortunately, my wife is more of a materialist than I am, although her big weakness is mostly in travel.
A decent ultralight cost about 10K, a decent hang glider costs 3K. Being towed up, and climbing a mountain are entirely different.
Then again, with the kind of money you seem to have, the difference between $3k and $10k seems pretty insignificant.
I grew up about 1/2 mile away from a small ski tow and started skiing at 2 years old. I've definately graduated from the bunny hills.
I've never been much of a skiier, personally. I always preferred snowmobiles.
Colorado was fun when I stayed there. I never skied corn snow before, it was remarkably easy to any hill under those conditions - fun too. Most of the Midwest is too flat to do anything except cross country, which isn't bad, but not the end all be all of skiing. I like speed.
Colorado and Utah are very good for skiing, but I wouldn't actually consider them in the midwest, but rather the west.
Unless there is a mountain to run up there isn't any point in my opinion. I grew up in the Adirondacks. If you go far enough west it isn't too bad (like Colorado) except for the culture. In Colorado it was either smoke pot from 9 to 5 and ski or shove a stick up your ass and be ultra conservative.
Well, it doesn't sound like you gave Colorado much of a chance. I've spent enough time there to find that the people there aren't that much different than anywhere else. You don't really get a good feel for what people are really like in a short vacation or if you spend most of your time in touristy areas. At any rate, most of the things you seem to enjoy doing are largely solitary activities, so what difference does culture make?
You need rapids, and that comes with mountains again.
It still safer to bike to San Fransisco than it is to bike in the country in Indiana. I was hit twice in Indiana by very stupid drivers. Another guy pointed a shotgun at my head as he drove by.
Try bicycling in Oakland or the South of Market area of SF. I'd feel much safer in rural Indiana than either of those two areas. Of course leather clad, long haired and goateed people like myself aren't well liked by either the boys'n'da'hood types or rednecks either one. Surprisingly, I have little trouble fitting in around here, despite the fact that I might look a little out of place to a lot of people.
Whatever, it doesn't change the validity of my statements.
That is a matter of opinion. I find your statements to be clouded by an air of intolerance which makes them seem less valid than they might otherwise. While you complain about conservativeness of hicks, you seem unwilling to take the time to explore anything that isn't exactly what you are used to or quite up to your self imposed standards. I can find ways to amuse myself just about anywhere I might be. While you certainly have a right to your opinions and standards, I don't see your need to look down on or insult everyone who doesn't share them.
Again it all comes down to how much you squirrel away. I know plenty of people that make more than I do that are 10's of thousands of dollars in debt. They are idiots in my opinion also known as yuppies. They exist everywhere here on the East Coast especially in Boston. I buy their road bikes after they discover it actually takes work to pedal.
Believe it or not, yuppies even exist in the midwest, at least in the suburbs.
(Yes, I'm a Windows vendor looking to port to Linux, one of 1000's more to come, I am sure).
You might also check out Willows which produces Twin, which is a commercial (albiet free in some circumstances) product similar to Winelib. It includes an implementation of the Windows APIs and MFC. I'd like to see Winelib be successful in the long run, but in the short run, Willows' product may be a better fit for you.
...then there's the other extreme
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Dude. I lived in Indiana where I made 70K. It's not even comparable. If you think making 65K in Indiana or some other Midwest hicktown is even comparable to making about twice that in Boston, fine. But it isn't. I was able to save 30K a year if I really really worked at it, here I can save 50K a year without effort.
Well, I don't know about Boston, but I can tell you from experience that the SF bay area versus the midwest in the salary comparators is pretty close to accurate.
You can't hang glide in the Midwest,
Why not? Most of the midwest is flat enough that it isn't ideal, but its far from impossible. Ultralights are actually fairly popular around here.
you can't ski in the Midwest,
This isn't at all true. There are numerous ski facilities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. You must be basing your opinion about the whole midwest based on Indiana.
you can't hike in the Midwest,
Say what? You have got to be kidding. There are tons of hiking trails throughout the area where I live. You can hike anywhere.
you can't kayak in the Midwest
This is silly. We've got lakes and rivers. Kayaking and canoeing is very doable throughout most of the midwest. Minnesota, for example, probably has more opportunities for water sports than just about any other state.
and wearing biking shorts in about 50% of the Midwest
About 50%. Well, where I live must be part of the other 50% then.
is equivalent to wearing a sign that says "I'm a flaming homosexual queen, please blow my head off you fucking stupid inbred hicks" so biking isn't too much fun in the Midwest either.
One of the more well known summer events around here is an annual bike ride across the state that is sponsored by one of the bigger newspapers. Additionally there are numerous bike trails throughout the area. Biking as a recreational sport is not uncommon here.
The only thing to do in the Midwest is to drink, fuck, watch tv, and watch movies and you can do those anywhere.
The more you talk, the more I remember about why I don't care for the northeast. I can deal a lot more with dumb hicks than with brash, arrogant east coasters.
To each his own I guess, but don't believe the salary comparisons. Making $3,000 a year in Siberia is probably equivalent to making $300,000 a year in the United States but I'm not going to move there. It's not what you make, it's not what you spend, it's what you save, and I save $800 a week.
Well, I wouldn't put a huge amount of faith in salary comparisons either, but they can't be that far off either. As I said, comparing between SF and the midwest they are not far off. What you save is obviously directly related to what you make and what you spend.
Hotmail runs a combination of Solaris and FreeBSD. They attempted a (mandated by MS) switch to NT soon after they were bought out by MS. After a couple of days of problems, and despite the best efforts of both the Hotmail and MS senior staffs, they switched back to Solaris and FreeBSD and have not attempted a switch again. This was a major black mark on MS's records, and one that has come back to haunt them every time they want to play in the enterprise world. NT just isn't capable of handling high demand, high volume applications. Worse than that, it appears that the reason why is due to fundamental design flaws down to the lowest levels of the kernel design.
NT5/W2K is supposed to be an almost complete rewrite, so it may improve a little, but I personally find it hard to believe that they can overcome NT's scalability and performance problems without seriously compromising backward compatibility with previous versions.
...then there's the other extreme
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No, yes, no, about $800/month - Boston. Boston rules. I love Boston.
Well, I went and checked on a salary comparator on the web, and according to that, $124,000 in Boston is only about $65,000 where I live after you figure for the differences of paying health insurance and office ezpenses. For me, I like the deal I have better, but to each his own. Where you like to live is largely personal preferances, personally, I don't like the northeast much. The weather is just about as bad as the midwest and on average the people seem much more rude and arrogant. I can put up with hicks better. I wouldn't mind moving back to the SF bay area where I used to live, but my wife absolutely refuses to consider anywhere in California. I've never been to Indianapolis, but I have no complaints about the food here. There are plenty of things to do in my local area if you are over 21 and willing to look for them. The Twin Cities, Kansas City and Chicago are within driving distance and if you can't find anything you like to do in those towns, I truly pity you -- you must not like much. The state I live consistantly has amongst the top 10 best public schools in the country, albiet being long past college age and having no kids I don't care that much any more. Its not perfect where I live, but it isn't bad. When I retire, I am going to where it is warm, probably Florida or Nevada.
...then there's the other extreme
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As a consultant all I can say is:
"I make $124,000 a year"
So who cares what you think? You can be fucked by your employer, or you can fuck your employer. It's your choice.
My questions would be:
Do you pay your own 15% self employment tax?
Do you pay your own medical/dental insurance?
Do you pay your own office expenses?
What is the cost of living where you live?
If the answers to two or more of the first three are yes, and the answer to the last is something comparable to the SF bay area, then chances are you are effectively making a lot less than I do as a salaried employee out here in the midwest. Just raw salary numbers are not that useful without knowing all the facts...
If you haven't already, try getting a gel-filled wrist rest. I was having troubles a while back, and even the foam wrist rests (which did help some) didn't do the trick. I got a gel-filled rest and haven't had any trouble since, and I am behind a keyboard 8 hours a day at work and a couple hours at home.
I really hate the 'warped' keyboards. Ugly, heavy and bulky. If you must get one, at least get one of the clones and not the Microsoft 'Natural' keyboard. Microsoft doesn't deserve your money.
Voice over IP will hurt the Long distance providers more than it would Baby Bells, who usually offer unlimited local calling, and small change for regional calls
"Small change" for regional calls my @$$!!! I am stuck with US Worst, and their rates to call my parents or mother in law who live within 50 miles of me (in the same area code) are higher than what it costs me to call California with AT&T. Nonlocal intrastate calls are usually the highest domestic rate there is.
Hi. My name's Leo, and I like Word. ("Hi, Leo.")
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I regret to admit that I like Microsoft Word (after you turn off all the idiot "wizards" and "helpers" and that fscking paperclip!). The last version of Word I really liked was Word 5.1a for the Mac.
I find it particularly distressing that for most purposes, I find MS Word to have gotten worse rather than better in the past two major versions. Word 97 seems slower and less useable than Word 95 which was worse than Word 6.x.
Word is, of course, shoddy, but it's damn useful.
Urk. Well, it is better than nothing I suppose. I have not tried any of the available office software for Linux.
You probably should. Either StarOffice or ApplixOffice's word processors are quite adequate substitutes for MS Word for most purposes. Both of them even bear more than a passing cosmetic resemblance to MS-Word. I also like the Word Perfect that is available for Linux.
I tried LyX about two years ago, but found it a bit too primitive.
You might also check out other free stuff like Maxwell. The KDE (KOffice) and Gnome projects also both look like they will eventually produce usable office suites.
So I do most of my writing in (brace yourself) 'vi'.
Well, I still use 'vi' for a lot of things. But for general writing I tend to use a word processor.
If Word were to become available for Linux, I would probably buy it.
Yuck. I wouldn't. If for no other reason than Bill doesn't deserve my money. But seriously though, I wouldn't use it even if it was free. As I said before, Applix Office and StarOffice are really quite decent, especially for the money.
...and it would have been nice if the NT part of the graphs had been at the opposite side from Linux. So that amount of growth of Linux could have been more easily compared to NTs.
Very true. Just for my own comparison purposes, I snagged the image, then cut and pasted the parts of each graph to move the Linux and UNIX segments together, and aligned the two graphs next to each other along the boundary between UNIX/Linux and NT. That makes the graphs a whole lot more interesting to compare. Looking at that it is clear that NT's market share remained relatively flat, and most of Linux's growth in market share has come at the expense of Netware and Other rather than from UNIX, as some might suggest.
I would have greatly preferred if they had put Linux and UNIX next to each other on the graphs. I think they intentionally seperate them to make NT look stronger than it is because if people were to group Linux and UNIX together as they naturally will, it would show the combined total to be around the same size as NT.
What surprises me is the number these users that have bought commerical systems. Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like high end users that use Linux and belive in it strongly enough to hold a demonstration would be the people most likely to have built their own computers?
I suspect that may have something to do with why there were only a hundred or so protesters around the U.S. People like me who either build their own machines from parts (at least partially to avoid the Microsoft tax), purchase used machines sans software or buy from a Linux specific hardware vendor are less likely to be able to or as greatly motivated to participate in events like Refund Day.
Of course the biggest reasons I wasn't there were that the nearest Microsoft office to me (the one in the Twin Cities) is a 4.5-5 hour drive, and Refund Day was held on a workday for me. If I still lived in the Bay Area and had President's day off, I probably would have turned out just for curiosities sake.
internal modems _do_ use the computers' uarts. if you've ever written a low-level serial driver you'll know this.
Wrong. Internal modems supply their own UART, usually a 16550A equivalent of some sort. You can use an internal modem with a motherboard with no on-board UARTs and no add-in serial card. The only exception to this is the dread "Winmodem", which doesn't have, nor use a UART, but rather a "bit banger" approach. Avoid the "Winmodems" at all costs, even for Windows use they stink, because they steal processor power to do things real modems do in hardware.
Actually, what I do is use setserial in my rc.local to set the 38400 speed (spd_vhi) on the UART to be 115K, then use pppd to select 38400, which really then gives me 115K. I dunno if this is the best way to do it, but it sure works fine.
This is incredibly good news. The one company that has as much mind share amongst PHBs as Microsoft is IBM. I also like their multivendor plans. That will make things a much easier sell to management.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I don't think that the student edition of MicroStation is crippleware. The downsides of it are:
People from Bentley have been asking for support getting Intergraph (their marketing partner) to let them do a commercial release for Linux, but so far they haven't gotten enough solid interest to move Intergraph. Then again, Intergraph is a solidly pro-Microsoft company.
I love linux, but cannot find an ISP that will give me the same kind of access that I can get under Windows.
What kind of access can you get for Windows but not for Linux? Even if they don't explicitly support Linux, most ISPs actually use UN*X of some sort for their services, so Linux has no trouble connecting to them. Even for those few that use proprietary systems like NT, it is almost always possible to connect with Linux, as it supports many of the proprietary protocols. Unless you live in a really backwater area, I find it difficult to believe you can't find an ISP that can give you the connectivity you need with Linux.
Crap. I should have previewed... Forgot a closing tag. :-( I'd love to have a pet again (not since childhood) but it would be too cruel since I really don't have time for one at the moment. I would get a traditional dog which would require movement to the country because chaining one up I also consider unethical.
:-) Nobody should have to take responsibility for a wonk like that. If anyone is to blame, it is probably the army. McVeigh was probably a bit off before he went into the army, but they managed to make him into a very dangerous and disgruntled person.
I only consider it unethical to chain up dogs for extended periods of time. For short times I don't have a problem with it, although I consider even a small enclosed dog run to be much preferable to a chain. Where I live, yards are large enough that it is feasable to have a fenced in yard and allow a dog to have considerable freedom of movement. Even at that, I have a small dog that stays indoors most of the time, which seems to work out better in town.
I'll do this when I'm older.
I guess I am the right age for it (early 30s).
Also, buying a house is also flushing money down the toilet. You just don't know it yet.
Actually, this is an area I am very well studied in, since I work for a company that is in the financial services business. While you throw a lot of money down the toilet in interest over the course of a loan, you are far better off in the long run buying a house than renting. If it is throwing money down the toilet, it is far less than renting.
The only way to come out ahead is to build a house, like my sister and husband did. It cost them 60K and is worth a cool $200,000 easy. Wait until you try to sell it.
Unlike the coasts, which have seen big ups and downs in their housing market, things are more stable around here. I expect that my house will continue to slowly rise in value over time, not too far paced off the general inflation rate. I also don't expect to sell my house for a number of years. You can come out badly if you have to move frequently, but it is less likely the longer you stay in a house. At any rate, given a few years occupancy, you at least come out less far behind buying than renting.
I keep a regular schedule, this doesn't effect me at all.
I don't like keeping a regular schedule. It is begrudging enough for me to maintain an 8-5 workday. That is one area that I'd have to say that contracting actually might have some potential benefits in flexibility. All too often in reality though, I found when I was contracting that I didn't get to exercise that because I was still dealing with companies that wanted to see people around 8-5.
This will just confirm what you've already said, but I think most people are idiots.
Well, I would agree in general, albiet likely for slightly different reasons. I also believe people have the right to be idiots if they want to. And if they are really stupid, its not worth arguing with them about it.
Materialism is the biggest waste of money ever. Of course, a materialist society is the best society to live in if you are a non materialist. Everything is cheap to me.
Again, I agree with you up to a point, but I am a bit less idealistic about things than you are. I like having a certain number of things, but I don't go for the level of extravagance that too many people do. I can often do nicely off the cast-offs of others.
It's anything but irrational. I'm an atheist, I'd be killed, trust me on this one.
I don't believe that. A friend of mine who is a militant athiest, and almost as vocal about it as you managed to live for two years in Provo, Utah without getting himself killed. Mormons may be overly zealous, but they don't strike me as the kind that are predisposed to violence. At any rate, my friend didn't like Utah, but he complained about it a lot less than Jersey City, NJ, where he lived for a year.
If you cannot exchange idea's life is boring.
For me the important thing is to find people who are worthy of exchanging ideas with.
I'm a totally different person than I was just 10 years ago (I'm still young) and I like to challenge my own beliefs. I don't believe in taboo's and do not respect them. If you cannot defend your position it is a pretty safe bet you're holding a bad opinion.
I don't have any trouble defending my opinions. If anything, I can be too good at it, something I would suspect you may run into, whether you realize it or not. Some people are just not capable of arguing logically, and they tend to 'melt-down' when their positions are threatened. I've found it isn't productive to argue with these people. I only enjoy debating with people who are of reasonably like mind, anything else is a waste of time.
Since I am a permanent employee, I also have to exercise a little more care in how I deal with coworkers than a contractor has to.
Surprisingly, I "fit in" quite well, because I can discuss many topics as a result of my being brash. Pursuit of knowledge is fun, and what better way to do it than challenge assumptions?
There is a time and a place for that. As I have gotten older I've decided that it is better to pick and choose what things are appropriate to discuss. I am also reasonably comfortable enough in my opinions to no longer need to constantly challenge them.
Then let me put it this way: The things I enjoy doing in a group, a lot of other people enjoy doing to, so it's easy to get a group together to do anything. In the midwest, people seem to want to go see movies, or go to the mall, or other things which I consider boring - at least that is my experience. Nobody ski's out there, nobody hikes out there, and NOBODY hang glides out there.
You might have trouble finding people who hang glide in Florida, for example. You'd definitely have trouble finding people there who ski, unless you count water skiing. I'd dispute the hiking argument, but as you said before, you don't like hiking without mountains.
It is hard to find fun people, simple as that.
Well it is for you because your definition of 'fun' is different. You can either try to expand other people's horizons, you can try to expand your own, or you can give up and leave.
Actually, he's from Buffalo. I worked with somebody that knew the family. It was a cheap shot I admit.
Apology accepted.
Yeah, no people. That isn't my kind of place.
Well, Montana isn't my cup of tea either. It also isn't really a part of the midwest. It has more in common with the desert southwest (like New Mexico), except being very cold in the winter, than it does the midwest.
The Midwest has a disproportionate number of wacko's, I'm sorry but this is true.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one. In my experience this is not true. I also think we might have difficulty in coming to a general agreement on who was a 'wacko' and who wasn't.
The less social interaction a human being has with peers, the "wierder" they are.
I don't know if I can buy that. Some of the wierdest people I've known are nothing, if not highly socialized. Of course my time living in SF may color my view on that point.
This is partly why I discuss so many topics, I grew up in a tiny hick town and boy did I hate it. I want to understand different points of view so I move around a lot. The midwest has no unique views as far as I can tell, that's why I consider it "50's" - it's mostly the same views I grew up with and out of.
I grew up in a small midwestern college town with a population around 50,000. I now live in a town of about 300,000. My experience is that what you are saying may be true of Podunk Center, Population 300, but it is an unfair characterization of the whole region. Just because you didn't like Indianapolis is not necessarily reason to think you wouldn't like the Twin Cities or a town like Madison, WI. You might find the diversity of people in those towns could force you to re-evaluate your opinion that the midwest is entirely homogenous.
I never said anybody that didn't contract was an idiot,
Well, one could have misinterpreted what you were saying as that. My apologies if that was a mistaken interpretation.
I may have said anybody that wouldn't contract for "moral" reasons was an idiot though.
That I wouldn't and didn't argue that much. There is nothing unethical about contracting. Conversely there is nothing wrong with being a permanent employee if you know what you are getting.
Value judgements like that are incorrect because large companies do not return the favor.
Then again, unless you are a totally independant contractor, the contracting companies I've dealt with are just as morally challenged as any other company.
Also, I said the midwest sucked. I like both coasts, the entire length of it.
The company I work for has an office in Maryland about 45 minutes inland from Baltimore. I've visited there on occasion, and we regularly have people from the Maryland office here. Furthermore, several people here moved here from there and vice-versa. I don't see a lot of difference between the people there and here, or the country there or here.
Yes, and Indiana hasn't changed a bit.
If most of the country has changed in the past 20 years, it in general doesn't seem to have been for the better.
Burton will be re-elected. Nobody in his district has any sense of, well, sense. There isn't a more corrupt official in government than Burton both morally and professionally.
You may have more personal knowledge of him, or he may be getting more press of late than other politicians, but I doubt he is really that much worse than a lot of other politicians. I am more convinced all the time that they are all hypocritical scumbags.
California plates everywhere, constant talk about "those damn Californians" and the "homo's moving in", tracts of housing built in the middle of nowhere with 4x4 foot lawns. You might have to live there to notice.
Perhaps that is true. I've never heard any of my friends or relatives that live in CO complain that way though, but perhaps that is because they are 'carpet baggers' themselves. I see a surprising number of CA plates around here, despite the fact that CA is over 2000 miles away. Tract housing such as you describe is a blight on most of the country these days I think. You even see it popping up in any wooded area of the rural countryside around here.
Mormons don't take no for an answer in Utah.
I haven't found that to be the case, but perhaps in tourist areas, even the most zealous know it doesn't profit to bother the tourists.
I'd love to have a pet again (not since childhood) but it would be too cruel since I really don't have time for one at the moment. I would get a traditional dog which would require movement to the country because chaining one up I also consider unethical.
:-) Nobody should have to take responsibility for a wonk like that. If anyone is to blame, it is probably the army. McVeigh was probably a bit off before he went into the army, but they managed to make him into a very dangerous and disgruntled person.
I only consider it unethical to chain up dogs for extended periods of time. For short times I don't have a problem with it, although I consider even a small enclosed dog run to be much preferable to a chain. Where I live, yards are large enough that it is feasable to have a fenced in yard and allow a dog to have considerable freedom of movement. Even at that, I have a small dog that stays indoors most of the time, which seems to work out better in town.
I'll do this when I'm older.
I guess I am the right age for it (early 30s).
Also, buying a house is also flushing money down the toilet. You just don't know it yet.
Actually, this is an area I am very well studied in, since I work for a company that is in the financial services business. While you throw a lot of money down the toilet in interest over the course of a loan, you are far better off in the long run buying a house than renting. If it is throwing money down the toilet, it is far less than renting.
The only way to come out ahead is to build a house, like my sister and husband did. It cost them 60K and is worth a cool $200,000 easy. Wait until you try to sell it.
Unlike the coasts, which have seen big ups and downs in their housing market, things are more stable around here. I expect that my house will continue to slowly rise in value over time, not too far paced off the general inflation rate. I also don't expect to sell my house for a number of years. You can come out badly if you have to move frequently, but it is less likely the longer you stay in a house. At any rate, given a few years occupancy, you at least come out less far behind buying than renting.
I keep a regular schedule, this doesn't effect me at all.
I don't like keeping a regular schedule. It is begrudging enough for me to maintain an 8-5 workday. That is one area that I'd have to say that contracting actually might have some potential benefits in flexibility. All too often in reality though, I found when I was contracting that I didn't get to exercise that because I was still dealing with companies that wanted to see people around 8-5.
This will just confirm what you've already said, but I think most people are idiots.
Well, I would agree in general, albiet likely for slightly different reasons. I also believe people have the right to be idiots if they want to. And if they are really stupid, its not worth arguing with them about it.
Materialism is the biggest waste of money ever. Of course, a materialist society is the best society to live in if you are a non materialist. Everything is cheap to me.
Again, I agree with you up to a point, but I am a bit less idealistic about things than you are. I like having a certain number of things, but I don't go for the level of extravagance that too many people do. I can often do nicely off the cast-offs of others.
It's anything but irrational. I'm an atheist, I'd be killed, trust me on this one.
I don't believe that. A friend of mine who is a militant athiest, and almost as vocal about it as you managed to live for two years in Provo, Utah without getting himself killed. Mormons may be overly zealous, but they don't strike me as the kind that are predisposed to violence. At any rate, my friend didn't like Utah, but he complained about it a lot less than Jersey City, NJ, where he lived for a year.
If you cannot exchange idea's life is boring.
For me the important thing is to find people who are worthy of exchanging ideas with.
I'm a totally different person than I was just 10 years ago (I'm still young) and I like to challenge my own beliefs. I don't believe in taboo's and do not respect them. If you cannot defend your position it is a pretty safe bet you're holding a bad opinion.
I don't have any trouble defending my opinions. If anything, I can be too good at it, something I would suspect you may run into, whether you realize it or not. Some people are just not capable of arguing logically, and they tend to 'melt-down' when their positions are threatened. I've found it isn't productive to argue with these people. I only enjoy debating with people who are of reasonably like mind, anything else is a waste of time.
Since I am a permanent employee, I also have to exercise a little more care in how I deal with coworkers than a contractor has to.
Surprisingly, I "fit in" quite well, because I can discuss many topics as a result of my being brash. Pursuit of knowledge is fun, and what better way to do it than challenge assumptions?
There is a time and a place for that. As I have gotten older I've decided that it is better to pick and choose what things are appropriate to discuss. I am also reasonably comfortable enough in my opinions to no longer need to constantly challenge them.
Then let me put it this way: The things I enjoy doing in a group, a lot of other people enjoy doing to, so it's easy to get a group together to do anything. In the midwest, people seem to want to go see movies, or go to the mall, or other things which I consider boring - at least that is my experience. Nobody ski's out there, nobody hikes out there, and NOBODY hang glides out there.
You might have trouble finding people who hang glide in Florida, for example. You'd definitely have trouble finding people there who ski, unless you count water skiing. I'd dispute the hiking argument, but as you said before, you don't like hiking without mountains.
It is hard to find fun people, simple as that.
Well it is for you because your definition of 'fun' is different. You can either try to expand other people's horizons, you can try to expand your own, or you can give up and leave.
Actually, he's from Buffalo. I worked with somebody that knew the family. It was a cheap shot I admit.
Apology accepted.
Yeah, no people. That isn't my kind of place.
Well, Montana isn't my cup of tea either. It also isn't really a part of the midwest. It has more in common with the desert southwest (like New Mexico), except being very cold in the winter, than it does the midwest.
The Midwest has a disproportionate number of wacko's, I'm sorry but this is true.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one. In my experience this is not true. I also think we might have difficulty in coming to a general agreement on who was a 'wacko' and who wasn't.
The less social interaction a human being has with peers, the "wierder" they are.
I don't know if I can buy that. Some of the wierdest people I've known are nothing, if not highly socialized. Of course my time living in SF may color my view on that point.
This is partly why I discuss so many topics, I grew up in a tiny hick town and boy did I hate it. I want to understand different points of view so I move around a lot. The midwest has no unique views as far as I can tell, that's why I consider it "50's" - it's mostly the same views I grew up with and out of.
I grew up in a small midwestern college town with a population around 50,000. I now live in a town of about 300,000. My experience is that what you are saying may be true of Podunk Center, Population 300, but it is an unfair characterization of the whole region. Just because you didn't like Indianapolis is not necessarily reason to think you wouldn't like the Twin Cities or a town like Madison, WI. You might find the diversity of people in those towns could force you to re-evaluate your opinion that the midwest is entirely homogenous.
I never said anybody that didn't contract was an idiot,
Well, one could have misinterpreted what you were saying as that. My apologies if that was a mistaken interpretation.
I may have said anybody that wouldn't contract for "moral" reasons was an idiot though.
That I wouldn't and didn't argue that much. There is nothing unethical about contracting. Conversely there is nothing wrong with being a permanent employee if you know what you are getting.
Value judgements like that are incorrect because large companies do not return the favor.
Then again, unless you are a totally independant contractor, the contracting companies I've dealt with are just as morally challenged as any other company.
Also, I said the midwest sucked. I like both coasts, the entire length of it.
The company I work for has an office in Maryland about 45 minutes inland from Baltimore. I've visited there on occasion, and we regularly have people from the Maryland office here. Furthermore, several people here moved here from there and vice-versa. I don't see a lot of difference between the people there and here, or the country there or here.
Yes, and Indiana hasn't changed a bit.
If most of the country has changed in the past 20 years, it in general doesn't seem to have been for the better.
Burton will be re-elected. Nobody in his district has any sense of, well, sense. There isn't a more corrupt official in government than Burton both morally and professionally.
You may have more personal knowledge of him, or he may be getting more press of late than other politicians, but I doubt he is really that much worse than a lot of other politicians. I am more convinced all the time that they are all hypocritical scumbags.
California plates everywhere, constant talk about "those damn Californians" and the "homo's moving in", tracts of housing built in the middle of nowhere with 4x4 foot lawns. You might have to live there to notice.
Perhaps that is true. I've never heard any of my friends or relatives that live in CO complain that way though, but perhaps that is because they are 'carpet baggers' themselves. I see a surprising number of CA plates around here, despite the fact that CA is over 2000 miles away. Tract housing such as you describe is a blight on most of the country these days I think. You even see it popping up in any wooded area of the rural countryside around here.
Mormons don't take no for an answer in Utah.
I haven't found that to be the case, but perhaps in tourist areas, even the most zealous know it doesn't profit to bother the tourists.
I got rid of my car (although I plan to buy a "new" $1,500 car next week), live in a studio,
:-(
I could never go back to sharing walls with other people. I like the room that a real house offers. I like to have pets, and that just isn't feasable in most apartment situations. Not to mention that, but an apartment big enough for two people plus pets would probably cost as much as my house payment. Besides that, renting is like flushing your money down the toilet. You build equity for your landlord instead of for yourself.
and commute by train at 7 dollars a day.
I don't like being dictated when I can come and go. I like my 15 minute commute from my door to the office door.
My monthy expenses total about $1,500.
Most people can't live like you. If I lived in Boston, something comparable to my modest house would likely have a payment of around $1,200. When I lived in SF, you could barely get a studio or efficiency apartment for $1,200 a month.
Probably. I prefer to get out of the company when they aren't doing anything rther than being chained to a desk playing "let's make a project that we will never build" or "hey you, do this useless task".
I've seen other people have those sorts of frustrations, but I have rarely run into them myself. If anything, I always seem to have more than enough to do. The reason for my nick 'Software Janitor' is I am the guy who gets brought in to 'clean up' after projects who had staff or contractors bail on, or whatever.
I tried full time, I hated it.
I tried contracting, and hated it. My whole original point was that contracting is not for everyone. It is also a valid point that neither is full time employment.
It true you could probably make as much as I do, but I've only been working for 4 years. I expect I'll be making more soon.
I've been working for more than 10 years. I've seen my income more than quadruple in that time.
Cars, boats, and motorcycles aren't materialistic or luxury? You have to be kidding.
I have two cars and a pickup, none of which are extravagant. One of the cars is relatively new (and being traded in on a new one next month), but is what I would consider basic transportation (I.E., it is an under $25k car in this day and age). The newer car is pretty much for the wife. My pickup is also pretty much basic transportation, with the side of being able to haul around junk on occasion. It was a reasonably priced used vehicle and its not a 4x4 or anything fancy. My other car is an early 70's muscle car which is my hot-rod fun car. But its got more sweat equity in it than $$$
I decent car (say a AR Spider rag top from the 60's) will run you 10 K,
You can buy or build a car that is fun for a lot less than that, especially if you place the emphasis on functionality rather than appearances. For someone who claims not to be materialistic, you seem to have champaign and caviar taste when it comes to any material items.
a boat 10K,
You can buy a decent used boat for a lot less than that. I don't have a boat at the moment, but I have friends and relatives that do (my parents have a sailboat).
and a decent cycle at least 5K.
My motorcycle is a '78 Honda CB550. It cost me a lot less than $5K. Its nothing fancy, but it works, and its fun. Actually for the most part I prefer off-road riding, for which decent bikes are far less expensive than street bikes. On one point having a motorcyle at all for me is somewhat of a luxury - because I don't use if for commuting or anything like that. But I don't consider the cycle I have any more of a luxury than owning a television or a stereo, certainly a lot of people spend more on electronics than I did on my motorcycle. For that matter, I spent about as much on a bicyle as I did on my motorcycle.
That's 25 grand. Of course your wife is more materialistic, it's the nature of woman.
Don't I know it.
3K is 3K no matter how much money you make.
I know too much about Joseph Smith ever to feel comfortable in Utah.
Well, I don't know that I would want to live in Utah either, but an irrational fear or loathing of Mormons wouldn't stop me from taking a skiing vacation there. Religion shouldn't make much of an impact in a ski lodge.
I lived in Colorado for 6 months. I once got a woman to quit her job while discussing evolution versus creation "theory". She was a religious fruit.
It seems like your rather abrasive style may be more responsible for your inability to fit in than anything else. Frankly, I just don't discuss religion with coworkers. And I've found that if you don't mention it, in general most people around here won't either. In most cases even the occasional religious nut can be brushed off once and ignored. I just don't see much point in being confrontational about that sort of thing. At any rate, I actually ran into a lot more religious fruitcakes when I lived in SF than I do out here in the midwest.
Hiking and skiing are not usually solitary activities for me, although I do occasionally do them alone.
Hmmm... perhaps solitary is not the right word. I meant that they are things that don't necessarily require interaction with other people. For the most part, they are things that if done with other people you can usually select the people with whom you choose to participate. There are many other activities that require you to interact with a lot more people.
Timithy McVeigh's favorite place?
Actually, as far as I know, he spent as much of his time in the south or southwest (Oklahoma and Texas) as in the midwest. At any rate, one wonk like McVeigh is certainly not representative of the midwest any more than Willie Horton is representative of Boston. Throwing out the name of one of the most heinous mass murderers of our time as if he was the poster boy for the whole midwest doesn't seem to me to be a constructive way to engage in conversation.
The Midwest is the land of extremists.
Extremists? I don't think that is a fair statement at all. For the most part, I've found most midwesterners to be fairly moderate. I certainly ran into a lot more extremist cranks when on the coasts or in the deep south than I have in the past few years.
Why not just tell me to go to Montana.
Actually there are so few people in Montana that you can literally drive for hours without running into anyone, let alone an extremist. Most people I have met from Montana are not really much different than anywhere else. The press tends to make them out to be all wackos because the only time they notice Montana or Wyoming at all is when something bad happens there.
Whose insulting?
Well, you started out by implying that anyone who wasn't working as a contractor was some kind of an idiot. Then you proceeded to more or less say that just about everywhere but the northeast sucks...
I tried the midwest and I tried to make it work. Indiana is the current HQ for the KKK, birthplace of Jim Jones and his church and is
Hasn't Jim Jones been dead for over 20 years?
where Representative Dan Burton is from.
Well, I don't much like Ted Kennedy or Charles Schumer, but you don't see me condemning the whole northest just because of them.
When I explore a place, I explore everything about it. Chicago is a city of people trying to emulate NYC right down to the gangs. Colorado is a war between the natives and all the people that moved from California.
I never got that impression when I was there, but perhaps that might be because I was there from the midwest rather than from CA at the time.
Utah is a bunch of lunatics and if you want me to elaborate I will since I've studied the fruitcake that started the religion.
I really don't care that much about religion. At least mormons will generally take no for an answer when they are out and about, unlike some other groups who aren't nearly so polite.
You might consider this insulting, but it's not as if I haven't gone there and saw for myself. None of the places are pleasant to live.
For you this might be true. But it is a personal opinion, and there is no need to be condescending to everyone who might happen to feel differently.
The good news is, since 1945, a few things happened. Ever heard of EEC? Drive to a bookstore and get yourself a history book. Might be useful!
Eh? WWII was only one incident in centuries of conflict between the germans and french. The EEC doesn't do anything to change people's feelings when it comes to pride in their heritage, etc. Besides that, my relatives left europe in the late 1800's, so that sort of thing kinda got frozen at that point.
Isn't it $70 now?
Yea, I think you are right about that. Seems gnulix.com is worth even less than I thought.
$100 for two years. gnulix.com isn't registered to anyone yet.
Usually right after I say the word "french", I like to spit.
:-)
Being german by descent, I tend to feel the same way...
I think every "first world" country suffers from xenophobism. By far, the most xenophobic culture is the American one. Try to convince one american that a good non-US product is better then a crappy US product...
Bullpuckey. So many americans have the attitude that any product with a japanese brand name is superior to any american product it is not funny. Even when the product is also sold with an american brand, the market favors the japanese branded version of the product. When studies were done by Chrysler on this subject a few years ago, they found that for identical model cars with the nameplates visible, testers overwhelmingly preferred the japanese branded cars. For tests where the nameplates obscured, testers preferred the american branded cars by a small margin.
These days most japanese branded electronics isn't even made in Japan. It is funny to look on the back of a product with a big japanese brand name and see "Hecho En Mexico".
Its not just japanese xenophilia which afflicts a lot of americans, the same thing seems to occur with german products like BMW and Mercedes, and products of other northern european countries such as the U.K. and Sweden.
I did some work with Diba and Oracle, and that wasn't my experience. You must have blown a lot of money.
Actually I had very little money when I lived in CA. I am doing a lot better now but I still live fairly frugally even now. The differences in cost of living in SF versus the midwest are pretty staggering, especially in two areas, the cost of housing and vehicular costs. For what a 700sq foot 2br bugalow in South San Francisco in "fixer-upper" condition sells for, you can buy a new construction 3500sq ft house in one of the best suburbs around here. Not only do cars cost more in California, so does insurance (its about double) and you have to have your car inspected and smog checked twice a year -- staying in compliance usually costs hundreds if not thousands a year. We have no inspection or smog check here ever, we do auto registration by mail. A lot of the things that are more expensive in CA than the midwest are largely unavoidable. You have to have a place to live, you have to have transportation. You have to eat. You have to pay taxes. It is actually the luxury items in CA that aren't really all that much more expensive than the midwest.
At any rate, if I wanted to do contracting, I could probably make pretty nearly as much out here in the midwest as you do in Boston, and assuming I spent my money the same as you do, I should have more money left over given the differences in the cost of living. I've done contracting in the past, and I didn't particularly like it. It certainly isn't for everyone.
It all depends on whether you are a materialist or not. I'm not. I don't need nice things, I need to do things.
I am not very materialistic, or at least not into expensive luxury items. Things I enjoy doing just don't seem to rely as much on the outside terrain as yours. I enjoy outdoor things like motorsports (cars, boats and motorcycles), which while somewhat weather dependant, are possible in just about all of the country. I also don't spend an excessive amount on any of those things, although it is certainly possible to do so. Unfortunately, my wife is more of a materialist than I am, although her big weakness is mostly in travel.
A decent ultralight cost about 10K, a decent hang glider costs 3K. Being towed up, and climbing a mountain are entirely different.
Then again, with the kind of money you seem to have, the difference between $3k and $10k seems pretty insignificant.
I grew up about 1/2 mile away from a small ski tow and started skiing at 2 years old. I've definately graduated from the bunny hills.
I've never been much of a skiier, personally. I always preferred snowmobiles.
Colorado was fun when I stayed there. I never skied corn snow before, it was remarkably easy to any hill under those conditions - fun too. Most of the Midwest is too flat to do anything except cross country, which isn't bad, but not the end all be all of skiing. I like speed.
Colorado and Utah are very good for skiing, but I wouldn't actually consider them in the midwest, but rather the west.
Unless there is a mountain to run up there isn't any point in my opinion. I grew up in the Adirondacks. If you go far enough west it isn't too bad (like Colorado) except for the culture. In Colorado it was either smoke pot from 9 to 5 and ski or shove a stick up your ass and be ultra conservative.
Well, it doesn't sound like you gave Colorado much of a chance. I've spent enough time there to find that the people there aren't that much different than anywhere else. You don't really get a good feel for what people are really like in a short vacation or if you spend most of your time in touristy areas. At any rate, most of the things you seem to enjoy doing are largely solitary activities, so what difference does culture make?
You need rapids, and that comes with mountains again.
It still safer to bike to San Fransisco than it is to bike in the country in Indiana. I was hit twice in Indiana by very stupid drivers. Another guy pointed a shotgun at my head as he drove by.
Try bicycling in Oakland or the South of Market area of SF. I'd feel much safer in rural Indiana than either of those two areas. Of course leather clad, long haired and goateed people like myself aren't well liked by either the boys'n'da'hood types or rednecks either one. Surprisingly, I have little trouble fitting in around here, despite the fact that I might look a little out of place to a lot of people.
Whatever, it doesn't change the validity of my statements.
That is a matter of opinion. I find your statements to be clouded by an air of intolerance which makes them seem less valid than they might otherwise. While you complain about conservativeness of hicks, you seem unwilling to take the time to explore anything that isn't exactly what you are used to or quite up to your self imposed standards. I can find ways to amuse myself just about anywhere I might be. While you certainly have a right to your opinions and standards, I don't see your need to look down on or insult everyone who doesn't share them.
Again it all comes down to how much you squirrel away. I know plenty of people that make more than I do that are 10's of thousands of dollars in debt. They are idiots in my opinion also known as yuppies. They exist everywhere here on the East Coast especially in Boston. I buy their road bikes after they discover it actually takes work to pedal.
Believe it or not, yuppies even exist in the midwest, at least in the suburbs.
(Yes, I'm a Windows vendor looking to port to Linux, one of 1000's more to come, I am sure).
You might also check out Willows which produces Twin, which is a commercial (albiet free in some circumstances) product similar to Winelib. It includes an implementation of the Windows APIs and MFC.
I'd like to see Winelib be successful in the long run, but in the short run, Willows' product may be a better fit for you.
Dude. I lived in Indiana where I made 70K. It's not even comparable. If you think making 65K in Indiana or some other Midwest hicktown is even comparable to making about twice that in Boston, fine. But it isn't. I was able to save 30K a year if I really really worked at it, here I can save 50K a year without effort.
Well, I don't know about Boston, but I can tell you from experience that the SF bay area versus the midwest in the salary comparators is pretty close to accurate.
You can't hang glide in the Midwest,
Why not? Most of the midwest is flat enough that it isn't ideal, but its far from impossible. Ultralights are actually fairly popular around here.
you can't ski in the Midwest,
This isn't at all true. There are numerous ski facilities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. You must be basing your opinion about the whole midwest based on Indiana.
you can't hike in the Midwest,
Say what? You have got to be kidding. There are tons of hiking trails throughout the area where I live. You can hike anywhere.
you can't kayak in the Midwest
This is silly. We've got lakes and rivers. Kayaking and canoeing is very doable throughout most of the midwest. Minnesota, for example, probably has more opportunities for water sports than just about any other state.
and wearing biking shorts in about 50% of the Midwest
About 50%. Well, where I live must be part of the other 50% then.
is equivalent to wearing a sign that says "I'm a flaming homosexual queen, please blow my head off you fucking stupid inbred hicks" so biking isn't too much fun in the Midwest either.
One of the more well known summer events around here is an annual bike ride across the state that is sponsored by one of the bigger newspapers. Additionally there are numerous bike trails throughout the area. Biking as a recreational sport is not uncommon here.
The only thing to do in the Midwest is to drink, fuck, watch tv, and watch movies and you can do those anywhere.
The more you talk, the more I remember about why I don't care for the northeast. I can deal a lot more with dumb hicks than with brash, arrogant east coasters.
To each his own I guess, but don't believe the salary comparisons. Making $3,000 a year in Siberia is probably equivalent to making $300,000 a year in the United States but I'm not going to move there. It's not what you make, it's not what you spend, it's what you save, and I save $800 a week.
Well, I wouldn't put a huge amount of faith in salary comparisons either, but they can't be that far off either. As I said, comparing between SF and the midwest they are not far off. What you save is obviously directly related to what you make and what you spend.
Hotmail runs a combination of Solaris and FreeBSD. They attempted a (mandated by MS) switch to NT soon after they were bought out by MS. After a couple of days of problems, and despite the best efforts of both the Hotmail and MS senior staffs, they switched back to Solaris and FreeBSD and have not attempted a switch again. This was a major black mark on MS's records, and one that has come back to haunt them every time they want to play in the enterprise world. NT just isn't capable of handling high demand, high volume applications. Worse than that, it appears that the reason why is due to fundamental design flaws down to the lowest levels of the kernel design.
NT5/W2K is supposed to be an almost complete rewrite, so it may improve a little, but I personally find it hard to believe that they can overcome NT's scalability and performance problems without seriously compromising backward compatibility with previous versions.
No, yes, no, about $800/month - Boston. Boston rules. I love Boston.
Well, I went and checked on a salary comparator on the web, and according to that, $124,000 in Boston is only about $65,000 where I live after you figure for the differences of paying health insurance and office ezpenses. For me, I like the deal I have better, but to each his own.
Where you like to live is largely personal preferances, personally, I don't like the northeast much. The weather is just about as bad as the midwest and on average the people seem much more rude and arrogant. I can put up with hicks better. I wouldn't mind moving back to the SF bay area where I used to live, but my wife absolutely refuses to consider anywhere in California.
I've never been to Indianapolis, but I have no complaints about the food here. There are plenty of things to do in my local area if you are over 21 and willing to look for them. The Twin Cities, Kansas City and Chicago are within driving distance and if you can't find anything you like to do in those towns, I truly pity you -- you must not like much. The state I live consistantly has amongst the top 10 best public schools in the country, albiet being long past college age and having no kids I don't care that much any more.
Its not perfect where I live, but it isn't bad. When I retire, I am going to where it is warm, probably Florida or Nevada.
"I make $124,000 a year"
So who cares what you think? You can be fucked by your employer, or you can fuck your employer. It's your choice.
My questions would be:
- Do you pay your own 15% self employment tax?
- Do you pay your own medical/dental insurance?
- Do you pay your own office expenses?
- What is the cost of living where you live?
If the answers to two or more of the first three are yes, and the answer to the last is something comparable to the SF bay area, then chances are you are effectively making a lot less than I do as a salaried employee out here in the midwest. Just raw salary numbers are not that useful without knowing all the facts...If you haven't already, try getting a gel-filled wrist rest. I was having troubles a while back, and even the foam wrist rests (which did help some) didn't do the trick. I got a gel-filled rest and haven't had any trouble since, and I am behind a keyboard 8 hours a day at work and a couple hours at home.
I really hate the 'warped' keyboards. Ugly, heavy and bulky. If you must get one, at least get one of the clones and not the Microsoft 'Natural' keyboard. Microsoft doesn't deserve your money.
Voice over IP will hurt the Long distance providers more than it would Baby Bells, who usually offer unlimited local calling, and small change for regional calls
"Small change" for regional calls my @$$!!! I am stuck with US Worst, and their rates to call my parents or mother in law who live within 50 miles of me (in the same area code) are higher than what it costs me to call California with AT&T. Nonlocal intrastate calls are usually the highest domestic rate there is.
I regret to admit that I like Microsoft Word (after you turn off all the idiot "wizards" and "helpers" and that fscking paperclip!).
The last version of Word I really liked was Word 5.1a for the Mac.
I find it particularly distressing that for most purposes, I find MS Word to have gotten worse rather than better in the past two major versions. Word 97 seems slower and less useable than Word 95 which was worse than Word 6.x.
Word is, of course, shoddy, but it's damn useful.
Urk. Well, it is better than nothing I suppose.
I have not tried any of the available office software for Linux.
You probably should. Either StarOffice or ApplixOffice's word processors are quite adequate substitutes for MS Word for most purposes. Both of them even bear more than a passing cosmetic resemblance to MS-Word. I also like the Word Perfect that is available for Linux.
I tried LyX about two years ago, but found it a bit too primitive.
You might also check out other free stuff like Maxwell. The KDE (KOffice) and Gnome projects also both look like they will eventually produce usable office suites.
So I do most of my writing in (brace yourself) 'vi'.
Well, I still use 'vi' for a lot of things. But for general writing I tend to use a word processor.
If Word were to become available for Linux, I would probably buy it.
Yuck. I wouldn't. If for no other reason than Bill doesn't deserve my money. But seriously though, I wouldn't use it even if it was free. As I said before, Applix Office and StarOffice are really quite decent, especially for the money.
...and it would have been nice if the NT part of the graphs had been at the opposite side from Linux. So that amount of growth of Linux could have been more easily compared to NTs.
Very true. Just for my own comparison purposes, I snagged the image, then cut and pasted the parts of each graph to move the Linux and UNIX segments together, and aligned the two graphs next to each other along the boundary between UNIX/Linux and NT. That makes the graphs a whole lot more interesting to compare. Looking at that it is clear that NT's market share remained relatively flat, and most of Linux's growth in market share has come at the expense of Netware and Other rather than from UNIX, as some might suggest.
I would have greatly preferred if they had put Linux and UNIX next to each other on the graphs. I think they intentionally seperate them to make NT look stronger than it is because if people were to group Linux and UNIX together as they naturally will, it would show the combined total to be around the same size as NT.
What surprises me is the number these users that have bought commerical systems. Is it just me, or doesn't it seem like high end users that use Linux and belive in it strongly enough to hold a demonstration would be the people most likely to have built their own computers?
I suspect that may have something to do with why there were only a hundred or so protesters around the U.S. People like me who either build their own machines from parts (at least partially to avoid the Microsoft tax), purchase used machines sans software or buy from a Linux specific hardware vendor are less likely to be able to or as greatly motivated to participate in events like Refund Day.
Of course the biggest reasons I wasn't there were that the nearest Microsoft office to me (the one in the Twin Cities) is a 4.5-5 hour drive, and Refund Day was held on a workday for me. If I still lived in the Bay Area and had President's day off, I probably would have turned out just for curiosities sake.
internal modems _do_ use the computers' uarts. if you've ever written a low-level serial driver you'll know this.
Wrong. Internal modems supply their own UART, usually a 16550A equivalent of some sort. You can use an internal modem with a motherboard with no on-board UARTs and no add-in serial card. The only exception to this is the dread "Winmodem", which doesn't have, nor use a UART, but rather a "bit banger" approach. Avoid the "Winmodems" at all costs, even for Windows use they stink, because they steal processor power to do things real modems do in hardware.
you would use pppd to set this not setserial.
Actually, what I do is use setserial in my rc.local to set the 38400 speed (spd_vhi) on the UART to be 115K, then use pppd to select 38400, which really then gives me 115K. I dunno if this is the best way to do it, but it sure works fine.
This is incredibly good news. The one company that has as much mind share amongst PHBs as Microsoft is IBM. I also like their multivendor plans. That will make things a much easier sell to management.