<p>Is there anyplace where one can download a virtual machine containing a working install of some Linux distro with Globus Toolkit and some development tools (Java) for testing purposes? A real deployment of a grid is more complicated but I just need something portable, for development.</p>

You could possibly use a construct such as a
traits class
. In this way, you would have a parameterised helper class that knows how to convert a string to a value of its own type. Then your getter might look like this:
```
```
get { return StringConverter<DataType>.FromString(base.Value); }
```
```
Now, I must point out that my experience with parameterised types is limited to C++ and its templates, but I imagine there is some way to do the same sort of thing using C# generics.