"Of course, this could also be part of a culture diffeernce between India and the US that I am not aware of. I'm open to that possibility." You are spot on. I'm replying to your comment not as a defense for being unaware of basic things ... but to state how the relative the term basic is (thanks Einstein!). Desktop pcs started becoming a household object for us, the middleclass Bengalis not until 1999-2000. They were shipped with pirated copies of Windows 98, and we thought it was such an integral part the computer, that there could be no other option. Internet access was available only in cybercafes, whose charges were enough to keep you away from them, unless you were that much addicted to porn. Then we started getting account free dial up access - at quite a high charge to the pathetic service. I have two ubergeek friends, who told me about GNU/Linux, and I was hooked. We got access to an adsl connection only one and a half years back, and the world has become a saner place to live in ever since. Now /., *igg, mailing lists, blogs, irc channels, are coming together to give a pciture like never before. :) But few things/people remains unchanged - I have mentioned the state in our college which is true for the so many engineering colleges here. Unless you are fortunate enough to get into an IIT, a programming culture is absolutely non-exisitent.