I'm at a university in DC and they are also talking about outsourcing student's mail either to Yahoo or Google. They're starting the trials soon and there are a number of good reasons for it. Currently students are limited to 250 MB of mail which can be a problem when you're sending papers back and forth to your group paper. Also, they are currently using Lotus Notes webmail and it's horrible to use on the web, regularly failing and being generally backward in its use. Webmail clients like the new Yahoo client would be a fantastic improvement from what we have now.
Reason for the university to do it. I've talked with the folks running this and there are a bunch. 1) It's much cheaper to outsource your email than to run your own servers. 2) Re-purposing email servers to all those new services that you'd love to offer...like perhaps a library of recordings of lectures. 3) Long term relationships - While current student's email would be ad-free, the university could allow people to keep their school email accounts forever as long as they went ad-supported after graduation. That has a lot of benefits for the school community and may help them improve donations.
Personally I'm going to see if I can get in on the trial of this. I'd love to keep my email address from the university for a while, especially while I'm looking for a job after I graduate.
A lot of folks have talked about jobs and public life. Perfectly good stuff, having a public life on the internet. But the internet is also an important forum for our "private" lives. The places where we connect with other people in our imperfect ways, where we are vulnerable and confused. People here will go on and on about keeping things locked behind passwords and such, but that is the antithesis of trying to reach out and find people and know something about them.
In a world where many people feel isolated, it seems like a failure to say that you can either find community or a job, but you can't have both. I think employers need to understand this and either not search, or ask for web references just like they ask for other references.
Back in 1995, I UPS ground shipped my computer and stereo from Illinois to Colorado. I shipped everything in their original shipping packaging. This doesn't seem to have helped because both arrived completely useless. UPS cracked the motherboard and the laser in my CD player was knocked completely out of alignment. I had insurance but I had to hound UPS for weeks until I found a director's phone number and started calling him every day until I had a check in my mailbox.
It was over a month until they finally had everything taken care of.
My advice: Takes the drives out of any boxes that you're shipping. At least your data won't get destroyed when they ruin your electronics.
A few years ago I spent a lot of time on irc and made a bunch of good friends. So on my way back home from college one summer I figured that it would be cool to make a side trip and say hello. She and I talked about it for a while and it ended up happening.
OH BOY!
Once I got there, it turned into a total nightmare. Her husband totally freaked out and spent most of the weekend driving me around, trying to figure out how to keep my friend from leaving him. The weekend ended with him putting his hand through a glass table-top during an argument.
I got sick of how my desktop looked a few years ago. So I cut out a pattern from posterboard and took the case out onto the driveway. A litte spray paint and I now have two giant smiley faces on the old box. Definately personalized. I'm thinking of doing the next one in Flexstone, a paint that ends up looking like rocks surprisingly enough. Suggestions: What you can't remove, tape over. Definately use a clear coat. They're easier to clean and won't get damaged as quickly. And finally, don't get stuck using spray paint, anything that you can affix to the case can make it cool looking, remember those macaroni sculptures you made as a kid.
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I'm at a university in DC and they are also talking about outsourcing student's mail either to Yahoo or Google. They're starting the trials soon and there are a number of good reasons for it. Currently students are limited to 250 MB of mail which can be a problem when you're sending papers back and forth to your group paper. Also, they are currently using Lotus Notes webmail and it's horrible to use on the web, regularly failing and being generally backward in its use. Webmail clients like the new Yahoo client would be a fantastic improvement from what we have now.
Reason for the university to do it. I've talked with the folks running this and there are a bunch. 1) It's much cheaper to outsource your email than to run your own servers. 2) Re-purposing email servers to all those new services that you'd love to offer...like perhaps a library of recordings of lectures. 3) Long term relationships - While current student's email would be ad-free, the university could allow people to keep their school email accounts forever as long as they went ad-supported after graduation. That has a lot of benefits for the school community and may help them improve donations.
Personally I'm going to see if I can get in on the trial of this. I'd love to keep my email address from the university for a while, especially while I'm looking for a job after I graduate.
A lot of folks have talked about jobs and public life. Perfectly good stuff, having a public life on the internet. But the internet is also an important forum for our "private" lives. The places where we connect with other people in our imperfect ways, where we are vulnerable and confused. People here will go on and on about keeping things locked behind passwords and such, but that is the antithesis of trying to reach out and find people and know something about them.
In a world where many people feel isolated, it seems like a failure to say that you can either find community or a job, but you can't have both. I think employers need to understand this and either not search, or ask for web references just like they ask for other references.
Back in 1995, I UPS ground shipped my computer and stereo from Illinois to Colorado. I shipped everything in their original shipping packaging. This doesn't seem to have helped because both arrived completely useless. UPS cracked the motherboard and the laser in my CD player was knocked completely out of alignment. I had insurance but I had to hound UPS for weeks until I found a director's phone number and started calling him every day until I had a check in my mailbox.
It was over a month until they finally had everything taken care of.
My advice: Takes the drives out of any boxes that you're shipping. At least your data won't get destroyed when they ruin your electronics.
A few years ago I spent a lot of time on irc and made a bunch of good friends. So on my way back home from college one summer I figured that it would be cool to make a side trip and say hello. She and I talked about it for a while and it ended up happening.
OH BOY!
Once I got there, it turned into a total nightmare. Her husband totally freaked out and spent most of the weekend driving me around, trying to figure out how to keep my friend from leaving him. The weekend ended with him putting his hand through a glass table-top during an argument.
Watch out for yourself.
Grissom's wife opposed the recovery and said that the capsule belongs on the bottom of the ocean.
I got sick of how my desktop looked a few years ago. So I cut out a pattern from posterboard and took the case out onto the driveway. A litte spray paint and I now have two giant smiley faces on the old box. Definately personalized. I'm thinking of doing the next one in Flexstone, a paint that ends up looking like rocks surprisingly enough.
Suggestions: What you can't remove, tape over. Definately use a clear coat. They're easier to clean and won't get damaged as quickly. And finally, don't get stuck using spray paint, anything that you can affix to the case can make it cool looking, remember those macaroni sculptures you made as a kid.