I just now saw your comment while metamoderating, that was an excellent comment. The two guys who modded you up did well.

A bitmap ASCII (CP437) font? Done. I can crank one out in an hour, tops

You're better than I ever was, then. Of course, my tools were primitive. That took me back to 1984 when I discovered that the video circuit in Radio Shack's MC10 was capable of NTSC standard format quality video (but only in 8 colors) and decided to write a graphics program for it. It was great fun.

Anyway, I decided to add text capabilities to the drawing program, and it took a hell of a lot longer than an hour. I mapped it out on graph paper first, which took hours in itself and probably an hour to input the codes.

Since I'd made it so you could print your artwork on it's plotter, I eventually made it into a word processor. In 20k running on a 6802 chip IIRC.

Primitive times, a year later when I was looking for work the guy who interviewed me bragged about his mainframe, which had a whopping two megabytes of memory. I didn't get the job.

I haven't done any "real" programming since they ditched NOMAD and dBase and switched to MS Access at work ten years ago. Yech, glad I retire next year.

And what was your problem with Altavista?

My problem with it was that it wasn't really a search engine. It did no web crawling and sites were added by hand -- and it was damned hard to get your site on it. I was on all the rest of them, and I argued with them about the poor selection of Quake sites they had, some of the worst, content-free crap out there, while mine was actually excellent (other webmasters listed by Altavisa told me "your site puts mine to shame").

Infoseek was IMO the best one before Google came along. I fell in love with Google when I discovered it mostly because a search for just the word "quake" brought my site in something like third place. Of course, lots of folks linked to me.

Indeed. The AC obviously knows nothing about Christianity. Christians are judged not for our sins but for our good works, the price of our sins has been paid in blood, as long as we repent our wrongdoing. Forgiveness and love is what Christianity is all about.

I hadn't played that one even though I was a rabid gamer back then, but looking at the wikipedia entry I can see what you're saying.

Rex Nebular seems to be the polar opposite of the 1st person perspective guy (sorry, I'm stoned). I wish I'd have seen that game.

The fact that Linux has every feature Windows has while Windows lacks features that Linux has had for years is fact, not opinion. The fact that Linux is faster on the same machine is not opinion, but fact.

I use both OSes. Windows falls short everywhere except eye candy and gaming, which they excel at. Fact, not opinion.

Mars Needs Women.

That tickled a long-disused memory neuron... I think I've seen that phrase in a short story decades ago.

I was thinking how few women go into STEM and how few females there were in the old American west.

And thanks, I'm really looking forward to no more MS Access (and alarm clocks).

I'm glad you're not one of the goobers that complain about slashdot posting dupes!

Obviously when there is 50% unemployment something will have to change (like doubling wages and cutting hours in half).

When unemployment and poverty get high enough it's amazing how many conservatives become liberals. Look at the depression -- most of today's social programs started then.

As to "our inbred desire to kill people", that is certainly NOT inbred. Violence is a learned reaction, not hereditary.

Excellent comment. To my fellow slashdotters, it's obvious that caseih is a farmer from his user name. CaseIH makes tractors. It used to be two companies; Case and International Harvester. We used Case tractors on the flightline when I was in the USAF; they don't (or didn't) only make farm equipment then.

I see their ads all the time on TV.

And if anyone is wondering what a farmer is doing at slashdot, farming isn't for dumb people any more; farmers have to know chemistry, biology, and tech. Today's farmers are nerds.

You were modded troll because "To be honest I have enough trouble leaving Microsoft products at times, although often it's because they are the best at what they do" is incorrect. Nobody would replace the OS that came on their computer unless the replacement was superior, and Linux IS superior. My W7 notebook will be joining the tower in running kubuntu very soon -- Windows gets slower and slower all the time as its registry becomes hugely bloated. It seems uninstalling a program seldom deletes any registry keys; I'm using the Windows AV (can't remember its name) and have uninstalled AVG, yet Windows keeps nagging my to turn AVG on.

Windows lacks features, has to be rebooted monthly, its useability is awful, and it's slow as molasses compared to Linux.

As to "Explorer file manager has no equivalent in terms of speed, functionality and usability compared to anything in Linux", that is PURE troll. Windows file manager was all right in XP but the one in W7 is klunky as hell. I don't remember the name of kubuntu's file manager, but it's heads and shoulders above Windows'.

As to MS Office I'll agree Excel is the best spreadsheet, but Word has few advantages over Oo, and MS Access is one of the reasons I'm glad I retire next year. I miss real DBMS languages like NOMAD and it's little brother dBase. I'm still pissed about what MS did to FoxPro after buying it. It was a great little DBMS before Microsoft bought and ruined it.

And Outlook is the absolute WORST email client I've ever had the misfortune of using. They went all MS a couple of years ago where I work and I miss the Novell email client.

I use MS products at work and absolutely HATE them. Microsoft makes the absolute WORST products of anyone's in my opinion.

You were modded troll because it was a troll. I completely agree with the guy who modded you down.

People keep saying that private corporations can always do things cheaper than government.

They say that, but they're wrong. Springfield's power company CWLP has cheaper rates, less downtime, and better customer service than any other power company in Illinois. The reason is, as a natural monopoly, the CEO of Amerin is only beholden to the stockholders. What are the customers going to do, use a different power company?

Springfield's ratepayers ARE the stockholders. If the price goes up too much, the service deteriorates, the Mayor loses his job next election.

Oh, and CWLP keeps taxes down by actually turning a profit for the city.

What the hell am I supposed to do with the books? I have an entire wall covered in them.

Donate them to the public library; donate them to organizations that provide books for the poor; sell them at a used book store, there are all sorts of solutions.