I think another issue here that I haven't seen anyone mention at my level of filtering is this: How rude! Are we really becoming so ungracious that we can't appreciate someone's effort to give us something. If we really don't like it, still thank them, hold onto it for an appropriate amount of time, then re-gift, sell or give to charity.
For the moment, http://fss.live.com/ is in beta and free to all. I don't know the long term marketing plans with respect to charging for it. The parental control features offered by fss.live.com are redundantly available in all versions of Vista, BTW.
I agree with the general thrust of what has been said here. Give the kids simple "User" accounts. If you don't want to go to all the trouble of having a domain controller with AD group policies and such, here's a newer, simpler way to go: Set up Family Safe Settings on each computer with you and certain other faculty as administrators, and the various students as the children. It blocks the worse stuff, and by monitoring what's going on, you can selectively lock down various sites. We use it in my house with our kids and it works pretty well. Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.
I had a similar experience. To be safe, I backed up everything under
C:\Documents and Settings
first, but it turned out to be completely unnecessary. My system runs beautifully with SP2 and I have a decent software firewall as part of the OS now.
That said, my plan is not to stick with the Windows OS after the current version. The "Trusted Computing" changes coming down the pipeline are just too Orwellian. I'm testing out various Linux distros on my old machine to see what my next operating system is going to be. I love MacOS X, but there's no reason to believe the won't also go down the heavily DRM'd route.
I've tried looking at the pages, but I guess I'm inexperienced with Linux and need a little more help than they give. I see how to force db42 to compile using nptl, but not the other way around. On one page, somebocy suggests compiling with --disableposixmutexes, so I tried
cd build_unix ../dist/configure --disableposixmutexes
I only got a complaint that the option doesn't exist, and I can't figure what to do. Help?
I was frustrated in my attempt to get Subversion up and running on Fedora Core 1, because apparently the Native Posix Threads Library (nptl) enabled version of glibc is not available in the distro or on the yum/up2date servers for i486/i586 systems. I see that the distro has added another CD. Does anyone know if i586 nptl-enabled glibc has now been included in FC2?
The preprint servers are not true open access, merely free (as in beer) access. We need to distinguish between these two things.
Also, Arxiv is a fast way to "publish", but it completely lacks peer-review. The only thing resembling peer-review is that you have to be sponsored by an existing member to be able to post a paper, unless you joined before this rule went into effect recently.
I use Arxiv personally because I like to make sure that my family (who are not associated with Universities) can access my papers when I publish them, and it makes a good way to send around revisions of a paper to co-authors for criticism (as opposed to sending out a dozen e-mails with PDF attached).
I don't think you're a minority. In physics (my area) at least, many more Ph.D.'s are produced than than can possibly be employed permanently in research. Many people go on to careers in the private sector, but I'm sure maintain their interest in scientific developments, and have the training to read the scientific literature.
Fortunately, though, in physics there is the network of prepring/eprint servers where many papers go prior to publication. (See Arxiv.org, for example.) However, they have the disadvantage of not having been peer-reviewed yet. I would like to see a respected, true Open Access journal in physics. There are many "free" physics journals available (see Directory of Open Access Journals), but none fit my desire for a respected, peer-reviewed, open access journal.
I had a similar experience. I installed Mozilla off the Open CD, and turned on the pop-up blocker for them, making it the default browser. Then they had some Outlook Express-related e-mail problem (I go in baby steps with them. I wasn't about to make them switch e-mail software too.), and at some point the ISP tech-support people made them find IE to access their e-mail (on SBC Yahoo!, which of course works with Mozilla no problem), and so now they have started using it instead.
I was walking my dog this morning, and the sight of our moon nearly at the new phase got me pondering the task of flying there, given that this year will mark the 35th anniversary of the first landing. I have a couple of questions for my fellow/.ers:
Were the earlier manned moon missions all done at full or nearly full phase?
If we were to send a mission there within the year, how would the technology used (specifically, rockets and landers) differ from that of the Apollo program?
Their sleigh is over there.
I put a word with 'ei' in it next to the possessive form. Also, the word next to the other form, over, has 'er' in it. Does that help?
Someone can go ahead and mod this as offtopic, but it was the only way I knew to respond.
POP3 is all I have available to me, so have Thunderbird set to leave messages on the server for 7 days (Useful for peeking at mail from text terminals around my workplace), and store anything truly important in my Local Folders heirarchy.
Read privacy policies. Keep a spam magnet e-mail address for those web sites that have poor or nonexistent policies.
I read the privacy policy of any website before providing them with my e-mail address. If it looks at all like they might give it to third parties for advertising purposes, or post it on a website in the clear, or put me on lists where it's not clear I can opt out at any time, then I don't give it. If I must, then I give them my old Yahoo e-mail address, which already gets 20-1 spam, because I wasn't careful with it.
I began this policy 5 months ago, when I finished my degree, and since then I have only received the occasional (1/week or so) "Herbal Viagra" ad. The moment I stopped using my university account (not careful with it, same as the Yahoo account), my "spam count" dropped through the floor.
A month before, I had started using Popfile to filter spam. I still use it, but mostly just to pre-sort my e-mail into different priority folders.
Microsoft users are getting fed up. They're battered by worms, viruses, security patches and increasing enterprise licensing costs. Aggravation has users talking about switching from Microsoft software to something else. We're trying to figure out how much of that talk is just talk, and how much is serious action. Do you seriously plan to dump Microsoft software?
Speaking personally, I am happy with Windows XP, but the gymnastics I see the administrators at work go through to keep the Windows machines (effectively required of office staff) secure and virus free, makes me want to switch. The software I use most often is x-platform anyway, with the glaring exception of Quicken. I could always switch to MacOSX, I suppose. But given my limited resources, I'll probably switch to Linux within the year, resigning myself to a more limited personal finance program.
The only pages I know of that won't work right in my Mozilla Firebird browser, but do work properly in IE, are the Windows Update site and the MS Office clips gallery (clips I can access because of my old Office 2000 software, but which I can actually use in my sparkly new OpenOffice 1.1 software).
Mac OSX is better than XP. I get it. Really. I am writing this from an XP laptop, because I didn't want to spend the extra $$ on a Mac laptop. Does Apple have any plans for porting their OS to Pentium machines?
Rant (which you may want to ignore): Actually, I like XP's interface just fine. Any time I would complain about it, I go use a Gnome or KDE desktop and end up grumbling about the Windows niceties that are missing. OK. Not really. Gnome is actually pretty decent. But my sysadmin, in his infinite wisdom, has locked down all desktop customization features, so I can't change a damn thing.
That's absolutiely right. Has anyone noticed what's been snuck under the radar recently. Nuclear power plants managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority have begun to produce tritium for the USA's stockpile of nuclear weapons. I couldn't make this stuff up.
I am a nuclear physicist (note: not a nuclear engineer, which I admit would be more of an expert), and I have not seen compelling arguments that nuclear power plants will be necessary to provide power to future generations.
Economically, none of the existing ones have ever turned a profit without generous government assistance. I humbly submit an interesting organizations' website to this discussion: The Rocky Mountain Institute. They are a think tank on environmental and energy issues, which strives not to have a particular agenda, but only to base their analyses on proven science and solid economic reasoning. They don't lobby governments, and most of their recommendations are squarely aimed at industries.
Also, the notion that solar energy generation could never provide enough energy without taking up too much space is absurd. A back of the envelope calculation shows that a desert installation of mirrors focused on heating towers (working prototypes exist) or photovoltaics with today's available efficiencies, can do the job. The USA's electricity demand could be met with an installation the size of Rhode Island.
Readers of The Industrial Physicist will also recall from a recent article (and discussion in the letters to the editor) that we are not limited to Earth-based generation. Within decades, we could be placing photovoltaic installation on the moon, and beaming the energy to stations on the Earth's surface by focussed microwaves.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree entirely with the sentiment of this comment, if not the coarse language.
I think another issue here that I haven't seen anyone mention at my level of filtering is this: How rude! Are we really becoming so ungracious that we can't appreciate someone's effort to give us something. If we really don't like it, still thank them, hold onto it for an appropriate amount of time, then re-gift, sell or give to charity.
For the moment, http://fss.live.com/ is in beta and free to all. I don't know the long term marketing plans with respect to charging for it. The parental control features offered by fss.live.com are redundantly available in all versions of Vista, BTW.
I agree with the general thrust of what has been said here. Give the kids simple "User" accounts. If you don't want to go to all the trouble of having a domain controller with AD group policies and such, here's a newer, simpler way to go: Set up Family Safe Settings on each computer with you and certain other faculty as administrators, and the various students as the children. It blocks the worse stuff, and by monitoring what's going on, you can selectively lock down various sites. We use it in my house with our kids and it works pretty well. Disclaimer: I am a Microsoft Employee.
A good example of RTFA, or at least follow a few more links before commenting. Time dollars are not taxable. See here for IRS rulings on the subject.
That said, my plan is not to stick with the Windows OS after the current version. The "Trusted Computing" changes coming down the pipeline are just too Orwellian. I'm testing out various Linux distros on my old machine to see what my next operating system is going to be. I love MacOS X, but there's no reason to believe the won't also go down the heavily DRM'd route.
I only got a complaint that the option doesn't exist, and I can't figure what to do. Help?
Also, Arxiv is a fast way to "publish", but it completely lacks peer-review. The only thing resembling peer-review is that you have to be sponsored by an existing member to be able to post a paper, unless you joined before this rule went into effect recently.
I use Arxiv personally because I like to make sure that my family (who are not associated with Universities) can access my papers when I publish them, and it makes a good way to send around revisions of a paper to co-authors for criticism (as opposed to sending out a dozen e-mails with PDF attached).
Fortunately, though, in physics there is the network of prepring/eprint servers where many papers go prior to publication. (See Arxiv.org, for example.) However, they have the disadvantage of not having been peer-reviewed yet. I would like to see a respected, true Open Access journal in physics. There are many "free" physics journals available (see Directory of Open Access Journals), but none fit my desire for a respected, peer-reviewed, open access journal.
I had a similar experience. I installed Mozilla off the Open CD, and turned on the pop-up blocker for them, making it the default browser. Then they had some Outlook Express-related e-mail problem (I go in baby steps with them. I wasn't about to make them switch e-mail software too.), and at some point the ISP tech-support people made them find IE to access their e-mail (on SBC Yahoo!, which of course works with Mozilla no problem), and so now they have started using it instead.
Their sleigh is over there. I put a word with 'ei' in it next to the possessive form. Also, the word next to the other form, over, has 'er' in it. Does that help? Someone can go ahead and mod this as offtopic, but it was the only way I knew to respond.
POP3 is all I have available to me, so have Thunderbird set to leave messages on the server for 7 days (Useful for peeking at mail from text terminals around my workplace), and store anything truly important in my Local Folders heirarchy.
Yeah..."Keeping Up Appearances" is a modern classic.
Read privacy policies. Keep a spam magnet e-mail address for those web sites that have poor or nonexistent policies.
I read the privacy policy of any website before providing them with my e-mail address. If it looks at all like they might give it to third parties for advertising purposes, or post it on a website in the clear, or put me on lists where it's not clear I can opt out at any time, then I don't give it. If I must, then I give them my old Yahoo e-mail address, which already gets 20-1 spam, because I wasn't careful with it.
I began this policy 5 months ago, when I finished my degree, and since then I have only received the occasional (1/week or so) "Herbal Viagra" ad. The moment I stopped using my university account (not careful with it, same as the Yahoo account), my "spam count" dropped through the floor.
A month before, I had started using Popfile to filter spam. I still use it, but mostly just to pre-sort my e-mail into different priority folders.
I've been having the same experience. I assume it's just growing pains, but if not, I'd be curious to know.
Speaking personally, I am happy with Windows XP, but the gymnastics I see the administrators at work go through to keep the Windows machines (effectively required of office staff) secure and virus free, makes me want to switch. The software I use most often is x-platform anyway, with the glaring exception of Quicken. I could always switch to MacOSX, I suppose. But given my limited resources, I'll probably switch to Linux within the year, resigning myself to a more limited personal finance program.
Because climate models matter, if we care about whether global warming is really happening or not:
The only pages I know of that won't work right in my Mozilla Firebird browser, but do work properly in IE, are the Windows Update site and the MS Office clips gallery (clips I can access because of my old Office 2000 software, but which I can actually use in my sparkly new OpenOffice 1.1 software).
You might want to take a look at this: J2SE 1.4.2 Optimized for Red Hat 9
Rant (which you may want to ignore): Actually, I like XP's interface just fine. Any time I would complain about it, I go use a Gnome or KDE desktop and end up grumbling about the Windows niceties that are missing. OK. Not really. Gnome is actually pretty decent. But my sysadmin, in his infinite wisdom, has locked down all desktop customization features, so I can't change a damn thing.
Sorry I don't have anything more clever than that to say. I was just tickled is all.
That's absolutiely right. Has anyone noticed what's been snuck under the radar recently. Nuclear power plants managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority have begun to produce tritium for the USA's stockpile of nuclear weapons. I couldn't make this stuff up.
Economically, none of the existing ones have ever turned a profit without generous government assistance. I humbly submit an interesting organizations' website to this discussion: The Rocky Mountain Institute. They are a think tank on environmental and energy issues, which strives not to have a particular agenda, but only to base their analyses on proven science and solid economic reasoning. They don't lobby governments, and most of their recommendations are squarely aimed at industries.
Also, the notion that solar energy generation could never provide enough energy without taking up too much space is absurd. A back of the envelope calculation shows that a desert installation of mirrors focused on heating towers (working prototypes exist) or photovoltaics with today's available efficiencies, can do the job. The USA's electricity demand could be met with an installation the size of Rhode Island.
Readers of The Industrial Physicist will also recall from a recent article (and discussion in the letters to the editor) that we are not limited to Earth-based generation. Within decades, we could be placing photovoltaic installation on the moon, and beaming the energy to stations on the Earth's surface by focussed microwaves.