Any of the Martin Gardner books would be good but I don't know if they are still in print.

I thought the main reason to use java was to be OS independent. When your web page on Linux couldn't handle the load you could just move your code to a bigger Solaris or IBM box. Or when the PHB says he doesn't trust BSD to be secure he can move it all to Windows.

I've not worked with c#. Is it multiplatform like java or are you stuck with running it on Windows?

Yes, I have no problem reading two of the examples at wikipedia. The fully reversed paragraph wasn't readable.

My apologies. The post was written as 6 text paragraphs which became one paragraph when I posted it as html.

Labels can be an issue. I am dsylexic and have met other dsylexics. Being labeled dsylexic is almost like being labeled stupid. I was lucky that no one figured it out until late enough in my life that the label didn't bother me. A dsylexic thinks different than "normal" people. A lot of my thinking is 3D visualization. While in high school I was getting some training in patternmaking. The dsylexica made that job so easy I was doing stuff that my trainer couldn't understand. Once when I walked into the boss' office (the trainer) he was on the phone telling a customer that he couldn't make the part they wanted. The blue print was on the desk in front of me and a two second glance at it let me figure out why he thought it couldn't be made and that I could make it. So right at the end of him saying "it can't be made" I quietly said "I can make it." He was used to me by then and said into the phone "I just had an idea. Let me get back to you." After I explained how I can make it, he still didn't understand it. He asked me if I were sure I could make it. I said yes and we bid and got the job. I had no problem making the pattern. So I'm color blind, dsylexic and have the signs of an aspie. Those issues have caused me problems at times but they also helped me do things normal people can't do. The issue is that the label is often considered to be a negitive trait rather than just a different way of thinking. The aspie traits made me a good sysadmin and a good coder though it made dating very difficult. The dsylexia made me a good patternmaker but makes spelling and balancing a check book almost impossible. The color blindness makes it easy for me to see through camouflage which is useful in hunting or war but makes wiring a network cable very difficult. Beware the label.

In high school I read all the Sherlock Holmes books. Later I found the charactor was based on a real person, Dr. John Bell.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein was an indirect study in how society is affected by resources.

Stranger in a Strange Land also by Heinlein also about choices society makes that they aren't always aware of.

One time I was writing some code to control hardware and the boss wanted it to watch for a condition and then alert the supervisors. I thought it was a good idea and asked him what symptoms defined this condition he wanted to watch for. He said "just let the computer figure it out." I don't think I ever got him to understand the computer doesn't think but just follows rules and until the rules are defined the computer won't know what to do. I ended up making a guess for rules and kept tweeking as I watched for false positives and negatives.

A entrepreneur needs to understand how computes work and how algorithms work or it's going to be a cluster.

Depending on what type of job you are doing, bandwidth could be an issue. As a sysadmin, when a server goes down my boss expects me to fix it "right now". Excuses like storms took down my internet connection aren't acceptable. I was expected to have alternate internet and as a last resort, drive into the data center to fix the problem.

Some Linux servers only had GUI interfaces for the hardware connection. Dial-up wasn't fast enough for these.

A programmer could be off line for a few days and still be productive as long as phone service was available so conversations with coworkers could still take place.

I've tried 6 different browsers on 4 different platforms and none of them render slashdot properly. All of them render something different than the others. Firefox on Solaris was so bad I gave up reading slashdot at work. I would think Firefox on Linux would render it properly but it leaves out major chunks of screen that show up in Opera.

Is anyone going to acturally quality test your changes this time?

I take it you don't know about ADA...

I'm on the north side of 65 and am still employed as a sysadmin for a little more than 100k. I was 54 when I was hired and offered the second highest salary of my small group of sysadmins. Being old isn't a handicap yet. I have one company waiting for me to retire from my current employer just so they can have me work part time for them. I've never let my skills get rusty by studing both inside and outside the company. I'm considered the go-to guy for any weird Linux or Solaris problems and the person to see for ksh or perl coding help. I'll let you know in another 5 years if being old has become a problem.

I second the suggestion for spinrite. It worked wonders for me back then. The biggest problem you have is the compression. Since the compression algorithm depends on previous data in the file, once you get to an unreadable sector everything after is lost. For some algorithms is any part is missing, all is lost. You might be able to read the raw disk sectors under linux. I remember doing something like that long ago but don't remember how to do it anymore. Reading it under linux has the benefit of not corrupting the data even with multiple read attempts. There is a second fat table on floppies but MS never used it. Linux will use it if the first seems corrupted.

quote: Poor thing looks absolutely terrified.

It's not scruffed and the person is holding the feet up. If that animal were unhappy (like some of my ferrets get) there would be some serious blood from bites and claw rips.

My Honda gets 60 mpg. With a 60 mile round trip that is about a $6 a day saving in gas over my pickup. I find taking the back roads home very relaxing. On the other hand there is no public transportation between my home and work so I don't really have the choice of public/private transportation. Mostly I ride when there is no ice on the roads and it's not raining on my drive in. I don't care if I get wet driving home. This year I started riding the bike in April and will continue until the snow flies which is usually in mid December.

My 1998 Ford F-150 pickup which is in pretty good condition can be sold on the street for about $3000 but the voucher system would only give me $2000 for it. Hmmm, should I sell it or take a $1000 loss on the voucher? That being said, I've been looking for a high milage utility vehicle for the last five years with no luck. I keep thinking a Geo Tracker with VW's diesel would be a great combination but I doubt I'll ever see it.