Well, I work for a media co based on a dead-tree newspaper, and that's the important thing. Make other media - websites, whatever, make money. Use the dead tree thing to drive clicks to the websites, and run em like they're extensions of the old broadsheet. My news/website is fine, started years ago. See wapo, nyt, etc. It's how you use your distribution and penetration in the market. Being a dead-tree newspaper is a start, or an ending, depending on how you build out.

I trust Colin Percival implicitly. His speaking matches his writing to an astonishing extent.

Nothing about why a kid would want to write programs.
My oldest son started playing on my MAME rig at the age of four, GBC/GBA emus at six. He loved the 8 bit Nintendo games.
By age eight I showed him GameMaker. Community, sprite sheets, people writing fan versions. He loved it.
I mean, I'd show him perl and shell and he'd be like, why? But being able to write your own games, that's a motivator for him.
He still does GM stuff, but spends most of his time in Flash, again because it does what he likes.

Context is everything, and awareness of relevant context is a differentiator between any communicators.
In a classroom written context, there will be fewer noticeable differences between native speakers.
As context becomes abstract and less predictable communication starts to break down. Things become less familiar. A great translator, transcriber, or interpreter knows how to adjust and compensate.

The ability to identify the communicating community context is rare. When we say "native speaker" it's a narrow reference to that person's context of familiarity, and I think several posts are trying to discuss this aspect of communication.

and beginning an obsessive hunt for compatible isa network cards so lynx could get to hotmail

The post about McLuhan was great. Also, see the work of Arthur Kroker in the early 90s. Mashups and social networks predicted. "Spasm" - it came with a cd!

There was also a post about newspapers persisting despite the net. Misses the point of this, and this is why tv won't die. The media companies make money with a business model that uses established dino media like newpaper and tv, to drive traffic to money making web based businesses. Pay some attention to what you are being sold, in a paper and on tv. Advertising is about an exchange of influence, not a messaging system. Paying big money for a campaign buys you stuff. That's why you do it. The ad message is largely irrelevant. The transaction is the important business, buying you important regulatory and oversight relief. Funny, eh?

And didn't Xenix have a lovely networking setup too... MSNet anyone? It is great to see NetBSD being recognized. Small fast slim and powerful, you have to know vi, and put on your own perl. What's not to like?

the customer with no mail has unrealistic expectations. when this is getting set up, it needs to be pointed out that it isn't controlled internally. free, but comes with risks. when i deploy google apps, i stress the privacy and advertising angle more than the reliability as far as potential issues to consider. the reliability speaks for itself, it is what it is, and what it will be. places need to assess if they want to plow dollars into their own infrastructure, or use the dollars on better people. for some places, the risk is worth it to get free email for their domain. since apps recently tied domain mail to outlook and other clients, a reason to not choose it was removed. an honest evaluation of the service needs to be given before a decision is made. here's what they do, here's what you get, here's what it would cost for me to do this in house.