If I raised that point at a .NET User Group meeting, I'd expect a large number of shouts, "write a stored proc!!!" ;)

That's because "everybody knows" that local datasets are a risk! Same as everybody knows that diesel cars are smoky, smelly and gutless. It's the modern curse- "we don't know what we don't know". ;-)

Over the last few years, there have been posts to the tune of "I'll learn .NET when it's ready".

I don't maintain an encyclopedic memory of threads, but if people did say that I'll bet they also said that they have a secure job with years of VFP work before them. Anybody looking at the chasm who refuses to learn something new has a screw loose.

and if you REALLY want me to dig up the posts and identify the message IDs, I'll send them to you privately and you can do with them as you please.

We can't prove anything to each other with "private" messages. Actually you might like to review your own "private" message to me when we first disagreed about SPs. ;-)

I'm not trying to openly play "gotcha" here with past messages - the key point (and the question I raised that you didn't answer) here is that those who have learned incrementally are in much better shape and more likely to be productive than those who wait for that genetic match.

You do need to review the messages, because you'll see that most people have advocated keeping informed, learning new skills, and STAYING PRODUCTIVE. Nobody has a monopoly on that sort of idea. But I would say that if Linq is as good as some of the MVPs are saying, having thousands of man-hours of previous non-Linq investment may not feel all that clever. ;-)