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[from http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/system-administr ator/ch-sysadmin-time.html]:

Computers have a clock to keep time. Usually there is a hardware clock with battery backup to keep time when the computer is off. The operating system (for example Linux) runs its own clock, and from this clock comes the time shown by commands such as date in Linux and time in DOS.

The hardware clock is usually accurate enough, provided that the battery has not run out. If the time shown by the computer when you turn it on is wrong by several months or years, it is worth checking if the battery is still usable.

The "software" clock in the operating system usually has drift, either systematic or random. This drift means the clock runs too fast or too slow. For this reason it is necessary to use some accurate time source to syncronize the operating system clock if accurate time is needed.

[my opinion:] Normally I'd just say: Use NTP. But your random time drift seems to be so high, NTP would freak out.

It seems to be a hardware problem, or some friend made a practical joke on you, inserting some random time drift in crontab. Try to reinstall your OS and check if this behavior continues. If so, you should change your motherboard. And try to get a good one, like Asus.

No offense to humans, but most people are generally too friggin' stupid to understand how to set their VCR clocks. Just imagine what these idiots could fuck-up using a TiVo...

Well, certianly not the clock. It uses Network Time Protocol

There already is an area like this, It's called the Amish Country, Pennsylvania Dutch, etc.

Actually the Amish have been using cell phones for a while now.

I emailed Jon, and he sent me the files...

http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/mirrors/vendetta/
ftp://ftp.lug.udel.edu/mirrors/vendetta/

We have the full movie and its parts for both 1 and 2 in Quicktime, and we have Part 1 (full/parts) in AVI as well.
We've got a 45 megabit connection to the internet and 100 megabit to Abilene (Internet 2) so leech away!
Merry Christmas!

I emailed Jon, and he sent me the files...

http://ftp.lug.udel.edu/mirrors/vendetta/
ftp://ftp.lug.udel.edu/mirrors/vendetta/

We have the full movie and its parts for both 1 and 2 in Quicktime, and we have Part 1 (full/parts) in AVI as well.
We've got a 45 megabit connection to the internet and 100 megabit to Abilene (Internet 2) so leech away!
Merry Christmas!

Two psychologists independently discovered autism in the 1940s; Kanner and Asperger. Kanner wrote in English, Asperger wrote in German. That's why American psychologists always use autism to mean Kanner's Autism; it's marked by extreme social withdrawal, usually occurs with mental retardation, etc.

The other side of the autistic spectrum is Asperger's Autism, aka Asperger's Syndrome, aka Very High Functioning Autism, aka Pervasive Developmental Disorder--Not Otherwise Specified, etc.

Asperger's research into autism was well-known in continental Europe, but unknown in English-speaking places, until Lorna Wing translated Asperger's original works and brought him to the attention of the English-speaking psychological community. In America, there's a lot of debate as to whether or not Asperger's is a form of autism--the current belief is yes, but it's still being worked out. In the UK and Europe, there's very little debate about it; most psychologists believe that yes, it is.

I have Asperger's, incidentally, so I try to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field. :)

Check out OASIS, at University of Delaware, for more information regarding Asperger's Syndrome.

(And a european parent at that)

I have no problem with the games and their content or whatever. I also hate extreme Christian tosspots like this guy. The aim of "reducing the marketing of violence to children" is, however, a laudable one. These companies put recommended ages on and then deliberatly market toys at children below that age group. My nine year old stepdaughter, like all of her classmates, has been into the Pokemon craze. The way I watch it, I don't see that there's much difference between the basic premise and dogfighting - setting pets on each other to see who wins. Admittedly, my nine year old stepdaughter does have Aspergers syndrome and therefore has a lot of trouble distinguishing what's serious and what's not.

I don't believe that banning or censoring things is the answer. I do believe that awareness and parental responsibility will help. My two year old son will soon be old enough to be influenced by what he sees and hears (he picked up the word "bugger" quickly enough). I wouldn't like him to grow up thinking that it's normal to shoot/stab/punch people.

I don't want censorship (yeah - I surf for porn now and again) what I want is responsibility. I don't want people to blame the TV or the Internet for their kids seeing graphic anal fisting (much less Taco snotting), I want them to take responsibility and educate their kids. You can't take responsibility without knowledge.

The people who run this site may be going about things the wrong way, but someone needs to highlight that there is a problem.

PS Yes, our TV news does show what actually happens when people are shot/bombed/gassed and it aint pretty. And we still don't want guns - coincidence?

Here is a link that has a simple graph from the 4004 to the P7 (Merced Pentium II) that shows how Intel has obeyed Moore's law (at least until the P2.)

While working on a grant at SDSU, I heard of an instructor in Maryland who found that her students who used a DOS-based PC to write english papers received better grades then did the Apple Mac counterparts.

Well, utilitarianism can be interpreted in many ways, for example John Stuart Mill kind of broke out of the hedonist tradition started by Bentham. He thought that it is the greatest good of the greatest number that counts. And he was a vigorous defender of freedom of opinion.

These are all pretty complex issues. And did you know Kant wasn't too "good" either (depending of course what you mean by the word), being a racist and all?

Yes, it was called the Morris Worm and it caused a lot of problems on 1988-11-03 using a buffer overrun in fingerd or a sendmail mis-configuration - whichever was vulnerable a system. Back in '93 I collected together some papers regarding it (Gene Spafford's is excellent) as well as source code that was reverse engineered. Take a look here if you're interested.

I think the real question is that of the school, and how the _school_ views the difference between the two. What people say here does not mean much since the difference varies wildly from school to school.

Just my $.02. Best of luck to you.

C-NOTES ( Not C++ )

I have monitor calibration data from Colorific on Windows for my Samsung. Could you send me your email address so I can get in touch with you if I have problems? It sounds like you know what you're doing.

The stuffed blue birds are the mascot of the University of Delaware - the "Fighting Blue Hens". They are sold at the on -line Campus Store, the Student Center, and in local tchotchke shops, right next to the "Dela-where?" sweatshirts.
I didn't notice any references to UD in the article, so I'm somewhat confused by this. And really, a blue chicken with the UD logo on its chest looks almost entirely unlike a penguin.
--Charlie

You haven't lived until you've seen my page about my roommate's deadly fish tank. We keep adding fish - they keep dying. Come read the news archive!

The Fish Counter Archive

The slamming happens behind your back. A long distance carrier can have your local carrier switch your long distance carrier on your behalf, supposedly with notification of your consent. Notice that your consent doesn't have to go to your local carrier. However, you can explicitly ask your local carrier to not allow this, instead requiring your consent on any account chages go to the local carrier. BA & Qwest were both very helpful. If your carriers aren't too helpful, it's your right, and responsibility, to report the incident to the FTC. (Gotta love online complaint forms!)

Shortly after my ordeal was over, I moved into a place of my own, abandoned the idea of land-line telephone service, and only use the copper pair for my DSL :)
--
I wrote the play & still own the script ...

That's a very ignorant statement. Linux, and many web sites such as the one I administer, encrypt password using a one-way hash, so they cannot be decrypted. When a user tries to authenticate, you encrypt their input'ed password and see if that matches the encrypted password in the database, or in /etc/passwd (such as Linux does).. This way you cannot decrypt the passwords, and yet you can still use them for authentication. Elliot elliot@bha.udel.edu

I was one of the main developers of a portal here at the University of Washington, MyUW. We did it all ourselves, although at the time we did look at companies like Campus Pipeline and another product called Blackboard, at least to see what they included. Even if we would have wanted to use these products, it's dubious we could easily do so, due to the wide dispersal of the interesting data here at the UW: one group has the main Student database, with grades, schedules, etc. The Housing and Food Services department has a separate database with dorm info. Financial Aid is elsewhere, etc. I got the feeling that many of the campuses that use services such as this are small enough so that one small group of people is in charge of nearly all the data (as well as probably running the e-mail system and web servers), and thus it's pretty easy for Campus Pipeline or whoever to come in and take over.

After we were pretty much done with version 1.0 of MyUW, another group of schools started a project dedicated to producing a collaborative University Portal Framework. It's called the JA-SIG Portal Framework Project (the J means it's being done in Java), and it's about the closest thing to an open-source portal project I've seen. The license is hard to find, and I think they're still working on it, but the last time I looked, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the Mozilla Public License.

One area where these things are really taking off is Alumni Associations. Companies basically come in, wave some money, offer 'lifetime e-mail' for members, and then set up a 'portal' that directs the members to cool shopping, travel, credit card, and other (for the company) lucrative offers. Now, it's not as if Alumni Associations were ever adverse to such marketing deals, but this is a whole other level, with essentially a 'lifetime' commitment on the part of the Alumni Association, as opposed to the once-a-year 'buy our life insurance' type of offers that were standard in the '80s.

Actually, a large percentage of geeks and nerds are believed to have Asperger's Syndrome, a disorder that impairs social interaction skill development, but also sometimes makes people very well suited to writing code all night.

This syndrome might have genetic origins in some cases. (It's hard to know, because it was only discovered as a unique pathology in 1994 and there are currently no biological tests for it).

OTOH... These days, some parents would probably want to genetically add the syndrome, rather than subtract it. Bill Gates shows many of the symptoms of this disorder, and who wouldn't want their kid to grow up and be a multi-billionaire? :)

Bah...

Niftyness.com

is better than most of these... -GS

If you like to be scared, take a look at some of the non-radioactive toxic materials such as organic mercury compounds. Karen Wetterhahn, a Dartmouth chemistry professor, died in 1997 after spilling a few drops of dimethylmercury, a highly toxic and volatile liquid, on her latex glove. The compound passed through the latex glove in seconds and into her skin. She died about 6 months after the exposure from mercury poisoning.

When are your new books due out? No, seriously...I know that bottling up such potent humor and creativity must be giving you a nasty case of "Blue head." :) Niftyness

How the hell does the 'Find the black dot' work?


If anyone knows could you post it Please.


------------
How many hardware guys does it take to screw in a light bolb?
I don't know because the hardware is working. It must be a software problem.

If you want to check out more, check out http://www.capsl.udel.edu. The information on the web page isn't too organized, and all the info on the EARTH page is bound to be pretty old, but you might be able to get a decent idea.

Some more lightly recommended reading, but on a more positive note... The Guy's Guide to Geek Girls by Lisa Michaud and A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys by Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat.

This may interest you

I use a perl script called ripit.pl that rips the tracks from a cd, uses CDDB to name them, and encode them into mp3s. I can't remember where I got it but all the credits are still there, I wish the author had put their email or web address in the info block.. Anyway, it rocks, but it uses cdparanoia and bladeenc so I'm modifing it to use Xing with cdparanoia.

There are already some nice guides to geek (girls/guys) out there... Guide to Geek Guys and... Guide to Geek Girls

> Now I hate to defend Microsoft, but they did have one (1) original idea: BASIC.

*Cough*! Maybe you should tell that to Tom Kurtz and John Kemeny, of Dartmouth University...

For some real history...

There's this nifty article called "The Guy's Guide to Geek Girls" on the Girls Who Wear Glasses site.

Not a meeting place, per se, but it's a start.

*grin*

Here are two classic geek guides: A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys and The Guy's Guide to Geek Girls.