I've never worked in a startup type company, but I've been in IT my entire professional life and have never seen ageism in any of the places I've worked. Mind you, they've mostly been medium-to-large corporations that have been around for a while. But there's always been a good spread from 20s up to 60s in terms of who you had running around in the shop. At 40, I have yet to have a boss younger than me. It's been weighing on my mind, though--I've seen the same news items as everyone else--and I'm trying to get a realistic assessment of how bad it is outside the west coast/startup kinda zones. Anyone got any experience to share?

Agreed. If we ditch Texas we're totally keeping Austin. Been down there several times and love it.

Tried that already. Called the Articles of Confederation. It didn't go well.

South KCMO here. Got to my polling place at 6:30, got out right around 7. We had one of the electronic ones, and everyone else was using the Scantrons. Place was packed! Little church fellowship hall, with both A-L and M-Z lines stretching back and going around on themselves.

Well yeah, but there's other people in KY you know. My poor family, for one. I'm the only one who escaped; they're all still stuck there. C'mon, do it for them; don't they have it bad enough already? ;)

I don't know how many times it has to be said, people neither want nor need a tablet that can double as a desktop. That is not what tablets are for. That is why all the tablets that came before were niche products at best, landfill at worst.

Apple grasped it was not a desktop replacement, but a specialized appliance. You can't use a tablet like a PC, nor should you. It's a different feature set, a different interface, different everything. I thought perhaps MS had got the message but apparently this is not the case, esp. with the keyboard-case thingy they've got. They're still trying to shoehorn two disparate user experiences together into one, and this neither can nor should be done.

Frankly, as long as Ballmer is in charge, I fear MS is going to keep going down this primrose path, and before it gets better it's going to get a lot worse.

Actually, Mr Cook makes a valid point about vertical touchscreen interfaces. Back in the 80's when they first came out, you got a lot of them in, e.g., kiosks and whathaveyou. And while they work for short periods (e.g., look something up real quick), for any extended period of time over a few minutes the arms get very tired, very fast. They're not meant to be held out like that for any long time, so you wind up with arms sore and fatigued, and feel like, yes, gorilla arms when you're through.

Usually an ideal angle for touchscreens is at an angle, preferably one which has a sweet spot for viewing, and some sort of support for the touching arm.

(Fun fact: the 'gorilla arms' problem is considred one of the main examples of what happens when you don't take real-world user experience into account. It's why companies that do extensive end user testing put out products that work better, and companies that just follow along with the trappings fall by the wayside.)

I am primarily a mac user, and this was the way I was able to play certain games that didn't get ported over, like Arkham Asylum and such. And they looked a heck of a lot ebtter than if I'd just run them in a VM or something like that. I had occasional bandwidth issues, but that was generally down to my ISP in any case. Frankly, I thought they were the bee's knees, and I'm sorry to see they seem to be going the way of the dodo. It's still a good idea, to my mind. Maybe just needs a little tweaking to make it a viable proposition.

...getting a huge "Road Warrior" vibe offa this whole thing?

"To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the dark syrup. And the forest sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without syrup, they were nothing. Man began to feed on man, because who wants dry pancakes? The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a barrel of sap. And in this maelstrom of decay, came the warrior we called Mad Makenzie..."

Well, TW just mailed me a flyer for free TV service for one year if I buy into their Ultimate Internet package, but their connection is dodgy at best, so I don't see that happening. And AT&T fiber isn't even close to gigabit here. So at this point I'm just waiting.

Well, hopefully they'll have gotten their butts down here by then, but we'll have to see. Still, it is an interesting question, though I can't imagine too much of a real estate migration being driven by fiber, except by outlier geeks like us ;)

I know what you mean. I'm south side, and *just* outside of the service area. I swear, I can smell the bandwidth from there. Hopefully they'll come around the other side of 71.

I first read his Stainless Steel Rat books in a small town in the bible belt, whre my stepfather was a minister. His were the first books I ever encountered that openly made the case for athiesm. It was so different form everything else I'd run into-of course I had head of it, but to come right out and openly advocate it in the books (and a bit after the story proper, IIRC) was definitely a bit of a first. Tonight, I'm heading out to a sushi joint with the other members of my Skeptic/Freethinkers' singles group, and I'll raise a toast to Slippery Jim. For me, he was step one on a long, long journey, and I am grateful.

With me, it was a summer gifted class. I had a choice of acting or computer programming. I'd never played with computers all that much, and wanted to grow up to be an actress, but for some reason I cannot for the life of me went with the computer course. A room full of Model IIIs, learning about PRINT and INPUT and all that fancy stuff. Well, I was hooked. I've been a programmer ever since. TRS-80's were still a damn pain, though. Sooooo slow.