Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with computer

What to do with forgotten flash drives?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:04:00 -0800

For those of you who work in computer labs, what is your policy for dealing with flash drives that have been forgotten by a student? I'm a teacher at a small college in the computer department. Three or four flash drives are forgotten by someone in our computer labs every week. The lab supervisor puts these drives on a plate near his desk, which is accessible to anyone walking by. I do know of at least one case where a drive was found, and the next day, it was gone (and it wasn't picked up by the owner).

Shouldn't these drives be treated with the same care as someone's wallet or purse? Could we be liable if someone is a victim of identity theft because their drive was easily taken from the lost-and-found? If we look at the contents of a drive in an effort to figure out who it belongs to, what happens if a student blames us for anything from deleting their homework file to stealing their passwords?

There is no campus-wide policy on this, as far as I know. The lab supervisor is really a good guy in general (and has been there forever and is well-loved), but I don't think he really gets how valuable these drives can be to someone who has all their work (and possibly passwords and other sensitive information) saved on it. Or how valuable they can be to someone who wants easy access to that kind of information.

So, what do you do in your lab? Do you lock drives up? Do you plug the drive in and look through the contents in order to figure who the owner is? Do you make an effort to contact the owner? Is there a sane policy or procedure we could put in place that doesn't cause too much extra work for the lab staff and also protects the drives and ourselves?

Apologies for the length and anonymity, but I don't have tenure yet, so I'd like to not associate my name with potential conflicts with long-time beloved employees. If you want to email me directly, use forgetfulstudents@gmail.com.

Help with buying a new mid-range windows gaming PC?

cortex — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:37:45 -0800

I'm looking at purchasing a new PC for gaming, wanting to spend between $1000 and $1500 total, would prefer not to put it together myself, and am waaaay out of the loop on hardware at this point, particularly graphic cards. I've been pricing out desktop builds from some of the major manufacturers this morning and I'm realizing that while I'm comfortable making some basic price/performance calls as far as CPU and memory, I'm completely out of touch with the GPU market and need some guidance.

I'd like to be able to play current releases without flinching, at crisp resolutions. I'll be happy with non-distracting performance: 30fps is great, 60fps is not something I'm going to care about so much.

I'd rather just buy a box from someone and have done with it than do much work myself inside the case, but as far as buying my own GPU to install in an otherwise standard box that's certainly not outside my comfort zone.

Looking at Dell's builds for both their normal beefy desktop line and their Alienware stuff, it seems like a lot of the latter is Ooh, Shiny packaging. I don't need a pretty box. But options for GPUs are pretty slim on non-gamer boxes, which has me wondering if going in that direction for a reasonably bullshit-free desktop build and then slotting in my own card is the smarter move.

Any specific advice on targeting a good-enough-for-current-games (biggies on my list include Dragon Age now, Mass Effect 2 and Diablo 3 when they drop, for example) GPU on the saner side of the price/performance break? Any particular good deals/providers for a solid out-of-the-box system in my price range?

Can I find a school that teaches what I want to learn?

niles — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:10:35 -0800

I'm currently attending MyCounty Tech School, and have been planning to transfer to Local Private University next fall to finish my Computer Science/IT bachelors. The thing is, I really don't know if that's the right way to wrap up my schooling. Can I get some recommendations on what to look for in a good CS program, and recommendations on slightly non-traditional/accelerated ways of getting a degree in Computer Science? More background info inside. Since high school I've been planning on studying some combination of computer arts/graphic design and computer science, both fields that I believe I have very good experience in. I was heavily involved in the graphics program at my school, and my junior and senior year took 300 level CS courses at Local Private University. I have also been working for several years at a job that has given me extensive real world technology experience.

Now I've effectively spent two years in college (I did take one year after high school to attend a leadership/volunteering program), I don't know if Local Private University is the way to go, for several reasons.

I would also call myself autodidactic, and I get very frustrated with the opportunity cost of school - I'm so busy ostensibly learning that I don't have time to actually learn (that is, teach myself). This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that I haven't found a school that teaches what I want to learn. I've looked at TESC as a way to finish school quickly, but they don't have a graphics program and I'm also wary of the benefits of "Computer Science by mail."

I realize that the 100 and 200 level courses are necessary for a good foundation, but is there a school out there that would let me roll my experience into a way to finish school quicker? I also wonder if there are any accelerated programs out there, where classes meet several times a week and finish after a few months, rather than meeting just twice a week for the entire semester.

Finally, is there a school out there that teaches the things I think would be useful and relevant? Local Private University has a "Web Development" major, but it doesn't cover things like AJAX or PHP, both things I've been teaching myself as time permits. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think I should be able to take classes in topics like that, yet I can't find a school that offers that.
I've also been teaching myself After Effects and other video editing software, which has been a lot of fun and has even resulted in some side jobs, but again - I can't find a school that offers classes in what I think is a necessary skill set.

There's a lot more questions I have that I suppose would be nice to bounce off of a high school guidance counselor, as I don't imagine Local Private University will be handing out recommendations for competing CS programs, but I think this will cover it for this week.

Sorry this got so long. :/ I've highlighted the questions to make them more obvious.

Do I 'need' a gaming laptop to play MMOs?

Kurichina — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:37:12 -0800

Do I 'need' a gaming laptop to play MMOs? Computer hardware knowledgable people: what sort of system do you use for determining your 'needs' for a computer? My HP lappy conked out last week (very likely a motherboard failure, I'm told) and I'm in the market for a new one. It wasn't an ideal time financially for this to happen, so I don't want to spend anymore money than I have to. However, I also want this next laptop to last 4-5 years if possible, or, at the very least, 3.

I'm not a huge gamer, but I started playing a fair amount of WoW earlier this year and it's not unreasonable to think I may branch out into a few other MMOs. On my old, mid-range HP, WoW had many errors (not able to process the zone files and crashing) and was generally frustrating. Other than the games, my needs are fairly basic: a small amount of graphic design, word processing/spreadsheets, listen to music and watch DVDs/blu-rays. Is it worthwhile to splash out on a newer, more powerful processor *(quad core or I7, for e.g.) and some extra memory or will this be money wasted due to not using this power? Is there an objective (i.e. not trying to sell me something) site out there that will determine my hardware needs?

I've seen this but that question didn't discuss the needs of MMOs, and I'm not interested in the PC vs Mac side of things. (For reasons of cost and wanting to keep using the same software I already own, some of it purchased at "educational" prices for which I no longer qualify, I'm sticking with a PC.)

Wireless possible, or no?

BlahLaLa — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:37:12 -0800

Did the Apple salesperson do me wrong? I bought an AirPort Express to go wireless with my Mac Mini but now I think I got screwed. Okay, it's embarrassing to admit this on Metafilter, where almost everyone seems to be very computer savvy, but I DON'T KNOW ABOUT COMPUTERS. I use 'em, but I don't know how they work.

I have an older Mac Mini. I've had it for two years, but it was used by someone else previously and I don't know precisely how old it is. I want to set up a wireless network in my home, and I called the Apple Store to see if that would be possible with my model. The phone rep talked me through looking at my computer. I have a new-enough OS. I do not have an AirPort card. I do have firewire. She said I can connect through firewire.

But the AirPort Express arrived, and when I looked at the documentation, it says I must have the AirPort card installed.

So...is that true about this alleged firewire? Can I connect wirelessly, or am I out of luck? If not, can I keep my Mac Mini wired to the modem, and hook up the AirPort Express so my husband can use his laptop elsewhere in the house?

If I need to return this thing: Have you had experience with the Apple Store? Are they going to easily accept the explanation that I only bought this because the salesperson said it would work with my computer?

Please speak to me as if I am your mentally challenged great aunt. I really need it step by step, spelled out.

Help me make my computer backup checklist

Elminster24 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:21:00 -0800

BackupFilter: My new replacement laptop arrives tomorrow--help me make sure I don't forget anything critical in my backup process when I transfer everything to the new computer because I have to ship the old one back to Dell (hard drive as well). So here's the situation...I have a Dell XPS m1730 that is being replaced by Dell with an Alienware m17x since my graphics cards fried. The m1730 runs Vista 32-bit and the new one (which arrives tomorrow!!!) will come with Vista 64-bit and a Windows 7 upgrade disc. After doing a little research I've decided I'd like to try doing a clean install of Windows 7 on the new machine (versus just the upgrade option) and I have a laplink cable which will hopefully help facilitate data transfer from the old machine to the new one, although if I need to I can temporarily move things to my 1Tb external Lacie drive.

Now on to the question...

I'd consider myself pretty good with computers but I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to making sure I have a backup of everything I need to and that I've transferred things over the right way. Below are a list of key things that I plan on backing up and the specifics that I think I've got covered in terms of how to transfer the data but I'd love some additional opinions to make sure I am not missing anything important that I wish I'll have later. The reason for this is that once I am completely finished, I need to do a complete HDD wipe and send the old machine (including the HDD) back to Dell to complete the exchange and thus will no longer have access to the machine or data. I considered making a disc image of the drive but I'm not sure how useful that would be for recovery purposes if I won't have a similarly configured machine available to load the image onto.

Also, just a general note...the vast majority of the software I have on there, unless specifically noted otherwise, was...*ahem* "acquired" via Bittorrent. So I will most likely have to redownload everything as I did not save the installers.

1. Web Development
Right now I build my websites in Dreamweaver and have several site profiles setup that I need to transfer...not quite sure how to do that. I also have a local server setup via XAMPP.

A. How do I backup my Dreamweaver sites properly so that all the site logins and file paths aren't completely messed up?

B. How do I properly transfer my XAMPP server which houses several several databases from Wordpress installs and multiple sites?

2. Design
I have Photoshop CS3 installed currently. Since I need to redownload it I'll most likely just grab CS4. However I have several brush packs, fonts, patterns, filters, etc. on the current machine. What is the best way to back this up?

3. Internet
I use Firefox 3.0.12 and have a TON of addons and themes. I successfully used FEBE to transfer my bookmarks, profile, addons, themes etc. between machines in the past but I'm worried that it won't work if I try to load the backup into a newer version of FF.

A. Anybody know if FEBE can load a backup from an older version of FF into a new one?

4. Media
I don't have any music I've purchased off of the ITMS or anything but I have a ton of MP3s and iTunes is music software of choice. My photos are stored in my documents and I use Picasa to manage them.

A. Do I need to do anything with my iPod and iTunes on my old machine like deauthorize or anything?

B. Is backing up photos as simple as copying them all and then putting them on the new machine and just importing them into Picasa again?

Aside from those four things, I think the rest of the files on there are fairly straightforward things to copy/transfer--mainly MS Office files and some user data/preferences from games like Savage 2 and Battlefield. Is there anything else I'm forgetting about here that is crucial? I feel like I'm forgetting some important things that I'm going to really be pissed about once I wipe the drive... And speaking of wiping the drive, I don't want anybody getting a refurbished machine with my old HDD in it and accessing my data. What is a FREE guaranteed way to completely wipe the drive?

I understand this is a pretty meaty AskMeFi question so if you're able to provide answers to all the parts you're a rockstar, and even if you can only provide some, I'll take any advice I can get on this as I only get one shot at this and need to do it right. Happy to answer any additional questions anybody has.

How can I get my laptop to boot up properly?

AngryTypingGuy — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:36:05 -0800

Was in the process of system restore but now I can't boot up my PC. How can I get it to start up correctly? I was in the middle of cleaning up (defrag, viruses, spyware, etc.) someone else's laptop when I ran into a problem. There was some spyware I was trying to get rid of using a few antispyware programs but none of them seemed to work. So I went to my last resort and used system restore.

The laptop was never able to boot up correctly. It got to the F8 screen and listed the alternative bootup options (Last Known Configuration, Safe Mode, etc.). I tried them all but none of them had any effect. A blue screen would appear for a second and then it would shut down and try starting up again. It just does this in an endless loop.

By the way, I don't have the Windows XP installation CD.

The only other thing I can get into is the BIOS setup utility.

Any other ideas to get it to startup correctly? I really hope I can get the laptop back to the owner without screwing it up any morewhen I took it.

Thanks for your help.

How do you fix a fried laptop?

Bobby Bittman — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:20:31 -0800

How badly have I fried my laptop? I went to a friend's house last night to watch a perfectly legally downloaded movie, and planned to hook my laptop up to his TV with an S-Video cable. Well, something wasn't grounded - when I touched the S-Video cable to the jack on his TV, there was a spark and my laptop shut off.

Now it's a brick. No power lights, no response at all.

I'm going to find all of this out on Monday when I take it in to the repair shop, but I'm anxious: how badly have I damaged it? Is this the kind of thing that can be repaired? How much does it cost? And most importantly - is all my data recoverable?

If it matters, it's a 4-year-old Gateway laptop. All educated guesses welcome. Thank you!

What should my son's first computer be?

emjaybee — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:41:00 -0800

What should my son's first computer be? Or rather, should it be a computer at all?

He's four, and expressing an interest in playing online Sesame Street games, etc. on our computers, but he's a little rough on things and I have no desire to have ours trashed. Plus my Mac mouse makes things hard, the whole no-obvious-button to click is confusing.

Should we get some of those semi-computer toys that you see in stores, and if so, any recommendations? Or start with a gaming system, even? (we don't have one). I want him to learn keyboard, mouse, monitor, etc. He doesn't read yet, just recognizes letters and numbers. Not wanting to blow big bucks.

Any suggestions?

Help me find the right netbook

Crotalus — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:38:42 -0800

Help me choose between these 11.6" netbooks! I sold my 10" netbook because I have an important program that runs poorly in 1024x600. I'm going to buy a machine with an 11.6" screen. Battery life is by far the most important consideration. This machine has an 8 hr battery and uses a SU1400 processor. This machine is rated at 8 hrs, $50 more, and uses a SU7300 processor. How much difference would there be between the two processors, and which one would be faster? Is it worth the $50? This machine is the battery life champ, and it is the cheapest. Am I correct in assuming that the other two would be substantially faster?

Nifty Computer-related Gift for Friend?

oracle bone — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:18:05 -0800

Gift filter: I'm looking for a nifty computer-related gift for a friend's birthday. A friend's birthday is coming up in December. She's a thoughtful girl that's quiet and shy most of the time, but has got a sense of humor. She's also into computer science. I'm wondering if anyone can suggest some nifty computer science gifts I could get her? I've thought about getting her an extremely fancy mouse, but I'm wondering if there's anything more 'personalized'/'unique' than that (as in, would not be too common place). Budget at this time is not an issue, and I'll most likely be ordering this over the internet. Please post a link if possible. Thanks for your time!

Big monitor, big monitor, talk about eyestrain, my girl's got 'er

Madamina — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:17:34 -0800

We're a Mac office, and we rotate the computers around when we get new ones. So imagine my delight when I got my weird 15" G4 monitor magically replaced with my boss' 24" iMac! w00t!... except that the giant size really spaces me out. Help! I've seen this question, but I don't think that's the same thing.

The computer is in the corner of my L-shaped desk. I did place it farther back on the desk (it's maybe 18" away now), and that helps, but I still seem to be squinting at it. Which is weird, because it's perfectly clear and I have no problems with high resolutions. I think I just don't really know what to focus on.

I'm mildly nearsighted but still need to wear glasses; with glasses, I'm pretty acute.

I do enjoy having the space to keep multiple windows open. For reference, when I work I typically have maybe two or three Word or Excel windows open with an expanded Firefox window on the side and other stuff minimized or in the background.

Adding to all this is the fact that I have absolutely awful desk posture, and sometimes I end up slumping reeeeeeally far down. I've found myself doing this a lot since I've gotten the new monitor, for whatever reason.

So. What kinds of things should I be doing with this thing? Lower the brightness? Lower the resolution just for kicks? Move it back so it's a full yard from my head? Sit fully upright at all times at the highest level of my chair's extension? Get tinted glasses (are they expensive? do I leave them at work?) Any and all ideas, however wacky, are welcome.

Thanks!

Where did I read about three rules determining how the robots run the factory?

Cool Papa Bell — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:41:47 -0800

Help me find a half-remembered anecdote about robotics and computing taking a cue from ant- or bee-like, hive-mind biological processes -- a story about a car factory's paint process organized with just three rules. If my memory serves, the rules boiled down to:

1) do something essential -- paint a car a certain color when that specific color is ordered.
2) do something useful -- when you don't have a specific order for a specific color, paint the most popular color, because there will always be a demand for it anyway.
3) do something -- don't ever stop the line; if both rules 1 and 2 fail, just paint another car with whatever color is loaded in the machine, because that's better than stopping the production line.

Where did I read this? Am I remembering the three rules correctly?

I think I was reading something from Kevin Kelly's Out of Control, but I don't think that's it (can't easily find it in the text).

Speaker noise when metal USB plug touches my computer case and other electrical problems.

archagon — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:21:09 -0800

Speaker noise when metal USB plug touches my computer case and other electrical problems. I have an aluminum PC case. Whenever the metal USB plug from my external drive contacts the front, I get crackling from my speakers, which are connected to an external USB soundcard. (This crackling happens even if they're not connected to the actual output jack.) A few possibly related problems: my audio occasionally starts popping once every few minutes, and my USB devices sometimes play the "connected" sound in Windows even though they're already connected, as if they're briefly disconnecting.

My guess is that this has to do with the grounding, but I'm not sure exactly what to do. My case has a round grounding wire, but I don't know where to attach it, and fiddling with it didn't seem to have any effect. Suggestions?

Stupid mousey thing no work!

IAmBroom — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:02:46 -0800

Trackpad suddenly stopped working - any solutions? Details:
Dual-boot: WinXP, v5.1, SP3. Ubuntu 8.10.
Acer Aspire 4730Z, out of warranty.
Trackpad stopped working in both operating systems. When this happened before, I plugged in a USB mouse, and when I removed it, the trackpad worked again. Now it's dead, as are the two left-/right-click buttons.

The curious part is that all of the trackpad - buttons and pad itself - stopped working. That doesn't grok. Can't be a driver issue, since it's across two OS's. Yeah, I'm probably screwed, but if anyone has a clue...

Is there good sites that provide ranking of computer processors performance?

idyllhands — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:35:47 -0800

Is there good sites that provide ranking of computer processors performance? I am looking to buy a new PC, but am being patient for the right deal to come along. It would be nice to have a trustworthy source of which processors are "better." Any links to PC and/or laptop rankings is appreciated.

At least for once, I have good backups...

tkolstee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:46:01 -0800

iMac drives failing - first external, then internal. Seems to be hardware in both cases. Questions about troubleshooting or replacement inside. My 1TB external media drive (usually connected via firewire, but has USB as well) on my iMac went bad last week, randomly dropping off until it's powercycled. It was a WD MyBook, which I have now come to understand has an overheating issue. The firmware upgrade didn't help. I bought a new (1.5TB Seagate USB 2.0) external and migrated over the files using rsync. Opening the external case and pointing a desktop fan at the drive seemed to help it stay up longer, but SEVERAL times during the process it crashed, sometimes hanging the host computer with it. Several forced powercycles and hours later, I had all my data moved. One of these crashes happened in the middle of a Spotlight index job which I tried to kill to no avail.

I was just about to "retire" the old drive when it crashed once more, again hanging the iMac. I held down the power button on the iMac and forcefully rebooted it, and this time the system came up to the "question-mark-within-a-folder" icon. Booted from Snow Leopard install DVD, and tried to run Disk Utility. Disk Utility was having some problems detecting the filesystem/partitions on the internal drive, so I tried to repartition it to restore my Time Machine backup and found that its capacity was listed as 0 bytes.

I've gotten the drive to (briefly) recognize properly once, but most of the time the drive begins clicking as it's trying to read. When it was recognized I attempted a verify and repair, but the drive stopped working (and again hung the computer) in the middle of the process.

Is there any possible correlation (unstable power, magnetic interference, sunspots?) between the external and internal drives failing so closely together? It seems like this is a hardware failure where both drives are concerned; the external due to heat intolerance, and the internal due to unknown causes but making a telltale click. Could the internal drive have failed due to my powercycling the machine? I would think the machine should have brains enough to gracefully kill off its drive before shutting itself off....

Secondly, is there anything else I can do to save the drive? I'm assuming the click generally means the drive won't ever be good again. I know about the freezer trick and other temporary methods, but I don't care about the data on the drive as it's backed up and easily replaceable.

Third, if the internal drive is permanently dead, how easy is it to replace it with a new one? I have a 3.5" 250GB SATA drive that I can use to replace it, but have never taken apart an iMac before.

Lastly, is there anything I can do with the overheating external? It seems to work fine, so long as I direct a lot of airflow at it, but otherwise it crashes within 30-60 minutes of use. It seems to be getting more intolerant of heat as time goes on.

The receipt lists this as an "iMac 17/2.0/1G/160/SD/AP/BT/WLKBM, Part Number MA758LL/A". It was purchased July 29, 2007 so is not still under any warranty.

Looking for the perfect laptop for traveling

Afroblanco — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:31:20 -0800

Looking for the perfect laptop for traveling. Priorities are durability, lightness, and battery life, in that order. Performance is not too important, but it must run Windows 7 like a champ. Willing to consider netbooks. Can spend up to $2000, but obviously I would like to spend no more than I absolutely have to.

Why does my laptop think I'm pushing ctrl?

Pope Guilty — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:50:34 -0800

My Inspiron 1545 thinks I'm pressing ctrl and I don't know why. I picked up a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop awhile back, and the only problem I've had with it is that it frequently activates the ctrl key regardless of whether or not I'm actually pressing it- or even have my hands on the keyboard! Sometimes this is just annoying, like randomly crouching in an FPS or tab-targeting grabbing friends instead of enemies in WoW, but if I type a "w" while it thinks I'm pressing ctrl, I lose the Firefox tab I was working in! If I hit tab in Firefox, I frequently go to the next tab instead of the next field. Perhaps most bafflingly, it is only ctrl that this happens with; it never randomly types another character, nor does it ever wrongly activate shift or alt or any other key.

So far, I've talked to Dell about it; they sent me a replacement keyboard, but this did not resolve the problem. Googling indicates that many people are having this problem, but nobody seems to have any solutions (besides one suggestion, bizarrely, to reduce trackpad sensitivity, which did nothing).

Anyone out there know what's going on or have any ideas?

Skip the Black Friday Madness?

dyno04 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:51:20 -0800

I am in need of a new desktop computer. I am wondering if I should wait until Black Friday and brave the crowds or take advantage of some of the Windows 7 deals this week. I live in the Twin Cities, MN metro area if that makes a difference.

Can you recommend a good computer repair place in Hong Kong?

lmm — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:57:18 -0800

Recommended computer repair service in Hong Kong? My aunt's relatively new Vista desktop has, for the past couple of months, been consistently shutting itself down after at most 10-15 minutes of use and we've exhausted the usefulness of remote assistance. What is needed now is physical troubleshooting.

If you have any recommendations for computer repair service (on-site or depot), I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Hard drive reads a lit-tle too regularly.

Lord Fancy Pants — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:41:39 -0800

My hard drive reads data like clockwork. Really! What's going on here? Usually a hard drive when it reads something sounds random:

BRRP, BRP brp e drp. . .clackity clackity clack brp brp brrrrp.

But periodically my computer slips into this very rhythmic mode and the hard drive reads something small every second on the second. It's so rythmic you could almost time an egg with it:

brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .brp. . .

I think it slows my computer down so I might want to do something about it. I know millions of computers must do this because just about every computer I've owned or used over the past several years has this "feature."

Is this a "virtual memory" thing? A house keeping function? Does any computer maven out there know what this extremely rythmic read is?

Help me be an IT wizard.

Anonymous — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:36:15 -0800

I will need to change careers, but I have a bit of time to plan this out. What should my next computer- or education-related job be? About me, I’m American, living overseas in Tokyo. I have a wife and baby girl. I’m teaching English at a private high school/jr high, and enjoy the work very much. What I would like to do is move back to the U.S. and teach English at an American jr. high or high school. The catch is I don’t have a teaching certificate, and would need to take classes to get that. In addition, states are slashing budgets left and right, and even experienced teachers are being laid off and having a hard time finding work. If you have any advice in this area, please let me know.

So…the other arena I’d like to see about gaining skills/experience is computers and programming. If you ask me “what job?”, well, that’s kind of my question for you. What kinds of IT jobs are out there? What can I do all by myself with my iMac at home to gain skills and even make money (I’m thinking Web-based work, perhaps). I don’t know programming languages, but I’m fairly autodidactic given half a chance, and think I could teach myself; again, I have at least a year, probably more like 3 or 4 years before I make the switch. I am fairly computer savvy, though when it comes to typing code I guess I hit a wall.

My second question, then: what are some wise ways to spend the next couple of years teaching myself IT / Web / Programming skills? How to build up a portfolio of sorts during that time as well?

Best 27" iMac Arm?

fairmettle — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:21:50 -0800

What are the best options for a desk mounted VESA compatible articulating arm for the new 27" iMac? Up until recently, I had an old G5 iMac and although the included stand was an elegant design, I was never very satisfied with the limited range of motion it provided. So now that it has finally come time to purchase a new iMac, I would like to get a well built, stable articulated arm that provides a wide range of viewing positions.

I'm interested in hearing any ideas, experiences, and/or suggestions for a mounting arm that would provide convenient and safe positioning for the weight (20.5 lbs.) and width (27" diagonal) of my new machine.

Some examples that I have been looking at are the Ergotron MX and the iLift, and the Innovative 7500.

With the new iMac's large screen size and my particular room set-up, I would like an arm that is long enough to be viewable at my desk for work and from my bed which is right beside it for watching DVD's.

Out of the models I listed above, the 7500 has the greatest range of movement (27" horizontal and 18" vertical - here is a YouTube video showing it). In my research so far, it seems that if you want to find a longer arm you need to go up to the medical/dental type suppliers such as the ICW Elite (with a 42" reach or longer).

Please don't send me into my next iMac purchase unarmed - - any and all thoughts and suggestions would be most appreciated!

Help me understand homogenous coordinates

tickingclock — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:37:11 -0800

Help me understand homogenous coordinates! I encountered homogenous coordinates in computer graphics, where I understand that they let us translate vertices. But this is a rather shallow level of understanding, and I don't really get why, for instance, the position of the light source in OpenGL is necessarily specified with (x, y, z, w). Is it kind of like how there is an infinite number of points that can correspond to a single point on a 2D image at (x, y), but by specifying a third dimension, we can disambiguate between the different points?

I've tried reading Googling and I've tried reading Wikipedia -- but to no avail. I'm really hoping that somebody in the hive mind can explain it at a level that I can understand, and also why homogenous coordinates are important on a more broad level. Thanks!