"If we're all descended from a bunch of accounts, that explains a lot about the world."

Exactly

My unfounded personal theory is that we get art from our Neanderthal ancestors.

To me, this looks more like a form of accounting.
Each mark represents something owed or something paid: In effect, it's a "chit".
(Was unsure of the exact meaning of chit, so I googled it:
Chit: A short official note, memorandum, or voucher, typically recording a sum owed.)

Capuchin monkeys can be taught the concept of money. They understand debt:
http://scholar.google.com/scho...

I haven't seen any studies where they spontaneously create art, though, which leads me to believe that accounting could appear earlier.
"Deliberate Markings", yes, which is significant and amazing, but undoubtedly some fool is going to claim that it is "unmistakeable proof that the ancients worshiped the ocean waves" or that it was carved by a shaman as a form of divination.

You could call this "viral marketing"?
(sorry.)

I would be interested, if I didn't have to run Windows on it.

I thought it was all a bit silly, but this video made me rethink that position:

http://bergcloud.com/case-stud...

Buggy whip makers may have gone the way of the horse and buggy, but those who make riding crops have found themselves a niche in which to prosper.
The trick is to adapt.
Find a niche and scratch it...

"code red worm ..."

Those words gave me a twinge of nostalgia.
Yes, I just got a bit sentimental about an old buffer overflow.
Sysadmin Things (tm)... :-)

As to faxes, handwritten business communications are not at all unusual among older companies, due to the fact that typing kanji was not as straightforward process 20 years ago as it is today.

I've sent telegrams in Japan, but only to couples who were getting married and whose wedding I couldn't attend. I've never seen them used for other things, but a wedding is likely to have a few telegrams read at the reception.

Stop grasping at straws, you dullard.

While you're bickering over semantics, I'm demonstrating to the original poster how I have put together a working, reliable system that actually helps people deal with the tragedy that is Alzheimer's. Think about that for a minute, will you?

You're a zealot and a bore.
This is why people don't like you.

Explain to me how *any* of what you suggest would actually add any value whatsoever over the current setup.

We have a reliable, working system in place, after all. It has proven itself over and over, allowing us to communicate easily with her, with ambulance crews and with doctors. It has brought some peace of mind to both her and the family.

You offer nothing.
Your opinions are worthless.

Zealots like you give the open source movement a bad name.

Yeah. That's so much easier

I can see trying to explain to some minimum wage nursing home assistant how to open a terminal and open a new tunnel. Right now, all I have to do is ask them to restart the laptop and everything works.

You seem to want to wage a war of Open Source vs all things Microsoft, but I won't play along. I'm telling you that this is a system that has been working well for a couple of years. If it breaks, I'll probably replace it with Linux, Skype, Chrome and TeamViewer. After all, while I happen to be well-equipped to use Linux and SSH, the other people involved are not.

Now will you please give it the fuck up?

Nice troll.

That said, I am speaking from experience. Old laptop, with Windows in this case, plus Skype, plus TeamViewer, has worked for my family for several years, doing just what the OP is looking for.

But let's look at your assertion that you don't need TeamViewer in Linux. This would be possible, if I were the IT guy at the home, but as it is, I'm not. They have a wireless network for residents and visitors and the staff had to ask around just to find the PostIt note that had the WiFi password. Do you really think that I'll have much luck getting a local IP address reserved for this laptop and then getting the necessary ports opened and NAT rules put in place to be able to tunnel in?

As it is, we use TeamViewer and I can tell other family members, of varying technical skill levels, to start up a movie on Netflix for mom when they are finished Skyping

Forget trying to set it up for the other residents as a group. The staff and administration will likely freak out over the privacy implications and HIPAA laws or whatever. Offer to help other families do it on a one-by-one basis as I outline below:

My mother is in a rest home for the past few months and she's lost the ability to do much of anything on a computer.

Still, we manage to video conference with her every day, with almost no problems and no work required on her part.

The cost was negligible and the setup trivial. Here's what we did:

Scrounge an old laptop. For this, my brother donated a late-model thinkpad. It runs some version of Windows, currently. If it gets a virus, I'll wipe it and install Ubuntu, but it's been fine so far.

Install Skype, with an account created for the elderly person. Set it so that only people on their friends list are allowed to call. Set it to auto-answer incoming calls. Add family members to the person's friends list, but do so carefully, as anyone you add will be able to pop on any time they like.

Add TeamViewer, in case you need to log in and restart Skype, add someone, or even start a movie on Netflix or YouTube.

Our setup has worked well in practice for two years, including scenarios like talking to ambulance crews and LifeAlert, before she went into the home and talking with her doctors and other caregivers at the home. She spends time every day visiting with an infant grandson she hasn't yet met, so it's had a huge impact on the quality of her life.

Some people will complain that they don't like Skype, or they want to use FaceTime, but another family member isn't on IOS or whatever, but by now, everyone knows that if they want to call mom, they just use Skype.

Our family tried those. We bought 2 of them to talk to mom, but while they work for a while, they seem to just die after a few days. Sure, a reboot, reconnect to wifi and re-login sets it all good again, but that's a lot to ask.

We went with regular skype on an old thinkpad.

Do yourself a favor and install TeamViewer as well.

I listed my membership on my résumé, along with the ACM logo.
This was 15 years ago and I was a contractor around Washington, DC, doing many short-term contracts.

Yes, it was effective.
In the course of interviews, the interviewer would often tell me that they had been meaning to join, or had heard of it, but not once that they were themselves a member. Just a little psychological advantage, I guess. This helped,too, because I never went to college.

That said, I got absolutely nothing from their articles or other content.