So... what you are saying is that ICANN/IANA should've done something similar for names that has been done for the various "private" "non-routable" ip address pools (10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x, etc) have done since The Beginning... there needed to be some TLD that would only work for local networks and queries.

Of course, since that didn't happen all those years ago admins and amatures (and amature admins even) have been using a random mess of things, usually done by trying to ping or get a nslookup for some hopefully imaginary TLD and when it works (or rather, returns a NXDOMAIN error) they assume they can use it locally without repurcussion.

Which means there are tens, hundreds, or maybe thousands (or more!) "fake" TLDs in use out there, some hard coded into applications that are no longer supported, etc. but are still in use. Which means to try and fix it now would be pretty much near impossible.

But what it can do is increase the number of people learning

I have 1.5mb down/384k up (3mb down is offered but I'm so far out I loose too much signal for the higher speed to work reliably). Web access for us (2 kindles, a tv w/ netflix, my desktop, 2 other laptops for wife and oldest kid) really takes a hit for everyone else when someone is streaming from netflix or amazon and if 2 people want to stream something it becomes a fight to see which client has more buffering capability.

so my ISP should be paying me instead of vice versa? i certainly download much more than I upload....

If you already have your BS why would you go back for another? If you want to further your education you go back for a MS. What you want from the content of your question however, sounds like you need a couple hundred dollars worth of reference books and some free weekends.

The problem with learning this way is that you need the motivation. Either because you need the new skill/language to complete some part of a paying job or project, or because it scratches a particular itch or fills some need you have.

Taking a course, even at a community college, where you've paid for the course, paid to be evaluated (tests/projects/labs throughout the course/semester/term) and you've paid to recieve a grade is sometimes the only way to get truly committed to learning the skill or completing the course work.

I am concerned that going back to college would require a lot of time wasted doing electives and taking courses that don't get to the 'meat' of the learning

If you really want to get into teh web development side, I'd check out your local community colleges. All your gen ed stuff (english, math courses, history, etc) from your prior degree(s) should still count, so you'd just need to do the core classes for the AS degree you are interested in. You should be able to finish up in 3 or 4 semesters, if that.

Yup, same here, but it was a Fine Arts/Photo student's laptop, running Ubuntu 12.04

I recall an article I read 10-12 years ago about grade inflation, and how it really started in the 60s as a way for the "liberal" professors to help keep kids out of the draft for the Viet Nam War. High GPA (3.0 or higher IIRC) let the students keep their draft deferrments, so a lot of instructors were happy to fudge the numbers upwards just a tad.

Yup. Wherever it leaves Amazons data center to whoever provides service to Amazon - thats it, Amazon has paid for their connection. Everything else is peering agreements or smaller services buying service from larger ones, up until it leaves the end-user's ISP and hits their cable/dsl/dialup modem/carrier pigeon/whatever, at which point that end user is payign their service provider for their traffic or rather right to access at a particular speed.

I think teaching the concepts - how to think about the common programming tools (variables and then arrays, logic, loops, objects, object oriented vs. proceedure oriented, connecting tovarious data sources, etc) without even really writing any real code.

If someone is still interested in learning how to code after that, then it is time to break out the text editor and compiler/interpreter of choice.

That is one thing I liked about VB (yeah, flame on but this was in '96/97) was creating a quick GUI app, you could drag/drop/draw to add/move/remove objects from your app, then set the initial properties and write the code for the various event handlers. While I liked writing c/c++ and java, I really hated writing the overhead code to create the visual interfaces.

I've not done much/any c/c++/java stuff other than compile source written by other folks in the past 14 years or so, so maybe the current crop of IDEs do this.

win32 xserver and a ssh tunnel

Several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a pict.

Underpowered for what? 1/4 mile times? Yup, they are.

But my '65 356 w/ 75 hp engine can out corner a brand new production Camero or just about any other muscle car. Granted, on the straight aways I'll get the rust blown off my doors, but Porsche owns cornering and handling.

Probably because

1) Those corporate org customers/clients of yours probably have intranet apps that were designed around IE6 and break horribly in any other browser, and it is "too expensive" to re-do them for either a neutral platform, updated version of IE, etc.

2) Those same corporate org customers/clients of yours probably have an IT department that won't allow them to install other browsers to use when not using the aforementioned IE6 based apps

While you are at it, hope that the answers are stored with a hash just like a "real" password...