>>> It's easier to find jobs to apply to when you have a broader awareness
>>> of the world than just what's relevant to you right now.
>>
>> I doubt you're going to get that by reading some text on a screen. To
>> understand what a new capability means, you often need to experience it
>> for yourself.
>
> Hmmm, so let me see if I understand this correctly....You're asserting
> that one of the methods that I actually use to keep up on technology
> doesn't work?  Interesting that you'd have insight into what works for me
> on such a deep level.

I'm saying that if (for example) I read somewhere that a lot of 
companies use Citrix to host their applications, that doesn't really 
qualify me for a job managing Citrix. If I had actually /used/ Citrix, 
or something vaguely like it, then yes. But having read about how it 
exists and people use it? Not so much, no.

>> OK, I have to ask: What the hell is this "RSS" everybody keeps
>> mentioning?
>
> Google it.  If that doesn't work, try "Really Simple Syndication".  It's
> only all over the web.

Ooo, because I haven't tried *that* before. :-P

OK, so let's see... First hit from Google is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

(Unless you meant Royal Statistical Society, which I'm pretty sure you 
didn't.)

As usual with Wikipedia, the page babbles about updates and feeds and 
XML and "syndication" and something about RDF, but utterly fails to 
explain WHAT IT IS.

>> I usually visit Tom's Hardware when I want to see what's happening in
>> the hardware world.
>
> I doubt you're going to get that by reading some text on a screen.

That's why I just built a new PC - to experience the Core i7 first-hand. :-P

>> I know what streaming *is*. (Indeed, I knew what it was 15 years ago.)
>> I'm failing to comprehend how it applies in this situation.
>
> I'm not sure I understand how this is so difficult to comprehend.  Netflix
> has servers in their data centres that stream data to clients running the
> NetFlix software on them.  You pick a movie you want to watch, and you
> instantly start watching it.
>
> And before you say it, yes, it actually works.

The BBC's iPlayer system "works". I mean, it's so horrifyingly blurry 
that you sometimes can't see people's faces clearly enough to recognise 
who's who, and often the end credits are unreadable. But technically 
that still counts as "works", right?

I just looked it up. The transfer rate of a DVD is 10.5 mbit/sec. The 
maximum broadband speed you can get is 8 mbit/sec. So... does that mean 
that people in America have something faster than ADSL or something?

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