That's the kicker w/ a hosted VM. Once you need more than one virtual machine, hobbyists are probably priced out.

If the interface doesn't have a low learning curve, they're probably not going to waste time with it. I was at a university that used Blackboard, which would be great if it worked as intended. But, it was slow (sucked for students) and apparently has a terrible interface that professors have to go through (I never heard a positive word from them). As a consequence, I'd guess about 1/3 of my professors didn't use it, 1/3 used it sparingly, and the other third made a graduated use of it with a handful relying on it almost totally. I don't think I had one professor that didn't have to rely on their own website to pick up the slack, and many just said "hey if I have to set up my own website anyway, why bother learning Blackboard on top of that?"

I second this comment. The "college is a waste of time" mindset seems to be popular on Slashdot and couldn't be further from the truth. If you can't understand how some of the formal learning you're getting in college doesn't help you as a developer, you're not thinking hard enough about what you're being taught. College isn't about teaching you to write a web page for a specific job. Formal education is teaching the best way to tackle fundamental problems the most efficiently.

I just completed a degree after about 14 years in the field and I took A LOT from my curriculum (and I mean in EVERY class).

I'm guessing the old one was on Windows XP; probably time to retire him anyway.

I find that hard to believe, seeing as both the Flintstones and Rubbles have young children with young, attractive wives.

I'd agree with you, except Assange doesn't have some intrinsic power to information. His "power" is that he's trusted to release this information with the wides disbursal. The moment he develops the appearance if cherry picking, he loses that power and whistleblowers will use other outlets.

The media doesn't like competition. When Assange started dropping major headlines he 1.) took eyeballs away from the latest Kim Kardashian sightings headlining in the MSM thus costing them money and forcing them to do real work, 2.) Made the MSM look trivial and incompetent since they obviously hadn't been paying much attention or care, 3.) endangered the cozy relationship media has with government by dsrupting their monopoly relationship.

Think about how many times some moron has shared information about a crime they committed on Facebook. I think they care, but they don't understand how quickly information spreads.

At first, I thought FaceBook users were a bunch of popularity whores looking for scores of friends and their own reality TV fix. Now, I simply think users just don't make the connection to a bunch of online connections and how quickly and easily their activity propagates to each other.

No only do they provide good instruction, but it'll also prepare him to learn skills on his own which is more aligned with what professional developers do on a daily basis.

As for languages, I always recommend HTML for new programmers. It's simple, you get immediate results, you can quickly build practical applications, and it set up a foundation for further learning; scripting, networking, style sheets, etal.

They've got their critics and the best thing anyone can say is their revenue looks to be trending downward. Call me when they've declared bankruptcy. They have a neat looking phone on the market and all I hear about it is "well they can't possibly compete with Apple or Androids."

Amen to that. In the DotCom era it seemed like the IPO was the goal. Maybe companies will start to see that sometimes running your business the way you see fit is better without a quarterly report monkey sitting on your back. My only concern is I see that Goldman Sachs was in on the deal, so I'm wondering how much blood they drained from Dell on the way out.

Another vote for the harassing marketing. When I bought my house, the first day I checked the mail box it was STUFFED with flyers, brochures, credit applications, etc. targeting a new home owner. I'm sure it was one or more of the 10-20 organizations you work with during the process, but it's an example of what happens when private personal data makes it to advertisers.

Unless something has changed, the credit bureaus give potential creditors access to credit summaries about you. I don't know what they include, but that's how you get unsolicited credit card offers.

People in 2 other states from me (ever) with the same names (I'm assuming from what I found on the internet that they're 2 different people) had some of their information posted on my credit report. It's an annoyance to get it removed, but it's possible. Find a good credit cleanup book, get all 3 of your reports, and make sure there's nothing jacked up in it.