I'm sorry, but after the abomination that was Hellgate: London, it will take a very, very long time for Bill Roper to earn my trust again. That game was a prime example of what NOT to do in an MMORPG. I just feel bad for all the people who blew their money on a "lifetime" subscription which ended basically being an extended beta masquerading as a finished game, full of broken promises, missed release dates, glitchy content, and eventually a slow death. I hope he's learned his lesson, but I'll let other people test the water before I'd be willing to jump in; I'm not ready to get burned by Roper again.
That entire series is excellent, but having read all of the books in the series that have been published up to this point makes the wait until next fall for a new hard! Be sure to read the other series that starts with Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling as it ties in with the event in Dies the Fire.
Parent poster is absolutely spot on with their comments on World of Goo. Not only is the game a real gem, it comes with absolutely no copy protection or DRM at all. Even though 2D Boy is an indie outfit, and not a huge corporation, those who slam DRM in games (an boycott games such as Spore) should put their money where their mouth is and support games like this. Perhaps the success of a DRM-less game (in terms of sales) will have some impact on the market as a whole.
This code could easily be wrapped into the preflight scripts for an Installer package in OS X, or integrated into any piece of malware to escalate itself to root without any user interaction beyond downloading it and launching it. In this sense, the arguments against the DNSChanger Trojan Horse of "it requires an admin password to be installed" becomes null and void. This is fairly serious, folks. One-click privilege escalation is way too easy for script-kiddies and professional malware distributers alike to integrate into their nasty programs.
I have found my help desk experience to be essential in many aspects of my career. Being able to keep a level head, even when you are in the right, is essential in the business world, especially if you are looking to do any independent software development where you will not only be coding, but also providing support to end-users, many of which lack basic understanding of computers. When you are able to communicate efficiently and politely with your customers, it goes a long way in building and maintaining a strong userbase.
It's pretty obvious from the article that the author spent no more than an hour playing the game. He complains about the game component of going to class, saying that it doesn't tie into the game at all (not true, if you go to class you unlock "upgrades" for your weapons, transportation, etc). Once you've passed a class, you have a free period in which to "explore the world." I played the game, and enjoyed it, but all of the arguments the author puts forth crumble if you take into account that the ramp-up portion of the game takes about an hour of play before things get going. I've had my fair share of games that were so horrible that I just had to stop playing them, but I think he didn't give it enough of a chance. Also, what's up with the year delay on this article? Bully isn't new.
The Pnakotic Manuscripts were an invention of H.P. Lovecraft and factor into the Cthulhu Mythos. Besides, everyone knows the origin of Mankind lies within the information from the Elder Gods.
Good point there. I was out of coffee and tired when I posted that before, thus failing to take into account the further ramifications of click fraud. Although the internet is a great way to conduct business semi-anonymously, one would think that the people paying Google for the ad-placement in the first place would be more worried about who their "customers" (i.e. the people who host the ads on their sites) are in such a situation. Are there any major industry players who let a business choose which sites their ads can appear on (an approval-type system)? If Google already allows this (or a blacklist filter of some sort), forgive my ignorance, I haven't delved that deeply into the topic.
Looking at the links on Apple's site, it shows that the run data can also be synced with your computer once you get back from the run. The data includes stuff like speed, distance, calories burned, etc, so you can see your progress over a length of time. As a former cross country and track runner, this is the kind of information that we had to calculate manually (well, at least record the numbers and then crunch them) to get an overall view of our progress and goals. Also, it would be cool to have since I'd already be bringing my iPod on a run, and wouldn't need to bring a seperate electronic pedometer along (and I'd be willing to be the electronic pedometers out there that track the same information and sync with a computer don't work with Macs).
I've read Foucault's Pendulum, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and Da Vinci Code. If I remember correctly, Eco references HBHG in FP. Quite a few of the "connections" posited by the characters in Foucault's Pendulum were made in HBHG, but Eco's whole point of the novel was to poke fun at the conspiracy theorists. BTW, I believe HBHG was published in '82, Pendulum in '88, and '03, for those interested in a timeline of sorts.
- Netgear WGT624 and Airport Express w/same name, - Latest update for Netgear firmware (V4.1.11_1.0.1 worked for me) - *might* need to set channel to something other than 11. I found problems when working on 11, so I switched it, and it's been fine since. - Also, I found that making sure I had the Airport Card Update 2004-08-31 worked wonders as far as sound quality went...it was choppy before the update, and fine afterwards.
Many replies so far have focused on your daily caffiene intake. That can be a reason for lack of sleep, but as I've recently found out in my life, it's only the tip of the iceburg.
Insomia (chronic or not) can be caused from stimulants in the system. That's kinda obvious...Don't drink coffee right before bed, yadda yadda yadda.
I was recently diagnosed with a sleep disorder, which turned out to be anxiety-based. I didn't consider myself to be very anxious in my day-to-day life, but I would be up all night, and I usually ended up surfing the web (hey, it sure beat just lying in bed). I was eventually prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for 2 weeks, which I'd take about 20 minutes before I wanted to fall asleep, and I'd be able to fall asleep (normal bedtime hours, that is). It wasn't a sleeping pill, which I've found to cause grogginess in the past, but rather it just cleared my mind and let my body take over when it came time to sleep.
Beyond avoiding caffienated beverages within 4 hours of your projected bedtime, avoid cigarettes at night (if you smoke...I used to "need" a smoke before sleep..found out it was keeping me up, due to what it did to my body!), try exercising about an hour before bed (even a 15-20 minute walk with do, at a brisk pace), and avoid foods that could potentially upset your stomach (I'm big on spicy foods...a number of time I haven't been able to sleep due to stomach discomfort).
If basic, common-knowledge solutions don't work for you, consider making an appointment with a local psychiatrist/psychologist that speicializes in sleep disorders. Even if you don't have a specialist in your area, a general psychologist can diagnose a sleeping disorder, and reccomend a specialist to deal with your case. At the very least, they can usually prescribe a sleep-aide or anti-anxiety medication to get your sleep-cycle back on track until you can confront the problem head on, and face it.
I'm sure others have already posted along these same lines, but...
I picked up a part-time job programming last winter. I've been programming for a number of years, and thought it was what I wanted to do for a career. My experience programming professionally not only corrupted my hobby of programming, it nearly caused me to give up the trade completely. Programming in the work world is completely different than programming as a hobby. In the work world, you not only have deadlines (and no sympathetic users who understand the cavaets of making a solid product), but you have managers who either don't understand what you're doing or don't appreciate the skills you utilize day to day.
I remember sitting in hour long meetings every morning, wasting time while each programmer from each team explained what they were planning on working on that day. Seriously, I would have rather spent my morning cup of coffee pouring over code! Also, the place I worked at placed me in database programming, even though I specifically told them I did not have the skills needed to be doing production level database programming at that time. It wasn't a "I don't have the skills but I'll use this as a learning experience" type thing, either. I told them flat out that I didn't have the skills, and I shouldn't be working on that project. They snuck such jobs into my workload anyway. I should have quit then. That is to say, my third day on the job. Instead, through a series of horrible circumstances, I was set as head of the project, working with people who knew less about database programming than I did, with an unforgiving customer...needless to say, it's the only job I've ever had to leave, not feeling bad about giving my two week's notice.
Anyway, back to the point: When I was programming as a job, my hobby programming back home dropped to zero. I hardly wanted to touch a computer after 5-6 hour days at the job. And that wasn't even full time. I know I can't judge programming jobs as a whole based on that experience, but it still was a lot different than what I was expecting. Thankfully, I've since found a programming job that I'm not only happy with, but I can still come home and program as a hobby.
It all depends on the job, the project you are working on, management, etc. My word of advice: If you can't program as a hobby at least one night a week after programming for a profession during the day, look for another job if you want to be able to come home at night and crank out a few hour's worth of code as a hobby. It's not worth giving up your hobby if your job doesn't bring you an ounce of joy.
The only good thing that came out of that job is I know consider myself fairly proficient with ancient programming languages dealing with obsolete databases. I'm sure that'll fit nicely on my resume someday...
Yes, because we all know that the solar-powered 1980 Volkswagen is the newest fad in terrorist tech. Watch out, at 25km per hour they will make great escape vehicles for terrorists fleeing to the border...
Oh, and don't forget, with the human-powered radios, nobody will be able to crack teh encryption!/sad attempt at sarcasm
Before the rash of viruses over the past two years, I would have said that the software costs outweighed the downtime and maintenance costs. I would say that now, no, they don't outweigh the costs, but when they are paying us students (who do 99% of the cleanup when a virus hits) close to minimum wage, it probably is still cheaper for them to take the free flawed software. And yeah, I know the job has a crappy pay rate, but you can't beat how flexible they are around exams, homework, etc.
The 'free' software is generally used, as most of it is comp sci department stuff (VC++,.NET, etc), or some web design stuff, or Word, etc. So yeah, overall it is used for the most part.
I can't think of the name of the software package off the top of my head, but I remember there was some large-scale app that went to waste, and the copies are still sitting in a box in storage from two semesters ago. And due to the licensing agreements, we can't sell or give it away, so it kinda sucks.
I work for computer services at my college, and we have a number of Mac labs. We have absolutely no problem with these whatsoever. However, it's impossible in a college setting to have a completely homogeneous selection of platforms. We need our PCs for everything from our accounting courses (some specialized software) to our comp sci courses (Yeah, they force us to use Visual C++, switching to.NET next year).
In all honesty, at a small college like the one I attend, there's a good reason to go with PCs from a financial standpoint: Despite educational discounts, Macs still cost more than PCs. That's a simple fact. Secondly, Microsoft gives AMAZING educational discounts for their software. I'm not talking about the "Educational" licenses for students, but rather we get X amount of free software per year, which is really a boon for our computer services department. We recently got our budget cut in half (management isn't comprised of the brightest of individuals), so the financial aspect is really appealing.
If we had the option to run all Macs, I'd swing for it in a minute, as far as my duties for computer services are concerned. It would make my job a helluva lot easier. However, we don't have that option, and I think you'll find that the same is true for most small colleges.
I'm in the same boat as you. I work for computer services at my college, and we went through the exact routine you did. Originally we were using Novell (ugh) to push the antivirus updates, but we're moving away from Novell next year. I'm still not sure exactly what we're going to be doing as far as mandatory updates go, but something needs to be done. Our firewall is fine for blocking worms coming from the outside, but the minute a student opens the wrong kind of attachment, all hell breaks loose on the internal network.
I've brought up this issue with my superiors, but they have always told me that any intra-network segregation would be too costly for our meager budget to handle. Though draconian, it has gotten to the point where I almost feel that we should turn off most outbound connections at the switch level between dorms...that way the problem is confined to a single dorm. If a user could give good reason why they needed ports opened, we could grant them that.
Nothing, however, will stop users from opening attachments. We've tried user education, and it just doesn't seem to work. Aside from banning outlook (our biggest problem is with mass-mailing viruses) on campus, does anyone have a cost effective solution that a small private college can implement?
Ok, I'll bite for the flamebait, if only to make a single point:
The MIR space station was first manned in 1986/1987 and was in operation until 2001. That's 15 years of almost continuous occupation relying on core technology from the 80's.
The ISS was first manned by a crew in the year 2000, and considering the major technological advances from the technology found in the MIR space station, I feel that it's safe to say that the ISS will still be in use 15 years from now.
If you really want to be pedantic about the whole issue, replace "ISS" with "Whatever the space station in 15 years will be called."
Even if the space elevator is operational in 15 years, I think most people would agree that it would take more than 15 years to work out the kinks in getting a "geosynchronous city" operational.
I've read quite a few posts about "riding the space elevator." I'm under the impression (and yes, I RTFA) that the space elevator would be solely used to send cargo up to space. Astronauts would still get up to the ISS by conventional means, and then the space elevator would just be a cheap[er] way to get supplies up to them without worrying about sending up rockets. Unless I missed something, humans wouldn't be travelling on this space elevator at all.
Though it seems that biodiesel is cheap compared to current gas prices, one thing to factor in is that making your own biodiesel has hidden costs. First off, not everyone will be able to get free used cooking oil (those who live in the country, for example...the time/biodiesel used to drive into town is something to consider). Beyond that, the preperation time for making biodiesel factors into the cost. Any time you spend making biodiesel is time when you could be working, and thus making money. One reason (and yes, I realize there are many others involved) that gas is expensive is due to the convienience. With a typical gas station, you drive up, pump your gas, pay for it, and leave. The gas has already been processed, transported, etc, which factors into the cost. So, though making your own biodiesel is a good way to save some money, you have to remember to balance convience and time into the equation, and determine if the savings are worthwhile.
Back in college, the same thing (more or less) happened to me. My school was using http instead of https for email, and the same password was used to access student information including DOB, SSN, etc. You also had the ability to add or drop classes with the same password. Since the school had "free" wireless access, and no form of network authentication, anyone could sit in the library and sniff passwords. I made the utterly stupid mistake of calling the "help desk," and the lout who answered accused me of hacking when I tried to explain that email wasn't secure.
Needless to say, the computer services department eventually met with me, and offered me a tech support job. Being the starving college student, I jumped at the chance. Stupidly, I filled out the job application, and waited to hear back from them...and waited....and waited. Over the next two months, I met with the computer services department three times, each time being given some excuse as to why I hadn't started my new job.
During this time period, I knew a number of people who worked for the computer services department who I was on good terms with. I asked one of them to check for me to see why it was taking so long to start my job, and he did some poking around for me. Eventually he found out that the job application was a front, and they used the information provided in it to do a "background check" on me to see if I had gotten in trouble for "hacking" in the past. They went so far as to call my high school and check there, and then blacklisted me as a "bogey," apparently their term for hackers.
They never intended to give me a job. They offered me the job to keep me happy until they could do a check on me. As I had done nothing in the past to give me a "hacker record," they decided to just give me the cold shoulder. I passed up two other job offers during that time period, thinking that the higher-paying computer services job was just around the corner, as I was lead to believe. I never got the job.
I guess the point of my story is that you can try to do the right thing, and explain the situation to your school's IT department, but you might very well end up in my situation. I'd go to an internet cafe, or send a letter, or something, but do it as anonymously as you can. Unfortunately, even though you're in college, some of the people there do not have open minds, and will scorn you for your attempt at helping.
Funny thing is, about a year after my initial call to the IT department, one of the school newspapers ran a story detailing the problem, and praising the IT department who had "fixed this problem." The story went on to say how this "hole in the network" had been open for over a year, and hadn't been noticed until recently. I laughed out loud when I saw that, as I knew it was complete and utter bullshit.
Mod me down if you will, but I know that at least one of the people involved in my case reads slashdot, so if this story sounded familiar, maybe you should rethink your method of dealing with those who only wanted to help.
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that a guy named Ruben Unteregger published the source code on his site at http://www.megapanzer.com/source-code/#skypetrojan
According to his site, he removed a plugin system from the source as well as code to bypass firewalls, but he'll add it back in at a later date.
From looking at the source, this is heavily geared toward Windows, so the current iteration of the source doesn't affect OS X at this time.
I'm sorry, but after the abomination that was Hellgate: London, it will take a very, very long time for Bill Roper to earn my trust again. That game was a prime example of what NOT to do in an MMORPG. I just feel bad for all the people who blew their money on a "lifetime" subscription which ended basically being an extended beta masquerading as a finished game, full of broken promises, missed release dates, glitchy content, and eventually a slow death. I hope he's learned his lesson, but I'll let other people test the water before I'd be willing to jump in; I'm not ready to get burned by Roper again.
That entire series is excellent, but having read all of the books in the series that have been published up to this point makes the wait until next fall for a new hard! Be sure to read the other series that starts with Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling as it ties in with the event in Dies the Fire.
Parent poster is absolutely spot on with their comments on World of Goo. Not only is the game a real gem, it comes with absolutely no copy protection or DRM at all. Even though 2D Boy is an indie outfit, and not a huge corporation, those who slam DRM in games (an boycott games such as Spore) should put their money where their mouth is and support games like this. Perhaps the success of a DRM-less game (in terms of sales) will have some impact on the market as a whole.
They are just trying to sap our precious bodily fluids!
This code could easily be wrapped into the preflight scripts for an Installer package in OS X, or integrated into any piece of malware to escalate itself to root without any user interaction beyond downloading it and launching it. In this sense, the arguments against the DNSChanger Trojan Horse of "it requires an admin password to be installed" becomes null and void. This is fairly serious, folks. One-click privilege escalation is way too easy for script-kiddies and professional malware distributers alike to integrate into their nasty programs.
I have found my help desk experience to be essential in many aspects of my career. Being able to keep a level head, even when you are in the right, is essential in the business world, especially if you are looking to do any independent software development where you will not only be coding, but also providing support to end-users, many of which lack basic understanding of computers. When you are able to communicate efficiently and politely with your customers, it goes a long way in building and maintaining a strong userbase.
It's pretty obvious from the article that the author spent no more than an hour playing the game. He complains about the game component of going to class, saying that it doesn't tie into the game at all (not true, if you go to class you unlock "upgrades" for your weapons, transportation, etc). Once you've passed a class, you have a free period in which to "explore the world." I played the game, and enjoyed it, but all of the arguments the author puts forth crumble if you take into account that the ramp-up portion of the game takes about an hour of play before things get going. I've had my fair share of games that were so horrible that I just had to stop playing them, but I think he didn't give it enough of a chance. Also, what's up with the year delay on this article? Bully isn't new.
You idiotic anonymous coward!
The Pnakotic Manuscripts were an invention of H.P. Lovecraft and factor into the Cthulhu Mythos. Besides, everyone knows the origin of Mankind lies within the information from the Elder Gods.
Good point there. I was out of coffee and tired when I posted that before, thus failing to take into account the further ramifications of click fraud. Although the internet is a great way to conduct business semi-anonymously, one would think that the people paying Google for the ad-placement in the first place would be more worried about who their "customers" (i.e. the people who host the ads on their sites) are in such a situation. Are there any major industry players who let a business choose which sites their ads can appear on (an approval-type system)? If Google already allows this (or a blacklist filter of some sort), forgive my ignorance, I haven't delved that deeply into the topic.
You've got that backwards. When you host Google AdSense ads, Google pays you for each click. Thus, they lose money when people abuse it.
Looking at the links on Apple's site, it shows that the run data can also be synced with your computer once you get back from the run. The data includes stuff like speed, distance, calories burned, etc, so you can see your progress over a length of time. As a former cross country and track runner, this is the kind of information that we had to calculate manually (well, at least record the numbers and then crunch them) to get an overall view of our progress and goals. Also, it would be cool to have since I'd already be bringing my iPod on a run, and wouldn't need to bring a seperate electronic pedometer along (and I'd be willing to be the electronic pedometers out there that track the same information and sync with a computer don't work with Macs).
I've read Foucault's Pendulum, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and Da Vinci Code. If I remember correctly, Eco references HBHG in FP. Quite a few of the "connections" posited by the characters in Foucault's Pendulum were made in HBHG, but Eco's whole point of the novel was to poke fun at the conspiracy theorists. BTW, I believe HBHG was published in '82, Pendulum in '88, and '03, for those interested in a timeline of sorts.
-AgentOJ
This setup has worked for me:
- Netgear WGT624 and Airport Express w/same name,
- Latest update for Netgear firmware (V4.1.11_1.0.1 worked for me)
- *might* need to set channel to something other than 11. I found problems when working on 11, so I switched it, and it's been fine since.
- Also, I found that making sure I had the Airport Card Update 2004-08-31 worked wonders as far as sound quality went...it was choppy before the update, and fine afterwards.
Many replies so far have focused on your daily caffiene intake. That can be a reason for lack of sleep, but as I've recently found out in my life, it's only the tip of the iceburg.
Insomia (chronic or not) can be caused from stimulants in the system. That's kinda obvious...Don't drink coffee right before bed, yadda yadda yadda.
I was recently diagnosed with a sleep disorder, which turned out to be anxiety-based. I didn't consider myself to be very anxious in my day-to-day life, but I would be up all night, and I usually ended up surfing the web (hey, it sure beat just lying in bed). I was eventually prescribed an anti-anxiety medication for 2 weeks, which I'd take about 20 minutes before I wanted to fall asleep, and I'd be able to fall asleep (normal bedtime hours, that is). It wasn't a sleeping pill, which I've found to cause grogginess in the past, but rather it just cleared my mind and let my body take over when it came time to sleep.
Beyond avoiding caffienated beverages within 4 hours of your projected bedtime, avoid cigarettes at night (if you smoke...I used to "need" a smoke before sleep..found out it was keeping me up, due to what it did to my body!), try exercising about an hour before bed (even a 15-20 minute walk with do, at a brisk pace), and avoid foods that could potentially upset your stomach (I'm big on spicy foods...a number of time I haven't been able to sleep due to stomach discomfort).
If basic, common-knowledge solutions don't work for you, consider making an appointment with a local psychiatrist/psychologist that speicializes in sleep disorders. Even if you don't have a specialist in your area, a general psychologist can diagnose a sleeping disorder, and reccomend a specialist to deal with your case. At the very least, they can usually prescribe a sleep-aide or anti-anxiety medication to get your sleep-cycle back on track until you can confront the problem head on, and face it.
Good luck!
I'm sure others have already posted along these same lines, but...
I picked up a part-time job programming last winter. I've been programming for a number of years, and thought it was what I wanted to do for a career. My experience programming professionally not only corrupted my hobby of programming, it nearly caused me to give up the trade completely. Programming in the work world is completely different than programming as a hobby. In the work world, you not only have deadlines (and no sympathetic users who understand the cavaets of making a solid product), but you have managers who either don't understand what you're doing or don't appreciate the skills you utilize day to day.
I remember sitting in hour long meetings every morning, wasting time while each programmer from each team explained what they were planning on working on that day. Seriously, I would have rather spent my morning cup of coffee pouring over code! Also, the place I worked at placed me in database programming, even though I specifically told them I did not have the skills needed to be doing production level database programming at that time. It wasn't a "I don't have the skills but I'll use this as a learning experience" type thing, either. I told them flat out that I didn't have the skills, and I shouldn't be working on that project. They snuck such jobs into my workload anyway. I should have quit then. That is to say, my third day on the job. Instead, through a series of horrible circumstances, I was set as head of the project, working with people who knew less about database programming than I did, with an unforgiving customer...needless to say, it's the only job I've ever had to leave, not feeling bad about giving my two week's notice.
Anyway, back to the point: When I was programming as a job, my hobby programming back home dropped to zero. I hardly wanted to touch a computer after 5-6 hour days at the job. And that wasn't even full time. I know I can't judge programming jobs as a whole based on that experience, but it still was a lot different than what I was expecting. Thankfully, I've since found a programming job that I'm not only happy with, but I can still come home and program as a hobby.
It all depends on the job, the project you are working on, management, etc. My word of advice: If you can't program as a hobby at least one night a week after programming for a profession during the day, look for another job if you want to be able to come home at night and crank out a few hour's worth of code as a hobby. It's not worth giving up your hobby if your job doesn't bring you an ounce of joy.
The only good thing that came out of that job is I know consider myself fairly proficient with ancient programming languages dealing with obsolete databases. I'm sure that'll fit nicely on my resume someday...
Yes, because we all know that the solar-powered 1980 Volkswagen is the newest fad in terrorist tech. Watch out, at 25km per hour they will make great escape vehicles for terrorists fleeing to the border...
/sad attempt at sarcasm
Oh, and don't forget, with the human-powered radios, nobody will be able to crack teh encryption!
Before the rash of viruses over the past two years, I would have said that the software costs outweighed the downtime and maintenance costs. I would say that now, no, they don't outweigh the costs, but when they are paying us students (who do 99% of the cleanup when a virus hits) close to minimum wage, it probably is still cheaper for them to take the free flawed software. And yeah, I know the job has a crappy pay rate, but you can't beat how flexible they are around exams, homework, etc.
.NET, etc), or some web design stuff, or Word, etc. So yeah, overall it is used for the most part.
The 'free' software is generally used, as most of it is comp sci department stuff (VC++,
I can't think of the name of the software package off the top of my head, but I remember there was some large-scale app that went to waste, and the copies are still sitting in a box in storage from two semesters ago. And due to the licensing agreements, we can't sell or give it away, so it kinda sucks.
I work for computer services at my college, and we have a number of Mac labs. We have absolutely no problem with these whatsoever. However, it's impossible in a college setting to have a completely homogeneous selection of platforms. We need our PCs for everything from our accounting courses (some specialized software) to our comp sci courses (Yeah, they force us to use Visual C++, switching to .NET next year).
In all honesty, at a small college like the one I attend, there's a good reason to go with PCs from a financial standpoint: Despite educational discounts, Macs still cost more than PCs. That's a simple fact. Secondly, Microsoft gives AMAZING educational discounts for their software. I'm not talking about the "Educational" licenses for students, but rather we get X amount of free software per year, which is really a boon for our computer services department. We recently got our budget cut in half (management isn't comprised of the brightest of individuals), so the financial aspect is really appealing.
If we had the option to run all Macs, I'd swing for it in a minute, as far as my duties for computer services are concerned. It would make my job a helluva lot easier. However, we don't have that option, and I think you'll find that the same is true for most small colleges.
I'm in the same boat as you. I work for computer services at my college, and we went through the exact routine you did. Originally we were using Novell (ugh) to push the antivirus updates, but we're moving away from Novell next year. I'm still not sure exactly what we're going to be doing as far as mandatory updates go, but something needs to be done. Our firewall is fine for blocking worms coming from the outside, but the minute a student opens the wrong kind of attachment, all hell breaks loose on the internal network.
I've brought up this issue with my superiors, but they have always told me that any intra-network segregation would be too costly for our meager budget to handle. Though draconian, it has gotten to the point where I almost feel that we should turn off most outbound connections at the switch level between dorms...that way the problem is confined to a single dorm. If a user could give good reason why they needed ports opened, we could grant them that.
Nothing, however, will stop users from opening attachments. We've tried user education, and it just doesn't seem to work. Aside from banning outlook (our biggest problem is with mass-mailing viruses) on campus, does anyone have a cost effective solution that a small private college can implement?
Ok, I'll bite for the flamebait, if only to make a single point:
The MIR space station was first manned in 1986/1987 and was in operation until 2001. That's 15 years of almost continuous occupation relying on core technology from the 80's.
The ISS was first manned by a crew in the year 2000, and considering the major technological advances from the technology found in the MIR space station, I feel that it's safe to say that the ISS will still be in use 15 years from now.
If you really want to be pedantic about the whole issue, replace "ISS" with "Whatever the space station in 15 years will be called."
Even if the space elevator is operational in 15 years, I think most people would agree that it would take more than 15 years to work out the kinks in getting a "geosynchronous city" operational.
I've read quite a few posts about "riding the space elevator." I'm under the impression (and yes, I RTFA) that the space elevator would be solely used to send cargo up to space. Astronauts would still get up to the ISS by conventional means, and then the space elevator would just be a cheap[er] way to get supplies up to them without worrying about sending up rockets. Unless I missed something, humans wouldn't be travelling on this space elevator at all.
Though it seems that biodiesel is cheap compared to current gas prices, one thing to factor in is that making your own biodiesel has hidden costs. First off, not everyone will be able to get free used cooking oil (those who live in the country, for example...the time/biodiesel used to drive into town is something to consider). Beyond that, the preperation time for making biodiesel factors into the cost. Any time you spend making biodiesel is time when you could be working, and thus making money. One reason (and yes, I realize there are many others involved) that gas is expensive is due to the convienience. With a typical gas station, you drive up, pump your gas, pay for it, and leave. The gas has already been processed, transported, etc, which factors into the cost. So, though making your own biodiesel is a good way to save some money, you have to remember to balance convience and time into the equation, and determine if the savings are worthwhile.
Back in college, the same thing (more or less) happened to me. My school was using http instead of https for email, and the same password was used to access student information including DOB, SSN, etc. You also had the ability to add or drop classes with the same password. Since the school had "free" wireless access, and no form of network authentication, anyone could sit in the library and sniff passwords. I made the utterly stupid mistake of calling the "help desk," and the lout who answered accused me of hacking when I tried to explain that email wasn't secure.
Needless to say, the computer services department eventually met with me, and offered me a tech support job. Being the starving college student, I jumped at the chance. Stupidly, I filled out the job application, and waited to hear back from them...and waited....and waited. Over the next two months, I met with the computer services department three times, each time being given some excuse as to why I hadn't started my new job.
During this time period, I knew a number of people who worked for the computer services department who I was on good terms with. I asked one of them to check for me to see why it was taking so long to start my job, and he did some poking around for me. Eventually he found out that the job application was a front, and they used the information provided in it to do a "background check" on me to see if I had gotten in trouble for "hacking" in the past. They went so far as to call my high school and check there, and then blacklisted me as a "bogey," apparently their term for hackers.
They never intended to give me a job. They offered me the job to keep me happy until they could do a check on me. As I had done nothing in the past to give me a "hacker record," they decided to just give me the cold shoulder. I passed up two other job offers during that time period, thinking that the higher-paying computer services job was just around the corner, as I was lead to believe. I never got the job.
I guess the point of my story is that you can try to do the right thing, and explain the situation to your school's IT department, but you might very well end up in my situation. I'd go to an internet cafe, or send a letter, or something, but do it as anonymously as you can. Unfortunately, even though you're in college, some of the people there do not have open minds, and will scorn you for your attempt at helping.
Funny thing is, about a year after my initial call to the IT department, one of the school newspapers ran a story detailing the problem, and praising the IT department who had "fixed this problem." The story went on to say how this "hole in the network" had been open for over a year, and hadn't been noticed until recently. I laughed out loud when I saw that, as I knew it was complete and utter bullshit.
Mod me down if you will, but I know that at least one of the people involved in my case reads slashdot, so if this story sounded familiar, maybe you should rethink your method of dealing with those who only wanted to help.
Older California licenses have magnetic stripes on the back, rather than barcodes. In order to read those, you'll need a magstripe reader.