Re. http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2002/07/10/0002.html

Not just in highschool, and not just in Poland, and not just w.r.t.
computers...

E.g., I gather that the U.S. air force trains some of its pilots using
decidedly low-tech planes (so that they'll make better use of the best
planes should they ever enter combat).  (Not that what the U.S.A.F. does
is automatically right, but I gather that it works out.  (^&)

However, you should also bear in mind another perspective, Wojciech: Just
because someone advocates an easier solution (buy a more modern piece of
equipment and move on) does *not* mean that they aren't thinking.  It just
means that they don't spend so much time thinking about a problem that has
a trivial solution.  They may spend just as much (or more) time thinking,
but thinking about other problems that are not so easy to dismiss.

The value of your time, the money saved or spent, and the soultions found,
varies with the context.  It may be good in your context to find ways to
keep 386 and 486 boxes in service.  (Maybe the relative cost of hardware
is too high where you are; maybe you're primarily doing it for the
educational value.)  In others' contexts, it may be good to solve the
"trivial" problems with more hardware and reserve time and energy for
problems that can't be solved with hardware.  (E.g., security issues or
helping/training new users are problems that cannot be solved by spending
U.S. $100 or so more on hardware.)


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu