Fascinating. Of the universities and colleges in Georgia that I know of, at least a dozen, most of the tech staff uses and likes linux.
I think some quarters on a campus may gravitate one way or another, of course. The business dept. staff here is more strongly linux; the faculty is more Microsoft. Getting a monolithic 'yes' to anything at any large university is surprising...

Now just sign up James Cameron to do the movie after *that* and we'll be good.

Not drunk, yet.

Once again, I apologize for not explaining stuff fully. I just figured the fact that we were discussing businesses upgrading would sort of mean that we were talking about Microsoft-based businesses. (That's the ecosystem.)
Unfortunately, due to the way things work, for good and ill, if you're a Microsoft shop, you have more pressure to upgrade products than if you're running, say, Gnu/Linux.

And, as I said above, since these are business apps they're running, that are critical, wouldn't it be nice if the front-end was just a browser, and the back-end was a plain jane web app that could run on any browser.

I'm not talking about moving everything into the cloud, I'm just talking about moving some of these business apps to modern platforms.

First paying computer gig was in 1981, so I'm with you on the whole centralized-vs-decentralized thing. (I'm probably of the generation before you.) Really. I was a little bit concise in my post; sorry. I was just excited because for the first time in YEARS I might actually be that dreaded person, the primary poster, I think. (Didn't happen.)

I should clarify: I see a lot of businesses that switched over from dumb terminals to winxp running frontend apps. The business obviously has some process where they want a central server, hosting a db. If they went to a well-designed webapp, they could deploy WHATEVER on the desk. This excites me for a great many reasons.

Obviously, webapps will not replace everything. I don't want them for *my* docs. But I'm an individual, not a corporation. And there's quite a few business processes that are, unfortunately, just record keeping.

I want *my* data locally, sure. But if I'm a business, I'd prefer my data locally, too, on a server serving a webapp.

However, I'm atypical, since I have a mac and 3 linux boxes at home.

It's got to be tough. You can't kill off XP like you want to, because people really really might leave. But it looks foolish to support that morass of code in spite of the NEW morass you've spent all that money on.

In the long run, they'll switch. Until everything becomes a webapp, the ecosystem almost demands it. Here's hoping people realize webapps are where it's at, for most things.

I admit I haven't read the article yet, and perhaps it's got a very nuanced discussion on this subject that will persuade me otherwise...

but I doubt it.

Look, it's a new thing, really. I don't know why we haven't had 'art' in VG yet, but the simple fact is that it isn't because we don't have explicit sex. (Explicit violence has been censored from VG? Uh...)

I just drew a simple classic off the top of my head. Citizen Kane has nothing approaching violence and sex, and yet it's well regarded. And although Shakespeare had violence (and bawdy puns) it's nothing that you couldn't do without being a MA game.

I could probably list a 100 movies that affected me greatly, that are well regarded, and at least half of them I'd put forth as art, and of those, at least half again would be lacking in violence and sex. Sometimes, lacking colors in your palette can ENHANCE the experience.

We're getting there. Things like Braid are a step forward. Quite honestly, though, the real problem is the lack of a broad audience. When the 40 year old gamers of today hit 60, they'll have different tastes and requirements.

I've worked with them too, here in the US.

And guess what, they're not different from the vast majority of people, either.

If Montessori is the one best treatment, I would have been a miserable failure. I work best when I do have structure.
For example, I love reading. (Could read before I spoke, actually.) I have a large vocabulary and an instinctive grasp of grammar because of this.
It wasn't until I was actually forced to write, in great amounts, as part of an AP English course, that I really learned how to write. (And, am severely out of practice, alas.)
Montessori, if I remember right, would allow me to read, but not force me to write. And the majority of people I've met with AD(H)D- screw it, hyperactivity- would love to be in an environment that allowed them to do what they like, but would never force them to do other things. I don't know anybody my age with hyperactivity who didn't succeed without a process of careful attention to force them to learn how to do various things until it became a habit.
So, in a nutshell: how exactly is Montessori the best option?

I too have a mild case of it, and have been diagnosed for... 37 years? Something like that.
From my standpoint, it's not just sitting down, it's practicing the sitting down, forcing myself to do it, until it becomes a learned instinctive behavior.

Credentials: ADD from back when it was hyperactivity. Been on the Feingold Diet (worked for me, not for everybody), various drugs (works for me, not for everybody), and a lot of forced practice courtesy of mom (would probably work on everybody, since she's a force of nature).

I"ve heard various things about this, over the years, and the question that occurs to me: what happens when they've re-trained the brain this way, to the *good* aspects of ADHD?

I can zip through solving problems in a way that a lot of other people can't. I can 'see' the solution when working at fixing something mechanical. I can also spot discrepancies - visual, aural, logical - much quicker than my friends.

How much of this goes away? That would be a very interesting followup research project, IMHO.