dukdalf

Erlang does ring some bell, even though I can't tell which one yet. I'll go through tutorial 1 - 3 and reply afterwards (or before when needed).

First programming?When I was 15, the first computers came into our highschool. Those were PET 4000's, from the later famous CBM (Commodore Business Machines) brand. Alternatives in those days were Tandy TRS-80, IBM and Apple models.We had 8 PET's, linked together in a network, with a tape recorder each, and two 5,25 inch floppy drives attached to the main machine in the network.Those machines came in for learning us teeners programming, so that's what we did.In a couple years we explored all the available BASIC commands and made some more ourselves. Then we turned to machine code, for which the 6502 processor is also quite well known. A year or so later we all stopped with programming as there wasn't anything else to learn, and we didn't have an alternative machine. The famous C64 was a step forward, but not very much as you consider the amount of memory. The instruction set had been extended largely, but I didn't look at computers for quite some years.In university, at my 21st we got Pascal programming courses. That's when I continued, where the base was still laid with the PET-programming. Another 8 years later I followed some training in Cobol and similar techniques in order to get a job. When changing from mainframe to AS/400 I also learned RPG, a native AS/400 lanuage.During the Cobol-jobs I developed myself with HTML and some Java, whereas my main focus now is on PHP.

Well, looking at Some Webpage it is at least suggested that Ruby is one of the supported scripting languages here. I don't know who's beeen suggesting though...

Maybe it's idea to back-up anything on your hard drive that's important to you, then format the hard drive, followed by installing the OS of your choice?Four years with one piece of hardware may be long, four years with one installation is extremely long.But lots of people don't want to reinstall and look for a harder (but less time consuming if they are lucky) solution.Like me If I had the Blue Screen Of Death only once a month, wow, that would be great!!!

From the hardware point of view, take or build (with already owned or cheap obtainable pieces) a machine with as much memory as possible. If you have the choice of two processors, choose that, otherwise, one is fine as well. Make sure the machine has one or two 100 (or more) Mbit network cards (an aditional network card costs next to nothing these days). Then choose an operating systems that has "some" security built in. In case of Windows, use Win2000 or higher. Any Linux, Solaris or similar is fine as well. Don't go back into NT because of the lack of two many features and because you don't want to use IIS (whatever version). If you are into exotics BeOs or OS/2 or more exotic are fine. Then you have to choose the webserver. I would recommend Apache. Every vendor of some or more to large importance (except for Microsoft) has done similar Don't think about the Netscape WebServer, how good it maybe was, it's obsolete now. SUN, IBM and others, they all use Apache as WebServer. So unless you want to learn from building a WebServer yourself, I would stick to Apache. For the database of your desire several possibilities exist, whereas for scripting and programming languages the choice is all yours. That's how I see it

Well, at least not the Apple, as you require some Windows OS;)If you know so well what the specs should be like, I'd go to some local vendors, explain what I need, and say what the budget is as well (make sure the budget you name is on the low side;)), and see how they react.If anything goes wrong with your computer, you want someone else to be responsible for it, at best someone that is not living on the other side of the country. Also, if your sought combination turns out to be instable, than the vendor 'd better find out than you.It is pretty hard for non-hardware specialists to figure out a stable combination, and the vendor should know, or have some sort of warranty.In your case the highlights are not too specific so it shouldn't be hard actually.

The trouble with the robots.txt standard is that you can't tell if a webcrawler or searchbot is actually doing what you prescribe. So instead of ignoring those folders that you specify as disallow, it might just do the opposite. This also is true for hackers or other people with lesser intentions.

Talking to someone on the phone simply means paying less attention what you were doing before, whatever that is. So wether you are operating a machine, driving a car or riding on a bike, the focus is not on what you are doing or trying to do.If I receive a phone-call when driving I always look for a parking spot and call back when I have found one. It is only in a traffic jam that I sometimes phone someone that I will be late (even though that is also not a safe option).

Well, I think that NASA and the US Military have diferent possibilities of testing new equipment, and that Area51 is just one of their facilities.

I'm thinking of using Risc OS.. not a very alternative OS, but needing rather rare hardware. And in my jobs I have used and still do use some other OS's like MVS (IBM mainframe) and OS/400 (IBM midrange). Especially OS400 is very nice for developing database appications, but an AS/400 is not a home machine even though some smaller models are quite attractive for the professional :DBeOs was nice also; I might use it again.

I only use DOS for the commandline interface for batch programs and when something on the network is not operating properly.Without DOS I couldn't do a lot of my work, actually.