I find this page morally offensive, elitist, and inaccurate- I only came here, to give the page a 10 rating, because it gets the greatest number of 0 votes of any on photo.net. While I see none of my fellow alumni represented here, the picture of "David, PhD 1985 MIT" is actually me. I was indeed well on my way to becoming a multimedia developer when a lovely lady (Raquel, above) walked by one day, asked me where I graduated from, and ever since, well... I've just been too busy. (Rachel, PhD UCLA, isn't bad looking either, by the way.)
Finally, I have to add that I find your black-and-white photos of women (as if the use of grayscale somehow promotes them to high art) sexist and degrading. Women should be appreciated for their minds, and I'll be the first to tell you just how smart Raquel is.
http://www.nolo.com/humor/jokes/44jokes.html
The Real World functions primarily on perceptions, rather than logic, which is why smart people- I won't name any names (see below)- are attracted to companies like ArsDigita, Microsoft, etc.; it's good to have one or two abstraction layers between yourself and the farm. From my point of view, the application problem addressed by ACS has essentially been solved, from a technical standpoint. ACS is basically about access to information, and communication, which is a big field encompassing lots of money, and with a lot of problems that aren't so well solved. I recently installed a home/office network (laptop and Dell mini-tower), and the other day I had my laptop uploading information to my web host, which a few minutes later I downloaded to the Dell (I haven't yet got things configured so that Linux can access Windows on the LAN). So I had information going 500 miles to Washington D.C. and back, (partly) so that it could end up on a computer 8 feet from where it started. I've ...