I've built a fusor while in high school (a couple of years ago), and it's certainly within the reach of a dedicated person, or somebody with lots of support.
For me the fusor wasn't really an end so much as a starting point: it is an educational experience that is unmatched, because to build a fusor, you've got to have a grasp of high voltage, high vacuum, and gas management systems. Learning about these things in theory is nice, but there is nothing that can compare to slaving over a hot wrench after bolting down your chamber for the last hour and leak checking every single seal.
In the end, it matters what your userbase is--you should do a study (or have statistics ready, in hand) about what major browsers your clientele and users will use to navigate the site. Obviously, if you have a large amount of dumb terminals browsing the service from remote point of sale stations or other technology that's likewise impaired, you're going to have to accomodate it. No doubt about it.
Design's all about solving problems, and while you won't be able to accomodate 100% of users 100% of the time, you can solve for the majority of cases. Remember not to buy into hype about dropped vendor support, or the newest internet technologies--what good will a brand-spanking-new-AJAX site do if it's targeted at blind people who use the JAWS screenreader? Likewise, if your audience uses IE 5 Mac most of the time, go from there.
(Websites are a lot easier in this aspect if you already have one--you've got statistics, and you can poll your users directly about what they'd like, or if you're really paranoid, you can get someone to analyze traffic patterns and site layout to see what the end product should ideally be.)
You should work from standards-compliant code and augment it from there, as it's really helpful to be able to get a clean page marked up and rendering in the newest, latest browsers (usually), and then hack your way down the spectrum as your situation demands.
If you have a large digital divide between users--say, 50% Windows XP users, 25% Unix users, and 25% high-traffic DOS users, your best bet may be to fork the program/site. Due to the fact that the older technologies take much less time to code for (ahh, simple CLI versus tons of GUI menus), you might be able to get away with this. If not, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and should consult your users--would the advanced group mind giving up some functionality to support the retro OSes and platforms? Ask 'em, since they'll be using it, not the members of the board or council who make the decision.
It isn't so much that geeks have come into the mainstream now as they're just more prevalent. Considering that a large amount of social life today involves communicating via technology, it's only natural for the mainstream to run into the geeks/nerds--they've been there for the past 20 years.
Geeks run the Internet, and they run most of the technology around people. You can't escape them now, they're more conspicuous than ever, they rule the common modes of communication other than speech, and there is practically no way to avoid interacting with a geek/nerd of some sort if any of your technology is broken (not including bad tech-support lines and the like).
Slashdot Mirror
I've built a fusor while in high school (a couple of years ago), and it's certainly within the reach of a dedicated person, or somebody with lots of support.
More info for the interested at http://stores.lulu.com/raymondj .
For me the fusor wasn't really an end so much as a starting point: it is an educational experience that is unmatched, because to build a fusor, you've got to have a grasp of high voltage, high vacuum, and gas management systems. Learning about these things in theory is nice, but there is nothing that can compare to slaving over a hot wrench after bolting down your chamber for the last hour and leak checking every single seal.
And, if anything, it does look good on a resume.
FreeBSD has had this as its default behavior for years now; if the system fails during FSCK it'll drop you down into a root shell without hesitation.
/etc/ttys; Ubuntu probably has the same option lying around somewhere in its configuration.
Albeit, it can be disabled in
In the end, it matters what your userbase is--you should do a study (or have statistics ready, in hand) about what major browsers your clientele and users will use to navigate the site. Obviously, if you have a large amount of dumb terminals browsing the service from remote point of sale stations or other technology that's likewise impaired, you're going to have to accomodate it. No doubt about it. Design's all about solving problems, and while you won't be able to accomodate 100% of users 100% of the time, you can solve for the majority of cases. Remember not to buy into hype about dropped vendor support, or the newest internet technologies--what good will a brand-spanking-new-AJAX site do if it's targeted at blind people who use the JAWS screenreader? Likewise, if your audience uses IE 5 Mac most of the time, go from there. (Websites are a lot easier in this aspect if you already have one--you've got statistics, and you can poll your users directly about what they'd like, or if you're really paranoid, you can get someone to analyze traffic patterns and site layout to see what the end product should ideally be.) You should work from standards-compliant code and augment it from there, as it's really helpful to be able to get a clean page marked up and rendering in the newest, latest browsers (usually), and then hack your way down the spectrum as your situation demands. If you have a large digital divide between users--say, 50% Windows XP users, 25% Unix users, and 25% high-traffic DOS users, your best bet may be to fork the program/site. Due to the fact that the older technologies take much less time to code for (ahh, simple CLI versus tons of GUI menus), you might be able to get away with this. If not, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, and should consult your users--would the advanced group mind giving up some functionality to support the retro OSes and platforms? Ask 'em, since they'll be using it, not the members of the board or council who make the decision.
It isn't so much that geeks have come into the mainstream now as they're just more prevalent. Considering that a large amount of social life today involves communicating via technology, it's only natural for the mainstream to run into the geeks/nerds--they've been there for the past 20 years.
Geeks run the Internet, and they run most of the technology around people. You can't escape them now, they're more conspicuous than ever, they rule the common modes of communication other than speech, and there is practically no way to avoid interacting with a geek/nerd of some sort if any of your technology is broken (not including bad tech-support lines and the like).