There was a survey out that listed the top 5 areas to work in the IT industry (in the US). First was the Redmond, WA area, not just because of Microsoft, but all the other companies as well. Second was San Jose, CA (Silicon Valley). Third was Fairfield County, CT, and fourth was Research Triangle, NC. I don't know if that means anything, but it was just something I saw. I work in CT and can tell you there are a ton of Internet companies here now. Priceline.com for one. If I had the chance to move it would probably be to San Jose, and get a house outside of the area (since housing costs are so outrageous there). I don't remember the 5th location

I have never had any problems with Windows 2000. Windows 98 and ME on the other hand are always crashing. I have only had Windows 2000 crash once in the past 4 months, and I leave my machine running daily. I have installed Linux on the same exact machine (Dell Optiplex Gx1p 500 Mhz PIII) and am constantly having problems (by the way, this is Red Hat compatible, so KDE and Gnome are the same as what you get with the Red Hat release). I have tried updating Linux with all the latest updates and I still get it locking up once per day. I am not using any of the "new" features like hard drive optimizations or DHCP, so I can't explain why it doesn't work well. I have no desire to be working on Linux in my spare time...I have better things to do. I just want to have operating systems that get the job done, and Linux hasn't done that for me...YET! And that is the complete truth..

I am actually dissatisfied with Linux. I have a copy of Mandrake Linux (which has the 2.2.14 kernel) running on a test system here at work, and I have to say that the user interfaces (Gnome, KDE, etc.) are crap at best. My sound card is not supported, the mouse driver gets changed to PS/2 compatbile at boot up, and it doesn't keep the selected monitor (which is in the list of supported monitors) at boot either. I have been running Windows 2000 on my main development machine since Beta 2, and I have to say it's a lot more stable. Yeah, Microsoft has a gazillion dollars to spend on making it right, but I'm not gonna bet the farm on something that has some market appeal

I have been reading the Visual C++ Developer's journal which IS NOT written by Microsoft, and it's a pretty good publication. They have had a few columns about C#, but for the most part they cover everything from templates in C++ to COM/ATL development. For me, this magazine covers the things I need to know. HOWEVER, the magazine is very thin, and it is a little expensive. In light of this, it's still a pretty good read

With my wonderful T1 connection at work, I was able to get 1034 Kbps and 126.7 Kbytes/sec. I wish I had this at home!!!

I went to college to get my degree in Computer Science a little later than most. I graduated when I was 27. I feel that I was able to learn because I was in a classroom environment with set projects that were due at certain times. Before college, I tried teaching myself QuickBasic and have to tell you that it was difficult. This was due to the fact that I didn't have any idea what to program, and I also didn't learn the "correct" way to develop applications. School definitely helped in that regard. Now, I'm 33 years old and have been programming professionally for 6 years. I do C++ and Visual Basic, but I also started coding in Macromedia Director (which is VB like) to do web stuff for our company. Now I didn't know anything about this program, but I took a week long class in December and I am now able to really do some neat things with this environment. There are so many other things that I could learn, but I think personally, I would need some sort of classroom setting. COM/ATL, .NET, and other new things are coming, and I don't think I'll have any problem learning these new things, as long as I am taught instead of trying to pick it up myself