A user named "kpearson" has an excellent Distributed Computing compilation site from which you can see the latest news, view all completed projects, and visit the websites of any active project you may have an interest in.
So, if you don't trust a commercial company with your idle CPU cycles, look on the Active Projects list for something run by a non-profit org, or an educational facility. There's dozens of projects available to suit your particular cup of tea.
Right now, the THINK process is the only plugin available for the UD Agent. So, for now, if you download their software and run the application, you'll only be working on the Cancer project.
If you do join, you can select which projects your machines work on by modifying settings in your Device Profile page (membership required). The Device Profiles are also robust enough that you can create several profiles, and assign different profiles to different machines.
UD has been pretty forthcoming in releasing information on what their Agent does. A quick check in Member News on their forums is fairly revealing. UD will have to keep their member base informed on what they're doing to members' computers, or they would lose a lot of people quickly.
-Tex
I'm not convinced. They deserve higher salaries, but not for the competition it would bring to the field. Most teachers in public education are in the job because they love the payment that comes in forms other than money. Sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part these teachers put up with the really poor salary to truly make a difference in the public education system.
A particular example comes to mind. After getting out of high school, I TA'd there a couple years later for a "new generation" teacher got hired the year after I graduated. This instructor taught introductory computer courses to mostly lower-income 7th- and 8th-graders, something given to every new teacher their first couple of years to "stress test" them and see if they survive. If they make it past those years, then the school "allowed" them to teach high school (grades 9 through 12).
Anyways, the classes I TA'd for this teacher were pretty uneventful through most of the year. We handed out coursework in PASCAL (this was in the days before C/C++ and Java were the norm), graded tests, answered programming questions, and generally tried to offer these kids the chance to break free of their "gangbanger" mindset, and grow both mentally as well as spiritually.
The gem of this class came one day when, while the other kids were at their stations working on the latest programming project, one young black girl just refused to move from her desk, saying she just "couldn't do it any more," all the while sobbing, tears streaming down her cheeks. At the time she was dressed in a thin pair of sweatpants and a Raiders jacket, attire not uncommon among the streets of Southeast San Diego (Golden Hills). While I took care of the more mundane tasks of the classroom, our instructor sat down next to her, took her hand, and slowly built up her confidence in herself and her own abilities. By the time the bell rang, the girl was still a bit shaky, but had stopped sobbing, and even smiled at a joke or two the teacher sent her way.
Fast forward one year.
I revisited my old high school stomping grounds to say hello to some old friends in the faculty and staff, when I saw the same girl, now in the 9th grade, walking down a hallway talking with two friends. Her appearance had totally changed. Now, instead of wearing ratty clothing, she wore tasteful, brightly-colored clothes. Instead of holding a thin, nearly-empty paper folder in one hand, she gripped at least two textbooks and a Trapper Keeper stuffed with notes and assignments. Instead of walking the hallways with her head down, avoiding contact with everyone, she held her head high, her eyes bright with intelligence as she talked cheerfully with her friends.
The change was absolutely stunning to me. She stopped when she saw me, and we talked for a little bit. She mentioned plans to go to college after graduation, something that would have been totally unthinkable to her a few short months ago. I could hardly believe the changes she made in her self-confidence, and when I asked her what made her re-think her future, she referred to the incident in the computer classroom the year before.
When people ask me if I would ever consider becoming a CompSci teacher after I finish college, I mostly just shake my head and say, "I'm just a software guy. Teachers need to have so much more ability than what I can offer." I can definitely see why people would take a 50% pay cut to get their teaching credentials and enter the System though, especially when the rewards for success are so great, no matter how sporadically they may come.
Miss Pereira, if by some twist of fate you're reading this, know that you've been the most influential teacher in my life--and you weren't even one of mine!
As the king of my own mini-geek house, I tend to agree. Geeks have this savage territoriality that is almost second nature; akin to the Geek Drinks like those at ThinkGeek.com, a geek's dominant presence must be felt from your first sip all the way to the bottom of the can, when you get annoyed and toss the empty shell aside.
Cheesy metaphors aside, I have a 4 bedroom (well, 3.5 really) house amateurishly wired up for local network mayhem. Though the WAN is a mere 500Kb/s cable modem connection, I've found it more than sufficient to run the (mostly 486 & pentium) 10 machines that are pretty much only active to run Distributed.net's little cow TSR, or rack up points for my Echo.com internet radio rewards account.
Allow me to (briefly) beat my chest: the cable modem is hooked directly to a 1-port router, then through an 8-port 10/100TX switch to various parts of the house. 4-port hubs are strategically located in certain spots (2 rooms I call "my own," for instance), and if I manage to work up the nerve, I will eventually run a line to the last part of the house that isn't wired other than the garage: the "grandmother" unit attached to the front area.
Now, my amateurish question of the day: since I already have a Cable/DSL router acting as a gateway of sorts, is it worth the trouble to stick a Redhat/Apache machine in between it and the rest of the network to act as a firewall and web server?
Since you live in the UK, a lot of options like X.COM or PAYPAL aren't available to you. On the other hand, there are relatively inexpensive escrow services--in particular, iEscrow--that can take the place of your "trust" in dealing with online merchants.
The idea is simple--pay your money to iEscrow--, with a $2.50 fee (normally), the merchant sends you the merchandise, you inspect it, then release the money held in escrow to the merchant if you're satisfied.
The problem with using Escrow services is that most merchants won't want to deal with them, since they require you, the customer, have an "inspection period" to inspect the merchandise and make sure everything's ok before you send them the money. This means that not only do you have to trust the merchant, but the merchant also has to trust you, the consumer. Most are unwilling to do this, and so will instead try to get you to send alternate forms of proof of ID, like you're dealing with now.
As several people mentioned below, the person or people asking you for photo ID for a silly credit transaction are mostly causing themselves problems, not you.
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A user named "kpearson" has an excellent Distributed Computing compilation site from which you can see the latest news, view all completed projects, and visit the websites of any active project you may have an interest in.
So, if you don't trust a commercial company with your idle CPU cycles, look on the Active Projects list for something run by a non-profit org, or an educational facility. There's dozens of projects available to suit your particular cup of tea.
-Tex
Right now, the THINK process is the only plugin available for the UD Agent. So, for now, if you download their software and run the application, you'll only be working on the Cancer project. If you do join, you can select which projects your machines work on by modifying settings in your Device Profile page (membership required). The Device Profiles are also robust enough that you can create several profiles, and assign different profiles to different machines. UD has been pretty forthcoming in releasing information on what their Agent does. A quick check in Member News on their forums is fairly revealing. UD will have to keep their member base informed on what they're doing to members' computers, or they would lose a lot of people quickly. -Tex
I'm not convinced. They deserve higher salaries, but not for the competition it would bring to the field. Most teachers in public education are in the job because they love the payment that comes in forms other than money. Sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part these teachers put up with the really poor salary to truly make a difference in the public education system.
A particular example comes to mind. After getting out of high school, I TA'd there a couple years later for a "new generation" teacher got hired the year after I graduated. This instructor taught introductory computer courses to mostly lower-income 7th- and 8th-graders, something given to every new teacher their first couple of years to "stress test" them and see if they survive. If they make it past those years, then the school "allowed" them to teach high school (grades 9 through 12).
Anyways, the classes I TA'd for this teacher were pretty uneventful through most of the year. We handed out coursework in PASCAL (this was in the days before C/C++ and Java were the norm), graded tests, answered programming questions, and generally tried to offer these kids the chance to break free of their "gangbanger" mindset, and grow both mentally as well as spiritually.
The gem of this class came one day when, while the other kids were at their stations working on the latest programming project, one young black girl just refused to move from her desk, saying she just "couldn't do it any more," all the while sobbing, tears streaming down her cheeks. At the time she was dressed in a thin pair of sweatpants and a Raiders jacket, attire not uncommon among the streets of Southeast San Diego (Golden Hills). While I took care of the more mundane tasks of the classroom, our instructor sat down next to her, took her hand, and slowly built up her confidence in herself and her own abilities. By the time the bell rang, the girl was still a bit shaky, but had stopped sobbing, and even smiled at a joke or two the teacher sent her way.
Fast forward one year.
I revisited my old high school stomping grounds to say hello to some old friends in the faculty and staff, when I saw the same girl, now in the 9th grade, walking down a hallway talking with two friends. Her appearance had totally changed. Now, instead of wearing ratty clothing, she wore tasteful, brightly-colored clothes. Instead of holding a thin, nearly-empty paper folder in one hand, she gripped at least two textbooks and a Trapper Keeper stuffed with notes and assignments. Instead of walking the hallways with her head down, avoiding contact with everyone, she held her head high, her eyes bright with intelligence as she talked cheerfully with her friends.
The change was absolutely stunning to me. She stopped when she saw me, and we talked for a little bit. She mentioned plans to go to college after graduation, something that would have been totally unthinkable to her a few short months ago. I could hardly believe the changes she made in her self-confidence, and when I asked her what made her re-think her future, she referred to the incident in the computer classroom the year before.
When people ask me if I would ever consider becoming a CompSci teacher after I finish college, I mostly just shake my head and say, "I'm just a software guy. Teachers need to have so much more ability than what I can offer." I can definitely see why people would take a 50% pay cut to get their teaching credentials and enter the System though, especially when the rewards for success are so great, no matter how sporadically they may come.
Miss Pereira, if by some twist of fate you're reading this, know that you've been the most influential teacher in my life--and you weren't even one of mine!
-Tex
As the king of my own mini-geek house, I tend to agree. Geeks have this savage territoriality that is almost second nature; akin to the Geek Drinks like those at ThinkGeek.com, a geek's dominant presence must be felt from your first sip all the way to the bottom of the can, when you get annoyed and toss the empty shell aside.
Cheesy metaphors aside, I have a 4 bedroom (well, 3.5 really) house amateurishly wired up for local network mayhem. Though the WAN is a mere 500Kb/s cable modem connection, I've found it more than sufficient to run the (mostly 486 & pentium) 10 machines that are pretty much only active to run Distributed.net's little cow TSR, or rack up points for my Echo.com internet radio rewards account.
Allow me to (briefly) beat my chest: the cable modem is hooked directly to a 1-port router, then through an 8-port 10/100TX switch to various parts of the house. 4-port hubs are strategically located in certain spots (2 rooms I call "my own," for instance), and if I manage to work up the nerve, I will eventually run a line to the last part of the house that isn't wired other than the garage: the "grandmother" unit attached to the front area.
Now, my amateurish question of the day: since I already have a Cable/DSL router acting as a gateway of sorts, is it worth the trouble to stick a Redhat/Apache machine in between it and the rest of the network to act as a firewall and web server?
Since you live in the UK, a lot of options like X.COM or PAYPAL aren't available to you. On the other hand, there are relatively inexpensive escrow services--in particular, iEscrow--that can take the place of your "trust" in dealing with online merchants.
The idea is simple--pay your money to iEscrow--, with a $2.50 fee (normally), the merchant sends you the merchandise, you inspect it, then release the money held in escrow to the merchant if you're satisfied.
The problem with using Escrow services is that most merchants won't want to deal with them, since they require you, the customer, have an "inspection period" to inspect the merchandise and make sure everything's ok before you send them the money. This means that not only do you have to trust the merchant, but the merchant also has to trust you, the consumer. Most are unwilling to do this, and so will instead try to get you to send alternate forms of proof of ID, like you're dealing with now.
As several people mentioned below, the person or people asking you for photo ID for a silly credit transaction are mostly causing themselves problems, not you.