Ah! I've never visited your fine country, I was going off the wikipedia article.

Damn you, wikipedia! They told me not to trust you, I should have listened! I should have listened *sob*

Only the US and Canadia do MM/DD/YYYY these days. DD/MM/YYYY if you have to, but YYYY-MM-DD ftw.

For future reference, here is the correct form:

1) Sell cheap stocks and buy very expensive stocks
2) ???
3) Profit

The underpants gnomes stare at you in disgust.

Took some hunting, but found it eventually:

1. Go to the front page, find your Account link on the right hand side - you can't use those stupid ajaxy boxes, there's no option there. That should take you through to:

http://slashdot.org/my/preferences

2. Under "Discussions", click "Viewing"

3. Click on the button saying "Switch to classic discussion system D1"

Hope that's helps!

Just a shame they didn't bother to use modern design practices to accommodate mobiles. And failed to consider people who use page down to go through the page - there is nothing I hate more than a floating title bar.

Still at least they have some nice gradients on their buttons...

The underpants gnomes stare at you in disgust.

Section 7.2.3.2 in their terms and conditions says that if they introduce a change which "is of material detriment" to you, you can terminate your contract without charge.

Now, what exactly does "material detriment" mean? I'm guessing T-Mobile's lawyers are sufficiently competent that it will not mean "I just signed up for a 24 month contract which I can cancel but keep my new phone" as I hope it does.

Even if it means exactly that, I bet they won't give me time to port my number.

QED.

It may be a bit more expensive, but you could get any android phone and run sipdroid through a SIP provider of your choice, then forward your mobile number to your SIP line. Then you have the advantage that you can seamlessly switch to a mobile network when you go off-campus.

But isn't there a risk with this whole USB-virus-scanner thing that if a computer is infected, you can't be sure that your scanner is being read and executed correctly? If the OS you're scanning is infected, the malware could be monitoring for clamwin.exe etc and running its own version, or intercepting the important IO calls. I know if I was writing a virus and wanted to take control of as many computers as possible, one of the first things I'd do would be to make it look like my virus wasn't there.

Surely the only way to really scan a computer is by booting into a guaranteed-clean OS? And even then, isn't there a risk that firmware could be compromised? Or am I just being way too paranoid?

Exactly. If you start developing for and/or specifying a browser, let alone ridiculous point versions, you're doing it wrong. Just look at what has happened with organisations needing to keep IE6 running so they can continue to access their intranet. No. Just don't do it.

If you absolutely have to control how it looks when you're printing, get your server-side application to spit out an image or a PDF.

But something about this sounds like you're doing it wrong on a more fundamental level. It sounds like this is for a closed corporate network? If that is the case, and you're trying to build something that looks like a desktop application, that feels like a desktop application, and which prints like a desktop application, maybe you should actually be building a desktop application?

Yeah, I'd have thought this was pretty trival. A lot of files have some kind of signature that identifies what type of file they are, often in plain text at the start of the file. This would presumably make basic filtering based on file contents pretty easy - ie if it starts with 'PK' and has binary content, I'd be guessing it's a zip. And if it starts with GIF, PNG or JFIF I'll be forwarding it to my special private server.

The only excuse for a file filtering program not to do this would be that the mail server was under too much load to MIME-decode and examine each attachment - but then most corporate mail servers will be running virus scanners which will need to do this anyway, so that's a pretty weak argument.

No, you're an oxymoron! Haha that one never gets old.

But seriously, you're still going on about the locked room. I specifically said it didn't need to be a locked room. The parent post didn't say it needed to be locked - just a "computer room". A corner of a living room.

Ultimately you just have to trust your children to use the computer under your rules, and thereby use your parenting powers to enforce using the computers in communal areas.

After all, if - as you suggest - a child is determined enough to get onto facebook after hours that they'll learn how to pick a lock and then stay awake until everyone has gone to bed and fallen asleep, before creeping down and breaking into the computer room, I'm pretty sure they'll be determined enough to figure out a way around your DNS settings.

Ultimately you can't keep control over your children forever, and at some point you just have to trust that you have trained them well and let go of the bike and see if they fall over. Take sensible precautions; while they get used to the internet on their own computers, make sure they're somewhere you can keep an eye on them - not spy on their every move, just make sure they're not stripping off on their webcam for a 54 year old man in his underwear.

Technology is not a replacement for parenting.

The point is that technical solutions aren't always the answer.

He didn't say a locked room, just a common area designated as a "computer room". Putting the computers in a common area (be it a locked computer room or the corner of a living room) so you can keep a general eye on what they're doing, and you solve all of the content issues.

Tell your children that they can use the computer from 6am to 10pm. You don't need to lock them away in a room - if they obey, that's their sleep cycles protected. Punish them if you catch them sneaking off to use chat rooms at 2am. Hell, unplug the router and hide it in your bedroom if you don't think you can trust them.

Installing a complicated access and content filter costs more money and time to set up, and more to keep running. Just sit down with the children, explain the rules, and use your usual parenting skills to impose them.