Another great way to contribute is through complex testing, such as vulnerability testing, penetration testing, security testing, performance testing.

You do not need to be a great coder to run a test app, if you happen to have access to it. Run it and report the results or even better turn it into singular bug reports.

The same is true for performance testing. If you use a particular project, see what performance characteristics are important to you and distill a canned test with appropriate data (so it is reproducible). If you can run the test against different versions, to show a trend of improvement or not that is certainly helpful. If you can compare different (competing) projects that is helpful too. In the process you have a lot of interesting things to say and write about.

Many, many open source projects need a marketing strategy and execution (did I say execution). It starts with descriptions of the project, the target audience (library for programmers, end users, supported OS, functions/features, competition/comparable projects, positioning (faster, smaller, more beautiful, supported, ...). Also gather stories from users, how they use it why and what they'd like to improve. Also don't forget history.

Make this knowledge available in a thoughtful way, if possible on the projects home page (how often is the home page indecipherable

Then spread this knowledge on websites like http://wikipedia.org/ http://ohloh.net/ and others that catalog open source projects. this makes it easier for potential users to find the project and pinpoint if they want to use it.

In this article it is mentioned that Panasonic has some problem with its links on the site that hosts the GPL code. While the link on that site is broken, there is mention on the net of the TV itself listing the correct and working URL to download the TV's GPLed code

Funnily the site has a note saying the webmaster@ account is not working due to SPAM issues. So you can't contact them to fix their link issue. But then any self respecting web master will discover its mistakes by monitoring the site's logs ;-)

If you are heading to Boston/Cambridge, don't miss the Harvard Museum of Natural History and its excellent glass flower collection.

http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/on_exhibit/the_glass_flowers.html

I myself waist the most time on the Internet with Spam. So lets fix the most annoying things first.

Start signing your e-mail so I can filter on a reliable source where it comes from and use the web of trust to indicate if I have any 'remote' trust relationship to the sender.

Twitter is technically SMS on the Internet.

For the layman it is subscription to telegrams. Imagine instead a publisher who publishes only telegrams of less than 140 characters, instead of whole articles or a magazine. And you can write back to the editor in 140 chars or less. It so happens that you can get these messages forwarded to your cell-phone and also send them from there. So it opens up some billions of users who don't have personal Internet access but carry a cell phone with unlimited texting/SMS or simply are not at a computer at the moment.

That is all there is to it and like a roller coaster you don't really know what it is unless you tried it.

The difference is that other speculative goods are fixed and sold for a price by someone who has build them or owns them through inheritance. Sure you might not see any value in that old car but someone else has always admired it and wants to rebuild it to its new glory. Or you might offer that old clunker for sale until the desperate person comes along and offers you much money in his desperation. Also your physical goods do age and need maintenance, the value of stock varies with the fortunes and skills of the companies managers, a house costs taxes and repairs, etc.

In contrast you can always buy a new domain for a set cheap fee a yr. IT does not age or need any risky repairs. In fact you don't buy domains, you rent them with a right to renew yearly. You sure can make the domain valuable by using it for a great service and attract some great business or simply visitors at the virtual address.

So you are comparing apples and oranges.

P.S.: I don't mean to defend cyber squatters here at all.

The Music industry did not learn that Apple was successful with its ITunes in large part for the simple pricing scheme of 99c each song what ever it was. That made the buying decision simpler and people started to buy music online and make their IPods worth a fortune fully loaded.

Now the Game industry does not seem to understand that the risk of buying a new game gets lower if there is a flourishing attractive secondary market. If I put down $49 for a new game and happen to not like it or my friends don't like it, and I can sell it easily for $35 at a place like GameStop, then I'm only $14 in the risk. If that risk gets larger I won't buy that often a new game just for try or kicks.

And if the original publisher wants a piece of the resale in the secondary market every time, then it means that the resale price for every non commercial owner is lower, because he has to pay the publisher on the original purchase and on the sale to the second market. Which means again it will dampen the new sales.

There is an easy solution: Sell only used games.