How they're made public is irrelevant. If you don't liek it - get the law changed to make arrests NOT part of the public recored - but nobody will want that will they?
But it does matter how accurately they portray those public records. That is, if they are found to not make it clear that those are only arrest records, not convictions, they set themselves up for the same liability that journalists avoid by the usage of "suspect", "alleged", and "accused." If they are considered to be misrepresenting or obscuring the fact those depicted people were only arrested, not convicted, they risk a libel suit.
It also complicates matters if an arrest was made in bad faith, or any mistakes or wrong-doings. If charges are not pressed, or the court dismisses charges due to lack of evidence or other reasons, the accused may be able to seek compensation for both the bad arrest, and the bad publicity the police activity generated for the accused.
I know a someone who was arrested for DUI, but it was thrown out of court due to the total lack of evidence (no evidence they operated any vehicle that night). That person could of had their professional life ruined by such police's active attempt to "name and shame" people who was never found guilty of a crime. Frankly that smacks of police exceeding their authority and mandate, as if the police think they are judge and jury as well, and that they would never accuse an innocent person incorrectly. The history in reality shows otherwise. That why justice has a due process.
The situation may also become marginal or not worth the effort for foreigners to accept the cash, if they need to hire a tax lawyer to deal with foreign income, as most countries don't consider foreign prizes ("windfall") or "bounties" as tax-free (or zero-rate tax rate) income.
Let alone you live / work in a country that is not trusting of US Government and US organizations (think: Cuba, China, Philippines, Latin America), may consider it "proof" of being a spy. Why else would some foreign US non-profit organization group just "give" you money, you capitalist whore?
The military group (Communications and Electronics Branch) is based in Kingston, and is sometimes called the forth element (in addition to Navy, Army, Air Force) as they are a combined cross-element branch, while the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), which is the civilian SIGINT group, is based in Ottawa (Leitrim near airport). While they are civilian, often military personnel serve within the CSE.
I'm not sure if they C&E Branch are now the CF Joint Signal Regiment (CFJSR), which falls under Canadian Operational Support Command (CANOSCOM) or not.
An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose. (7) Very little development will be required. It will use off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.
Too bad the Americans didn't invent the SLOWPOKE, which while small, has never had a recorded incident as far as I am aware of, in its 40+ year history.
Damn Canadians. Luckily the Canadian Prime Minister and his political party has made efforts to halt Canadian nuclear efforts (all of which was and is non-weapons related) in an effort to preserve the importance of the Alberta tar sands. (the PC name is "oil sands").
What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices?
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees? And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
Actually from a financial perspective Apple should monitor the difference between the raw material costs and the contract price they pay. Generally if a company is willing to cheat and screw one party, they are very willing to do to other parties, namely Apple Inc., as well. Same reason I don't buy my goods from thieves, if they are clearly willing to be crooked once, they are willing to cheat or steal from me too.
Plus just think of the bad press from an iPhone or iPad packaged with a body part of a suicide victim. Now just imagine that you were planning on getting it for your daughter as a birthday gift. People won't care if it was from a Foxxconn or Apple employee once the media covers the story.
Considering most early personal computers did include schematics, and various appendixes of technical information for expansion, including the original IBM PC XT. ( ref 1, IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, ref 2).
Or any high speed digital signals in real-life...Howard Johnson's SigCon company and classic EE book on signal integrity. Hint: the solutions are typically not digital.
That's a great list, I have every one of those and use them often, but it has a very steep starting point.
Books like Gettng Started in Electronics by Forrest Mimms, Practical Electronics for Inventors, Tab Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics (2000) by Randy Slone, Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (5th ed.) by Stan Gibilisco, Grob's Basic Electronics by Mitchel E. Schultz, or MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery by Charles Platt are more suitable first book for a starting point.
Also ARRL's Ward Silver has a great little hands-on book of lessons, ARRL's Hands-On Radio Experiments that is cheap ($20 US) and a great 2nd book. (Electrical Engineering 101 2nd. ed by Darren Ashby is another great 2nd book, oriented to new EE students / grads).
Make-zine and their blog are full of interesting hobbyist oriented stuff for beginners, and cool projects to inspire you to learn more.
For licensed amateur radio operators, the QRP community and their own QRPedia is a area of kit-building and home-made of simple radio transmitters and receivers that can be simple to get started, and fun to operate (as the solar cycle improves).
All About Circuits is partial (unfinished) online basic electricity and electronics textbook.
The more hobbyist friendly big parts distributors in US are Jameco, Digikey, and Mouser. Anyone interested should request a catalog from them. They also ship to Canada, and Digikey does operate in Europe, but Farnell is generally better to deal with. G3SEK's Technical Topics website includes a list of UK electronics suppliers that deal with individuals (rather than businesses-only).
(particularly when my agency GIVES THEM GAS MONEY)
Geez, you need to act like a competent bureaucracy and add enough paperwork and dead-ends that the "worthless" (i.e. losers / deadbeats) are too lazy to finish a requisition for gas money, let alone be approved and actual receive such moneies. And more obscure usage of language, and vocabulary. plain-English is a government anti-Pattern.
(And I do know we need social / human services agencies for those who are trying to escape / improve. The difficult part is finding the balance to get to the money & support to those who need it.)
The CIO should be balancing the cost efficiencies, and "consistent user experience" of standardization. That said, department standardization or unrestricted defaulting to a single vendor generally may run afoul of Single / Sole Sourcing rules in government procurement policies. Contacts or formal "deals" may exist in some cases, but not as offer as people expect.
Blatant abuse can be reported to the auditors of the approximate level of government (state/ province, federal, etc.). But first, you'll need to know the general rules applicable in your case.
Successful Skunkworks style project with your immediate supervisor's approval (convince them it will a) work, b) make them look good) is the best way to introduce chance. But making it a obvious fight is a losing approach. Try the stepping stones approach, of Open Source / Free Software on Windows, before trying to encourage a wholesale conversion. Servers are about the only exception I've seen work.
And license fees are moot - they are often seen as a "computer tax" and just the cost of doing business, they are perceived as a small cost in the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) which includes hardware lifecycling, training, and helpdesk / support. Having an adequate pool of trained or "qualified" staff in the public service can be seen meaning whatever is "popular" and "common" ("industry standard"), at low wages compared to private sector.
This reminds of a series of books Robert Glass published in the 1980s, that I read as a kid. It served as a fun way to learn a bit of computing history, and gain experiences in the reading RISKS digest (comp.risks) sense.
I think the biggest difference can be in the motivations. Many of the self-taught programmers I've met or worked with their legacy (code), enjoy what they are doing. The dot-com boom increased the numbers of both CS post-secondary enrollment as well as the "self-professed" programmers who were merely motivated by the money. The "self-professed" tend to be more transparent about it, so are quicker to be weeded out, I suspect.
coming out of school often still have a horrible worth ethic
It's opinion, but I conjecture that it may have more to do with maturity than knowledge or experience. For many it isn't until they are out of college before they have to make their own decisions, and so are facing a large amount of growing up at the same time.
In my experience the biggest problems are caused by self-taught programmers who lack the humility to realize that computer science and computing a large field, in which they are not domain experts of all of it. Seriously, I'm saying this not to be an insult, but as a plea for self-taught programmers to take their blinders off, and admit to themselves there is a lot of knowledge about computer science and computing (or IT), which has a rich if relatively short history. The ones who get pass the chip-on-their-shoulder defense often become very good to great programmers. The ones who don't tend to become isolated, confrontational, unable to handle constructive feedback or criticism, and tend to be poor team players.
The other big weakness they can have, is they seem more apt to have problem with NIH-syndrome (not invented here). Anything they didn't do or create is crap. Again this seems to be a self-defense mechanism gone astray.
If these two psychological factors are dealt with, the technical knowledge gaps are in comparison trivial to deal with.
In your case, exposure to higher education including post secondary mathematics, helps with the building the experience of abstract thinking which is a excellent trait or training for programmers, to deal with programming in both the concrete and abstract terms.
A programmer who knows and understands the fundamentals of computer science, including data structures, algorithms, number systems, boolean logic, at least a basic understanding of computer architecture in my experience tends to be more flexible and adaptable to change in computing / IT in general as well as able to less stressful to change development environments including languages. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Structured Computer Organization, and Introduction to Algorithms are excellent resources for any self-taught programmer looking to fill gaps in the knowledge.
Also professional computing / IT society memberships might be worth considering (especially if your employer will pick up the tab), for example the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society. Both have a bent towards academia, but they largely due to the self-interest of authors in academia to publish (for their own career success), as opposed to a conscience focus away from the "real-world" programming in the trenches.
For any new professional programmer, texts like The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete, Peopleware, and The Mythical Man-Month are strongly recommended reading matieral.
Make it as easy as possible for users to try your software.
Take the time to create and maintain packaging for major Linux and BSD distributions. Or at least make it as easy as possible for someone to maintain a distribution package of the current stable version.
Make it easy to migrate to, and if possible, back out of again, from the popular alternative(s). Such as Import / Export functionality from popular commercial software (if there is any). In other words, as easy as possible for people to try your software.
Improve documentation. Write basic tutorials for with specific instructions for more distributions. Ensure you have a good wiki / FAQ / knowledgebase dealing with installation and usage issues that have been already reported, and keep it up to date with new issues that arise in newer releases. I hate seeing a FAQ for project X that hasn't been updated since the original 0.9 release 3 years ago.
Of course it has to be useful. Preferably better than the other free (either gratis or open-source / libre) alternatives.
Does the usefulness of the web software itself increase with an increased userbase? Look at marketing that deals with the network effect. In general, look at IT marketing, consider what would work with your target userbase, and try to go with that. How much do you know about your userbase? Market research is vital, even on FLOSS projects.
Talk about how open source has saved you money, eliminated licensing headaches, etc etc.
For my employer, the time and effort we save by not having to maintain and audit licenses, yet stay legal, is far more valuable than the license fees savings by using Open Source.
Another means of doing this (sponsoring development) is to directly hire co-op or term contract employment of OSS developers to develop or maintain software that you already use.
Think of Google's Summer of Code on a small scale.
He's reached an agreement with Apress for digital distribution rights making them the only possible channel for distribution. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a default contract for them. Regardless, downloading the Apress version on RapidShare is copyright violation with Apress, regardless of what the author says. There's no question of that.
As the Slashdot blurb states, the author retains copyright of his text, so thus the copyright violations are "against" him, regardless of what the publisher claims. As far as digital distribution, that is a contract (i.e.civil law, not copyright which is often now criminal law in the US) between those two parties. As long as Apress and the author don't break there respective terms as per the agreement (i.e. they don't publish his work without paying him and he doesn't give permission another party to publish his works if an royalty-based exclusive agreement) then it is moot.
All online schools that offer a degree program have to be accredited by the same institutions that accredit physical schools. They all have to follow the same standards. My school, Kaplan University, is accredited by the same organisation as the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan. If the accreditation is good enough for them, should it not be so for Kaplan?
Actually that's not correct. In the US most for-profit schools (online or distance learning) are accredited federally by Distance Education and Training Counci of U.S. Department of Education, which has been criticized as being a lower standard, whereas most traditional post-secondary institutions are regionally accredited, such as the Higher Learning Council, which as you suggest Kaplan is also accredited by. I would suggest while not necessary, if given the choice between two institutions, the one with regionally accreditation may be a preferable if a person has any concerns about transferring credits to other schools, concerns about the perceived "quality" of the degrees (e.g. such as by potential employers), and your own peace of mind about the quality of the educational content and experience. Some online schools have a terrible reputation for next to no availability or interaction between the student and professors, usage of their own "textbooks" of substandard quality, and no customer service after tuition is paid.
The college "life experience" is pretty over-rated if you are already married, have a house, and a career. You have to pick the right tools to get the job done. If the job is to get an degree or learn about a subject, college is a tool to get that done. Who is to say that a physical school is any better at doing that than an online school if job is accomplished?
One thing you are not explicit about is whether you are looking for a degree (i.e. a piece of paper) for a particular work related reason, or an education. A surprising large number of students at various for-profit online schools are not satisfied with their educational experience. At university I knew a number of mature students who had to juggle their lives to go back to school, most even made it to graduation. At the graduation ceremony one friend said she was sorry she missed so much of the potential experience by not being able to spend more time on campus or with her peers. It is the hard to measure or even describe the experiences that are part of the organic education that occurs from being somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, at a place of learning where you can concentrate on learning. I mean from learning advanced biochemistry at the local pub, learning about artistic expression at the town's only cinema where a film society showed weekly art house and independent films, to learning through experience more about project management, public speaking, and team building than any management training seminar could ever hope to cover.
It sounds like you found a decent online program that works for you. I'm glad, and wish you the best of success with it, but as far as I know there will be parts of the post-secondary "educational experience" you will likely miss besides the partying, and that's okay. Best of luck.
As the parent and great-grandparent posters, suggest the traditional education at university is not just the lectures, even ignoring the science labs. It is largely about the overall experience and personal growth.
I spent time with nearly all my professors outside of the classroom, formally or informally, talking both class related matters or about life in general. I had some great peers, in and outside the lecture halls and seminar rooms.
The four years spent at university getting an undergraduate degree was largely a time spent becoming an independent adult. Becoming able to take care of, and think, for myself. I went through a huge amount of emotional and personal growth, I use to joke, and there was more than a germ of truth to it, that I learnt more outside of class than I did in my "formal" part of my education.
And finally one reason I prefer to see students who graduate from a four year university degree, to students who graduate from a two-year diploma from a college during interviews, besides the focus on fundamentals which doesn't become obsolete, is simply that they have completed a four-year commitment of study.
Programmers at Work (1989)
on
Coders At Work
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Another similar book that is no longer in print is the semi-classic, Programmers at Work subtitled Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry, (1986/1989) by Susan Lammers which includes interviews with well-known or pioneer programmers such as Charles Simonyi (Microsoft), Bill Gates, Gary Kildall (Intergalactic Digital Research), Andy Hertzfield (Macintosh Operating System), John Warnock (Postscript) and C. Wayne Ratcliff (dBASE).
The scientific method doesn't require that everyone in the world is able to reproduce your experiments, although it certainly does help.
You do need to include a description of methodology and procedures to re-create any experiments or analysis, it does not require you provide access to raw materials, equipment, the data, or actively assist in others reproducing the results. In practice most non-commercial researchers will provide whatever assistance they can to other bona-fide (non-commercial) researchers, unless there are intellectual property (IP) issues involved.
As you suggest, it is strongly recommended that access to any data-sets used as a basis for the published results are made available, and preferably at modest (i.e. cost-recovery basis, not for profit) or no cost to bona-fide researchers (i.e. have suitable credentials as to be expected to accurately and responsibly interpret the data).
Slashdot Mirror
How they're made public is irrelevant. If you don't liek it - get the law changed to make arrests NOT part of the public recored - but nobody will want that will they?
But it does matter how accurately they portray those public records. That is, if they are found to not make it clear that those are only arrest records, not convictions, they set themselves up for the same liability that journalists avoid by the usage of "suspect", "alleged", and "accused." If they are considered to be misrepresenting or obscuring the fact those depicted people were only arrested, not convicted, they risk a libel suit.
It also complicates matters if an arrest was made in bad faith, or any mistakes or wrong-doings. If charges are not pressed, or the court dismisses charges due to lack of evidence or other reasons, the accused may be able to seek compensation for both the bad arrest, and the bad publicity the police activity generated for the accused.
I know a someone who was arrested for DUI, but it was thrown out of court due to the total lack of evidence (no evidence they operated any vehicle that night). That person could of had their professional life ruined by such police's active attempt to "name and shame" people who was never found guilty of a crime. Frankly that smacks of police exceeding their authority and mandate, as if the police think they are judge and jury as well, and that they would never accuse an innocent person incorrectly. The history in reality shows otherwise. That why justice has a due process.
You might as well provide a link to it,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ga41edXw3A
The situation may also become marginal or not worth the effort for foreigners to accept the cash, if they need to hire a tax lawyer to deal with foreign income, as most countries don't consider foreign prizes ("windfall") or "bounties" as tax-free (or zero-rate tax rate) income.
Let alone you live / work in a country that is not trusting of US Government and US organizations (think: Cuba, China, Philippines, Latin America), may consider it "proof" of being a spy. Why else would some foreign US non-profit organization group just "give" you money, you capitalist whore?
The military group (Communications and Electronics Branch) is based in Kingston, and is sometimes called the forth element (in addition to Navy, Army, Air Force) as they are a combined cross-element branch, while the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), which is the civilian SIGINT group, is based in Ottawa (Leitrim near airport). While they are civilian, often military personnel serve within the CSE.
I'm not sure if they C&E Branch are now the CF Joint Signal Regiment (CFJSR), which falls under Canadian Operational Support Command (CANOSCOM) or not.
Too bad the Americans didn't invent the SLOWPOKE, which while small, has never had a recorded incident as far as I am aware of, in its 40+ year history.
Damn Canadians. Luckily the Canadian Prime Minister and his political party has made efforts to halt Canadian nuclear efforts (all of which was and is non-weapons related) in an effort to preserve the importance of the Alberta tar sands. (the PC name is "oil sands").
What boggles the mind is why can't they pay a few more bucks to the people working in Foxconn(who are jumping off buildings) who actually make these iDevices?
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees? And why do you single out Apple in contrast to the dozens of other huge companies that contract with Foxconn like Microsoft, Logitech, Intel, Cisco, Dell, Nokia, HP, or Sony?
Actually from a financial perspective Apple should monitor the difference between the raw material costs and the contract price they pay. Generally if a company is willing to cheat and screw one party, they are very willing to do to other parties, namely Apple Inc., as well. Same reason I don't buy my goods from thieves, if they are clearly willing to be crooked once, they are willing to cheat or steal from me too.
Plus just think of the bad press from an iPhone or iPad packaged with a body part of a suicide victim. Now just imagine that you were planning on getting it for your daughter as a birthday gift. People won't care if it was from a Foxxconn or Apple employee once the media covers the story.
Considering most early personal computers did include schematics, and various appendixes of technical information for expansion, including the original IBM PC XT.
( ref 1, IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, ref 2).
It's an issue as we (the entire Internet, not Slashdot readers) slowly crawl towards IPv6 adoption over the next century.
Or did you think there was going to be another big switch?
Or any high speed digital signals in real-life...Howard Johnson's SigCon company and classic EE book on signal integrity. Hint: the solutions are typically not digital.
Or ....
Get yourself a best-of-class kit radio from Elecraft - K3 or K2 or one of their other kits. Or a cutting edge Open source High Performance Software Defined Radio from HPSDR and TAPR.
Get yourself a radio kit from Ten-Tec, or MFJ.
Or from Oak Hill Research, or Hendrick's QRP Kits, module kits from W8DIZ who also sells parts, or from various non-profit QRP groups selling kits from time to time, like NorCal QRP Club.
Get yourself a copy of Circuit Cellar or Nuts and Volts from the US, or Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE) and Elektor from Europe or Silicon Chip from Australia.
Heck, you can even get vacuum tube based kits still.
Forget it, just go buy a new chinese made mp3 player!
Wow, +4 Insightful for a parent Troll..
That's a great list, I have every one of those and use them often, but it has a very steep starting point.
Books like Gettng Started in Electronics by Forrest Mimms, Practical Electronics for Inventors, Tab Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics (2000) by Randy Slone, Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics (5th ed.) by Stan Gibilisco, Grob's Basic Electronics by Mitchel E. Schultz, or MAKE: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery by Charles Platt are more suitable first book for a starting point.
Also ARRL's Ward Silver has a great little hands-on book of lessons, ARRL's Hands-On Radio Experiments that is cheap ($20 US) and a great 2nd book. (Electrical Engineering 101 2nd. ed by Darren Ashby is another great 2nd book, oriented to new EE students / grads).
Make-zine and their blog are full of interesting hobbyist oriented stuff for beginners, and cool projects to inspire you to learn more.
For licensed amateur radio operators, the QRP community and their own QRPedia is a area of kit-building and home-made of simple radio transmitters and receivers that can be simple to get started, and fun to operate (as the solar cycle improves).
All About Circuits is partial (unfinished) online basic electricity and electronics textbook.
Fun stores (of many) include Ada Fruit Industries, and SparkFun.
The more hobbyist friendly big parts distributors in US are Jameco, Digikey, and Mouser. Anyone interested should request a catalog from them. They also ship to Canada, and Digikey does operate in Europe, but Farnell is generally better to deal with. G3SEK's Technical Topics website includes a list of UK electronics suppliers that deal with individuals (rather than businesses-only).
Enjoy!
(particularly when my agency GIVES THEM GAS MONEY)
Geez, you need to act like a competent bureaucracy and add enough paperwork and dead-ends that the "worthless" (i.e. losers / deadbeats) are too lazy to finish a requisition for gas money, let alone be approved and actual receive such moneies. And more obscure usage of language, and vocabulary. plain-English is a government anti-Pattern.
(And I do know we need social / human services agencies for those who are trying to escape / improve. The difficult part is finding the balance to get to the money & support to those who need it.)
The CIO should be balancing the cost efficiencies, and "consistent user experience" of standardization. That said, department standardization or unrestricted defaulting to a single vendor generally may run afoul of Single / Sole Sourcing rules in government procurement policies. Contacts or formal "deals" may exist in some cases, but not as offer as people expect.
Blatant abuse can be reported to the auditors of the approximate level of government (state/ province, federal, etc.). But first, you'll need to know the general rules applicable in your case.
Successful Skunkworks style project with your immediate supervisor's approval (convince them it will a) work, b) make them look good) is the best way to introduce chance. But making it a obvious fight is a losing approach. Try the stepping stones approach, of Open Source / Free Software on Windows, before trying to encourage a wholesale conversion. Servers are about the only exception I've seen work.
And license fees are moot - they are often seen as a "computer tax" and just the cost of doing business, they are perceived as a small cost in the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) which includes hardware lifecycling, training, and helpdesk / support. Having an adequate pool of trained or "qualified" staff in the public service can be seen meaning whatever is "popular" and "common" ("industry standard"), at low wages compared to private sector.
So you're not familiar with the Daily Mail (UK), they actively promote the preservation of out dated stereotypes the best they can.
This reminds of a series of books Robert Glass published in the 1980s, that I read as a kid. It served as a fun way to learn a bit of computing history, and gain experiences in the reading RISKS digest (comp.risks) sense.
They are fun, short reads, but learning from other's failures can save you time. :)
I think the biggest difference can be in the motivations. Many of the self-taught programmers I've met or worked with their legacy (code), enjoy what they are doing. The dot-com boom increased the numbers of both CS post-secondary enrollment as well as the "self-professed" programmers who were merely motivated by the money. The "self-professed" tend to be more transparent about it, so are quicker to be weeded out, I suspect.
coming out of school often still have a horrible worth ethic
It's opinion, but I conjecture that it may have more to do with maturity than knowledge or experience. For many it isn't until they are out of college before they have to make their own decisions, and so are facing a large amount of growing up at the same time.
Both can be good, both can be lame.
In my experience the biggest problems are caused by self-taught programmers who lack the humility to realize that computer science and computing a large field, in which they are not domain experts of all of it. Seriously, I'm saying this not to be an insult, but as a plea for self-taught programmers to take their blinders off, and admit to themselves there is a lot of knowledge about computer science and computing (or IT), which has a rich if relatively short history. The ones who get pass the chip-on-their-shoulder defense often become very good to great programmers. The ones who don't tend to become isolated, confrontational, unable to handle constructive feedback or criticism, and tend to be poor team players.
The other big weakness they can have, is they seem more apt to have problem with NIH-syndrome (not invented here). Anything they didn't do or create is crap. Again this seems to be a self-defense mechanism gone astray.
If these two psychological factors are dealt with, the technical knowledge gaps are in comparison trivial to deal with.
In your case, exposure to higher education including post secondary mathematics, helps with the building the experience of abstract thinking which is a excellent trait or training for programmers, to deal with programming in both the concrete and abstract terms.
A programmer who knows and understands the fundamentals of computer science, including data structures, algorithms, number systems, boolean logic, at least a basic understanding of computer architecture in my experience tends to be more flexible and adaptable to change in computing / IT in general as well as able to less stressful to change development environments including languages. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Structured Computer Organization, and Introduction to Algorithms are excellent resources for any self-taught programmer looking to fill gaps in the knowledge.
Also professional computing / IT society memberships might be worth considering (especially if your employer will pick up the tab), for example the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society. Both have a bent towards academia, but they largely due to the self-interest of authors in academia to publish (for their own career success), as opposed to a conscience focus away from the "real-world" programming in the trenches.
For any new professional programmer, texts like The Pragmatic Programmer, Code Complete, Peopleware, and The Mythical Man-Month are strongly recommended reading matieral.
Make it as easy as possible for users to try your software.
Take the time to create and maintain packaging for major Linux and BSD distributions. Or at least make it as easy as possible for someone to maintain a distribution package of the current stable version.
Make it easy to migrate to, and if possible, back out of again, from the popular alternative(s). Such as Import / Export functionality from popular commercial software (if there is any). In other words, as easy as possible for people to try your software.
Improve documentation. Write basic tutorials for with specific instructions for more distributions. Ensure you have a good wiki / FAQ / knowledgebase dealing with installation and usage issues that have been already reported, and keep it up to date with new issues that arise in newer releases. I hate seeing a FAQ for project X that hasn't been updated since the original 0.9 release 3 years ago.
Of course it has to be useful. Preferably better than the other free (either gratis or open-source / libre) alternatives.
Does the usefulness of the web software itself increase with an increased userbase? Look at marketing that deals with the network effect. In general, look at IT marketing, consider what would work with your target userbase, and try to go with that. How much do you know about your userbase? Market research is vital, even on FLOSS projects.
Talk about how open source has saved you money, eliminated licensing headaches, etc etc.
For my employer, the time and effort we save by not having to maintain and audit licenses, yet stay legal, is far more valuable than the license fees savings by using Open Source.
Another means of doing this (sponsoring development) is to directly hire co-op or term contract employment of OSS developers to develop or maintain software that you already use.
Think of Google's Summer of Code on a small scale.
He's reached an agreement with Apress for digital distribution rights making them the only possible channel for distribution. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a default contract for them. Regardless, downloading the Apress version on RapidShare is copyright violation with Apress, regardless of what the author says. There's no question of that.
As the Slashdot blurb states, the author retains copyright of his text, so thus the copyright violations are "against" him, regardless of what the publisher claims. As far as digital distribution, that is a contract (i.e.civil law, not copyright which is often now criminal law in the US) between those two parties. As long as Apress and the author don't break there respective terms as per the agreement (i.e. they don't publish his work without paying him and he doesn't give permission another party to publish his works if an royalty-based exclusive agreement) then it is moot.
All online schools that offer a degree program have to be accredited by the same institutions that accredit physical schools. They all have to follow the same standards. My school, Kaplan University, is accredited by the same organisation as the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan. If the accreditation is good enough for them, should it not be so for Kaplan?
Actually that's not correct. In the US most for-profit schools (online or distance learning) are accredited federally by Distance Education and Training Counci of U.S. Department of Education, which has been criticized as being a lower standard, whereas most traditional post-secondary institutions are regionally accredited, such as the Higher Learning Council, which as you suggest Kaplan is also accredited by. I would suggest while not necessary, if given the choice between two institutions, the one with regionally accreditation may be a preferable if a person has any concerns about transferring credits to other schools, concerns about the perceived "quality" of the degrees (e.g. such as by potential employers), and your own peace of mind about the quality of the educational content and experience. Some online schools have a terrible reputation for next to no availability or interaction between the student and professors, usage of their own "textbooks" of substandard quality, and no customer service after tuition is paid.
The college "life experience" is pretty over-rated if you are already married, have a house, and a career. You have to pick the right tools to get the job done. If the job is to get an degree or learn about a subject, college is a tool to get that done. Who is to say that a physical school is any better at doing that than an online school if job is accomplished?
One thing you are not explicit about is whether you are looking for a degree (i.e. a piece of paper) for a particular work related reason, or an education. A surprising large number of students at various for-profit online schools are not satisfied with their educational experience. At university I knew a number of mature students who had to juggle their lives to go back to school, most even made it to graduation. At the graduation ceremony one friend said she was sorry she missed so much of the potential experience by not being able to spend more time on campus or with her peers. It is the hard to measure or even describe the experiences that are part of the organic education that occurs from being somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, at a place of learning where you can concentrate on learning. I mean from learning advanced biochemistry at the local pub, learning about artistic expression at the town's only cinema where a film society showed weekly art house and independent films, to learning through experience more about project management, public speaking, and team building than any management training seminar could ever hope to cover.
It sounds like you found a decent online program that works for you. I'm glad, and wish you the best of success with it, but as far as I know there will be parts of the post-secondary "educational experience" you will likely miss besides the partying, and that's okay. Best of luck.
As the parent and great-grandparent posters, suggest the traditional education at university is not just the lectures, even ignoring the science labs. It is largely about the overall experience and personal growth.
I spent time with nearly all my professors outside of the classroom, formally or informally, talking both class related matters or about life in general. I had some great peers, in and outside the lecture halls and seminar rooms.
The four years spent at university getting an undergraduate degree was largely a time spent becoming an independent adult. Becoming able to take care of, and think, for myself. I went through a huge amount of emotional and personal growth, I use to joke, and there was more than a germ of truth to it, that I learnt more outside of class than I did in my "formal" part of my education.
And finally one reason I prefer to see students who graduate from a four year university degree, to students who graduate from a two-year diploma from a college during interviews, besides the focus on fundamentals which doesn't become obsolete, is simply that they have completed a four-year commitment of study.
Another similar book that is no longer in print is the semi-classic, Programmers at Work subtitled Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry, (1986 /1989) by Susan Lammers which includes interviews with well-known or pioneer programmers such as Charles Simonyi (Microsoft), Bill Gates, Gary Kildall (Intergalactic Digital Research), Andy Hertzfield (Macintosh Operating System), John Warnock (Postscript) and C. Wayne Ratcliff (dBASE).
The scientific method doesn't require that everyone in the world is able to reproduce your experiments, although it certainly does help.
You do need to include a description of methodology and procedures to re-create any experiments or analysis, it does not require you provide access to raw materials, equipment, the data, or actively assist in others reproducing the results. In practice most non-commercial researchers will provide whatever assistance they can to other bona-fide (non-commercial) researchers, unless there are intellectual property (IP) issues involved.
As you suggest, it is strongly recommended that access to any data-sets used as a basis for the published results are made available, and preferably at modest (i.e. cost-recovery basis, not for profit) or no cost to bona-fide researchers (i.e. have suitable credentials as to be expected to accurately and responsibly interpret the data).