Works well for me. I just stuff PDFs into my dropbox folder on my desktop, and read em on the iPad. Makes for a happy combination. There is also an Android tablet in the house, works about as well. Seems like a solved problem from my perspective. I never print anything for reading any more...

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, almost within rock-throwing distance of Silicon Valley, and I have ZERO broadband available. The only way I can get on the Internet is via a Verizon 4GLTE MiFi, at $10/GB. And THEY constantly screw up the billing too!

I used to live for his regular columns. I loved his wit, and curmudgeonly attitude. I met him a few times and found him the same in person as he was in print. He will be missed. Yeah, VW beetles were dangerous little cars. I drove one for years (a 1964 model) and I was very careful, and knew what a death trap they could be. But how many of us ride motorcycles, or other dangerous vehicles. Life is a series of risks. I guess we could wrap ourselves in cotton balls and stay home. He was not a "damned fool" just a human being who chose to do something he knew was risky, who no doubt weighed the risks, and decided to go ahead.

Robert A. Heinlein in his 1957 time-travel novel described exactly this idea in detail when his protagonist awoke in the "far distant" year of 2000. So it is hardly new.

I live in the outskirts of a major metropolitan area, the San Francisco Bay Area. I cannot get what a slashdoter would consider broadband in any form. The local Telco insists they want to sell me 6 Mbit DSL and that they can serve me. But they simply cannot. The local DSLAM is over 18,000 feet from my door, and it is full with no available ports. Further, the lines that serve me have load coils on them which the Telco refuses to remove. Because of the load coils, even dial-up sucks. I have been fighting them, begging them for ten years to give me service. Further, they have a cell phone site less than 1000 feet from my door, could put a DSLAM there and serve me nicely but refuse. Yet hardly a week goes by that I do not get a letter or phone call trying to sell me a service that they do not have and cannot deliver. As for Cable? They are not within 2 miles of me. We need some oversight to force the Telco to actually provide the service they claim to be able to. By removing load coils and upgrading the DSLAM they could probably give me 384 KBPS. Not quite real broadband, but better than what I have now. But they refuse. By putting a DSLAM in the cell phone facility, they could easily give me 6 mbps, but refuse. They have dark fiber that is sitting unused in the cell site, but won't sell me service. Yet they constantly bug me to buy their nonexistent service. I am not usually a proponent of government intervention, but I do not see any other way to force them to deliver service. They want the relatively easy low-hanging fruit, but refuse to upgrade the infrastructure to serve the more marginal cases.

No it can't. Many many people, including yours truly cannot buy health insurance for any price. I am healthy, no pre-existing conditions, and have money in the bank. I am also gray-haired and unemployed. They won't take my money and I've tried and tried.

Actually, you're quite wrong. I want to avoid closed "off-the-shelf" products if at all possible. But I want a really good system, and am trying to learn what is available in the Linux world that will meet my needs. I am leaning heavily toward Zoneminder, but want to know about alternatives I may have missed. I am planning a large server infrastructure that will include applications such as Asterisk, MythTV and even Misterhouse. I am very much wondering as well about sharing server platforms, thus looking for caveats about combining, say, Asterisk and a few security cameras on the same server. Frankly, your post is offensive and does not contribute to the discussion. Stony