Funny, had to learn all this stuff for my Master's thesis as it was a crucial part of my project to provide reliable shell command exchange via serial connection. It was really really hard to find anybody who knows anything about this lower network level and terminals.

What I can add for everybody who feels the same disappointment as ESR: It's very common for a growing community that three things happen.

A) The number of people with just a little knowledge over the holy grail of your community increases.

B) The popular communication is taken over by great communicators who care more about their publicity than your holy grail.

C) This gives the impression that the number of really cool people decreases. And that is depressing to old timers. But it's in fact often not true. Actually most often the number of cool people increases too! It's just that their voices are drowned in all the spam of what I like to call the "Party People" (see B).

So yes, you can actually cheer. It's harder to find the other dudes, but there are more of them! Trust me, I'm not the oldest guys here but I've seen some communities grow and die till now, and it's nearly always like that.