Which probably isn't as large a task as you might imagine. It will also give you the chance to customize it to your users, which makes it a whole lot more likely that people will read it. There is plenty of online material to use as a reference, especially when it comes to password choice. Also look around for documents from university computer labs or university computer support services. You may find some ideas there.
You also might want to consider making people pass a quiz in order to get an account. Sure, it's irritating... but it actually does work. Make it part of the regular procedure for getting access, so that you catch new users.
A presentation can also work, if you're a decent speaker or you are willing to hire one. Doing something flashy could be fun. Consider having everyone create an account for themselves on a test machine at the start of the presentation and then having a password cracker grind through them all while the meeting is in progress. If you've got a couple fast machines to spare, you could probably shock the hell out of people by guessing their passwords before the meeting ends. Better have a backup plan, in case your users are more savey than you think.
And, to repeat what's already been repeated many times: you really shouldn't be letting new users choose arbitrary passwords nor giving them root access if you can help it. If you can't avoid giving them root, then try to give it to as few people as possible, and have a nice long talk with them about appropriate procedures first. (And make damned sure you have regular backups, so you can repair things when they screw up.) Sudo is your friend!
I seem to recall buying an HP machine in 1994. . .
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Sphere XP Makes GUI 3D
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. . . that came out of the box with something rather similar. It was a silly "3D" environment that was really a 2D field with some nifty shading effects and the ability to stack objects. It took up 50% of the available ram on the machine, and didn't offer any features at all except giving the user a chance to say, "wow - look - a 3d desktop!" Of course one interacted with the environment using a 2D mouse, and it therefore took quite a bit longer to perform simple tasks than when using just about any alternative.
I used it exactly as long as as it took to figure out how to disable the thing, as, I suspect, did most people. Presumably in order to claim more users, they made it damned hard to disable.
Truth is, the fastest way to interface with a computer is still a keyboard. (Well, for *almost* any task, with exceptions such as manipulating graphics or sorting through a large number of similar files with meaningless names by hand.)
Until that changes, my "desktop" will be nothing more than a name for the background which peaks through the gaps between xterms.
. . . you could avoid buying hardware from companies that support unreasonably restrictive licensing schemes. At the risk of being modded a flame, I've got to say that it's people who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to companies that take away their rights that make this sort of thing possible.
Want to legally own your music? Here are three easy steps:
1- Take your ipod back to the store and ask for your money back.
2 - Buy a player from another manufacturer that handles mp3 and ogg formats without any nasty licensing restrictions.
3 - Take the hundred bucks you saved by not purchasing a nifty Apple logo, and use it to subscribe to emusic.com, or to buy albums from magnatune.com. Or, go to your neighborhood music store and buy albums from distributors that don't add copy protection to their CD's.
The only thing sillier than shooting yourself in the foot is paying someone else to shoot your foot for you and then complaining about it on slashdot.
I spent some time pondering something similar while putting together a home-made vertical split keyboard.
Didn't come across anything with IBM's name on it, but among the salvage laptop keyboards that I found in parts stores, none were easy to turn into a working keyboard. They not only lacked a controller, but they seemed to have entirely unique path layouts, making the prospect of finding a suitable ready-built controller unlikely. That's based solely on the three I explored - perhaps there are standards among some manufacturers.
The only suitable solution I could see was to cut every single circuit path on the keyboard and then wire them up *by hand* to a keyboard controller ripped out of a desktop keyboard, after carefully tracing out every path from the original desktop keyboard. Needless to say, it didn't seem worth the time required. But, with a DMM, a dozen dremel cutting disks, a half pound of solder, a weekend, and a whole lot of patience you could do it.
If you're willing to spend 100 bucks or more, you can find programmable controllers, and you might get lucky and find one compatible with the existing laptop keyboard. But, for that price, you can probably buy a keyboard to suit your needs right off the shelf.
If by some chance you find a nifty solution, please post it here. I'd love to see it.
I guess the silliest answer would be to attach it to an ibm laptop and write a program to mimic a keyboard on the usb port. (I suspect you'd run into latency problems - but it could be fun just for the shear absurdity of it.)
Not sure if all schools do this, but at least some universities and national labs have an excess equipment auction a couple of times a year. Basically, everything that gets put into the salvage bin is up for grabs.
You can't really plan on finding anything in particular there, but its a great place to look around for random bits of gear. Equipment which is either "obsolete" or customized tends to go for close to nothing - which means you can stock your basement on the cheap.
If that fails, there's always Ebay, or specialty shops like American Science and Surplus in Chicago, www.sciplus.com.
Most of emusic's material is also encoded with LAME's preset standard vbr setting. And it's also available without any attempted DRM nonsense. (And despite using a somewhat funky custom client, they support linux.)
Then there's magnatune, featured some months back on slashdot, who offers uncompressed wavs.
Don't get me wrong - *three* online distributors who treat their audio and their customers with respect is better than *two*. But, they've gone a bit overboard claiming to be the first to offer high quality, drm-free stuff.
Yeah, I know it's a pencil and not a pen. It's still the best writing implement every produced. You can buy this pencil directly from the yafa store, or from a yafa retailer.
I've had one for more than seven years of continuous use. By continuous, I mean several hours a day - every page of notes and every problem set so far in college and grad school. After about five years, the bottom half of the pocket clip chipped off, but the pencil action is still going strong.
The pencils were unavailable for a few years, and then the company began producing them again. I've now purchased a lifetime supply: 14 pencils, which gives me just under a one-sigma clearance on retirement age assuming poisson statistics apply to pencil loss.
Oh yeah - and don't be discouraged when you discover that it's made by a company who generates the bulk of their business selling kitchy corporate logo pens shaped like chocolate covered bananas. Most of their products, such as their badly designed four function stylus pens, aren't worth bothering with. This pencil, however, is the exception.
The Physical Universe by Frank Shu is a great intro to astro in particular and to the physical sciences in general. It's often used as an introductory text for majors classes in undergraduate astro, but it's designed to accomodate anyone with virtually any physics/math background. It makes for a well written descriptive astronomy book if you skip the problems and examples. For the more ambitious, some of the problems are comparable to graduate candidacy questions.
It's priced as a textbook, and isn't as sexy as some of the popular science books, but if you want a taste of how physics is done (rather than a list of what physics has done), it's hard to beat. The basic physics chapters rival any intro physics text I've seen.
Also, I note that many people have recommended th Feynman Lectures. While I have a great fondness for them, they may be something of a shock to anyone new to the field. By all means, take a look, but don't despair if you find them hard to follow. (Most people don't really fall in love with them until after they've spent several years learning the material from more traditional textbooks.)
Slashdot Mirror
Which probably isn't as large a task as you might imagine. It will also give you the chance to customize it to your users, which makes it a whole lot more likely that people will read it. There is plenty of online material to use as a reference, especially when it comes to password choice. Also look around for documents from university computer labs or university computer support services. You may find some ideas there.
You also might want to consider making people pass a quiz in order to get an account. Sure, it's irritating... but it actually does work. Make it part of the regular procedure for getting access, so that you catch new users.
A presentation can also work, if you're a decent speaker or you are willing to hire one. Doing something flashy could be fun. Consider having everyone create an account for themselves on a test machine at the start of the presentation and then having a password cracker grind through them all while the meeting is in progress. If you've got a couple fast machines to spare, you could probably shock the hell out of people by guessing their passwords before the meeting ends. Better have a backup plan, in case your users are more savey than you think.
And, to repeat what's already been repeated many times: you really shouldn't be letting new users choose arbitrary passwords nor giving them root access if you can help it. If you can't avoid giving them root, then try to give it to as few people as possible, and have a nice long talk with them about appropriate procedures first. (And make damned sure you have regular backups, so you can repair things when they screw up.) Sudo is your friend!
I used it exactly as long as as it took to figure out how to disable the thing, as, I suspect, did most people. Presumably in order to claim more users, they made it damned hard to disable.
Truth is, the fastest way to interface with a computer is still a keyboard. (Well, for *almost* any task, with exceptions such as manipulating graphics or sorting through a large number of similar files with meaningless names by hand.)
Until that changes, my "desktop" will be nothing more than a name for the background which peaks through the gaps between xterms.
. . . you could avoid buying hardware from companies that support unreasonably restrictive licensing schemes. At the risk of being modded a flame, I've got to say that it's people who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to companies that take away their rights that make this sort of thing possible. Want to legally own your music? Here are three easy steps: 1- Take your ipod back to the store and ask for your money back. 2 - Buy a player from another manufacturer that handles mp3 and ogg formats without any nasty licensing restrictions. 3 - Take the hundred bucks you saved by not purchasing a nifty Apple logo, and use it to subscribe to emusic.com, or to buy albums from magnatune.com. Or, go to your neighborhood music store and buy albums from distributors that don't add copy protection to their CD's. The only thing sillier than shooting yourself in the foot is paying someone else to shoot your foot for you and then complaining about it on slashdot.
I spent some time pondering something similar while putting together a home-made vertical split keyboard.
Didn't come across anything with IBM's name on it, but among the salvage laptop keyboards that I found in parts stores, none were easy to turn into a working keyboard. They not only lacked a controller, but they seemed to have entirely unique path layouts, making the prospect of finding a suitable ready-built controller unlikely. That's based solely on the three I explored - perhaps there are standards among some manufacturers.
The only suitable solution I could see was to cut every single circuit path on the keyboard and then wire them up *by hand* to a keyboard controller ripped out of a desktop keyboard, after carefully tracing out every path from the original desktop keyboard. Needless to say, it didn't seem worth the time required. But, with a DMM, a dozen dremel cutting disks, a half pound of solder, a weekend, and a whole lot of patience you could do it.
If you're willing to spend 100 bucks or more, you can find programmable controllers, and you might get lucky and find one compatible with the existing laptop keyboard. But, for that price, you can probably buy a keyboard to suit your needs right off the shelf.
If by some chance you find a nifty solution, please post it here. I'd love to see it.
I guess the silliest answer would be to attach it to an ibm laptop and write a program to mimic a keyboard on the usb port. (I suspect you'd run into latency problems - but it could be fun just for the shear absurdity of it.)
You can't really plan on finding anything in particular there, but its a great place to look around for random bits of gear. Equipment which is either "obsolete" or customized tends to go for close to nothing - which means you can stock your basement on the cheap.
If that fails, there's always Ebay, or specialty shops like American Science and Surplus in Chicago, www.sciplus.com.
Most of emusic's material is also encoded with LAME's preset standard vbr setting. And it's also available without any attempted DRM nonsense. (And despite using a somewhat funky custom client, they support linux.)
Then there's magnatune, featured some months back on slashdot, who offers uncompressed wavs.
Don't get me wrong - *three* online distributors who treat their audio and their customers with respect is better than *two*. But, they've gone a bit overboard claiming to be the first to offer high quality, drm-free stuff.
I've had one for more than seven years of continuous use. By continuous, I mean several hours a day - every page of notes and every problem set so far in college and grad school. After about five years, the bottom half of the pocket clip chipped off, but the pencil action is still going strong.
The pencils were unavailable for a few years, and then the company began producing them again. I've now purchased a lifetime supply: 14 pencils, which gives me just under a one-sigma clearance on retirement age assuming poisson statistics apply to pencil loss.
Oh yeah - and don't be discouraged when you discover that it's made by a company who generates the bulk of their business selling kitchy corporate logo pens shaped like chocolate covered bananas. Most of their products, such as their badly designed four function stylus pens, aren't worth bothering with. This pencil, however, is the exception.
It's priced as a textbook, and isn't as sexy as some of the popular science books, but if you want a taste of how physics is done (rather than a list of what physics has done), it's hard to beat. The basic physics chapters rival any intro physics text I've seen.
Also, I note that many people have recommended th Feynman Lectures. While I have a great fondness for them, they may be something of a shock to anyone new to the field. By all means, take a look, but don't despair if you find them hard to follow. (Most people don't really fall in love with them until after they've spent several years learning the material from more traditional textbooks.)