Cassandra1405241487

That's probably a good idea for people who keep their machines running weeks at a time, but for people who reboot (or who log off, if the ramdisk isn't running as a service) every day or two, surfing could easily end up being slower, since every time they reboot or log off all of the cache will be lost.

Nope.As far as I can tell, since there are only two users that interest me, the easiest way to do it was to log on as each user, drill down the registry to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders, and change the value to "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Cookies", and then move all of the old files by hand (since changing the registry entry would only change the way Internet Explorer stores its favorites from now on. The separate corresponding registry key for the cache, by the way, is "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Cache", but I keep my cache on a separate disk anyway.If there were 100 users, I suppose that I could set up a Group Policy for all of this, but I don't remember how to do it anyway.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, that will move the cache, not the active Favorites folder.

I don't understand how this could be legal, unless he includes a license from Microsoft with every copy he sell (or gives away, for that matter).

I am running Windows 2000, but my question probably applies to all of the NT-derived versions of Windows.I am the only user of my machine, but I normally use two accounts for reasons of security, an Administrator account and a User account. I want to set things up so that when I save a "Favorite" in Internet Explorer, it gets saved into the Favorites folder of All Users, so that I can see it from either account.How can I do this?

The problem is that I don't believe that the philosophy behind quantum physics is completely honest. Even more than the degree to which it's based on measurement, physics is based on the idea of rigidly recurring patterns. These patterns are assumed to be significant because they are assumed to be required: B will always follow A because B is caused by A, as its sufficient cause. If the idea of causality breaks down anywhere, causality has lost its human significance: if it doesn't have to exist everywhere, how do we know where it does exist? As Hume pointed out, we can't see it. We assume that just as causality gives significance to the pattern, the pattern is evidence for causality. Now some of the quantumists are telling us that causality exists only above a certain scale. Things sometimes have necessary causes. Once the reciprocal link between pattern and causality has broken down somewhere, and we can no longer assume that everything has a cause, how can we assume that there are any laws at all? Perhaps everything which we have seen and measured up to now is like the run of a thousand heads which will happen if we toss a coin long enough. In that case, all of science is pointless. Yet the quantumists continue to tell us that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (or when things are big enough) everthing has a cause, and on the other days of the week (or below a certain scale), pure randomness is permitted. And we have to take their word for it because most of them can see the solutions to differential equations faster than most of us. Hmm....

You seem to be saying that the big bang doesn't need a cause because causality is just a demand of human logic, to which the big bang is not subject. Well, in that case, nothing which has happened since - except perhaps human acts - needs a cause either. On that basis, there's no reason to make a distinction between the big bang and anything else.

In the 1960s, 99% of the experts in cosmology claimed that Einstein's concept of the "cosmological constant", the ad hoc term expressing the gravitational effect of "dark [unknown and unseen] matter", was a methodological disaster. You'll find meanmouths about the concept in Hawking's and Penrose's popular books. Now 99% of the experts in cosmology believe in its existence. In fact, if you question it, you're a heretic. In the 1950s, 99% of the experts in sleep research claimed that people dream only during REM sleep. This was the ultimate dogma of dream research. In 2005, 99% of the experts in sleep research claim that there is also non-REM dreaming. In the 1960s, 99% of biologists claimed that in any organic system with the slightest pretension to being lifelike, information was stored and transfered from generation to generation only in nucleic acids. This was the ultimate dogma of genetics. In 2005, 99% of biologists believe in the existence of prions. As to the ultimate dogma, they say "Well, um...". Please use the Net (or your local library, with the librarian's help) to check on these facts. Should I go on? Anything which opposes the beliefs of 95% of the experts in a science indeed strains credulity. It is extremely unlikely that 95% of a group of extremely intelligent people who have dedicated their lives to researching a subject should get it wrong in a big way, or at least later claim to have gotten it wrong. It almost never happens. Except when it does.

I didn't remember that. Could you post a URL to Google's explanation of it? Or the text of that part of the agreement, or the FAQ, or whatever?

Well, I was really referring to my Web sites as well, but I decided to phrase it as if I were talking only about my desktop machines because I believe in keeping a low profile, also for security reasons. Of course, thousands of people per week do find my sites, and I wouldn't want them to stop, but as the lady said, why look for trouble? On the other hand, it could really be that the bad guys don't find my sites "serious" enough. So much the better.

An easy-to-use database program is a good thing to have and to know how to use, though, and would be good for this purpose also. If you're running Windows: I use MS Access, which is very easy to use, but it's very expensive unless you have a student discount, or something of the sort. There are many good free database programs available for many platforms, such as MySQL (with its many graphical front ends), but they will be too difficult to learn if that's all that you want them for.

Doesn't the word "spontaneous" in this paragraph mean "We don't know the cause"? If Mr. Hawking really means that something happened in the universe without a cause, which is pretty much the everyday meaning of "spontaneous", isn't he in big trouble? For 2500 years the post-Aristotelean science which Mr. Hawking has been, well, hawking has been based on the unprovable assumption that everything has a natural cause. And now Hawking & Co. are saying that there was suddenly a loss of symmetry for no reason, and we're not even willing to say it outright? From a few remarks at the end of "A Short History", remarks which include some very obvious philosophical and linguistic fuzz, I gather that Mr. Hawking's opposition to the Judeo-Christian concept of the Creation is based on their need to postulate an event without a cause. Well.... And suppose that Mr. Hawking really means that there was a cause, but we don't know what it is (even though his use of the word "spontaneous", if that's really his language, is a problem). If you see an event in front of your eyes, it's not too much of an epistemological problem to say: Well, we don't know why or how it happened, but we all saw it, didn't we? On the other hand, when you're postulating something that you didn't see, to say "We don't know how or why it should have happened" is a big problem. One of the obvious possibilities is always: Well, maybe it didn't happen. I think I'll go back to the first chapter of Genesis. It doesn't strain my credulity as much. At least it's pretty obviously what's called in Hebrew a mashal, poetry, if you like, and not cause-and-effect without a cause. [/End of Rant]

I suspect that there's something very simple which would be pretty effective in practice, if not in theory: Just have the script check the referrer. It's true that the referrer can be spoofed very easily, but whoever hacks the site isn't going to know immediately why he got a 403, or whatever, and he often won't have any overwhelming interest in hacking a particular site, unless it's a professional hacking a bank site, or whatever. I suspect that most of the vermin who hack other people's Web sites are script kiddies trying to feel important: if they (or their robots) can't get in immediately, they'll just go elsewhere.Like the lock on a door, Web security doesn't have to be perfect, and never will be. It just has to be good enough to make hacking that site a waste of the guy's time.I have two desktop machines always online protected only by minimal and very standard security, and I've never been hacked (yet).

Neither of my current machines is overclocked, but I've done it in the past. Depending on your hardware, you can sometimes even do it successfully without any additional hardware or software, just by modifying the speed settings in BIOS. Intel processors, especially Celerons, are good for this, since they are sold with an enormous margin of thermal safety. In other words, they are sold rated for speeds much lower than what they can actually safely accomplish.

I may be crazy, but I'm not that crazy. If I had meant that the script can't be run by anyone, I would have written nobody, without the quotes. When I wrote "nobody', with quotes, I was referring to the special user called "nobody" on many UNIX-type systems. If I'm not mistaken, the user "nobody" is the server itself, and if one sets the owner of a script to "nobody", and then has it writable, executable, whatever, only by the owner, it can't be run except by a process on the server itself, not by an ordinary user. Of course, I may be wrong. CHMOD, as above. To preserve the spiritual balance of the Universe. You obviously didn't understand what I meant, but it could be that what I was suggesting is impossible. Somehow, though, I seem to remember seeing scripts which were really written that way.

Do you want to run it on your own machine, or a Net server, or what?

How about using a script which can only be run by "nobody"?

This should not be a problem, unless you've done it many times. The Windows activation system is designed to put up with a certain number of upgrades. It will just re-activate itself. It's not clear to me what's going wrong, and if you're really having trouble activating or installing. Could you give us more details about the problem? This should not be a problem. If the Microsoft techies need hardware information from you, they'll almost certainly be able to help you find it. No! They're two different numbers. If you registered your copy of Windows (not the same as activation, but also free), they may be willing and able to help you get a new serial number. I'm not sure. That's one of the reasons I prefer Win2000.

If I'm not mistaken, neither of these ick-techniques should be a problem, as long as the receiving script is designed not to accept data from off-site. Well, it certainly can't hurt!

I don't find the same depth on the Net. Scholarly resources are sparse in many fields, and free ones are almost nonexistent. So much the better. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found any to which I can subscribe for free. In any case, I concentrate better lying down and looking at paper.

If you mean to ask about our favorite network, since I never initiate instant messenger communication myself, I'm stuck with whatever addresss I get for the other guy.If you mean which client, I like Trillian.

Yeah, it had its faults, but it had really good power-saving: I ran some of mine for years without ever recharging the batteries.

At the moment, I'm using an old machine which my kids usually use now.It used to be a Compaq. (Don't buy a Compaq under any circumstances: high price, terrible design details, terrible support.) However, a few years ago it had a motherboard transplant, so it's now a Brand X.Pentium III 800 MHz, 133 MHz bus speed, 512 MB RAM, 8GB Hard Drive.

I don't expect the Net to replace libraries as a tool for serious learners in my lifetime, but occasionally one can find some serious learning tools on it. Here are two of my candidates: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ Interesting editions of the complete texts of classics of French literature (in French), for download, with background articles. They use an interesting technology to create the PDFs on the fly. Unfortunately, these are image-based PDFs, which can be inconvenient. http://landmarkcases.org/en/landmark/home Discussions of important cases which came before the United States Supreme Court, include the complete documentation for many cases for download, and sound files of the oral arguments.

It's a matter of personal style. I would buy an introductory book, printed on paper (Does anyone else here remember paper?), and lie on my back in bed and read it through. Oddly, books intended for beginning certifications are often best for this kind of thing.The previous posters are right, though. If you don't already have some basic ideas about modern computers, such as the concepts of partitions, file systems, kernal, shell, etc., you're liable to find it rough going.