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The university’s IT department has posted a reminder message in Pipeline, asking faculty and staff to reboot their office computers at least once a week. Most of these users should shut down their computers before leaving for the weekend.

Older operating systems like Windows 2000 must be rebooted after patches are installed. Some Windows XP and MacOS patches require a reboot after installation.

A weekly reboot is also a good idea for my readers at home. I turn off my home computers whenever I can. It’s an easy way to keep intruders out of my home network.

According to Wired, Facebook now allows third-party developers to write small applications that users may embed in their profiles. This is a necessary addition to Facebook’s business model, especially if the company hopes to compete with other social networking sites.

Facebook does have a few rules. My favorite: audio and video players cannot automatically start a clip when a user profile loads. If there’s anything I hate about MySpace, it’s media players that automatically cue up a clip when a page loads. I find this a tremendous waste of network bandwidth.

As I remind my students from time to time, the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech.

However, most people in the US sign these rights away when they sign an employment contract - even faculty members.

I’m having trouble determining the weirdest part of this story.

1. Les Meade, a county judge who was teaching a Purdue business law class, confiscated a student’s cell phone because it rang during a course lecture in April. The student should have seen this coming. The judge has a “no hat” and “no cell phone” policy in his classroom, after all.
2. The student decided to call 911 after Judge Meade said he’d give the phone to the dean the next morning. The student overreacted and refused to acknowledge his error, even as his phone kept ringing in the judge’s pocket during class.
3. Police officers told the judge he’d be charged with theft if he kept the phone overnight. That makes sense to me. The student escalated the situation, and it was now out of the judge’s hands.
4. Dean Richard Cosier showed up at the classroom to resolve the dispute before class ended. The phone was returned to the student, after the dean delivered a quick lecture about classroom courtesy.
5. A special prosecutor was named to resolve the case.
6. The special prosecutor’s phone rang after he delivered his one-page report in Judge Meade’s courtroom on May 26.

Since this incident, management instructors at Purdue have been told to confiscate cell phones if the devices disturb their classrooms. Surely there are more pressing matters to occupy the dean’s time than this trifling incident, especially after the massacre at Virginia Tech. It seems the only thing at stake was a county judge’s inflamed ego.

Most students at US universities understand that turning their cell phone off is a good idea in a crowded classroom. I’ve only seen one of my students leave a room to take a call when their phone rang. In every other case, the student shut off the ringer without leaving the classroom.

Tourists who flock to Hawaii’s beaches may not realize that our state has a high rate of drowning deaths. In the last 6 calendar years, an average of 64 people have died each year. The casualty rate is almost evenly split between tourists and residents.

On December 13 in my old Bloglines blog, I mentioned that the University of Hawaii had developed an ocean safety web site, featuring real-time information from Hawaii’s beaches.

According to an article in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Governor Linda Lingle launched a new and improved version of the UH site at hawaiibeachsafety.org

The RSS feed still posts the conditions for every beach listed on the site, and that is an awkward solution. Individual RSS feeds for each of the beaches would be much more usable, as most users only want information for one or two specific beaches. I’ve tried using the comprehensive RSS on my mobile phone, and it’s a dismal experience.

The RSS feed is located at http://oceansafety.soest.hawaii.edu/features/recommend_beaches.xml

That domain name redirects to the UH site, with pages that indicate conditions on these islands’ beaches:

• Oahu (North, West, East, South)
• Hawaii
• Kauai
• Maui