Piglet should be so much higher on the star ranking!

Hehe Pete, sounds like you've done that before ;-)

Seriously, why worry as long as it was just the link and not a message like 'hey, just got an email from the dork who wrote that book but didn't have a clue. How do I politely tell him its rubbish?' Or something.

Sorry, but its up to Dr DJ Wicked to define the rules! Loser! ;-)

Mote

Awful

Ah, the possibilities...

RAT

Gutter

As someone's already mentioned, it depends on your subject and how much stuff you churn out - I have +70GB of modelling data etc which is located on various DVDs, external hardrive etc. But even if you're in an Arts subject I suppose you'll still produce a lot of stuff - for example, I have 1.5GB of journal papers in .pdf alone. External hard drives are stupidly cheap at the moment, check the PC World website etc. They easily work out cheaper than a USB stick if you look at £ per GB, but are less portable. I don't know which platform is the most stable/reliable.

Its very easy to be lazy though, so make sure you do it often. And an external hard drive can still fail.

If your computer/laptop dies but if its not due to a hard disc failure then you're University Computing Service should be able to recover it. Mine does it for £30 +VAT. Probably best not to rely on that though!

The best advertising physics has had in years...

I think its cool, but Sir David King I think (former Chief Scientific Officer guy) actually said a few days ago that we shouldn't waste money on things like this, and concentrate money and minds on global climate change, poverty reduction etc. I'm not sure if I entirely agree; obviously science funding should be increased to do both!

I had one friend who dressed very informally, gave them loads of leeway with missed deadlines, got added as a facebook friend by all her students, and that person had loads of grief with their students stretching the limits on what they could get away with, or not submitting work at all. Another friend would wear a suit and tie when teaching, and was pretty firm. And it worked.

I tried to find some middle ground - my clothing was pretty smart (shirt and smart trousers, may be smart jeans), but I found that being firm (we all know the student excuses!) but fair with respect to the rest of the relationship, and keeping the atmosphere quite informal once in the session helped as much, if not more. I hope it fostered some mutual respect, got them to do the work, and resulted in a free and open discussion once in the session.

I suppose the moral of the story is that professionalism and respect (which of course leads to a very fruitful student-teacher relationship!) relies on appearance, but a whole lot more too.

Lute

Pipe

Boots also do these plugs that are like plastacine which I use for music quite a lot, they mould in the groove in your ear, so you don't have to force things into your ear canal if you find it a bit weird!

Tomorrow at 7pm on Radio 5 Live: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7600651.stm

Can people really fall for this, or do they know what they're getting themselves into? Surely somebody with years of experience as an expert witness should be able to spot that an American online University, that is accredited in Liberia and asks for a large sum of money is not all it might claim to be?