LOL, that's a great way to put it. ;-)

It's pretty funny because calc.org has been essentially hijacked by the very guy who was supposed to revive it. The domain doesn't legally belong to him, it still belongs to Adam, and I don't think Adam approved of this move.

Is that what happened? I have no idea. It's really very sad to see this happen to calc.org.

Well:
* A whois says the domain still belongs to Adam.
* I remember Ben Trettel talking about his Super Soaker Central site on a calculator site (probably calc.org) at some point in the past, so he's not some unrelated hijacker. This is from memory, so unfortunately I don't have any more details.
* IIRC, Ben was indeed the guy in charge of calc.org. (Again, from memory, so no guarantees and no details.)

Thus what I have written is what I have figured. Maybe we should ask Ben Trettel and Adam for clarification? Any of you reading this?

Ben Trettel talks alot about SEO, so I'll assume he knows a bit about it. And if you know anything about SEO, you know duplicate content is the worse thing that can happen to a site. It would NOT be in his best interests to have one of his sites appear on two different domains.

From that (and that both he and Adam are very nice people and appear to be good friends) I'll believe him that it wasn't intentional.

I also believe him, still he should have known that turning off the VHOST would cause exactly this to happen. ;-)

True, but it's been dead for so long that it basically doesn't matter at this point

Adam might not have approved but would he really care?
A few years ago when calc.org was making vast improvements, gaining momentum and people where actually uploading programs didn't he get pissed off and deleted all the archives?

nah this was TI-Files, long before i joined the community (back in 98-99 I think), some guy called bryan from ticalc hacked ti files and he got fired from ticalc.org . Back in 2001-2002 calc.org was getting awesome and even had some programs not avaliable on ticalc.org (good ones and horrible ones), but in summer 2002 they moved to new server and it didnt turned out well and they lost everything but the program archives, afterward this is when they became crappier and crappier.

No I very much doubt Adam would agree with this.

Adam was very proud of calc.org when he ran it. it was his baby so to speak, and his site had a lot of features ticalc.org wouldn't touch at the time, such as program ratings, modular views, site hosting that at the time was top notch with CGI access and lots more space, and every tutorial he could get permission to add.

When he left, calc.org basically died, and it shouldn't have. It had three major site crashes. then when they finally got a host that didn't crash every five minutes, itmom ran spam relay's which basically further ruined calc.org reputation when it got joe-jobbed. finally they decided to redesign the site and sat on it for two years instead of attempting to do something to at least keep it's userbase.

It got to the point that itmom was dead, and when it finally went under, so did all the hosted sites. (mine, hiryu's and Patrick's. pretty much the only ones getting updates anyway) That was pretty much the end of it.

If I had to predict the future, Adam will either kill the domain altogether and some spam spyware Lister will take it like what happened to ti-files.org, or he'll just park it. I could see about buying the domain off of him and try to resurrect the thing, but I don't know if it can be done after this amount of damage, and it definitely wouldn't be the same since I'm not exactly a web designer. It'd probably be a CMS or a forum like bluecrimson.

This is amusing :)

Let me know if you have any ideas on how to use the domain name. It's obviously not doing any good as it is now, and I don't forsee any revitalization attempts succeeding on a domain name alone. So I'm taking suggestions.

Point it at ticalc.org? :-P

According to Ben, calc.org was a VHOST on sscentral.org, and he shut it down, so it now shows the main VHOST instead. (There's a link to his explanation further down the thread.)

That's pretty, but how does it have anything to do with calculators?

/me misses the old calc.org

Heh. :)

I've never been there before, what did it used to look like? And why would such a site have that URL?

Before the crash in 2002 it looked like this

http://web.archive.org/web/2001072114170 5/http://calc.org/
(dont forget to remove the space between both urls)
9 months or so after the crash it somewhat continued but the website had much less features and they only had the TI-83, 86 and 89 files avaliable for download. They also had HP calculator stuff

Wow, the archived main page looks pretty darn good. I especially like the search function (filters for program type, etc.). Maybe something for ticalc.org to implement?

Still, it is sad to see a once calculator-oriented domain hosting a super-soaker site...

Yeah....

LOL that was hilarious!
How did they get that URL? It looks to me to be just some other website or did the guys at calc.org really make it?

BTW Firefox 2.0 is awesome

The guy at calc.org, Ben Trettel, is also in charge of this site.

it is not the most hilarious thing in the world, actually sad, calc.org used to be about as good as ticalc.org

so this means the old one is gone forever? I never rly went there but any calc website must be good :)

It's very sad.

BTW FIREFOX SUCKS!!! IT'S WORTHLESS!!! JAVA DOESN'T WORK, GAMES WON'T LOAD, PLUGINS ARE HARD TO SET UP...WHO ON EARTH WOULD WANT IT??? MY HIGH SCHOOL HAD IT AND THEIR HOMEPAGE DIDN'T EVEN LOAD CORRECTLY!!!

well i guess they ddint followed W3C standard. At least firefox is better than IE imo, I prefer Opera tho

I hate FF too. And I love Opera. It's so smooth and configurable.

OPERA RULES!!!!

Konqueror rulez!

I gotta try that someday (if it's for windows)

Of course it's not, Window$ sucks. ;-p

More seriously, Konqueror 3 is only available for *nix systems, the only Window$ port uses Cygwin and X11. Konqueror 4 will probably be natively ported to Window$ though, they're currently working on the KDE 4 kdelibs.

ah ok I see x.x i was just wondering

perhapes but, MS has the market cornered. I have a tv-tuner, scanner, printer, radio-scanner, memory stick, and UPS strip, all of which have windows-only drivers

oh, and I forgot my wifi card -- Dell TrueMobile 1300 MiniPCI -- It only exists for Windows and that one has bugs (I actually looked for another driver, not just accepting the package that says win only)

Well, I think you probably aren't looking for GNU/Linux drivers well enough. If you're seriously interested in trying out GNU/Linux, then I can try to help. Please give the model numbers of all the hardware you need drivers for.

As for the WiFi card, you need to figure out the actual chipset of that card. Dell doesn't produce wireless chipsets, they buy them, solder them on a circuit board and then sell the result with their brand name. Most other WiFi card brands do the same. (In the case of Dell, it could even be that they bought the entire card from another manufacturer and just sticked their name on it, but that doesn't really matter, what matters is the chipset.)

According to the sites found by Google, the Dell TrueMobile 1300 MiniPCI has a Broadcom 4306 chipset. This is handled by the bcm43xx driver which has been included in Fedora since Fedora Core 5. But sometimes manufacturers use a completely different chipset without changing the model number, so I'd recommend verifying this, though the easiest way to verify is to simply install GNU/Linux and then run the "lspci" utility which should be installed by default in most distributions. (I always got it installed by default in Fedora, at least.)

I don't really know and I don't really care, my point was most manufacturers(sp?) assume the customer uses windows...I knew someone who used linux and he got a digital sorround sound (sp?) card and then he found out it was for windows only...

Since I have to have WinXP to access the college network from on campus, I'll stick with that anyway...besides, my Sandisk Cruzer U3 only works with win2000/xp...

thanks tho.

> Since I have to have WinXP to access the college network from on campus, I'll stick with that anyway...

Are you sure? While they won't support it officially, connecting with GNU/Linux will probably work. And I doubt IT will be getting mad at you for that, they're more likely to be happy to have one less machine on the network spreading viruses. ;-) But of course, I'm neither a lawyer not a decision maker at your college, I just give my informal opinion.

> besides, my Sandisk Cruzer U3 only works with win2000/xp...

Well, you can use it as a normal Flash drive. I don't see the point of the U3 feature anyway for GNU/Linux, if you need to insulate whatever program is running from the Flash stick (i.e. keep it from permanently writing stuff to your HDD), just run it as a different user.

I don't know about their policies but I know that when I connect to the wifi, I type in a url (usually google) and it loads a page "Welcome to VWwifi, please log in" and I put in the user/password and it then loads google. As far as that goes, I only know they said we needed windows XP and Office 2003 (I stuck with 2002 because it opens most of the things the teachers post) so that's what I'll stick with.

As far as U3, I like the program it came with where I can enter my password and it configures the computer just like mine at home. I can go into "my documents" and my stuff is there. I can go to "Favorites" and my favorites are there.

What I do like linux for (I have 'UBCD') is when I have computer trouble and I can repartition my drive and recover data without loosing anything.

<< I don't know about their policies but I know that when I connect to the wifi, I type in a url (usually google) and it loads a page "Welcome to VWwifi, please log in" and I put in the user/password and it then loads google. As far as that goes, I only know they said we needed windows XP and Office 2003 (I stuck with 2002 because it opens most of the things the teachers post) so that's what I'll stick with. >>

That's the "login hack" for open WiFi so they can have open (and thus more compatible) WiFi while still allowing only registered users to use it. (It's a pretty common setup.) This doesn't require any particular operating system on the client (i.e. your computer), in fact the very reason they do it is not to require OS and/or hardware support for stuff like WEP, WPA or 802.1X.

<< As far as U3, I like the program it came with where I can enter my password and it configures the computer just like mine at home. I can go into "my documents" and my stuff is there. I can go to "Favorites" and my favorites are there. >>

That's a nice feature. You can have something similar with a regular USB stick (or your U3 stick in regular mode, but realistically, you'll probably want to get a second one to try it out, so you don't trash the U3 stuff) together with a live CD such as Knoppix or the FedoraUnity LiveSpins. With the Kadischi tool, you can even spin a Fedora Live CD with your own choice of packages, for example, you can put TiLP2 on it.

Thanks, that's good to know. I must say I'm not that knowlegable about wifi...love to get a wifi print server for xmas...

I'll have to keep that in mind, I have used UBCD for data recovery and I know/knew someone with knoppix but for the moment, I'll stick with what I have. I've filled up not quite half of my 2gb U3 disk...

thanks, though

WTH?? FF is awesome! The plug ins are easy and you don't even need to download anything, it installs straight from the browser.... built in spell check... Faster than IE... safer than IE... I don't know much about Opera but I do know that FF 2 kix but.
maybe u had a different version. the new one came out like a week ago.

Opera is the most standards-compliant browser AFAIK, and I think it's pretty secure too. Personally, I like both Firefox and Opera, each has its own advantages.

i think opera has some website rendering issues, but not too bad, most of the time it's javascript related and they keep fixing it in each release. I don't like how firefox sometimes reset settings to default when it crashes too often

hmm yeah also Opera doesn't remember my ticalc.org login either, even if i set ticalc.org to store my username/pass to my computer, it still log me out when i close/reopen opera and go on ticalc.org

I've used numerous versions of Opera on ticalc.org, and had no problem like this. Maybe you have turned off cookies, or disabled cookies specifically for ticalc.org?

I should check out, but it only happens on ticalc.org, I don't have this problems on any forums I visit, nor any other website i vist that require logining

</emo>

You probably don't have the flash plugin installed properly. And java is a computer thing, not a browser thing.

Their system is so locked down we can't change anything...the accounts rank below the XP "limited" -- we can't even recover from system errors.

anyway, I got a flash drive that is "U3" and it came with firefox. I know that the stuff is loaded properly and...IT STILL DOESN'T WORK!!! I can't pull up that school's homepage. It says "content blocked" over all of the menu buttons...WORTHLESS!!! It won't load games or chat boxes either...USELESS!!!

I stand by my orig. view. IT'S WORTHLESS!!! IE may not be as secure but at least it works properly!!!

Well then something's screwed up with your computer or your Firefox installation, since I've used both IE and Firefox, and Firefox has always worked perfectly for me.

...even with the Java and Flash plugins, BTW. If your school's computers are so locked down you can't install the proper extensions for Firefox, blame your school, not Firefox.

Perhapes but how do you explain the mobile one preinstalled on the memory stick? EVEN THAT ONE HAD TROUBLE!

I'll stick with IE. Firefox usually adblocks the content I want and lets through the stuff I don't care about anyhow. It won't even let me log on to my college account management...or grades for that matter!

nope, I like IE just fine, the programs I use run fine and everything works.

I think Firefox has ad-blocking disabled by default, so that shouldn't be the problem. The problem is probably as people have said already: the page uses proprietary IE-only extensions. As Web developers grow up, they'll start to use standards more and proprietary extensions less (hopefully). This will be aided by having a better standards-compliant browser (one that even properly supports transparency in PNGs!) to test sites.

What's the URL to your school's account management Web site (assuming it is accessible on the Internet)? I'd like to see it for myself, so I can determine the exact cause and possibly a solution.

The login works fine but after that the problems begin. I havn't tried it since they upgraded their server though. It's virginia community college (US).

Have you tried downloading Firefox from the official site and installing it? Otherwise the one on the drive might be set up badly. I'm not saying you have to use Firefox if you don't want to, but don't go giving it a bad name for bad reasons.

dunno, don't really care, I just tried it since it came preinstalled to my U3 drive. I'm doing fine with IE so until I have reason to change, I won't.

I'm not even going to upgrade to IE7 unless I have to. If it says anything about how much I like upgrading, I just did XP SP2 this past summer -- only when I had to.

Definitely upgrade to IE7 as soon as you can. The initial-release bugs have been fixed by now, so it ought to be just fine to use. It'll save you a lot of bother.

as I said, I don't like upgrades. They usually screw stuff up. I only upgraded to sp2 this past summer (still working out some of the bugs with software incompatibility) because I have stuff that is 'not windows xp tested' and they 'may cause errors or stop functioning'...

yea, like TI's black-link driver that keeps loading itself...took me a week to figure out how to make windows boot normally, if I update any of TI's software, I have to remove black-link before rebooting or I get a blue-screen over and over and over

I know, my brother's the same way. He refuses to move his stuff off from an old PIII with Windows ME to our P4/WinXP machine at home, even though the old machine's hard drive is failing.

In my own experience, the only time when I had a trouble upgrading my computer (a Mac) was when I waited a week to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4.5. (I usually install the upgrade hours or maybe up to a day after it is released.) So I try to upgrade anything that requires an installation as soon as possible.

I still wish I had the old P3 laptop I wanted...I was getting it as a gift and they waited for the "new improved P4" but it overheated...was lost in shipping for repairs...now I've got a computer that the hardware says celeron and the sticker on the case says pentium-m...

I've only upgraded one mac and that was back with OS7 (90's)...didn't have trouble but it didn't fix the problem I had.

Then I guess they intentionally turned off all this stuff in Firefox for security reasons. They probably forgot to turn it off in IE because they thought nobody would be insane enough to actually browse the web with IE. ;-)

That's actually what my school does...

yea, you know what I love:

1. log onto computer that has high security
2. someone messed up a simple setting -- like the homepage
3. you go to fix it because of all the pop-ups and...
4. security locks you out and resets it back to the one with popups
5. the computer crashes (again) and the cycle starts again

That's what sucks about Windows. You can "lock down" the user interface so you can't change settings through it, but it doesn't really lock down the settings themselves, so someone can change the settings through other means (like with adware). It's silly to think that disabling right-click on the taskbar (even for accessing a program context menu; my college's computers are like this) will prevent anything from changing settings.

This is not security at all.

Have you ever thought about it from the view of the poor system admins?
They have to deal with all kinds of crap! Think about it: thousands of kids, all of whom like jacking around with settings, making things difficult for other users. The sys admins then have to go and fix stuff.
Wouldn't you rather have things locked down?

I see it a bit different, put in fair security so that people don't abuse the computers but make it so that they can fix minimal problems (like the websites that automatically change homepage) -- they had lots of fun when we all figured out the keyboard shortcut to flip the screen orientation sideways and upside-down...I feel sorry for the people who had to stand on their heads to fing the setting in control panel and fix it...

They're going to find a way, security or not, so why go overboard.

--- on a similar note ---

You'll like this:
btw, do they really need to DELETE the drivers for CD-ROM, Floppy, and Mass-storage? It makes so much sense when they switch to books on cd and then lock down the computers to make them useless.

I went into the library one time to do some homework. I put in the book on cd and...nothing, open in my computer...cannot read from drive, please reinstall drivers...so I ask the staff and, "well, we can copy the files you need to your directory"...as if that would help, the cd was set up to prevent copying (yes, I admit I tried to copy it to my HD @ home, then I wouldn't have to carry a cd either) so, basically they made stuff useless...

I don't think he was saying that they shouldn't lock down the computers - I think he was saying that the actual settings should be locked down, instead of just the interface (so adware or other stuff couldn't change them, as he said).

Yes, thank you, burntfuse. This is what I'm talking about.

I am in favor of security and locking down school computers or other public computers. I'm just appalled at the way it's done in Windows (that is, poorly).

I agree. I like system errors that you have to restart to complete restoration of system files and when you restart it says you need to restart...

They even yelled at us for trying to troubleshoot stuff...the mouse won't move, is it plugged in? DON"T TOUCH THAT, THE COMPUTER PEOPLE WILL FIX IT...rather than check the plug, they would reformat the hard drive and replace the CPU and then realize someone pulled the cord too hard.

That's horrible, they're just setting themselves up for pranks. It would be really fun to just unplug the mouse and keyboard slightly (so the plugs are still in the sockets) and then go to them and complain that nothing's working, and watch them reinstall Windows or something.

unfortunately (or fortunately for us, rather), my school decided to wait for 'IT' to fix any problems in our CompSci class while my teacher is on vacation... we now end class by hitting control+alt+down (flips the screen), locking our computers, unplugging the mice and keyboards from the computers slightly, disconnecting the network connection cables from the wall, AND to top it off we hit the emergency red button that shuts off all power to the room in case of an electric fire... the IT hates us... :-D

yea, IT...

the computer teachers at my school let us do stuff that couldn't hurt...the first week I rewired the power and eithernet to make the computers work...in the library or computer lab it was another story

if we did that, they'd remove all of our accounts at a minimum...

btw, strangely enough, the school I went to, rather than shut down the computers at the end of the day *TECH PEOPLE BRACE YOUR SELF* would hit the power kill switch to turn everything off...and I wonder why windows would get corrupt after a while...

Yeah, Windows corrupts itself too because it changes its own settings too casually. It's a very promiscuous operating system.

One example: I once killed the print spooler daemon (whatever the heck it's called in Windows), and when I restarted Windows, it couldn't find the printer! How stupid of it to mess up settings like that simply by killing one little process. That would've happened only if it changes its own settings so carelessly and without permission from the operator (me). I tell you, Windows is not a system designed with the end user in mind. Microsoft is really a sadist company.

I winced at that. Any idiot knows to shut the computer down first!

and all they'd have to do is hit the power button, the escape button and turn off the screen

this site has a weird comment system...
look at how flat these comments are with all the replies!

yea but if you change the resolution of your screen, that changes. Looks normal at 1400x1050 (my max) but strange at 800x600 (my usual)

What's better is when someone switches the mouse/keyboard...

also, when someone steps on the eithernet port and it unplugs...that can take weeks to fix...or seconds if you can pull it out and plug it back in without being seen...

Do they really need to DELETE the DRIVERS for CD-ROM, Floppy, and Mass-storage?

It makes so much sense when they switch to books on cd and then lock down the computers to make them useless.

they don't do it with windows, they have windows xp professional with "Clean slate" and "Novell Netware" for security and "Lanschool" to track our use...

well, this is past tense, I WAS in high school, now I'm in college so I use my own laptop. Their security is very high but not near what the high school had.

Hmm, "content blocked" sounds fairly self-explanatory to me. Clearly it's the school's fault, not Firefox's.

dunno, it worked with IE so we found a workaround to launch it even though the icons were gone: Start>Run>"iexplore google.com"

BECAUSE YOUR SCHOOL PROXY BLOCKS FIREFOX.
Can I make it any more clear than that?

that would make sense, and it's very clear now. I thought you meant content blocking (which they had too)

IE does not work properly! Surely you must be joking.

Try visiting my Web Page link. It's a simple demo of a translucent appearance in a page. The blue background of the text area should look slightly "see-through" to the background of the page. It uses simple, standard CSS1 stylesheets to accomplish this effect, yet MS IE gets it wrong! (And Microsoft claims 100% CSS1 compliance in IE. Ha!)

The problem is that in IE, the blue background is incorrectly fixed to the top left of the content area, whereas according to CSS1, the blue background should be fixed to the top left of the viewport (browser window). CSS1-compliant browsers, such as Netscape, Mozilla, FireFox, and Opera (> version 6) do it correctly. See http://meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/ gallery.html (remove the space) for screenshots of how the pages *should* look.

It's sad that Microsoft can't even get CSS1 to work correctly, but it's even sadder that they lie about it. Oh well, they depend on people like you to believe them and continue their poor software engineering practices.

Now I need to sleep. It's midnight, and I have a class tomorrow morning.

I was sure IE7 had full CSS1 support O.o or are you using IE6?

That was referring to IE6 (I tested it at school, and I don't even know what version of IE I have on my computer, as I rarely go into Windows on it).

IE7 *might* work correctly; if you have IE7, just see that page for yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't, though.

the page load pretty fine in IE7. i think IE7 support CSS1 much better now. It still sucks that it doesn't support CSS2 correctly tho

you sure? looks good to me...try this link, I put up a screenshot, I'd be interested in what it did wrong.

perhapes you care about my config too:

-IE 6.something.something
-all patches up to date (except a few for office)
-XP SP2
-All software is OEM

No - it's totally wrong. The background shell is supposed to show through the links and the main content - they aren't supposed to have their own shell in each, as yours shows. (Screenshot of Safari in link.)

Oddly enough, IE5 Mac does it right! (Well, mostly. There's never a border on the right-hand side, but the transparency works.)
Proof:
http://static.flickr.com/
101/293457664_cac5d84da5.jpg?v=0

interesting, I never knew that. well, maybe they fixed that in IE 7...I hear it's got many fixes to well-known bugs...I'll still stick with IE6 until I have a reason to update (like MS did with SP2 where they discontinued SP1 support)

IE6 /is/ the reason to upgrade to IE7. I haven't yet managed to use IE7 (I have no access to Windows computers), but it can't be worse than IE6. Don't wait - upgrade now (if you want to wait awhile longer, don't wait longer than a couple of weeks).

On a side note, I just got spam to upgrade to IE7. It had a link to a file named "IE7-setup.exe". That does me a lot of good, as I'm running Linux. :)

Of course, I know that Microsoft would never send stuff like that, especially since I never registered that email address with them.

I saw a joke one time comparing windows to a virus...at the end it pointed out one major difference -- a virus is a compact, memory-efficient script and windows is a large, slow, memory-wasting program...so it's not a virus, it's a bug.

Here it is:
"McAfee-Question: Is Windows a virus?
No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do:

They replicate quickly - okay, Windows does that.
Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so - okay, Windows does that.
Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk - okay, Windows does that too.
Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. Sigh... Windows does that, too.

Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2.) and the user will buy new hardware. Yup, that's with Windows, too.
Until now it seems Windows is a virus but there are fundamental differences:
Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature.
So Windows is not a virus. It's a bug."

Yea, I love reading that nomater how many times...

That's great, I'm saving it...

Here's a good site, that one may even be on it.

http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il /~omri/Humor/

**LOOK ON THE SITE FOR "Star Trek meet Microsoft"

Heh, thanks for the link.

That is incredible; I had no idea simple CSS could do that! It seems the page renders correctly in IE7...that said, LONG LIVE FIREFOX!!!! (2.0)

That demo is what got me into css!
Check out the rest of Eric Meyer's css/edge site for more cool demos like that.

I like the demo in which some text or an image appears when you hover on a link. The demo with text flowing around images is cool too (it's called "slantastic").

I found on another site (see Web Page link) that shows a way to do rollover buttons using only CSS also. One of the ways uses only one image that contained multiple button state sub-images in it, and the CSS changed the image's position inside the "button" rectangle for :hover and :active. Another method just changed the rollover image's z-index property to put it on the top.

Those are called CSS sprites.
You might also want to check out A List Apart (url), which has tons of cool css tricks like that.

broken link.
this post has the right one!

Your issue here is with your school's proxy, along probably with some other stuff. Our school district has computers set up in much the same way (think your account is deleted each time you log off, except for the contents of your My Doucuments folder). Firefox won't run, because the crazy proxy or firewall system they have won't allow it. If they configured it properly, then they could run Firefox just fine. I'm not sure why our school doesn't use Firefox - probably just because there is no good reason for them to switch.

In the last few years, because of all the limiting factors, the computers at school have become even less useful.

In this situation I would run Knoppix on it if I wanted to use a computer while I'm at school. See Web Page for info about Knoppix.

While my school (a community college) generally sucks technology-wise (they still use Windows on all desktops, for Pete's sake!), they don't restrict much in terms of Internet access. I use FireFox just fine from my flash drive (it's even installed on some computers!), and I run Cygwin on my flash drive too so I can log into some school computers that run Linux or Solaris. I also log into my home computer (which runs Linux, naturally) this way, so I can update my web site and develop software on my home computer from school. (I use ssh for all logins, and I use public key authentication on my home computer, so it's pretty secure.)

You (by which I mean anyone) can install Cygwin on a flash drive if you'd like to do the same. See www.cygwin.com, and download and run setup.exe. I installed it on my 256MB flash drive, and it uses about 3/4 of the space (it's minimal but enough to run X and a few utilities like gzip, tar, etc.). You can find instructions somewhere online to set it up to run correctly from a flash drive.

Firefox 2.0 is the only thing that works on my computer, except fot IE7, thats pretty good.