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It's cheaper to launch nearer the equator (ideally, right on the equator) since the earth at the equator can provide an additional thrust for rockets, in addition to what bhmcintosh mentioned (Florida is a peninsula, etc.).

You can already play that online right here.

Anyway, while these results from Prusiner and colleagues go a long way toward demonstrating the infectivity of prions, there are still some problems with the experiment before one can conclude that Koch's postulates have been satisfied.

I've listed some of the problems (potential and real) with the experiment here:

• The strain of mice used is a transgenic strain that expresses 16 times the normal level of the prion protein (PrP). There are some in the field who say that the high level of PrP expression in this strain makes them unusually sensitive to developing neurological disease to ANY environmental perturbation.
• Prusiner's lab has many other prion strains. Laura Manuelidis, a neuropathologist at Yale, has said that the pathology of brain samples from these mice closely resemble RML scrapie. It is very important to eliminate the possibility that they developed disease by cross-contamination from another prion strain. Recall that the goal of the research is prove one of Koch's postulates that PrP is directly infectious, rather than any nucleic acid associated with a prion.
• Finally, injection of the same recombinant (E. coli produced) PrP fragments into normal mice that do not produce 16 times the amount of PrP do not produce disease. Producing disease in normal mice would be the best demonstration of Koch's postulates.

BTW, my scientific background is not in prions. I direct a lab that works on Epstein-Barr virus.

3) People knew the world was round; what was not known was how big it was
Eratosthenes measured the Earth's radius to within 2% in 200 BC without needing to send a human led expedition around the planet. This was well-known and accepted in Columbus's time.

If you're hoping they'll convert newtons to pounds for you you're out of luck.

But they might be able to give you a league for your foot.

This reminds me of a website that Nothwestern has opened that has most of the case files from Chicago homicides from 1870 to 1930.

Take a look.

It's incredible. How did anyone ever survive the city during that time period? If you feel like doing a little sleuthing and completing some unsolved cases, check it out. There's solved cases there as well.

It's a good complement to Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen.

The other amazing this is that almost nothing has changed in over 100 years...

I agree. Last Christmas I asked for Settlers Of Catan (the basic 3-4 players box) and I've never regretted it. It's quite an expensive game, and some of the pieces (all the roads) were missing right at the start (factory screw-up?) but the very friendly people of 999games sent me the pieces, I had to wait 2 months but it was worth the wait.

Me, my girlfriend, my brother and his girlfriend regularly play a game of Catan and it's always fun. It takes some time before you get a good insight in the game mechanics, but as soon as you develop some tactics it gets more and more fun every time.

What is especially intriguing about the game mechanics is the balance between luck and tactics. You need to understand the bell curve for 2d6, and the factor of luck is almost totally out of the equation.
If you haven't played it yet, try the Java online version of Catan or find a copy of the cheap but crappy CD-ROM version in Dutch (I think the original was German, so you might find that on CDROM too), details here.

If it doesn't, a pretty window pops up, displaying your password along with an explanation of the error. Wonderful. A variation of my second most sensitive password suddenly popped up when I missed the shift key while typing in a symbol. So far all my complaint has gotten from IT is "We'll forward this one on to so-and-so."

Students in-the-know are generally ignored. I wouldn't bet heavily that your school will change its policies anytime soon. It probably took a boatload of work to make the switch in the first place, so more changes will probably take a lot of prodding.

This guy put a lot of thought into the "leaving a buffer" theory. His links page has some really cool links.

"The big Chill" - the Ice Age froze 'em all. Popular among scientists.

I'm really skeptical that a mammoth extinction caused by an Ice Age is popular among scientists. Mammoths seem to have been well adapted for the cold and died off when the climate became warmer.

"The big Kill" - hunted to death by humans, little evidence exists for this, popular with the tree hugging set.

There is plenty of evidence for human involvement in extinctions of mammals such as the mammoth. The models demonstrate that it doesn't take a whole lot of hunting to drive a population of large mammals to extinction.

Our school's course management system is one of the more infuriating sites around. For instance, hitting enter in a form doesn't submit the form. Rather, it reloads the page. And blanks all of your entries. And you can't stop the reload.

I have a serious problem with Peoplesoft's products.
</rant>

I don't know or understand all of the stakes involved in the acquisition or lawsuit, but I have this to say: I can only hope that Peoplesoft cleans up its act (read: HTML output). I don't like having to use other people's computers when Firefox doesn't know how to deal the poor output.

And for free
Settlers Of Catan - Beta

Right here

Get some boom/headset mics for you and your SO and fire up one of the free voice engines, like TeamSpeak or Roger Wilco for voice chat (in or out of games). I've used TeamSpeak with excellent results while playing Unreal Tournament and other games, as well as just for conversing with distant family members on a semi-regular basis. (Free is good!)

For gaming, you have a chuckwagon full of choices. Unreal Tournament, Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy and Need for Speed: Underground top my recent list of multi-player games for raw fun and enjoyment with minimal commitment level (and I sense a commitment issue from the OP anyway!). Then of course, there's the obligatory mentions of The Sims, Everquest, Age of Mythology and Civilization III (find your own URLs for those), if you're into that kind of gaming (these require a higher commitment level).

If you two are more cerebral in your gaming, go hunt down a board game called Settlers of Catan and its offspring (Seafarers of Catan, et. al.) and play that with some friends next time you two are together. Once you get hooked on the board game -- and you will -- start playing it online. There's a nefarious, somewhat-underground (not after /. gets wind of it!) online client called Sea3D that works pretty darn well (Win32 only, sorry -- but if this is a problem, use the Java client instead), and is terribly enjoyable for raw strategy and board game fun, although it can sometimes be difficult to get players to join hosted games (there doesn't seem to be a LARGE community of Sea3D users yet). If you host your own games and have people you know join in, this is a non-issue.

If you're side-stepping the guy-girl conversation thing, your best bet is probably one of the action games, like Unreal and its similar-engine spawn (anything based off the Quake2 or Quake3 engines). There's usually so much going on in a DeathMatch or Team DeathMatch, there isn't much time for deep chit-chat, but you can both probably come out feeling like you had a onversation.

[Note to Guys: this probably isn't going to lead to a long-term, deep relationship, mind you, but will suffice for temporary distance relationships. Chicks don't generally like games, and especially don't like the KINDS of games we guys like, so YMMV. Board games and strategy type stuff, though, are generally universally enjoyable, which is why I mentioned Catan (this is the original German site).]

Good luck!!

After all the work that our IT department has done to try and inform people, the student population is still ignorant of simple virus-protection techniques.

;) With the exception of myself, of course: I run Gentoo Linux. ;)

After all the work that our IT department has done to try and inform people, the student population is still ignorant of simple virus-protection techniques.

;) With the exception of myself, of course: I run Gentoo Linux. ;)

After all the work that our IT department has done to try and inform people, the student population is still ignorant of simple virus-protection techniques.

;) With the exception of myself, of course: I run Gentoo Linux. ;)

• Lunar Orbiter camera info from the Lunar Orbiter mission history
• Online Photographic Atlas of the Moon contains scans of the hand-mosaicked frames originally published in the original NASA Lunar Orbiter Photographic Atlas of the Moon by Bowker and Hughes
• Another site with scanned Lunar Orbier frames
• Lunar Orbiter Digitization Project is a project to scan the films and digitally mosaic the frames to get rid of striping and other blemishes and create a global lunar mosaic

If the virus is nothing but the DNA and a protein coating around it, why are the people wanting it to be live?

Am I missing something? What am I missing?

As a card-carrying virologist let me give you a run down on the information you're missing. If you don't consider the type of nucleic acid (RNA or DNA), there are two types of viruses that infect mammalian cells - enveloped and non-enveloped. Enveloped viruses (such as smallpox) have an outer lipid bilayer (the envelope) that is studded with glycoproteins that need to bind specific molecules on the surface of mammalian cells to permit fusion between the viral envelope and the cell membrane. Fusion allows the virus' nucleic acid to enter the cell. The viral envelope is very fragile, and breaks down rapidly when dried. When the envelope breaks down, it spills the contents of the virus out -- i.e. the nucleic acid, which in the absence of the envelope doesn't have a means to specifically enter a cell. This is one reason why wiping surfaces with 100% ethanol (a dehydrating agent) is quite effective against enveloped viruses like HIV.

Even viruses that are not enveloped have protein coats that directly interact with cell surface molecules that act as receptors to mediate the entry of these viruses into cells. The proteins that make up these coats also denature (lose their proper shape) with time, although this is typically a slower process.

Finally, how stable is the viral nucleic acid? Viral nucleic acids are typically not present as naked RNA or DNA, but in a complex of DNA or RNA with proteins that coat them. These coated nucleic acids are quite stable. Nucleic acid from DNA viruses (like smallpox) is likely to be more stable than nucleic acid from RNA viruses, and I'm guessing that they should be able to do phylogenetic studies on the strain of smallpox present in those scabs after amplifying recovered DNA by PCR.

BTW, after many years of Slashdot lurking, a wee bit of horn tooting. My lab works on how the genome of EBV latches on to human chromosomes. Here's a pretty picture from our work that was on the cover of the Journal of Virology last month.

This doesn't really seem like a good application for ion engines. They are designed more for long distance deep space travel as they build speed very slowly.

This device will probably have more conventional thruster units that allow for high thrust and greater manueverability - especially if trying to catch objects that are no longer in orbit.

Here is a comparison of space engine capabilities: Engine Comparisons.

Here's a story and photo of a McCafe. I'd never heard of that before.

If I've understood the article, once the chip is in, it's impossible to adjust the delivery schedule, which depends on the rate at which the coating dissolves.

One thing that really worries me is that the chip can't be reloaded. The patient needs to have the chip replaced regularly. Isn't each replacement a minor surgery? I know about the difficulty of getting people to follow a regimen, but a recurring minor surgery seems a steep price to pay in exchange. If they could manage a chip that could be reloaded with an injection, that would be better.

the next logical steps are chips that release medicines based on the detection of biological markers

There is a technology which could make this feasible. It checks the blood for the presence of (potentially hundreds of) different DNA/RNA sequences simultaneously, which information is diagnostically rich. If deployed clinically in a small blood-testing gadget, this could dramatically reduce health care costs and catch a lot of missed diagnoses, so I'm wishing these guys good luck.

I pretty sure that this guy has heard of Settlers. He's doing his doctoral thesis on the AI involved to play it. My girlfriend and her friends are positively addicted to it.

I'll see your lame link and raise you the truth.

Truth? The link you provided doesn't include any more truth than the Wired story, just that he plead guilty, instead of continuing to be held indefinitely against his will.

You're aware that a confession doesn't necessarily mean that the person is guilty, right? (And don't think that this doesn't happen in the US.

"limited" access is not the same as "no access,"

So, it's OK to violate someone's constitutional rights, as long as it's only a little bit, right?

Northwestern University has a program called NetReg, where new users must register their mac
address with the university to get online (the whole thing is automatic):
NetReg FAQ

NetReg Screenshots

They use all managed switches and Cisco IDS their routers, so when a user trips the IDS, their port
is automatically turned off and the student is called using their information in NetReg.

From their site:
Technical Questions
How does NetReg work?
A user starts his/her computer on a NetReg network and uses DHCP to obtain an IP address.

The NetReg DHCP server receives the configuration request and checks to see if the MAC address in the DHCP packet is associated with a NetID.

If the MAC address is not associated with a NetID, the DHCP server replies to the request with an address from a small range of IP addresses on the network that are used by unregistered machines.

The network infrastructure is configured to force users with IP addresses in the unregistered range to talk only to the NetReg server.

When the user opens a browser window, regardless of what server he or she is trying to reach, that person is redirected to the NetReg server and prompted to register.

The user registers by typing in his/her NetID and password. At this point, the system can get additional information such as the type of operating system and Web browser being used. This information is exported to an external database.

After authenticating with a NetID at the NetReg server, the user is prompted to restart his/her computer. (Steps 1 and 2 above are repeated.)

If the MAC address is associated with a NetID, the DHCP server replies to the request with an address from a large range of addresses on the network that are used by registered machines.

The network infrastructure is configured to allow unimpeded network access for computers with addresses in the registered address range.

Northwestern University has a program called NetReg, where new users must register their mac
address with the university to get online (the whole thing is automatic):
NetReg FAQ

NetReg Screenshots

They use all managed switches and Cisco IDS their routers, so when a user trips the IDS, their port
is automatically turned off and the student is called using their information in NetReg.

From their site:
Technical Questions
How does NetReg work?
A user starts his/her computer on a NetReg network and uses DHCP to obtain an IP address.

The NetReg DHCP server receives the configuration request and checks to see if the MAC address in the DHCP packet is associated with a NetID.

If the MAC address is not associated with a NetID, the DHCP server replies to the request with an address from a small range of IP addresses on the network that are used by unregistered machines.

The network infrastructure is configured to force users with IP addresses in the unregistered range to talk only to the NetReg server.

When the user opens a browser window, regardless of what server he or she is trying to reach, that person is redirected to the NetReg server and prompted to register.

The user registers by typing in his/her NetID and password. At this point, the system can get additional information such as the type of operating system and Web browser being used. This information is exported to an external database.

After authenticating with a NetID at the NetReg server, the user is prompted to restart his/her computer. (Steps 1 and 2 above are repeated.)

If the MAC address is associated with a NetID, the DHCP server replies to the request with an address from a large range of addresses on the network that are used by registered machines.

The network infrastructure is configured to allow unimpeded network access for computers with addresses in the registered address range.

Then again, that 50 number for Mac systems is low if you count historical viruses that would no longer work on modern Mac systems

Depends on how you count them. There were probably less than 20 virus strains targeted specifically at the MacOS. There were also hundreds of MSWord macro viruses which could also do considerable damage (at least one of which was cross-platform.)

Back in 1998, John Norstad's Disinfectant (the best of the breed of AV for the Mac, and free!) checked for about 15 or so signatures. With the advent of MSWORD marco virus, updates to Disinfectant were discontinued. After that, I think (till the switchover to OSX) there were 2 (3?) new ones (non-MSWord macro).

I have a floppy somewhere that incarcerates 8 or 10 of those nasties that came my way (academic curiosity!)

cheers- raga

"He is currently working on a variety of research topics in telecommunications and regulation stimulated by having spent the 1998-99 academic year in Washington serving as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission.

One of the key players in the persuading the FCC to let AOLIM be kept is William P. Rogerson, former FCC chair and economist at Northwestern. I couldn't find his paper but the dissenting opinions of Gerald R. Faulhaber and David J. Farber; both UPenn Econmics professors give a great opinion on why AOL has been behaving badlly (All gentlemen have held high ranking positions on the FCC). Its in PDF but their criticisms of Rogerson's draft are striking,

"AOL Time Warner's strategic behavior has not changed, and that is perhaps the most compelling evidence that they believe they can eventually tip the market by refusing to interoperate. Such strategic behavior only makes sense if the market leader expects the market to tip in its favor; otherwise, interoperation is their best strategy. But the Petition and the Affidavit are strangely and tellingly silent on this key piece of evidence.

We also note that AOL Time Warner failed to exploit its newly acquired cable assets to deploy an AOL Broadband service. Since the firm had no Broadband service, it had little reason to care about advanced IM services such as two-way video that are not feasible on dial-up connections. However, AOL Time Warner has just recently begun marketing AOL Broadband, apparently now trying to capitalize on its cable assets. It should not come as a surprise that as AOL Time Warner rolls out its new broadband offering, it wishes to be relieved of the requirement to interoperate if it offers an IM-based high-speed service. Their behavior suggests that they may well have such a service ready to roll out soon as a feature of their AOL Broadband, and wish to keep their network effects proprietary. In fact, it is precisely this case that the Merger Order anticipated when it imposed the IM condition.

We urge the FCC to proceed cautiously. While conditions have evolved since the Merger Order that suggest network effects and tipping are not as urgent today, other evidence suggests that it is perhaps even more urgent. The FCC needs to recall that AOL Time Warner has in its own hands the ability to offer advanced IM-based highspeed services without let or hindrance: it need only interoperate with its competitors, as it promised the world it would do two years ago, to the benefit of all customers."

When I received one box back from servicing today, a botched update completed itself upon booting, and a warning came up that a particular video driver file may be compromising the OS's security, did I want to fix and use, not use, or just use it? Nice. All I have to do is run software update. I want more of that caution built in, but as things stand, keep it up Cupertino.

From the GDC Pictures link:


"*This game uses only the right analog joystick for control."


If you're gonna make a game you can play with one hand, put some naked chicks in it for chrissake!

I'm glad to hear that programming is a brain-dead job. That makes my college courses and job that much easier - apparently I can stop working my ass off to write good, efficient programs which people can actually use and start writing useless perl scripts like everyone else, no? Thank you for successfully insulting every decent programmer out there.
Oh, and have you ever really looked at a real algorithm? They are mathematics, pure and simple. Mathematics has everything to do with programming. Case in point: Dijkstra's Algorithm. Not one of the really heavy math ones, granted, but in view of the topic I think it's appropriate.

At NU the IT department has deployed hotspots at a variety of locations. The campus cafe, parts of the student center, certain locations in the dorms, libraries, as well as other locations provide wireless access.

WEP is not used to secure the network. Instead they're using VPN to provide authentication as well as secure/encrypted connections. Nothing beyond the VPN server and other clients of the AP are accessible without connecting to VPN. As an added benefit VPN allows off-campus users to use the NU mail relays, and other things that are restricted the university subnets.

Check it out:

http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/wireless/

http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/vpn/

At NU the IT department has deployed hotspots at a variety of locations. The campus cafe, parts of the student center, certain locations in the dorms, libraries, as well as other locations provide wireless access.

WEP is not used to secure the network. Instead they're using VPN to provide authentication as well as secure/encrypted connections. Nothing beyond the VPN server and other clients of the AP are accessible without connecting to VPN. As an added benefit VPN allows off-campus users to use the NU mail relays, and other things that are restricted the university subnets.

Check it out:

http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/wireless/

http://www.tss.northwestern.edu/vpn/

Another entry into programming is creating web pages, by tweaking them with JavaScript, and eventually CGI scripts. Really anything that allows tweaking is good, such as tweaking Mozilla or the computer desktop. Programming is about tweaking the world.

Once they feel ready to transition to a full programming language (Java, C++, etc.), there are ways to ramp up to that too. JavaScript is a great way to learn object-oriented concepts. Learning game programming really motivates kids and they learn about 3D graphics too (Nehe and GameTutorials). For building real desktop applications, NetBeans and the free JBuilder edition let you visually design java user interfaces, but something like Thinlets simplifies java development greatly (and introduces you to XML, see also other XUL-based development tools). Of course there are thousands of resources out there for learning java, see Sun's New to Java center.

Lastly, I think kids should keep a blog or a journal somewhere. If you have webspace, set them up a MovableType blog and let them tweak everything they want (adding commenting, shoutboxes, javascript goodies, etc.).

Almost the entire math department (i.e., the 4th floor of a massive building called Tech) uses GNU/Linux with Gnome for their research projects and simulations. Down on the ground floor, at least one lab is loaded up with GNU/Linux and IceWM (see Intro to EE lab instructions under the "Hardware" section), because they needed real-time responses while running some simulations and such. It's heartening to see my university using OSS.

-- Kurt

Almost the entire math department (i.e., the 4th floor of a massive building called Tech) uses GNU/Linux with Gnome for their research projects and simulations. Down on the ground floor, at least one lab is loaded up with GNU/Linux and IceWM (see Intro to EE lab instructions under the "Hardware" section), because they needed real-time responses while running some simulations and such. It's heartening to see my university using OSS.

-- Kurt

Didn't realize these guys were both here at NU. Based on the directory info Daniel is a visiting scholar in the WCAS (Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences), and Mark is a professor in the same department. I wonder why they're not part of the Materials Science & Engineering department (which I'm an undergrad, studying under).

The new nanofabrication center is sweet.

Capcom has been sitting on the PS2 version of Catan for a while now -- I wonder if they're holding it back due to the lack of installed network adaptors? Trying to figure out how to price it? Trying to figure out how to market it? Not yet bothered to translate it from the Japanese version?

There's been almost no word on this one period -- I even wrote Capcom to find out what's up and they told me they couldn't tell me anything. Guess I'll have to stick to playing the Java version for now...

Some universities try to prevent network users from adding routers and wireless APs. Northwestern, for example, has policy to that effect.

The same would go for corporations - I can easily see why a corporation would want to prevent its employees from adding WAPs and routers.

its amazing that AOL is circumventing the FCC rules, I was pretty disapointed when AOL IM protocol wasn't forced open during the merger but this is ridiculous. To brashlly declare it doesnt hold a dominant control over IM, have they forgotten about AOL IM & ICQ???

News.com article
"The petition argues that AOL's IM services, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ, face more competition from Microsoft and Yahoo, both of which have launched video conferencing features on their respective IM clients. The petition also disputes the order's original argument that AOL's dominance would increase given the lack of interoperability, now that MSN and Yahoo have amassed millions of users as well.

"There is no longer any plausible reason to conclude either that AOL is dominant or that the market is in danger of 'tipping' to AOL," said Northwestern University professor William P. Rogerson, who provided an affidavit on behalf of AOL Time Warner. "

also alarming, William P. Rogerson is the Chief Economist of the FCC

Of course, none of the apps people have mentioned here are particularly pedagogical. The best listed are collaborative discussion systems. Big whoop. So's Slashdot, and we're not learning much here.

There are, however, many applications built for learners. They just all happen to focus on teaching a small number of specific ideas. Good examples are World Watcher for teaching climatology and SimCalc for teaching Calculus to middle schoolers.

Writing small applications for teaching in a limited domain is just not sexy enough to get headlines or grants.

:w

Still, though, signifigantly less fuel.

-T

I hadn't heard of that either.

Interesting applications... here, and here.

There are better places to go in Chicagoland if you're interested in technology history. Like the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where the first web browser (Mosaic) was developed. Or the University of Chicago, the site of the Manhattan Project, where the first atomic pile was developed and the first artificial nuclear chain reaction occurred. Or the Fermi national accelerator laboratory. Or the Argonne national laboratory. Or the Northwestern University Institute for Nanotechnology. Or the Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Internet Research. The first sandwich transistor was also designed here, while William Shockley was in town for New Year's Eve, 1947/8.

Also, the MoSaI is a damn sight more than $9, especially now that they encourage you to buy "city passes", which are a combined ticket for the MoSaI, the Field museum, the Shedd aquarium, the Adler planetarium, the Art Institute, the Historical Society, and probably a whole fucking slew of other things.

...because it doesn't use tabbed palettes. Those were introduced in Flash 5, and replaced in MX by a windowish-docking system. I would wager that Macromedia's decision to change the interface in MX was based far more on the lawsuit than on user feedback.

Adobe is seeking an injunction preventing Macromedia from selling "the infringing software" - which is, like I just said, Flash 5. Notice that Macromedia released Flash MX within the last month, and are now going to be actively phasing out their Flash 5 product and pushing MX instead. Is this good timing just a coincidence? You tell me. So what I'm wondering is what Adobe could possibly do to further harm the Flash product line (besides the $2.8mil in damages, of course).

The original Legend of Zelda in Flash MX: a prototype

http://www.chem.northwestern.edu/~lambert/index.ht ml

From the Engineering Analysis 3 homework page

"Collaboration is encouraged. Groups of 2 or 3 are best. Collaboration is encouraged only to the extent that it is useful in furthering your understanding. Please take this limitation seriously. In any case write up the problems independently and make sure you could do each problem alone by the time you are done."

Working with other students, I find rather beneficial, so long as you aren't the lagging one just writing stuff down..

Here's a question for you in order to help answer your problem. How exactly do you intend to use Flash? Because as much as I love Flash and spend lots of time coding silly fun things, it's not the be-all end-all development tool for web content or web-based training. It is very strong in interactivity, vector graphics, and recently scripting, but every release before Flash MX is incredibly poor at displaying and manipulating text.

So if you at all intend to display large amounts of text (and since this project is a learning tool I am assuming that you are) you might be better off not using Flash at all - especially if money is a concern. Good ol' fashioned HTML will always be easier to create and run faster than any kind of in-Flash text manipulation (Alternatively, if you have interactivity requirements that you'd like to use Flash for, like a quiz, you can always keep the main text HTML and embed individual Flash movies into the page for the interactivity). Now, I really do think that MX is making leaps and bounds in this area, but you said yourself that the price is very high - and I agree with you. Others have suggested the educational version (which is ~$99) and I would also recommend that.

Now I might be reading too much into your question, but you said that "We'd really like to use Flash as our main language." Very few people ever refer to Flash as a "language" (it's mostly seen as an animation tool), and fewer of them would post your question to Slashdot (you might want to try the Flash message boards on were-here or flashkit). So I'm assuming that you or the people on the project have technical experience and are coming from the prospective of programmers. In this case, you might want to consider doing at least some parts in Java. You don't have to pay anything, there's plenty of free tools out there, it can do interactivity, and the download requirement isn't going to be a whole lot larger than the Flash MX player (though that would depend on which version you'd use). The development time would almost certainly be a lot higher, but again that depends on the specific requirements of the project.

In any case, good luck and if you do end up delving into some serious Flash programming, I have a bunch of good links to advanced Flash actionscripting resources off my little university page.

I was shut down at Northwestern for running NAT in my room - but wasn't even told. The policy at the time was to let the students figure it out on their own that the port was shut off, and not simply not working. They've since changed that policy, but it's still "against the rules" to run more than one system in the room.