Haven't yet seen any comments about floor 7½.

It's a bit cramped, but can be interesting.

I do not currently intend to allow my body to be consumed by fire, shot into space, or any of the other options in the poll.

Before I am too decrepit to move under my own power, I will take what steps are necessary to assure my body is recycled as completely as possible.

If I am not an organ donor at the time, my current plan involves a plane ticket to the American West; a drive to Yellowstone National Park, if the volcano hasn't visited its wrath upon us; and a hike out into the backcountry.

Once there, I expect to find one of the resident wolf packs, and observe them and the other creatures for as many days (or weeks) as possible.

On the other hand, if the costs for commercial space travel drop over the next 40 years or so ... (no, not my lifeless body; my living, but old, self).

No offense is intended here, but there are - in general - significant differences between "blue collar" and "white collar" software and systems people.

With respect to pay, the short answer and significant oversimplification: BA/BS | Master's | Doctorate means the holder can command a higher salary than those with a lesser degree in the job market in general.

In debates such as this, when they've arisen on /., respondents often say "proof of persistence", "better grammar", any number of other reasons to reward more highly educated software people with higher salaries. Some simple rules of economics hold; there are fewer people with BA/BS degrees than there are without; there are fewer people with Master's in any field of employ than there are people with BA/BS degrees; etc.

Positions that call for additional responsibility/skill may often allow an applicant to substitute "years of experience" for an advanced degree - for the same reason - there are fewer people in the potential pool with XX years of experience than there are people in the pool with 2 years of experience.

Beyond this most basic reason (supply and demand), over 20 years in software and systems design, I have seen significant differences in abstract thinking, strategic design, forecasting & preparation, etc. between more highly educated people and those who liked school "not so much". Like anything else worth anything, you get out of your career what you put in. Education is a significant input that differentiates some candidates from the great hordes.

grep is certainly very useful, and of the tools listed is likely the most frequently used.

find is no doubt more useful than grep, because nearly any tool in the Unix tool box may be subsumed by find.

Siebel's comments were apparently uttered without any supporting homework. A glance at a graph does not a studied analysis make.

From TFA:

But the recent drop is not as steep as it seems at first. I asked Shane Greenstein, an economist at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management who has written extensively about the computer industry, to take a look at the raw data upon which those numbers were supposedly based: the annual I.T. spending estimates published by IDC.

Mr. Greenstein's calculations produced a more moderate compounded annual growth rate of 11.6 percent for 1980 to 2000, instead of 17 percent. (Mr. Siebel's personal assistant said last week that the 17 percent in the Stanford talk came from a staff member who calculated from a reading of a chart, not from precise figures.)

When Mr. Greenstein looked at the full IDC data set, which goes back to 1961, and used other breakpoints to compare growth in earlier and later periods, he found that the most golden years of I.T. were in the 1960s, when use of mainframe computers spread widely. From 1961 to 1971, the compounded annual growth rate was 35.7 percent, more than three times the rate in the 1980-2000 period celebrated by Mr. Siebel.

The article goes on to point out the obvious, that the percentage growth of an industry will decline as the installed base rises over time. Absolute growth in IT will continue - though it may not be gangbusters of old, IT will never be stagnant.

As other posters here have pointed out, many, (many) industries depend on the support infrastructure that IT provides to work effectively and efficiently. This will not change overnight. While some of this infrastructure has been substantially commoditized over the last 10 years or so, there will always be challenges that non-technical team-members cannot solve themselves. These challenges will require the participation of and collaboration with technologists in organizations that want to function at the high-performance end of the bell curve.

Methinks you extrapolate without enough sampling enough data.

For it's intended task, it's fantastic. That task being reading fiction. NOTHING ELSE

The Kindle's intended task is displaying the written word for reading. I happen to find it fantastic for reading. Reading fiction, non-fiction, periodicals, and work-related documents. Others apparently find the DX appropriate for non-fiction, as several universities are working with Amazon to put textbooks (....non-fiction?) on the device.

I have exactly zero (0) works of fiction on my DX. I have six or seven books (purchased), all non-fiction; a Project Gutenberg text (free), non-fiction; a $1.99 trial issue of a magazine, mostly non-fiction, some short works of fiction (The New Yorker); and several work-related documents in PDF format.

The New Yorker indeed has a navigable table of contents, as do other periodicals, based on several reviews I've read. PDFs do not behave the same way on the DX as on a computer, but as others have pointed out, this may be remediated with a software upgrade.

A couple of comments, from a "pleased DX owner" -

1) Amazon indicates that the Whispernet service is free. You make a good point that Amazon or Sprint may at some time in the future choose to charge for web browsing, but using the service to buy/sync/transfer documents will remain free. Nothing I've seen from Amazon indicates that they *will* charge for browsing, though.

2) In reading other posters' comments, it appears that PDFs - even those of the technical genus - render quite nicely. There are PDF capabilities missing from the DX that are standard on a computer - as you and others have pointed out, a software update may enhance these.

3) The DX is comfortable for *me* to read with. The screen "wipes" are no more disorienting than turning a page in a dead-tree book or changing pages in a web-based document, and in my experience take less than half a second. Reading e-ink is far more pleasant an experience than reading text on an LCD screen, and the bulk of one's time is spent reading, not refreshing, the screen.

If you know anyone with a Kindle (2 or DX), ask them if you can play with it for a short while. You may be surprised at how thoroughly you enjoy the reading experience.

I own a DX - my mom and wife went in together on a Kindle 2 for my birthday, several days later Amazon announced the DX. Returned the K2 and got the DX a couple of weeks back. I have used it every day since receiving it, and have thoroughly enjoyed using it. Excellent reading device and experience. The DX simply allows me to read, without getting in the way.

Loading PDFs using USB is trivially easy; once, too rushed to plug the DX into my work laptop, I emailed a work-related PDF document to my kindle email address; $0.15 saved me a few minutes. Amazon will convert some documents to Kindle format via email if you cannot convert to PDF on your own. One downside on PDFs: have not figured out how to magnify other than rotating the DX. I cannot testify to complicated graphics, as I have not loaded any technical PDFs on my DX.

A few technical reviews I've found that you may find helpful:

http://www.matthewdavidwilliams.com/2009/06/12/technical-document-pdfs-on-the-kindle-dx/

CNET Review

Gizmodo Review

Hope this helps. There are other reviews out there.

Thank you for your comment.

The troll made a number of assumptions, and failed to see that I was simply pointing out the pathetically poor reasoning in the report. I was not advancing any particular theory about the effects of rising atmospheric concentrations of GHGs.

Bad assumption number one: the people with whom I work seek government grants. Contravening truth: for-profit organization, does not seek grants.

Bad assumption number two: researchers always tailor their views to match the perceived desires of their customers. Contravening truth: conclusions that are developed from work my organization performs do not always provide customers the results they desire.

Thank you for commenting. I agree, "utterly silly" is how I would characterize the report in question.

Hate to be a party pooper but this

That lifespan increase had everything to do with development in medicine and a better healthcare network.

is not accurate.

Most of the improvements in mean lifespan are due to the development or improvement of public sanitation. Better healthcare and nutrition are both important contributors to improvements in lifespan, but don't reach the level of significance of public sanitation.