The demographics do not support you. (Canada has a greater urban/non-urban ratio than the US).
As for your "Statistics", the site you link is <sarcasm> wonderfully unbiased. </sarcasm> Please consult the crime statisitics of any nation (your no doubt fair choice) with more restrictive gun control for an example of a country with less gun violence.
As for health care: Canadians pay 1/10 what we do per capita, and get health care for everybody. No doubt you'll say our (well, your) healthcare is better. But is it 10 times better? I'd gladly pay 1/5 what I do now for twice the health care of a Canadian. Hell, I'd pay what I do now for the health care of a Canadian (with similar hassle lack), and I've got supposedly above average benefits. For-profit health insurance is just plain stupid. The actuarial tables are well known; why throw away money (the vast majority of it!) on inefficiencies and profits for middlemen? Sorry, you hit a pet peave of mine: claiming the US Health system is good. It's not. It's the worst in the industialized world. Even the people getting served (you and me) are paying way too much for no reason. It's not even an academic argument; every other western nation has an objectively better system. It pisses me off. The sentence "Iceland is seriously kicking our ass on this" just shouldn't apply to anything, dammit.
"AK47s are to assault rifles what the original VW beetle is to cars"
I cannot imagine a better compliment. The original beetle is highly reliable. If it does break, you can jury rig it with a coat hanger until you get can fix it properly anywhere with the most rudimentary garage. This is exactly why the AK is the weapon of choice for everyone who doesn't bring a full maintenace department wherever they go (NATO & Israel).
"Java's limits also put a lower bound on how awful the code can be."
I'm dubious anything can possibly put a lower bound on code quality. In any case, I've dealt with a couple of big Java projects where the code quality was significantly under the "easier to throw it away and rewrite it" threshold, below which it really doesn't matter.
Assuming it's an actually running code base, I'd rather it be in C++. The original programmer might have been too briliant for his own (or my) good, but there's much less chance he was a drooling moron... (I'm not running down Java here - a good programmer can produce good code in Java. My problem these days is that a really lousy programmer can produce running (but crappy)code in Java, and not get fired before he's produced a giant steaming pile of it.)
GCC?!?!?!? You are aware that it wasn't the first C compiler right? That at it's introduction, others were clearly superior? That, while some might argue it, it's a pretty tough sell that it has ever been the best at what it does. The advantage is the license. The program is a reimplementation of something that already existed.
"CLIs may not be intuitive, but they are powerful in that they can run commands with various changable options."
Which is somehow impossible with a gui?
"And they make debugging/testing programs a lot easier"
Yeah, whenever I debug a program, and it stops at an exception, poping up the relevant source file, the values of local variables, and the complete call stack onto my screen automatically, I'm just begging to be back on a text only terminal...
"I'm always cursing the CLI (or what passes for it) in Win2K"
Now that I can understand. The cursing I mean, not the using the CLI for much in Win2K.
At first I thought you were stretching a bit by sugesting modern Windows is really just DOS, but after thinking about it, I realize you're just not in any touch with reality at all.
"...DOS which was stolen from QDOS"
I usualy think of "stolen" as having a meaning different from "purchased".
The answer to the gas station question is 59,542, of course. But if you're not in the midst of building site selection software for a major gas station chain...
You're correct that the point of the gas station question is to see if you can come up with some way to break the question down into numbers you can make reasonable guesses at. Which will allow you to come up with a number that's at least in the ballpark. Which is a very useful skill for sanity checking numbers, deciding whether a data structure can be kept in memory, etc. The only wrong answer is "I have no idea." I had the question as "how many hairdressers are there in the Us" The interviewer later confided that he got a little sick pleasure from the ones who said "I have no idea": "So it could be 10 times the total population then?" "Uh, no" "So you do have some idea. Can you come up with a better idea?"
I had my first job out of college at the time. I was tasked with setting up online access to social science data holdings information for a large university (a specialized card catalog essentially). I was instructed to start by figuring out how to set up a gopher site, and "check out this http thing while you're at it" (i.e. my well informed uber-geek boss had not heard the term World Wide Web). I soon told them to forget about gopher, which took some convincing, but then we went ahead. So I always feel real savvy about that; OTOH, A short while into the project Mosaic came out, and I thought "Why would anyone want that, what I've got is just as good." (What I had was a text only browser where the links were numbered so you could type the number of the one you wanted to follow. The latest version supported the bold tag, and there was talk of italics coming soon! Even at that state though, it was clear it was gopher was dead) Ahh, the good old days, when you wanted a browser, you got it from a high-energy physics lab, of course.
Yeah, such a stupid bug. It's amazing the world didn't switch to linux right then. I mean, the supriority of the linux offering for the desktop eight years ago was... Oh. Right.
Seriously though, while 95 was buggy as hell, that wasn't the main reason no one cared about uptime. Every night most 95 machines got, get this, turned off.
Yeah, I once had an account somewhere that wanted a max 6 charachters password. I mean really, is password storage overwhelming their memory capacity or what?
On the other hand, after the account was gone, I decided I liked the sound of the password, so at least I got a new nick out of it.
"No matter what they say, womem programmers will never get the mentality of 'killers'"
Bull. And it doesn't matter. In the successful game producing teams I've had (perifferal) contact with, Programmers != Designers. It is the designers who must get the mentality of the gamers. The programmers must get the polygons to render at an aceptable speed or whatever.
Besides, by far the best Quake player I've personally seen was, you guessed it, a female game programmer.
The point is, it's not a 'modern' meaning. Both meanings go back similar hundreds of years. Complain about the dilution of the word "stealing" if you like, but "piracy" has the same meanings it has for quite some time.
Without the 'who gets there first' game, we probably wouldn't have gone to the moon at all. Cooperation is great as long as you have motivation. Competition is great for providing motivation. So you usually need some competition for jobs like going to Mars or building a better mouse trap. Pure cooperation works best for jobs like putting out fires. So clearly, we must find a way to set Mars on fire.
"What is the difference between a religous message and a printed statement that is secular in nature?" The First Amendment. That said, a student handing out whatever she wants might be OK. But if the teacher passed it out? Or if the student appeared to be acting on behalf of the school? In that case there is definitely a difference between a religious and a secular message.
"It wasn't because he wanted to cover up the statues, it was to provide a better backdrop for the cameras."
Yeah, that's possible. But since it wasn't a problem for any other AG since the invention of television, I'm guessing Ashcroft just couldn't deal with the naked boobies.
Actually, in that case I wouldn't necessarily care as much. When it flakes out, it will be his problem. He's smart enough to stick with Dell though. I was stupid. I'm getting pissed just thinking about it. What the hell, here's my saga, abriged and slightly fictionalized by my imperfect memory:
I knew Compaq sucked, but they had the sexy Athlon I was lusting after at a price I could deal with. I figured "Hardware's hardware, and I don't care if their support sucks because everyone's support sucks too much for me to use it." Well, hardware is hardware, unless it says Compaq on it. The CPU was sweet for a few months. Now it's a few years later. The box tells my very nice non-compaq Trinitron to go into power save with no problem. Telling it to come out of power save is about 50-50, otherwise so you get to crawl under the desk (hope you saved!) yank the plug out of the wall and boot up cold again. At one point I tried to upgrade it to Win2K. I had a slew of problems. After many days of not having a computer my wife commanded me to put it back the way it was, and leave it alone. (I'm on Win98 to this day). But after I put it back, the modem wouldn't work. I broke down and called support when I was surprised that I couldn't find the driver on their web site. They seemed surprised I would expect to download a driver, and confirmed that they didn't provide them online. So then I just wanted to know what kind of modem they had sold me so I could find a driver on my own. They refused to tell me. The drivers were on the system restore disk I was told. Just put the CD in the drive, and click yes on one little dialog, is that so hard, why was I complaining? "Because it will reformat my hard drive, and install Win98, blowing away all my data and settings, which I really don't think is acceptable." "But a windows 98 machine is what you bought, sir. We can't be responsible for your data." "So I just can't upgrade the operating system, ever?" "It's a HOME computer, sir." "But it is a COMPUTER right? I mean it said it INCLUDED windows 98. Do you define INCLUDES as IS IRREVOCABLY TIED TO?!?!?" "Please calm down sir." "This is CALM!!! If I weren't calm I'd hang up on you. Let's see, I've been meaning to get DSL anyway, so maybe I can live without the modem. But that means you ripped me off. What do modems go for these days, $60?" "I don't know sir." "You're not allowed to hang up on me are you?" "Not unless you become abusive sir" "Well I'm sorry I raised my voice back there. Anyway, I don't know what modems go for, and you don't or aren't telling, so lets go with my $60 guess. Probably a little high, but what the hell. So Compaq is ripping me for $60. How much do you make an hour?" "I won't tell you that sir." "Great! I'll go with minimum wage then. So to cost Compaq more than 60$ dollars, I have to keep you on the phone for, lets see... well, a lot longer than I'm going to keep being amused by this. But you should be aware that I'm pretty easily amused. Hey, are you on a cordless phone?" "No sir." "Hope you don't have to pee then."
In a real tribute to his intelligence, he went a good twenty minutes before he figured out he wasn't going to get in trouble for hanging up on someone who had said flat out he was just trying to waste his time. Somewhere in there I made a vow that anytime computer buying was disscused "Don't buy a Compaq" would be the first words out of my mouth.
You want the display to be as perfect as it can be. So you probably want: 1. No lines. 2. The sharpest possible image. 3. The best possible color. 4. An image undistorted by screen curvature. 5. High resolution. 6. A high refresh rate.
Well, like many things in life, you can't have it all. Many people (including me) find it worth it to sacrifece 1 to get 2-6. Seriously, without a solid, light colored background, I can't find the lines if I look for them. I'd completely forgotten about them until this thread. YMMV. "Perfect" is not an option. For "as close to perfect as possible" I think the Trinitron is a strong contender.
There are some notable buildings in Egypt that have withstood the weather for four thousand years. I suppose they don't get hurricanes there, but I can't imagine it would make a difference. Making buildings that withstand hurricanes is no big trick. Making them also nice to live in is a little harder, but I know of some very nice houses that have gone through several hurricanes. It's just a matter of construction methods, materials, and location.
I think you're crazy if you think dissipating a hurricane is easy compared to, well, just about anything.
You're correct that the lines are not desirable. But you're not just saying their undesirable. You're saying they're a huge deal that makes Trinitrons completely unsuitable for a class of tasks for which they are actually the de-facto standard. You say things like:
"there's no getting used to them. You definitely will keep noticing them after the first day."
Sorry, but I definitely haven't, and I think my actual experience trumps your blind assertion. I defy you to even find the lines without a solid, light colored ground. I just tried it with a few random pictures. When the top one goes through the plain blue-white sky in a landscpe I can find it. Otherwise I can't. And I know exactly where it is.
I understand that some people might have more problem with the lines than others. But I don't think it's reasonable to tell people a typically trivial drawback is a huge problem that overides more significant advantages.
Of course personal preferences are personal, and that is no reason to address you like a clueless moron. Rather, I address you like a clueless moron is because you say clueless, moronic things with great confidence.
Many brushes are long so you can stand back at viewing distance while you paint. That's a good one. They're not THAT long. I think it might have a little more to do with balance. I'm just picturing you standing back a yard or two with you hand on the end of a really long brush. Exercising some really fine control I'm sure.
I'm a C++ guy, so naturally lot's of people ask me what kind of computer they should get:) I alternate between my smart aleck answer ("The one the IT guy puts on your desk") and my two tidbits of actual advice: 1. Don't buy a Compaq. 2. Whatever your price range, drop it a little, and put the extra into the monitor. A nice monitor will improve your computing experience more than anything else. Particularly in a year or two when the difference between the CPU you get and the next one up or down seems entirely trivial.
And if you didn't mention your price range on purpose, because it's not a major issue, one word: Trinitron.
The lines are much smaller than a pixel, and you will not notice them after the first day. (Well, except when someone who has never used a Trinitron for more than a day posts a stupid comment about them on slashdot, and you look for them.) You notice them when you're dealing with single pixel details? So you're saying that when you're dealing with single-pixel details in Photoshop, running your monitor at resolutions Trinitron users are likely to, you don't ZOOM IN? Right. 10 hours a day. Right. Do you expect to go blind from eyestrain this week or next? Trinitrons rock. They have the sharpest, flatest screens in the business. Some people don't seem to care about flat. Non-flat drives me buggy. YMMV. I don't do fine detail, I do text. But I like things sharp, and I like lot's of screen real-estate.
For years when my non-techie friends asked me for computer buying advice, I had only 1 rule*: Spend some extra dough on the monitor, it will improve your computing experience more there than anywhere else, and chances are in 5 years the only thing you'll still have is the monitor. When I went to buy a new monitor, I looked at what my various graphic designer friends favored, and went with the unanimous choice: A nice big Trinitron.
*I've recently added a second piece of computer buying advice: Don't buy a Compaq. That's not really on-topic here, but I made a solemn vow to their phone "support" people that I'd mention it any time I discussed computer buying...
"Do you honestly believe that Microsoft is doing this to help developers from the goodness of their hearts, and not to gain competitive advantage? Please"
Of course not, nor did he say so. Helping developers gains you competitive advantage. Microsoft has always understood this. If you're writing software for their OS, you're helping to maintain their market position, and you'll find they're really quite nice to you.
Slashdot Mirror
The demographics do not support you. (Canada has a greater urban/non-urban ratio than the US).
As for your "Statistics", the site you link is <sarcasm> wonderfully unbiased. </sarcasm> Please consult the crime statisitics of any nation (your no doubt fair choice) with more restrictive gun control for an example of a country with less gun violence.
As for health care: Canadians pay 1/10 what we do per capita, and get health care for everybody. No doubt you'll say our (well, your) healthcare is better. But is it 10 times better? I'd gladly pay 1/5 what I do now for twice the health care of a Canadian. Hell, I'd pay what I do now for the health care of a Canadian (with similar hassle lack), and I've got supposedly above average benefits. For-profit health insurance is just plain stupid. The actuarial tables are well known; why throw away money (the vast majority of it!) on inefficiencies and profits for middlemen? Sorry, you hit a pet peave of mine: claiming the US Health system is good. It's not. It's the worst in the industialized world. Even the people getting served (you and me) are paying way too much for no reason. It's not even an academic argument; every other western nation has an objectively better system. It pisses me off. The sentence "Iceland is seriously kicking our ass on this" just shouldn't apply to anything, dammit.
"AK47s are to assault rifles what the original VW beetle is to cars"
I cannot imagine a better compliment. The original beetle is highly reliable. If it does break, you can jury rig it with a coat hanger until you get can fix it properly anywhere with the most rudimentary garage. This is exactly why the AK is the weapon of choice for everyone who doesn't bring a full maintenace department wherever they go (NATO & Israel).
"Java's limits also put a lower bound on how awful the code can be."
I'm dubious anything can possibly put a lower bound on code quality. In any case, I've dealt with a couple of big Java projects where the code quality was significantly under the "easier to throw it away and rewrite it" threshold, below which it really doesn't matter.
Assuming it's an actually running code base, I'd rather it be in C++. The original programmer might have been too briliant for his own (or my) good, but there's much less chance he was a drooling moron... (I'm not running down Java here - a good programmer can produce good code in Java. My problem these days is that a really lousy programmer can produce running (but crappy)code in Java, and not get fired before he's produced a giant steaming pile of it.)
GCC?!?!?!? You are aware that it wasn't the first C compiler right? That at it's introduction, others were clearly superior? That, while some might argue it, it's a pretty tough sell that it has ever been the best at what it does. The advantage is the license. The program is a reimplementation of something that already existed.
"CLIs may not be intuitive, but they are powerful in that they can run commands with various changable options."
Which is somehow impossible with a gui?
"And they make debugging/testing programs a lot easier"
Yeah, whenever I debug a program, and it stops at an exception, poping up the relevant source file, the values of local variables, and the complete call stack onto my screen automatically, I'm just begging to be back on a text only terminal...
"I'm always cursing the CLI (or what passes for it) in Win2K"
Now that I can understand. The cursing I mean, not the using the CLI for much in Win2K.
At first I thought you were stretching a bit by sugesting modern Windows is really just DOS, but after thinking about it, I realize you're just not in any touch with reality at all.
"...DOS which was stolen from QDOS"
I usualy think of "stolen" as having a meaning different from "purchased".
The answer to the gas station question is 59,542, of course. But if you're not in the midst of building site selection software for a major gas station chain...
You're correct that the point of the gas station question is to see if you can come up with some way to break the question down into numbers you can make reasonable guesses at. Which will allow you to come up with a number that's at least in the ballpark. Which is a very useful skill for sanity checking numbers, deciding whether a data structure can be kept in memory, etc. The only wrong answer is "I have no idea." I had the question as "how many hairdressers are there in the Us" The interviewer later confided that he got a little sick pleasure from the ones who said "I have no idea": "So it could be 10 times the total population then?" "Uh, no" "So you do have some idea. Can you come up with a better idea?"
I had my first job out of college at the time. I was tasked with setting up online access to social science data holdings information for a large university (a specialized card catalog essentially). I was instructed to start by figuring out how to set up a gopher site, and "check out this http thing while you're at it" (i.e. my well informed uber-geek boss had not heard the term World Wide Web). I soon told them to forget about gopher, which took some convincing, but then we went ahead. So I always feel real savvy about that; OTOH, A short while into the project Mosaic came out, and I thought "Why would anyone want that, what I've got is just as good." (What I had was a text only browser where the links were numbered so you could type the number of the one you wanted to follow. The latest version supported the bold tag, and there was talk of italics coming soon! Even at that state though, it was clear it was gopher was dead) Ahh, the good old days, when you wanted a browser, you got it from a high-energy physics lab, of course.
Yeah, such a stupid bug. It's amazing the world didn't switch to linux right then. I mean, the supriority of the linux offering for the desktop eight years ago was... Oh. Right.
Seriously though, while 95 was buggy as hell, that wasn't the main reason no one cared about uptime. Every night most 95 machines got, get this, turned off.
Yeah, I once had an account somewhere that wanted a max 6 charachters password. I mean really, is password storage overwhelming their memory capacity or what?
On the other hand, after the account was gone, I decided I liked the sound of the password, so at least I got a new nick out of it.
cheers,
2short
"No matter what they say, womem programmers will never get the mentality of 'killers'"
Bull. And it doesn't matter.
In the successful game producing teams I've had (perifferal) contact with, Programmers != Designers. It is the designers who must get the mentality of the gamers. The programmers must get the polygons to render at an aceptable speed or whatever.
Besides, by far the best Quake player I've personally seen was, you guessed it, a female game programmer.
The point is, it's not a 'modern' meaning. Both meanings go back similar hundreds of years. Complain about the dilution of the word "stealing" if you like, but "piracy" has the same meanings it has for quite some time.
Without the 'who gets there first' game, we probably wouldn't have gone to the moon at all. Cooperation is great as long as you have motivation. Competition is great for providing motivation. So you usually need some competition for jobs like going to Mars or building a better mouse trap. Pure cooperation works best for jobs like putting out fires. So clearly, we must find a way to set Mars on fire.
So if my mortgage brokers son in law owes me twenty bucks...
"What is the difference between a religous message and a printed statement that is secular in nature?"
The First Amendment. That said, a student handing out whatever she wants might be OK. But if the teacher passed it out? Or if the student appeared to be acting on behalf of the school? In that case there is definitely a difference between a religious and a secular message.
"It wasn't because he wanted to cover up the statues, it was to provide a better backdrop for the cameras."
Yeah, that's possible. But since it wasn't a problem for any other AG since the invention of television, I'm guessing Ashcroft just couldn't deal with the naked boobies.
But "piracy" does still mean what it did in the 19th century, and the 18th, and the 17th. That's how far back the "unauthorized copying" meaning goes.
Actually, in that case I wouldn't necessarily care as much. When it flakes out, it will be his problem. He's smart enough to stick with Dell though. I was stupid. I'm getting pissed just thinking about it.
What the hell, here's my saga, abriged and slightly fictionalized by my imperfect memory:
I knew Compaq sucked, but they had the sexy Athlon I was lusting after at a price I could deal with. I figured "Hardware's hardware, and I don't care if their support sucks because everyone's support sucks too much for me to use it." Well, hardware is hardware, unless it says Compaq on it. The CPU was sweet for a few months. Now it's a few years later. The box tells my very nice non-compaq Trinitron to go into power save with no problem. Telling it to come out of power save is about 50-50, otherwise so you get to crawl under the desk (hope you saved!) yank the plug out of the wall and boot up cold again. At one point I tried to upgrade it to Win2K. I had a slew of problems. After many days of not having a computer my wife commanded me to put it back the way it was, and leave it alone. (I'm on Win98 to this day). But after I put it back, the modem wouldn't work. I broke down and called support when I was surprised that I couldn't find the driver on their web site. They seemed surprised I would expect to download a driver, and confirmed that they didn't provide them online. So then I just wanted to know what kind of modem they had sold me so I could find a driver on my own. They refused to tell me. The drivers were on the system restore disk I was told. Just put the CD in the drive, and click yes on one little dialog, is that so hard, why was I complaining?
"Because it will reformat my hard drive, and install Win98, blowing away all my data and settings, which I really don't think is acceptable."
"But a windows 98 machine is what you bought, sir. We can't be responsible for your data."
"So I just can't upgrade the operating system, ever?"
"It's a HOME computer, sir."
"But it is a COMPUTER right? I mean it said it INCLUDED windows 98. Do you define INCLUDES as IS IRREVOCABLY TIED TO?!?!?"
"Please calm down sir."
"This is CALM!!! If I weren't calm I'd hang up on you. Let's see, I've been meaning to get DSL anyway, so maybe I can live without the modem. But that means you ripped me off. What do modems go for these days, $60?"
"I don't know sir."
"You're not allowed to hang up on me are you?"
"Not unless you become abusive sir"
"Well I'm sorry I raised my voice back there. Anyway, I don't know what modems go for, and you don't or aren't telling, so lets go with my $60 guess. Probably a little high, but what the hell. So Compaq is ripping me for $60. How much do you make an hour?"
"I won't tell you that sir."
"Great! I'll go with minimum wage then. So to cost Compaq more than 60$ dollars, I have to keep you on the phone for, lets see... well, a lot longer than I'm going to keep being amused by this. But you should be aware that I'm pretty easily amused. Hey, are you on a cordless phone?"
"No sir."
"Hope you don't have to pee then."
In a real tribute to his intelligence, he went a good twenty minutes before he figured out he wasn't going to get in trouble for hanging up on someone who had said flat out he was just trying to waste his time. Somewhere in there I made a vow that anytime computer buying was disscused "Don't buy a Compaq" would be the first words out of my mouth.
You want the display to be as perfect as it can be. So you probably want:
1. No lines.
2. The sharpest possible image.
3. The best possible color.
4. An image undistorted by screen curvature.
5. High resolution.
6. A high refresh rate.
Well, like many things in life, you can't have it all. Many people (including me) find it worth it to sacrifece 1 to get 2-6. Seriously, without a solid, light colored background, I can't find the lines if I look for them. I'd completely forgotten about them until this thread. YMMV.
"Perfect" is not an option. For "as close to perfect as possible" I think the Trinitron is a strong contender.
There are some notable buildings in Egypt that have withstood the weather for four thousand years. I suppose they don't get hurricanes there, but I can't imagine it would make a difference. Making buildings that withstand hurricanes is no big trick. Making them also nice to live in is a little harder, but I know of some very nice houses that have gone through several hurricanes. It's just a matter of construction methods, materials, and location.
I think you're crazy if you think dissipating a hurricane is easy compared to, well, just about anything.
You're correct that the lines are not desirable. But you're not just saying their undesirable. You're saying they're a huge deal that makes Trinitrons completely unsuitable for a class of tasks for which they are actually the de-facto standard. You say things like:
"there's no getting used to them. You definitely will keep noticing them after the first day."
Sorry, but I definitely haven't, and I think my actual experience trumps your blind assertion. I defy you to even find the lines without a solid, light colored ground. I just tried it with a few random pictures. When the top one goes through the plain blue-white sky in a landscpe I can find it. Otherwise I can't. And I know exactly where it is.
I understand that some people might have more problem with the lines than others. But I don't think it's reasonable to tell people a typically trivial drawback is a huge problem that overides more significant advantages.
Of course personal preferences are personal, and that is no reason to address you like a clueless moron. Rather, I address you like a clueless moron is because you say clueless, moronic things with great confidence.
Many brushes are long so you can stand back at viewing distance while you paint. That's a good one. They're not THAT long. I think it might have a little more to do with balance. I'm just picturing you standing back a yard or two with you hand on the end of a really long brush. Exercising some really fine control I'm sure.
I'm a C++ guy, so naturally lot's of people ask me what kind of computer they should get
1. Don't buy a Compaq.
2. Whatever your price range, drop it a little, and put the extra into the monitor. A nice monitor will improve your computing experience more than anything else. Particularly in a year or two when the difference between the CPU you get and the next one up or down seems entirely trivial.
And if you didn't mention your price range on purpose, because it's not a major issue, one word: Trinitron.
The lines are much smaller than a pixel, and you will not notice them after the first day. (Well, except when someone who has never used a Trinitron for more than a day posts a stupid comment about them on slashdot, and you look for them.)
You notice them when you're dealing with single pixel details? So you're saying that when you're dealing with single-pixel details in Photoshop, running your monitor at resolutions Trinitron users are likely to, you don't ZOOM IN? Right. 10 hours a day. Right. Do you expect to go blind from eyestrain this week or next?
Trinitrons rock. They have the sharpest, flatest screens in the business. Some people don't seem to care about flat. Non-flat drives me buggy. YMMV.
I don't do fine detail, I do text. But I like things sharp, and I like lot's of screen real-estate.
For years when my non-techie friends asked me for computer buying advice, I had only 1 rule*: Spend some extra dough on the monitor, it will improve your computing experience more there than anywhere else, and chances are in 5 years the only thing you'll still have is the monitor.
When I went to buy a new monitor, I looked at what my various graphic designer friends favored, and went with the unanimous choice: A nice big Trinitron.
*I've recently added a second piece of computer buying advice: Don't buy a Compaq. That's not really on-topic here, but I made a solemn vow to their phone "support" people that I'd mention it any time I discussed computer buying...
"Do you honestly believe that Microsoft is doing this to help developers from the goodness of their hearts, and not to gain competitive advantage? Please"
Of course not, nor did he say so. Helping developers gains you competitive advantage. Microsoft has always understood this. If you're writing software for their OS, you're helping to maintain their market position, and you'll find they're really quite nice to you.
Certainly it's accurate. But it's not very specific. If accuracy was all we cared about in job titles, we could just give everyone the title "Worker".