[ Thanks to Gene
Alexander for this link. ]
“Here I am at around 12:30 AM local time running
updates on a client’s PC that was just reinstalled with Microsoft
XP Media Center Edition 2005. This reinstall was done to clean up
the registry and get rid of the “sluggishness” that had set in over
the past 4 years of continual use. While the interminable Microsoft
updates ran on that PC sitting next to my desk, I watched a movie
on my personal business tower computer that is running Mandriva
2010.1 Linux. The same computer which was also downloading files in
the background, periodically checking my e-mail and keeping several
other software applications going simultaneously.“Suddenly, after the movie finished and I was listening to the
music while the credits ran, I had an overwhelming sense of awe at
how far we humans have come technologically in the last 200 years.
Especially the advances that have come in just the past 50 years of
my short lifetime (I am 50 this year.) suddenly seemed incredible
to me. People my father’s age, 70-ish, remember the Dick Tracy
serial cartoon series, and Dick Tracy’s video / audio two way wrist
watch. At the time my father was a boy that sort of technology was
Science Fiction. Today we pretty much have that technology with
cellular phones.”