Despite the ranges specified in the survey, I'm getting 87ms ping in North America. I'm thinking this one is on Telus, though... or savvis, who I don't much trust anyway. Why the heck are they routing my packets to /.?

The screen on a laptop is perforce much lower than is ergonomically appropriate, and you end up looking down at it all the time, unless you prop the whole thing up so the keyboard is at a 45 degree angle and your wrists are bent backwards while you type. If the screen could be detached and stood on a pedestal to bring it closer to appropriate height, it might be possible to actually work on a laptop.

Before you tell me how that would make it so much harder to, you know, use it on your lap, ask yourself how many people you see on a daily basis with a laptop actually perched on their laps, and how many use tray tables or coffee shop tables...

Why?

In all seriousness, despite the weakness of the statistics (33 points does not make a universe, particularly with such widely scattered data), this is simply a codification of the reluctance many feel about trusting vital data to Google. It's interesting to note how many projects Google has shuttered, and the lengths of time they were live. I do appreciate the fact that the author has provided his raw data so that we can draw our own conclusions.

I'm afraid I have to agree with the consensus here. The big issue is the doctorate. In my experience, very nearly the only people who will accept someone with a Ph.D. behind his / her name is a university. And universities will be wary as well, they will think you expect to go tenure track, and you've already found how limited those slots are. You would probably have better luck with the employment if you dropped the Ph.D. off your resume; that's a bigger problem IMHO than the gap.

The only alternative to the uni IT departments suggested earlier would be consulting; look for firms of consulting engineers, they like to be able to list Ph.D.s on their corporate CVs. I don't recommend going into business for yourself; that takes a vary particular mindset, and it's often a very thin existence.

I have Riven on Steam. It's broken. I don't know whether it's a data file issue, an OS issue, or something else, so I'm going back to the original CDs to find out.

Of course, some of us love the old Model M keyboard. I do, and I have four of them in reasonably heavy use.

I also have a computer with an Intel motherboard that uses RIMM memory. That's being a web server, so I can't nuke it yet; but when the next power supply fails (I have two that I've been swapping and repairing -- the RIMM motherboards used a funky 6-pin connector where the modern ATX uses the PCI-4 or PCI-8 connector) it will be time to start looking for a replacement. The machine I used until just recently for my home development, though, is even older -- a Pentium IV 1.6GHz without even hyperthreading.

I do have a Windows 98 machine with a SCSI card that I'm putting back on line so that I can play Riven from the deck of five CDs... SCSI lets me have four external CD drives.

And there's no point putting a perfectly good 100Base-T switch on the raw output from my "broadband" connection, as it peaks at 2.5Mbps; while I had to retire the 80's era 10BaseT hub that I used for that when its fans failed, I am using a 90's era 8-port 10BaseT hub for that now.

Here in BC a building exploded from a natural gas leak some ten+ years ago. The leak was not in the building but some distance away, and the gas traveled through the soil to reach the building. This was a well-used building, yet nobody noticed the mercaptan smell. Gas company experts concluded that in its passage through the soil, the marker compounds got stripped from the gas by the same process that makes gas chromatography work -- larger molecules are slowed by passage through what was effectively a packed column.

Not saying this is what's happening in Boston; I'm not there, I don't know. But it is possible. I suspect that something similar may have happened in that neighbourhood in Cali that blew up due to an undetected gas leak -- last year was it?

Sleep tight...

Who says computers donated to this place are "old"?

Typically, these people get computers that have been in the school system for a couple years and are physically abused. School kids don't treat school computers very well. Electronically they are still sound, and recent in enough cases that DDR3 is a serious option. Granted, they also get rafts of (relatively) ancient computers from businesses, but the update / recycle of school machines that have only suffered physical damage is, as far as I understand it, still a pretty big part of their job.

I don't know where OP is from, but in BC, Canada, there is a group called Computers For Schools BC, who are in the (government-funded) business of taking old computers and buffing them up for use in the school system. I suspect they would be pleased to receive something as close to current as 4GB DDR3... and they do enough volume that 500 of them would likely be used up in a month.

Basically it seems that this would bar any company in California (and much of Canada) from entering this raffle. It is as illegal to take part in an unregistered raffle as it is to run one.

The Canadian province of British Columbia does as well... And Quebec requires that anyone running a raffle or other game of chance not only register, but pay all provincial and federal taxes on the winnings.

Debian would run on the Alpha machine I was playing with at the time. Shortly after that I got a Fedora distro running on a second machine. That combination stayed with me until the Alpha died, and the next install, one I actually had to do real work with, was Ubuntu. I did a number of Ubuntu installs but got fed up, and now new installs are Mint. I have three Fedora, one Ubuntu, and one Mint under my direct control right now, and I am about to bring up a second Mint box for gaming -- thank you Humble Bundle.

I have four of them. Collected them over the past twenty years or so, as I found them. Been using them ever since. No, you can't have any, I use them all.

In fact, I believe it is law that any tally within some defined percentage (2% comes to mind) in any poll triggers an automatic recount, and if the entire riding has a margin of victory less than, I think, 1000 votes, that also triggers a recount.

So maybe GoPro should make an iPad case?