This is something to think about. Yeah, there are some geek things that we can donate to, but not get a tax break (I doubt they'd give ya a tax break when donating to say Debian (yeah you can do that)).
Personally, I give to give and not for the tax break. My main charity is tax deductible (my church provides a nice little statement when you tithe, of course we have fallen off recently). I rarely give enough to make a difference on my taxes. Like I said, I give to give.
I am very careful on the organizations I give to. One example is the United Way. I no longer give to them because of a recent local snafu where one of the United Way execs embezzled a bunch of money. Same goes with one other organization in the area here ( I can't remmeber the name, nbut it was again several employees of the local chapter sponging off of the top.).
My church, on the other hand, uses the money as they see fit. Paying the pastors, money for drilling a well in India, Money for supporting our sister church in Saratov, Russia and money for a local ministry called A Better Way. A Better Way preaches the gospel to drug addicts, alcoholics and homeless people in the area. They do this in several ways...giving blankets to the homeless, bringing in presents to parents who have no money to provide gifts to their kids....the list goes on and on. Some people just take the gifts, others take them and change their ways and start attending church and learning the Bible. I don't want to sound too preachy here, but this makes me feel good whether I would get a tax break or not.
To me, if I were to pick a specific geek cause the EFF would be it because it has wider implications then the ones we all think about(specifically, how would it benefit the open source movement). Personally, I give to as many as I can. I am a sucker for kids selling stuff door to door because I had to do it too. I buy if I have money that is. I would much rather see people get fed or a kid go on a school trip then see an advancement in Linux, or Open Source (as much as I like and want to see Open Source succeed!). Linux and Open Source causes are good, but there are MANY more important charities out there. Sure, I would donate to Open Source, but it would not be the ONLY thing I donate to.
Why is it with these proprietary things some management go freaking ga ga over Calendar/E-mail integration and seeing other managers schedules? We have Novell Groupwise where I work and I'd have to say about 20% actually use the Calendar, and 1-2% actually use it to send appointments. We'd have been better served with Sendmail, and some other app for Calendaring. What's even more surprising is that NOONE has proposed a standard integrating E-mail and Calendars (at least I don't know of any). Why do we want it? I have no idea. It seems, to me, that my calendar is NOONE else's business.
As far as I know, there is no clear choice, for me, for wireless broadband. The miniute you try to take the same stuff and run it wireless you run into all sorts of problems. In amateur radio, using AX.25, we were doomed to 1200 baud when 28.8 and 14.4's modems were all the rage. Now, 9600 baud packet radio is common in amateur radio, and 14.4 is on the horizon with many TNC's available that can do 14.4. The reason they are behind is bandwidth. The faster the connection, the more bandwith it takes so they have to figure out how to fix it so it doesn't eat bandwith. We used to wire TNC's thru the mike connector, but now most mobile rigs have a RS-232 connector that connects the audio straight to the discrimintor on the transciever. Why am I saying stuff about ham radio when talking about broadband wireless? Well, mainly I am because most of the problems that happen for us will happen or is happening for the wireless broadband techs. You see, bandwith is limited in wireless and always will be to a point. There are only so many frequencies that we have access to at a certain point in time. The higher the frequency goes, the least amount of area it will cover(usually). The FCC and WARC and other orginizations around the world have to be responsible when they hand out band space. It's going to be real difficult to get Roadrunner or DSL type speed up and going because of the problems you have to account for when designing such a system. Oh, it will be possible someday, but now, to get something that will be as fast AND reliable at those speeds without a wire is going to be difficult. One suggestion I have is DirectPC. That is, when they come out with their two way system. I don't know if they have a business plan you can sign up on, but it may be an option. Even it's stuck around 400K. I may be missing some of the newer technologies, but nothing will be as good as a wire now.
I think it's a great idea to computerize the whole voting system. It eliminates the need for recounts (the polls would close, the winner would be announced a half hour later (or less!)). One problem. All of the seniors and anyone who knows NOTHING about computers would get all panicky about other people knowing who you voted for. The problem with these people is that they actualy believe things they see in movies like War Games and the like and believe that all computers are the spawn of the devil (no, they aren't spawn of the devil, they are our spawn:)). People trust that piece of paper or that worker. What shocks me is that they don't even check (in our county) your ID when you go vote. All they do is ask your name and ask you to sign your name. THAT'S IT! What if my grandpa died and I could sign his name well enough to fool the women at the booth (being that the average poll worker age is 65-70, that would be easy enough)? That would get me two votes (if we lived in two different locations and we did). With computers, I know it would eliminate that, but those seniors can't get hollywoods image of computers out of their head. People trust what they know (and get complacent with it.). Until we can get people to feel comfortable with computers, they won't trust them with their votes. What's funny is that they trust computers with something much more valuable...their money. Computers keep track of your checking account. The only reason you keep track of it is in case there's a HUMAN error (computers, when programmed right, are infallible as long as there are no hardware faliures (I know there's no "perfect" os or software, but most bank errors are HUMAN related and not computer related)).
That may be for new "manufactured" scanners....it's REAL easy to find an old one. (just find a compulsive upgrader around and see if he has a older one). On the other hand, sometimes the manufacturer doesn't know it and some enterprising young individual find out about it when he starts hitting multiple keys. PLUS, you CAN build your own scanner. It ain't easy, but it can be done. The parts are available. If someone REALLY wants to her you arguing with your wife about the stuff your picking up at the store or the wife telling you to get some milk on the way home, they can. Just because you can't go and buy an "appliance" and cut a wire or hit keys and make it pick up those bands, doesn't mean you can't do it by building your own(complete with plans available I might add.).
Yeah, but I wouldn't talk about ANYTHING that should be secure over a cellphone. EVEN digtal cellphones supposed securty can be comprimised. One other bad thing about digital phones is that some people's voices just plain don't go over the digital ones well. The digital phones are nice, but they need a few more bits of data to make it useful to me. Right now they are just on the edge. This comes from a digital phone user (NEXTEL.....I reccomend these for business's big time....if you can get them to go this way, convince them it can replace pagers too. Plus it has wireless internet (ok, I know it's MSN but it's still cool!)). So far as this imaging problem you are talking about this is called harmonics. Almost everything that produces rf will produce a harmonic, but this isn't what you have to worry about. Scanners may hvae the cell frequencies blocked when you buy them from a store, but this can be easily undone and you can scan around MUCH easier then trying to hit a harmonic.
Re:The problems are...
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 2
Um....ok. I am going to carrie an entire lab necessary to do this in my pocket right?? Maybe some day but today?? No way! They can do this ALL online (not the net, but a private net, similar to the credit card machines. Then as soon as the polls close, the race is settled, and the is NO need for recounts.
AMEN! Gore is just grasping for straws. If by 5 pm we have the answer, both men should stick to that decision and who ever the loser is should concede. Also, this is a matter that should be resolved by the next election so a similar thing never happens again. How about DITCHING the ancient punch card technology and going for flat screen computers or all electronic? Personally, I think we should have an ATM style voting machine where you stick your smart card or driver's license in the machine and then you vote. At the end of your vote it should give you a couple are you sure y/n messages to really make sure. Also, the only way a vote could be frauded in this case is if someone stole your wallet and we know the thief would not do that because it would be a sure way of getting caught! Also, the votes should be tallied online so that as soon as the polls close, we have the answer and it's right.
PPP has less to do with the kernel then the ethernet card. As for the DEC tulip, I have a Linksys 10/100MB based on that and am running test 9 (haven't had time to get 10 up on it yet) and I got it working just great with my Cable Modem at home.
I thought these cards have been out for a while. I remember seeing one on a web page somewhere. Anyway, wasn't HDTV (and SDTV) designed to work with a PC anyway? Didn't they do alot of the different HD resolutions so they could be displayed on the superior computer monitor? I am sorry but this just doesn't excite me. The fact that THERE ARE NO FULL HDTV's out there now. Every TV that they say are HDTV or Digital TV Ready require a convertor box! At least at Best Buy anyway. I want to get a HDTV for about the same price as a regular TV. I want to replace my TV's when they die with HDTV's for about 800 bucks. Why can't they do this??
We do elect the president....in a indirect sort of way. We vote which electors we want to elect our candidate. Popular vote means something in a state by state level, but not national. Yeah. it may be out dated, but there's nothing that can be done about it now. After the vote is decided, they can, if they want to, try to amend the constitution to rid us of the electoral college, but I REALLY don't see that happening! Amending the constitution is something that they SHOULD do. For example, it would be real hard for some of the suggested gun legislation to go thru becase some of their plans are unconstitutional! In my book, all gun laws could possibly be considered unconsitutional including the current ones! ANYWAY, when are the going to get rid of batch processing in this mess and do it in real time with computers? (Not necessarily the internet, but with private networks and computers at the polling places....)
Um, it may require those libraries, but if you have both KDE and GNOME installed will it not work in KDE? The GIMP is a gtk app and it runs in KDE. I have also seen screenshots with the GNOME panel in a KDE desktop.
Nautilus is pretty good. Very Flexible. I like the different interfaces for newbies and experts. I also like the idea of online storage. Only a couple things, and these maybe because of the file itself, but in Nautilus, I noticed when I clicked on a MP3 it used XMMS, like I hoped it would but it played it tehn played the same section over again. Almost an echo like effect for the first second or so of the file. When played direct from XMMS it doesn't do this. Now, I like EFM and E, but I am waiting to see E and EFM come out (dr.17).
I know redhat has kick start. That's pretty easy. All you do is install redhat on one machine like you want, tailor it for the network and any other setups you need (not sure if kickstart copies the config info or not) and run the kickstart program that generates the kickstart file. Then I believe all you have to do is make a bootable floppy, and copy the kickstart script to the disk and setup the boot disk to execute that script. This will work with CD, Floppy or NFS installations (I think! It's kind of fuzzy at the moment...).
In my setup, I would make a very minimal setup on the workstation (use old 386's or 486 machines) and make the main server a pretty kickbutt machine, and have another server with the Red Hat packages on it. Do the install over NFS. In the workstation, all I would have is a kernel, X-windows, inetd and a few other things that might be useful (fsck and other basic utilities). Mount the home directories off of the server, as well as/usr. Run EVERYTHING on the server, if you can. I am sure it could be even easier. Just setup the box with a floppy only, no harddisk, and everything else and pass out floppies to boot everything off of thr network. Or, you can also put a small harddisk, no floppy and put the floppy image on the harddisk. Man there are MILLIONS of ways to do it and they are all fairly easy. It's just a matter of doing it.
First off, if one wants to rip their own CD's, who cares? I know the RIAA does, but personally, I think they are really after Napster, and soon, there may not be enough water there to for them to continue the case (well, I am hoping anyway at least with recent things happening with Napster).
Second, their would have to be a service ala Tivo that would provide the TV guide features. They could recoup any cost the Hard Drive would add to the set top box. Also, by the time they'd have it developed, that 40 gig might only be around 100 bucks.
Um, have you not heard that emulation is legal? Remember Connectix won their case with their emulator, and I see Bleem on the shelf at Best Buy. I don't think it would be illegal to emulate a PSX or a PS/2. Also, they could do Dreamcast fairly cheap from the sounds of Sega's problems. Heck the PS/2 might be all of these soon (with initial added cost for hardware upgrades).
The impossible is not always impossible when you think how much time they'd have to take to develop this. People thought the initial costs of the PS/2 were prohibative. But Sony still made those. (I know, Sony is big japanese corporation and more capable then Amiga. Some thing was true about IBM (except the japanese part) when the Amiga first came out. Look what was better then.....).
I know it may be beating a dead horse (Amiga) but it's still cool that they are around, even though they have maybe 10-20 users (ok, maybe my numbers are pure conjecture, but who would use these things anymore?). I think if the Amiga has a shot, it's in the set box top area where there's no real leader yet. To make a winner of a set top box, here's my suggestions:
1. Integrated Ethernet as well as a modem.
2. Integrated DVD
3. Integrated Radio Tuner (both for internet radio (shoutcast, Real Audio and M$ stuff), and AM/FM...
4. CD player complete with visualizations
5. 30-40GB harddrive for video and audio storage (Rip above CD's into MP3!).
6. Ability to pop up caller id on screen in regular TV mode or A/V mode.
7. Game support. Be it Dreamcast, PS/2 or Gamecube games (pick one of those three....we don't NEED another console game format.).
8. RF keyboard with trackpoint.
That would be one killer box. It would be popular with the geeks AND grandma (for pure internet stuff) would like. I think Amiga can do it. This kind of box sure would be nice though!
Well, the way I look at it in my position, there a three things that get my direct attention when I get one of those emergency phone call:
1. A student calls with a problem (if it's something I can do quickly, I do it. They do contribute to my paycheck.).
2. Payroll (my paycheck and everyone else's is VERY important. Especially my paycheck!).
3. Purchasing/Business Office (they fund our projects, so they get my attention right away too!).
Everyone else will get their fire put out as soon as I get time for it. If I am doing something for any of the above three areas, the person calling can wait (well, unless it's the president of the college or something!).
Get everything done as soon as you can. I process all requests asap. Even if the due date is 3 days from now, I do it and finish it today if I can.
I have no experience running Linux on Sparc, but, in my opinion, from a electronics standpoint, the Sparc has it all! Most awesome design I have seen in computer equipment. We have a couple Ultra Sparc 30's in use as controllers for big 65 ppm printers and they are rock solid. They NEVER go down. Why look at Linux? You obviously have the money for the solaris license. Keep running solaris if they are doing a good job. If they ain't, I doubt putting Linux on them will change anything. I can understand the advantage you'd get by using Linux, but if the Solaris stuff works, great! If you don't like the Solaris web server (I think they sell Netscape's server?? I dunno.) Apache should run on Solaris.
I shop there and I understand it. Seriously, they are targeting geeks. I mean have you ever seen a LARGER snack food section in any store but Walmart?? The only thing missing there is some serious caffiene like Penguin Mints and Penguin Reds.
I know this might be off topic, but I have to agree with you on the Helixcode GNOME. It's dead easy. My mom could get Helixcode GNOME running on a linux machine. Now, when is Helixcode going to do a distro (I know, noone has announced plans, but MAN if upgrading a Linux distro could be as easy as the helixcode stuff....:)) I know Debian has apt (and I am going to be running debian soon) which is close, but the whole Helixcode process rocks!
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I give to give and not for the tax break. My main charity is tax deductible (my church provides a nice little statement when you tithe, of course we have fallen off recently). I rarely give enough to make a difference on my taxes. Like I said, I give to give.
I am very careful on the organizations I give to. One example is the United Way. I no longer give to them because of a recent local snafu where one of the United Way execs embezzled a bunch of money. Same goes with one other organization in the area here ( I can't remmeber the name, nbut it was again several employees of the local chapter sponging off of the top.).
My church, on the other hand, uses the money as they see fit. Paying the pastors, money for drilling a well in India, Money for supporting our sister church in Saratov, Russia and money for a local ministry called A Better Way. A Better Way preaches the gospel to drug addicts, alcoholics and homeless people in the area. They do this in several ways...giving blankets to the homeless, bringing in presents to parents who have no money to provide gifts to their kids....the list goes on and on. Some people just take the gifts, others take them and change their ways and start attending church and learning the Bible. I don't want to sound too preachy here, but this makes me feel good whether I would get a tax break or not.
To me, if I were to pick a specific geek cause the EFF would be it because it has wider implications then the ones we all think about(specifically, how would it benefit the open source movement). Personally, I give to as many as I can. I am a sucker for kids selling stuff door to door because I had to do it too. I buy if I have money that is. I would much rather see people get fed or a kid go on a school trip then see an advancement in Linux, or Open Source (as much as I like and want to see Open Source succeed!). Linux and Open Source causes are good, but there are MANY more important charities out there. Sure, I would donate to Open Source, but it would not be the ONLY thing I donate to.
Why is it with these proprietary things some management go freaking ga ga over Calendar/E-mail integration and seeing other managers schedules? We have Novell Groupwise where I work and I'd have to say about 20% actually use the Calendar, and 1-2% actually use it to send appointments. We'd have been better served with Sendmail, and some other app for Calendaring. What's even more surprising is that NOONE has proposed a standard integrating E-mail and Calendars (at least I don't know of any). Why do we want it? I have no idea. It seems, to me, that my calendar is NOONE else's business.
As far as I know, there is no clear choice, for me, for wireless broadband. The miniute you try to take the same stuff and run it wireless you run into all sorts of problems. In amateur radio, using AX.25, we were doomed to 1200 baud when 28.8 and 14.4's modems were all the rage. Now, 9600 baud packet radio is common in amateur radio, and 14.4 is on the horizon with many TNC's available that can do 14.4. The reason they are behind is bandwidth. The faster the connection, the more bandwith it takes so they have to figure out how to fix it so it doesn't eat bandwith. We used to wire TNC's thru the mike connector, but now most mobile rigs have a RS-232 connector that connects the audio straight to the discrimintor on the transciever. Why am I saying stuff about ham radio when talking about broadband wireless? Well, mainly I am because most of the problems that happen for us will happen or is happening for the wireless broadband techs. You see, bandwith is limited in wireless and always will be to a point. There are only so many frequencies that we have access to at a certain point in time. The higher the frequency goes, the least amount of area it will cover(usually). The FCC and WARC and other orginizations around the world have to be responsible when they hand out band space. It's going to be real difficult to get Roadrunner or DSL type speed up and going because of the problems you have to account for when designing such a system. Oh, it will be possible someday, but now, to get something that will be as fast AND reliable at those speeds without a wire is going to be difficult. One suggestion I have is DirectPC. That is, when they come out with their two way system. I don't know if they have a business plan you can sign up on, but it may be an option. Even it's stuck around 400K. I may be missing some of the newer technologies, but nothing will be as good as a wire now.
Man! 4.8 GB of MP3's on one disk! :)
I think it's a great idea to computerize the whole voting system. It eliminates the need for recounts (the polls would close, the winner would be announced a half hour later (or less!)). One problem. All of the seniors and anyone who knows NOTHING about computers would get all panicky about other people knowing who you voted for. The problem with these people is that they actualy believe things they see in movies like War Games and the like and believe that all computers are the spawn of the devil (no, they aren't spawn of the devil, they are our spawn :)). People trust that piece of paper or that worker. What shocks me is that they don't even check (in our county) your ID when you go vote. All they do is ask your name and ask you to sign your name. THAT'S IT! What if my grandpa died and I could sign his name well enough to fool the women at the booth (being that the average poll worker age is 65-70, that would be easy enough)? That would get me two votes (if we lived in two different locations and we did). With computers, I know it would eliminate that, but those seniors can't get hollywoods image of computers out of their head. People trust what they know (and get complacent with it.). Until we can get people to feel comfortable with computers, they won't trust them with their votes. What's funny is that they trust computers with something much more valuable...their money. Computers keep track of your checking account. The only reason you keep track of it is in case there's a HUMAN error (computers, when programmed right, are infallible as long as there are no hardware faliures (I know there's no "perfect" os or software, but most bank errors are HUMAN related and not computer related)).
That may be for new "manufactured" scanners....it's REAL easy to find an old one. (just find a compulsive upgrader around and see if he has a older one). On the other hand, sometimes the manufacturer doesn't know it and some enterprising young individual find out about it when he starts hitting multiple keys. PLUS, you CAN build your own scanner. It ain't easy, but it can be done. The parts are available. If someone REALLY wants to her you arguing with your wife about the stuff your picking up at the store or the wife telling you to get some milk on the way home, they can. Just because you can't go and buy an "appliance" and cut a wire or hit keys and make it pick up those bands, doesn't mean you can't do it by building your own(complete with plans available I might add.).
Yeah, but I wouldn't talk about ANYTHING that should be secure over a cellphone. EVEN digtal cellphones supposed securty can be comprimised. One other bad thing about digital phones is that some people's voices just plain don't go over the digital ones well. The digital phones are nice, but they need a few more bits of data to make it useful to me. Right now they are just on the edge. This comes from a digital phone user (NEXTEL.....I reccomend these for business's big time....if you can get them to go this way, convince them it can replace pagers too. Plus it has wireless internet (ok, I know it's MSN but it's still cool!)). So far as this imaging problem you are talking about this is called harmonics. Almost everything that produces rf will produce a harmonic, but this isn't what you have to worry about. Scanners may hvae the cell frequencies blocked when you buy them from a store, but this can be easily undone and you can scan around MUCH easier then trying to hit a harmonic.
Um....ok. I am going to carrie an entire lab necessary to do this in my pocket right?? Maybe some day but today?? No way! They can do this ALL online (not the net, but a private net, similar to the credit card machines. Then as soon as the polls close, the race is settled, and the is NO need for recounts.
AMEN! Gore is just grasping for straws. If by 5 pm we have the answer, both men should stick to that decision and who ever the loser is should concede. Also, this is a matter that should be resolved by the next election so a similar thing never happens again. How about DITCHING the ancient punch card technology and going for flat screen computers or all electronic? Personally, I think we should have an ATM style voting machine where you stick your smart card or driver's license in the machine and then you vote. At the end of your vote it should give you a couple are you sure y/n messages to really make sure. Also, the only way a vote could be frauded in this case is if someone stole your wallet and we know the thief would not do that because it would be a sure way of getting caught! Also, the votes should be tallied online so that as soon as the polls close, we have the answer and it's right.
PPP has less to do with the kernel then the ethernet card. As for the DEC tulip, I have a Linksys 10/100MB based on that and am running test 9 (haven't had time to get 10 up on it yet) and I got it working just great with my Cable Modem at home.
HDTV ready or HDTV built in? I want it built in! I have enough CRAP attached to my TV.
I thought these cards have been out for a while. I remember seeing one on a web page somewhere. Anyway, wasn't HDTV (and SDTV) designed to work with a PC anyway? Didn't they do alot of the different HD resolutions so they could be displayed on the superior computer monitor? I am sorry but this just doesn't excite me. The fact that THERE ARE NO FULL HDTV's out there now. Every TV that they say are HDTV or Digital TV Ready require a convertor box! At least at Best Buy anyway. I want to get a HDTV for about the same price as a regular TV. I want to replace my TV's when they die with HDTV's for about 800 bucks. Why can't they do this??
We do elect the president....in a indirect sort of way. We vote which electors we want to elect our candidate. Popular vote means something in a state by state level, but not national. Yeah. it may be out dated, but there's nothing that can be done about it now. After the vote is decided, they can, if they want to, try to amend the constitution to rid us of the electoral college, but I REALLY don't see that happening! Amending the constitution is something that they SHOULD do. For example, it would be real hard for some of the suggested gun legislation to go thru becase some of their plans are unconstitutional! In my book, all gun laws could possibly be considered unconsitutional including the current ones! ANYWAY, when are the going to get rid of batch processing in this mess and do it in real time with computers? (Not necessarily the internet, but with private networks and computers at the polling places....)
In my setup, I would make a very minimal setup on the workstation (use old 386's or 486 machines) and make the main server a pretty kickbutt machine, and have another server with the Red Hat packages on it. Do the install over NFS. In the workstation, all I would have is a kernel, X-windows, inetd and a few other things that might be useful (fsck and other basic utilities). Mount the home directories off of the server, as well as /usr. Run EVERYTHING on the server, if you can. I am sure it could be even easier. Just setup the box with a floppy only, no harddisk, and everything else and pass out floppies to boot everything off of thr network. Or, you can also put a small harddisk, no floppy and put the floppy image on the harddisk. Man there are MILLIONS of ways to do it and they are all fairly easy. It's just a matter of doing it.
Second, their would have to be a service ala Tivo that would provide the TV guide features. They could recoup any cost the Hard Drive would add to the set top box. Also, by the time they'd have it developed, that 40 gig might only be around 100 bucks.
Um, have you not heard that emulation is legal? Remember Connectix won their case with their emulator, and I see Bleem on the shelf at Best Buy. I don't think it would be illegal to emulate a PSX or a PS/2. Also, they could do Dreamcast fairly cheap from the sounds of Sega's problems. Heck the PS/2 might be all of these soon (with initial added cost for hardware upgrades).
The impossible is not always impossible when you think how much time they'd have to take to develop this. People thought the initial costs of the PS/2 were prohibative. But Sony still made those. (I know, Sony is big japanese corporation and more capable then Amiga. Some thing was true about IBM (except the japanese part) when the Amiga first came out. Look what was better then.....).
1. Integrated Ethernet as well as a modem.
2. Integrated DVD
3. Integrated Radio Tuner (both for internet radio (shoutcast, Real Audio and M$ stuff), and AM/FM...
4. CD player complete with visualizations
5. 30-40GB harddrive for video and audio storage (Rip above CD's into MP3!).
6. Ability to pop up caller id on screen in regular TV mode or A/V mode.
7. Game support. Be it Dreamcast, PS/2 or Gamecube games (pick one of those three....we don't NEED another console game format.).
8. RF keyboard with trackpoint.
That would be one killer box. It would be popular with the geeks AND grandma (for pure internet stuff) would like. I think Amiga can do it. This kind of box sure would be nice though!
1. A student calls with a problem (if it's something I can do quickly, I do it. They do contribute to my paycheck.).
2. Payroll (my paycheck and everyone else's is VERY important. Especially my paycheck!).
3. Purchasing/Business Office (they fund our projects, so they get my attention right away too!).
Everyone else will get their fire put out as soon as I get time for it. If I am doing something for any of the above three areas, the person calling can wait (well, unless it's the president of the college or something!).
Get everything done as soon as you can. I process all requests asap. Even if the due date is 3 days from now, I do it and finish it today if I can.