Yep, your version wins, it will be great and it should be coming real soon now.... the only worry is, what meta-information will the system collect about me, and who will it make it available to?
He thinks that everyone who was connected before NN came along was in Silicon Valley. No, we weren't -- and we weren't all at CERN either, and we had the telephone bills to prove it.
Is this limiting his perception of where the Next Big Thing will come from? And is he ignoring the fact that high-bandwith nations already have more opportunity to deliver this sort of thing? Yes, we know about the high number of South Koreans each with their virtual home carefully furnished but it sounds much more about social interaction than VR.
Interesting point about colour. It washed across the home computer scene very fast and very early -- 25 years ago.
As the article says, VR has been around at least as long, and our house has odd bits of VR kit lying around. So why aren't we using it?
Well, the most-used roadmap round here belongs to Grand Theft Auto, and every computer I touch gets a tabbed browser pronto. So we are 3D for some applications. Thinking about it, we had pretty good 3D back in the black-and-white text-adventure games -- including caves to adventure in that could not be mapped in simple 2D.
Are there really lots more possibilities out there where 3D makes sense, but no-one has sold us on it?
So you are saying that to find your broomstick-cutter, you go to the appropriate room and look in the appropriate cupboard? Your storage system took a whole lot longer to construct than mine, and doesn't work any better -- I go to the appropriate sub-directory ("folder" if you are hung up on your real-world analogues), and look in the appropropriate sub-directory inside that.
And it is easier for me to subdivide the garage to provide a workshop than it is for you.
... the price is still $179.99 in the "Special Summer Sale". I am looking forward to getting one for road warrior use, but it looks as though I will have to wait another couple of years at least.
It is not clear if life on Slashdot is intelligent enough to realise that George says things like "I am a human, you are a stupid bot" becuase George is a _learning_ system, and that's what people say to him. (They do of course use adjectives other than "stupid", and his database has to be cleaned up.)
Joan can hold more interesting conversations partly because the writer Ariadne Tampion has sat down for hours a week to talk rationally to her.
Hugh Loebner who runs the competition named after him does unsurprisingly know quite a lot about "The Turing Test", including the fact that Turing described several variations over several papers, not one definitive version. His testing methodolgy has evolved and will presumably continue to do so.
After the award of another bronze Loebner Medal this year there was a panel discussion where the panellists (mostly distinguished people in the field of AI) refused to try to forecast the years when the silver and gold medals might be won.
Yes, in the early days I thought Wikipedia was wonderful and I used to contribute. I have grown tired of the editing and the strange rules. I worked hard on a general-readership-level article on a difficult technical topic, to see it hacked about by the ignorant. I had my addition of explanatory info on a politician's article removed. I came out on the wrong side of a truth vs verification contest (I had the story from his own lips).
I have just found a stub for a topic where I wrote the best reference on the web. I will enjoy writing the article which will be "verified" by my own words...
I guess I still believe in the dream. I certainly do find Wikipedia a useful place to look up many topics. As in so many areas on the web, I just don't see why I should put up with the jerks who get their kicks by being unnecessarily rude to others. (Anyone else an ex-Gutenberg-contributor? I have never had the time and energy to fight a corner in open-source development.)
IANAL but ICUG (I can use Google). Yes, it looks as though across the world breaking this confidentiality is a civil, not a criminal matter. Additionally, in California attorney/client privilege belongs to the client only and not to the lawyer. So the law firm cannot sue the whistleblower over this, only Diebold can! I imagine that hell will freeze over before Diebold start waving those documents around in public. I doubt if they really wanted the felony case either.
California law is actually wider than many on the extent of the attorney/client privilege -- be very careful to check local conditions before telling a lawyer anything incriminating!
Now, if you were 18 today, what kind of insight would you have gained from your explorations of technology in 1990?
Most education in these fast changing times should be aimed at principles and long-lasting skills ("transferable skills" in the jargon), not the intricate detail of rapidly obsolescing kit.
So what future-proof ideas and skills can you give kids -- in this context, particularly aimed at developing technological capability?
A love of learning. The idea that questions are OK. The idea that exploration is OK.
The ability to read and understand. The ability to read and understand technical writing and diagrams (Lego leaflets are a good way to start).
Some piece of technology that they enjoy interacting with, and that they can modify (computer is the obvious choice)
The leader of a college should also consult his teaching staff. How does he think students learn? Has he ever heard of getting several heads together over a problem? In an art college, how about collecting informed comments on a piece of artwork in progress? How many people does he think can share a laptop screen at once?
Computing lectureres are complaining that everybody having a home computer and going straight home to it after class is visibly harming students' learning compared with the days when they worked together in computer labs, talked through problems, shared ideas etc. This appears to be an initiative to force the same problem into another subject area -- "you will all have your own computer". (Yes, I know this is Slashdot and almost all of us have had home computers for as long as we can remember, but there is a definite culture change about hanging round the labs.)
I have always used "ultra-light" laptops (thankfully the weight has shrunk as I have aged) because I am never carrying only a laptop and nothing else. What is this art college's minimum requirement going to be for carrying strength?
Wow, what has come over Slashdot? A discussion about women in science and engineering where many people are actually making good arguments standing up for women? It is impossible for a regular reader of Slashdot to claim that there is absolutely no gender prejudice in the field, unless you also subscribe to the insulting idea that all Slashdot contributors are 14-year-olds who don't count as "in the field".
This may be an example of where we shouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good argument, but I would like to add a few pertinent ones. My credentials are that I have been a PAWS sceptic longer than most of the rest of you -- I am an enthusiastic member of the Women's Engineering Society, the UK's sister organisation to the US Society of Women Engineers, and I have watched PAWS grow. Women are not PAWS' only focus, and the proposed "soap" was not planned to have mostly female leads. More mainstream science programmes is one thing PAWS wants, and this story is reporting on aspects of one effort where some money was available under the "women" label. (And another commentator here is right -- UK "soaps" are not daytime shows, but early evening ones with a wider viewing audience including young people and the parents who influence their career choices.)
I attended my first PAWS event at the end of November. Describing 'Happy Valley' as "worthy" implies that the reporter Mark Ballard wasn't at the event to see an excerpt presented -- it had sex, drugs, blackmail and murder all in about 20 minutes! (Just another day at the lab for the scientists in the audience.) McHale was, unsurprisingly, rather politer about his funders than the article shows. Yes, they have already altered their plans based on his arguments (even if they haven't been listening to mine, but I am now happier about their direction).
Who cares about getting more women into SET (science, engineering, technology, usually taken to explicitly exclude the medical sciences}? The major sponsor of McHale's work was the UK's Resource Centre for Women in SET. This centre was set up by the Department of Trade and Industry. The DTI are famously unmoved by anything except economic arguments -- they want more women in SET because they see a serious need for more good people in SET. Other PAWS sponsors include the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) who hosted the event, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the UK government funding agency for research. Yes, they have a social conscience, no, that isn't the only reason they got involved. More good people have to come from somewhere, and there is plenty of evidence that girls and women with a liking for maths, science and engineering and valuable abilities are being discouraged from following SET careers.
What is the barrier? If there was one single one, the Women's Engineering Society would, in its 86-year-old history, have identified it and let you know about it. The problem is, as many other people have commented here, a cumulative effect of many different influences. You could make a difference to two obvious ones in the next couple of days by giving a small girl a Lego set and lobbying your employer for flexible working practices. Men will directly benefit from a more capable younger generation and better working conditions -- we are not asking special favours that will accrue only to a few women. While you are at it, please buy a small boy a doll and a foreign language picture book -- we suffer through the stereotypes for boys too.
I work with many activists in the field, and very few ever talk of a 50:50 gender ratio in SET as a target. Organisations like WES and SWE say "We enjoy our jobs, we are sure more girls would too if they knew more about engineering". (And to answer the usual annoying question, yes, we do like men, otherwise why would we be working in a field with so many of them?) We would like to see a level playing field, and there is plenty of evidence that we don't have one at present. Pay and promotion for women lag badly -- eve
I think you have hit on the really dangerous idea -- the one that ought to be stamped out immediately -- the one that people other than "successful" white American men actually matter.
It is almost beyond belief that anyone genuinely interested in the future would ask such a biased sample of people.
To be melodramatic, this is the sort of thinking that mnay of us fear will kill us all, as the list of advisers to the White House is loaded in the same directions -- although to be fair to Bush, I believe he actually hears from more non-white and/or non-male people than are included here, and he does know than non-Americans hold importantly different opinions on many things.
Yep, I agree. "If you're going to come to me with a problem, make sure to bring a solution, too." sounds tough, but is bad management and probably indicates a boss promoted beyond his competence.
What benefit is there in broadcasting "Delay coming to me when you have a problem" and "Us guys at the top don't want to share the benefits of our experience with you underlings."?
"I would be interested in your suggested solution" is great, "Don't come to me unless you have one" is stupid.
Softick's Card Export program does a great job of transferring files to and from an SD card in your Palm without any added hassle -- the card appears on a PC as USB mass storage. http://www.softick.com/cardexport2/
Undergraduate academic integrity has been lost? When? Not recently! I was teaching in the 70s when one of our colleagues failed to turn up one day -- he had been arrested for fraud becuse his degree certificate was forged. The rest of us agreed that we should have worked it out for ourselves -- when we had been discussing cheating in undergraduate labs, he was shocked and said "We never did anything like that." We belatedly realized that that indicated he hadn't really attended university.
When I reached the eminence of university staff myself, I was amused by how shocked colleagues purported to be by ordinary student misdemeanours. What we did was light-hearted fun, what they do is a crime...
There is an informative Times Q&A piece at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075- 1776999,00.html which says that the trademark GMail (or similar) has not been awarded in either the EC or the US, although both parties in this dispute have applications in.
Yes, OSS work will impress *some* employers. You need to think about which employers you want to target, and work out a strategy for them. If you are OSS-minded, then this may be the route for you. (One advantage of using OSS work to give yourself that little bit extra is that you can do it from wherever, when finding other specific forms of experience can be difficult if you are not based in a big city.)
It only makes sense if you are genuinely interested in what you volunteer for. The usual rule applies -- it is not worth working hard at something you hate if what it will get you is entry into a job you will hate.
Don't think that OSS is a nice cosy little world -- you need a thick skin to cope with some of the comments that fly around. And you must find something the right size for you. Taking on a heroic-sized task and failing to complete it is not going to work out well. So take some time looking around for a small starter OSS role for yourself in an interesting well-run project that seems to have helpful people involved (we can all dream!) OSS experience is not going to compemsate for poor grades, so set a realistic limit on the time you invest.
Do make the most of what you can learn from being involved in a project. There is much more to gain than just coding experience. Learn about the wider issues of system architecture and project management. Also, read some of the criticism of OSS projects and do your bit to minimise the disadvantages of this type of development.
I was thinking that the suggestion of a limited duration of subscriptions was a poor idea and then I considered more carefully. If you haven't sold them anything in a whole year, are they likely to ever buy anything? are they even reading your emails? You have had your chance to impress yourself into their memories as being a good source for your product, if they are now trashing your emails (not trusting your unsubscribe link) then you are losing your advantage. Depending on your product and frequency of mailouts, 6 months or even 3 may be long enough.
You could offer a little bribe to resubscribe - some useful little free program or whatever.
The ability of people to write about a "community" without looking at women's lives is amazing (Do a count in any issue of National Geographic). Presumably half the Amish are female, but what do we learn of their experience of technology in these stories? Browsing around more widely, it certainly doesn't look like their invisibility is because they enjoy the same type of lives as the men.
It would shed a great deal of light on the Amish if we were told what modern technology is considered acceptable for household chores, and how often men use it!
Some pre-laptops-in-class research showed a marks gain of 10% for sitting at the front of a uni lecture instead of the back. This was for random seating assignments -- the usual gap between fromt and back when students pick their own seats is much higher.
Part of the effect was no doubt due to the fact that it is harder to hear at the back and all sorts of distractions happen in front of you.
But the key reason whould seem to be that if you are sitting at the front and look puzzled, the lecturer is likely to keep on explaining until you get it. You can also guide the lecturer to speed up through the stuff you do know so you don't get bored out of your mind. If you are at the back you don't have this control over the delivery of the material.
Don't believe me? Think about why all live lecturers haven't been replaced by recordings. Because interaction with the class is an important part of delivering the material at a level which will be understood. Even the most wooden lecturers actually respond to the class. And guess which part of the class the lecturer is interacting with most strongly? You can compensate a bit by shouting out from the back, but my advice is take the easy route and sit at the front.
Oh, come on, read the article. Who ever spends 100% of their time working if they can get away with working only 54% of the time? It looks like the workers in the experiment were trying to get their heating turned up, so they deliberately varied what they did to give the "results" that would get mangement to keep the place warmer.
"At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate,"
The workstations had monitoring equipment fitted, the people knew what was going on (well, you wouldn't miss the temperature varying from 68 to 77, would you) and they worked out an appropriate response. Well, nearly appropriate -- that 100% could only be believed by someone with a very pointy head or by someone in a very high ivory tower.
Hang out the flags -- this is a brilliant project. It would be a huge benefit to society, even if works still in copyright were not made freely available. And the benefits are not limited to the English-speaking world, just as that world has benefited from plenty of material not written in English originally.
I hope the Library of Congress are already scanning all books where there is reason to suspect they have the only copy. There are plenty more where this is our best hope of being able to read the contents in a reaonable timeframe. There are millions of books which are not 'rare' but for which this will provide the most convenient form of access. I hope they work out that cooperation with Operation Gutenberg should multiply the good effects of both projects.
A good companion project would be a campaign to honor those authors who voluntarily put their works into the public domain before the last tendrils of copyright law relinquish their grip.
It is good that the UK's equivalent, the British Library is involved in a project which will preserve and copy endangered archives around the world. The budget is not on the same scale though! http://www.bl.uk/cgi-bin/press.cgi?story=1418 (and the story mentions that the charity part-funding the programme is also trying to preserve endangered languages).
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, your version wins, it will be great and it should be coming real soon now .... the only worry is, what meta-information will the system collect about me, and who will it make it available to?
He thinks that everyone who was connected before NN came along was in Silicon Valley. No, we weren't -- and we weren't all at CERN either, and we had the telephone bills to prove it.
Is this limiting his perception of where the Next Big Thing will come from? And is he ignoring the fact that high-bandwith nations already have more opportunity to deliver this sort of thing? Yes, we know about the high number of South Koreans each with their virtual home carefully furnished but it sounds much more about social interaction than VR.
Interesting point about colour. It washed across the home computer scene very fast and very early -- 25 years ago.
As the article says, VR has been around at least as long, and our house has odd bits of VR kit lying around. So why aren't we using it?
Well, the most-used roadmap round here belongs to Grand Theft Auto, and every computer I touch gets a tabbed browser pronto. So we are 3D for some applications. Thinking about it, we had pretty good 3D back in the black-and-white text-adventure games -- including caves to adventure in that could not be mapped in simple 2D.
Are there really lots more possibilities out there where 3D makes sense, but no-one has sold us on it?
So you are saying that to find your broomstick-cutter, you go to the appropriate room and look in the appropriate cupboard? Your storage system took a whole lot longer to construct than mine, and doesn't work any better -- I go to the appropriate sub-directory ("folder" if you are hung up on your real-world analogues), and look in the appropropriate sub-directory inside that.
And it is easier for me to subdivide the garage to provide a workshop than it is for you.
... the price is still $179.99 in the "Special Summer Sale". I am looking forward to getting one for road warrior use, but it looks as though I will have to wait another couple of years at least.
It is not clear if life on Slashdot is intelligent enough to realise that George says things like "I am a human, you are a stupid bot" becuase George is a _learning_ system, and that's what people say to him. (They do of course use adjectives other than "stupid", and his database has to be cleaned up.)
Joan can hold more interesting conversations partly because the writer Ariadne Tampion has sat down for hours a week to talk rationally to her.
Hugh Loebner who runs the competition named after him does unsurprisingly know quite a lot about "The Turing Test", including the fact that Turing described several variations over several papers, not one definitive version. His testing methodolgy has evolved and will presumably continue to do so.
After the award of another bronze Loebner Medal this year there was a panel discussion where the panellists (mostly distinguished people in the field of AI) refused to try to forecast the years when the silver and gold medals might be won.
Yes, in the early days I thought Wikipedia was wonderful and I used to contribute. I have grown tired of the editing and the strange rules. I worked hard on a general-readership-level article on a difficult technical topic, to see it hacked about by the ignorant. I had my addition of explanatory info on a politician's article removed. I came out on the wrong side of a truth vs verification contest (I had the story from his own lips).
I have just found a stub for a topic where I wrote the best reference on the web. I will enjoy writing the article which will be "verified" by my own words...
I guess I still believe in the dream. I certainly do find Wikipedia a useful place to look up many topics. As in so many areas on the web, I just don't see why I should put up with the jerks who get their kicks by being unnecessarily rude to others. (Anyone else an ex-Gutenberg-contributor? I have never had the time and energy to fight a corner in open-source development.)
Oh, come on, moderators, that goat's milk joke is funny...
And it makes a legitimate point that has been ignored in other posts -- calling himself 007 indicates interesting things about his view of himself.
IANAL but ICUG (I can use Google). Yes, it looks as though across the world breaking this confidentiality is a civil, not a criminal matter. Additionally, in California attorney/client privilege belongs to the client only and not to the lawyer. So the law firm cannot sue the whistleblower over this, only Diebold can! I imagine that hell will freeze over before Diebold start waving those documents around in public. I doubt if they really wanted the felony case either.
California law is actually wider than many on the extent of the attorney/client privilege -- be very careful to check local conditions before telling a lawyer anything incriminating!
Now, if you were 18 today, what kind of insight would you have gained from your explorations of technology in 1990?
Most education in these fast changing times should be aimed at principles and long-lasting skills ("transferable skills" in the jargon), not the intricate detail of rapidly obsolescing kit.
So what future-proof ideas and skills can you give kids -- in this context, particularly aimed at developing technological capability?
A love of learning. The idea that questions are OK. The idea that exploration is OK.
The ability to read and understand. The ability to read and understand technical writing and diagrams (Lego leaflets are a good way to start).
Some piece of technology that they enjoy interacting with, and that they can modify (computer is the obvious choice)
The leader of a college should also consult his teaching staff. How does he think students learn? Has he ever heard of getting several heads together over a problem? In an art college, how about collecting informed comments on a piece of artwork in progress? How many people does he think can share a laptop screen at once?
Computing lectureres are complaining that everybody having a home computer and going straight home to it after class is visibly harming students' learning compared with the days when they worked together in computer labs, talked through problems, shared ideas etc. This appears to be an initiative to force the same problem into another subject area -- "you will all have your own computer". (Yes, I know this is Slashdot and almost all of us have had home computers for as long as we can remember, but there is a definite culture change about hanging round the labs.)
I have always used "ultra-light" laptops (thankfully the weight has shrunk as I have aged) because I am never carrying only a laptop and nothing else. What is this art college's minimum requirement going to be for carrying strength?
Wow, what has come over Slashdot? A discussion about women in science and engineering where many people are actually making good arguments standing up for women? It is impossible for a regular reader of Slashdot to claim that there is absolutely no gender prejudice in the field, unless you also subscribe to the insulting idea that all Slashdot contributors are 14-year-olds who don't count as "in the field".
This may be an example of where we shouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good argument, but I would like to add a few pertinent ones. My credentials are that I have been a PAWS sceptic longer than most of the rest of you -- I am an enthusiastic member of the Women's Engineering Society, the UK's sister organisation to the US Society of Women Engineers, and I have watched PAWS grow. Women are not PAWS' only focus, and the proposed "soap" was not planned to have mostly female leads. More mainstream science programmes is one thing PAWS wants, and this story is reporting on aspects of one effort where some money was available under the "women" label. (And another commentator here is right -- UK "soaps" are not daytime shows, but early evening ones with a wider viewing audience including young people and the parents who influence their career choices.)
I attended my first PAWS event at the end of November. Describing 'Happy Valley' as "worthy" implies that the reporter Mark Ballard wasn't at the event to see an excerpt presented -- it had sex, drugs, blackmail and murder all in about 20 minutes! (Just another day at the lab for the scientists in the audience.) McHale was, unsurprisingly, rather politer about his funders than the article shows. Yes, they have already altered their plans based on his arguments (even if they haven't been listening to mine, but I am now happier about their direction).
Who cares about getting more women into SET (science, engineering, technology, usually taken to explicitly exclude the medical sciences}? The major sponsor of McHale's work was the UK's Resource Centre for Women in SET. This centre was set up by the Department of Trade and Industry. The DTI are famously unmoved by anything except economic arguments -- they want more women in SET because they see a serious need for more good people in SET. Other PAWS sponsors include the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) who hosted the event, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the UK government funding agency for research. Yes, they have a social conscience, no, that isn't the only reason they got involved. More good people have to come from somewhere, and there is plenty of evidence that girls and women with a liking for maths, science and engineering and valuable abilities are being discouraged from following SET careers.
What is the barrier? If there was one single one, the Women's Engineering Society would, in its 86-year-old history, have identified it and let you know about it. The problem is, as many other people have commented here, a cumulative effect of many different influences. You could make a difference to two obvious ones in the next couple of days by giving a small girl a Lego set and lobbying your employer for flexible working practices. Men will directly benefit from a more capable younger generation and better working conditions -- we are not asking special favours that will accrue only to a few women. While you are at it, please buy a small boy a doll and a foreign language picture book -- we suffer through the stereotypes for boys too.
I work with many activists in the field, and very few ever talk of a 50:50 gender ratio in SET as a target. Organisations like WES and SWE say "We enjoy our jobs, we are sure more girls would too if they knew more about engineering". (And to answer the usual annoying question, yes, we do like men, otherwise why would we be working in a field with so many of them?) We would like to see a level playing field, and there is plenty of evidence that we don't have one at present. Pay and promotion for women lag badly -- eve
So fantasy leagues own their fictional results, but MLB don't own their real ones? I can see how that might rile them.
I think you have hit on the really dangerous idea -- the one that ought to be stamped out immediately -- the one that people other than "successful" white American men actually matter.
It is almost beyond belief that anyone genuinely interested in the future would ask such a biased sample of people.
To be melodramatic, this is the sort of thinking that mnay of us fear will kill us all, as the list of advisers to the White House is loaded in the same directions -- although to be fair to Bush, I believe he actually hears from more non-white and/or non-male people than are included here, and he does know than non-Americans hold importantly different opinions on many things.
Yep, I agree. "If you're going to come to me with a problem, make sure to bring a solution, too." sounds tough, but is bad management and probably indicates a boss promoted beyond his competence.
What benefit is there in broadcasting "Delay coming to me when you have a problem" and "Us guys at the top don't want to share the benefits of our experience with you underlings."?
"I would be interested in your suggested solution" is great, "Don't come to me unless you have one" is stupid.
Softick's Card Export program does a great job of transferring files to and from an SD card in your Palm without any added hassle -- the card appears on a PC as USB mass storage.
http://www.softick.com/cardexport2/
Undergraduate academic integrity has been lost? When? Not recently! I was teaching in the 70s when one of our colleagues failed to turn up one day -- he had been arrested for fraud becuse his degree certificate was forged. The rest of us agreed that we should have worked it out for ourselves -- when we had been discussing cheating in undergraduate labs, he was shocked and said "We never did anything like that." We belatedly realized that that indicated he hadn't really attended university.
When I reached the eminence of university staff myself, I was amused by how shocked colleagues purported to be by ordinary student misdemeanours. What we did was light-hearted fun, what they do is a crime...
There is an informative Times Q&A piece at http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075- 1776999,00.html which says that the trademark GMail (or similar) has not been awarded in either the EC or the US, although both parties in this dispute have applications in.
6 54
If you really really want to know a lot more, Search Engine Watch has some information and links to heavyweight PDFs at http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050912-140
Yes, OSS work will impress *some* employers. You need to think about which employers you want to target, and work out a strategy for them. If you are OSS-minded, then this may be the route for you. (One advantage of using OSS work to give yourself that little bit extra is that you can do it from wherever, when finding other specific forms of experience can be difficult if you are not based in a big city.)
It only makes sense if you are genuinely interested in what you volunteer for. The usual rule applies -- it is not worth working hard at something you hate if what it will get you is entry into a job you will hate.
Don't think that OSS is a nice cosy little world -- you need a thick skin to cope with some of the comments that fly around. And you must find something the right size for you. Taking on a heroic-sized task and failing to complete it is not going to work out well. So take some time looking around for a small starter OSS role for yourself in an interesting well-run project that seems to have helpful people involved (we can all dream!) OSS experience is not going to compemsate for poor grades, so set a realistic limit on the time you invest.
Do make the most of what you can learn from being involved in a project. There is much more to gain than just coding experience. Learn about the wider issues of system architecture and project management. Also, read some of the criticism of OSS projects and do your bit to minimise the disadvantages of this type of development.
I was thinking that the suggestion of a limited duration of subscriptions was a poor idea and then I considered more carefully. If you haven't sold them anything in a whole year, are they likely to ever buy anything? are they even reading your emails? You have had your chance to impress yourself into their memories as being a good source for your product, if they are now trashing your emails (not trusting your unsubscribe link) then you are losing your advantage. Depending on your product and frequency of mailouts, 6 months or even 3 may be long enough.
You could offer a little bribe to resubscribe - some useful little free program or whatever.
The ability of people to write about a "community" without looking at women's lives is amazing (Do a count in any issue of National Geographic). Presumably half the Amish are female, but what do we learn of their experience of technology in these stories? Browsing around more widely, it certainly doesn't look like their invisibility is because they enjoy the same type of lives as the men.
It would shed a great deal of light on the Amish if we were told what modern technology is considered acceptable for household chores, and how often men use it!
Some pre-laptops-in-class research showed a marks gain of 10% for sitting at the front of a uni lecture instead of the back. This was for random seating assignments -- the usual gap between fromt and back when students pick their own seats is much higher.
Part of the effect was no doubt due to the fact that it is harder to hear at the back and all sorts of distractions happen in front of you.
But the key reason whould seem to be that if you are sitting at the front and look puzzled, the lecturer is likely to keep on explaining until you get it. You can also guide the lecturer to speed up through the stuff you do know so you don't get bored out of your mind. If you are at the back you don't have this control over the delivery of the material.
Don't believe me? Think about why all live lecturers haven't been replaced by recordings. Because interaction with the class is an important part of delivering the material at a level which will be understood. Even the most wooden lecturers actually respond to the class. And guess which part of the class the lecturer is interacting with most strongly? You can compensate a bit by shouting out from the back, but my advice is take the easy route and sit at the front.
Indiana Jones and the Zimmer Frame of Death?
"At 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the workers were keyboarding 100 percent of the time with a 10 percent error rate, but at 68 degrees, their keying rate went down to 54 percent of the time with a 25 percent error rate,"
The workstations had monitoring equipment fitted, the people knew what was going on (well, you wouldn't miss the temperature varying from 68 to 77, would you) and they worked out an appropriate response. Well, nearly appropriate -- that 100% could only be believed by someone with a very pointy head or by someone in a very high ivory tower.
Hang out the flags -- this is a brilliant project. It would be a huge benefit to society, even if works still in copyright were not made freely available. And the benefits are not limited to the English-speaking world, just as that world has benefited from plenty of material not written in English originally.
I hope the Library of Congress are already scanning all books where there is reason to suspect they have the only copy. There are plenty more where this is our best hope of being able to read the contents in a reaonable timeframe. There are millions of books which are not 'rare' but for which this will provide the most convenient form of access. I hope they work out that cooperation with Operation Gutenberg should multiply the good effects of both projects.
A good companion project would be a campaign to honor those authors who voluntarily put their works into the public domain before the last tendrils of copyright law relinquish their grip.
It is good that the UK's equivalent, the British Library is involved in a project which will preserve and copy endangered archives around the world. The budget is not on the same scale though! http://www.bl.uk/cgi-bin/press.cgi?story=1418 (and the story mentions that the charity part-funding the programme is also trying to preserve endangered languages).