Any of the networks that I've worked with have always been for smallish companies (i.e. 80 employees) but often with very large offices. Things like museums, factories, mills, etc.

Without a doubt, the one thing that has helped me more than anything else has been when the person who came before me kept a very fastidious cabling system. By keeping the area as tidy as possible, and accurately (and informatively) labeling their cables and ports, it was very easy for me to work with the network.

Now, good labeling, and a tidy closet is not the same as quality documentation. But, it's probably analogous to well formatted code and useful code comments. (Where I think the OP is more looking for how to write the architectural specs.)

""The experience of focusing on one problem and becoming a world expert on" would seem to apply to a PhD program and not a Masters program. The Masters is basically just a bunch of classes generally not that different from undergrad classes except that they tend to have bigger projects in each class."

"The experience of focusing on one problem and becoming a world expert on" it is what a Masters is *supposed* to be. You are 'Mastering' a particular topic.

The fact is that most Master's programs are so diluted these days that people can get a degree by just taking the classes, as you mention.

The class only option is still relatively new in most places. My Uni added it in 2003 (give or take 1 year).

I disagree.
I will take two years of related experience over a Master's degree 100% of the time.

I've interviewed an awful lot of people, and to be honest, I'm most concerned with what you can do, not what you have learned.

The degree is nice and all, but it rarely has any bearing on the work you will do on the job, and it does not prove that you are capable of doing the work.

Two years of work experience without getting fired, however, shows that you are at least capable of performing the work, and that you can work within the social structure of the office environment.

"I've read that online programming isn't making much money compared to regular tv."

Unfortunately, that's because networks are stupid.
They don't count viewership for anything broadcast online. As a result, when it comes to selling adspace, they have the shows on TV ('500,000 viewers in Texas alone...') vs the shows on the web ('Someone emailed us to say they liked it.').

As a result, it's very difficult to secure advertising dollars when advertisers will not have solid metrics on how many eyes will see their ads, and it's hard for the network to charge the rates they'd like because they can't say which shows do better than others.

I think it's important to define what you are looking for.
At my company, we had a very similar project for a long time. I always thought innovation meant some incredible break through, or new product line. Turns out, some innovations that were accepted were changes to our coffee vendor, and tests for our new development folk (standard practice in my office, but considered innovative at one of our other sites.)

Had I know what the quality bar was at the beginning of the project, I would have submitted all kinds of stuff. As it was, I was just waiting for a really great idea.

While it's true that we cannot definitely say that you would have purchased all 350 albums had they not been available for no charge by download, I think that it is fair to say that, if you're the sort of person that has 350 albums on your machine, you would have purchased at least one of those albums had none of them been available for download.

Maybe another way to think of it is to slightly flip the question. What if one album was downloaded by 350 different people? We have no way to say that if the album was not available, all 350 people would have had the desire, ability, or means to purchase that album. However, it is very likely that at least one person would have.

The really interesting question is to determine what the percentage of downloads could have been sales if the item had not been free, or if the ability to access the item legally had been more available?

Hm. So do you think there's any chance they will refund my outstanding store credit? I still have ~70 USD of gift card credit left over from Christmas. Is that just forfit?

Does it really? I thought that having it in a contract would be sufficient. Can you point me at your references -- I'd like to learn more.

"This is not the case for homework or class projects. If a professor or another student takes your code and uses it somewhere without your permission, it would be copyright infringement."

This is true. Most of the clauses are really there for something like if you produce a really astounding work of literature as part of a writing class, or a breakthrough research paper. The University might claim the right to republish that work in another form. They will always credit you for it though. If you are a graduate student, it is very likely that this will happen, and more likely that you will receive partial credit on the final paper -- your adviser will likely claim the authorship with you as an assistant. In these cases though, it is the University that owns the work, not a professor or a student. If a professor or a student took it, and it was not on behalf of the University, then it is definitely infringement.

As far as the contract goes, at my school the Calendar was the legally binding agreement. Whatever it said in the calendar was implicitly agreed to by the student when you signed up and paid for classes. It was explicitly agreed to by the institution when they published it. There may have been somewhere that I signed at some point as well that bound me to agree to the terms of the school calendar, I don't really remember.

In any case, you do not actually have to sign a contract for it to be valid. As far as legally binding goes, all you need is an offer from one party, and an acceptance of that offer from the other.

Party A provides something when Party B provides something else. In this case, services for money. Once both parties have agreed to the terms, it is a contract. It can be written by a lawyer, or by a student, on paper, or on a napkin. In many legal systems, verbal contracts are considered valid if there is a witness. A signature is not required in order to be bound by a contract -- only the exchange of goods for services. I believe a signature may be required if one party provides services and the other promises to reimburse them in the future.

This may be different at your University, or in your state or Country, which is why I suggested in the post title that the OP check the policies of their institution.

In my case, when the University extended me an offer of acceptance to the institution, and I accepted that offer by signing up for classes, then I was bound by the terms laid out in the calendar.

You can read more about contract law here: http://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/business-forms-contracts/business-forms-contracts-overview/business-forms-contracts-overview-simple.html

Each University has their own policy on this, and will make it pretty easy to find. Most University policies that I've looked at look something like this:

'Any work that you submit as part of your course requirements is the property of the University. Any work that you do while working on a research project for the University is the property of the University.'

Not surprisingly, this is the basic premise of many employment contracts as well.

'Anything you make while working for us is automatically our property.'

There are always exceptions, of course, for work that is done by you, on your own time and equipment, that has nothing to do with your coursework/job.

I've never really felt that these policies are that obscene, and I think that if you take a few minutes to think about it objectively, you may feel the same. In no case is someone laying claim to anything that might fall out of your head, only the material that you will produce at the explicit request of someone else (either your instructor or employer).

I took a grad level course at the end of my degree in which the prof tried to subtly communicate this to the grad students.

Each week we had to read and write a short review on a paper that had been peer reviewed and accepted into some CS or Eng journal somewhere. The topics were pretty broad, but all had something to do with the internet, or communication (the focus of the course).

At the end of the course, the professor revealed that he had purposely selected papers such that one third were considered today to be 'good' papers, one third were considered to be valid, but poorly written, and one third were considered to be pure bunk but well written.

He then posted a graph showing how people commented on each of the papers.

Not surprisingly, nearly every student reviewed all of the papers in a positive light.

I'm pretty sure that the professor was trying to teach a bit humility to the grad students. He also succeeded in proving "...that those who are supposed to review [the papers] are either incompetent or don't bother with their job, or that many "professional science" papers are actually pure bullshit, so you can't tell the difference?"

Id start by asking your publisher, they will know what format they will want. If they don't have any recommendations, then I would stick to something standard, that's good for writing long text.

Word and OpenOffice are both out. While they are fine tools, they are really designed for smaller documents.

Framemaker is a good tool, and is industry standard. It will cost though. Last I checked it worked on linux, mac and windows, although that was a long time ago.

You could take the plain text route, and use either latex or docbook. Both are good, and both are reasonable standards.

This should really be a series of videos, I think.
There really is no single face of linux.

Some of the users I know include:

  - College computer nerds
  - Aging hippies fighting against the establishment
  - Stereotypical sysadmin guy (tubby, cheetos, D&D)
  - Punk style sysadmin guy (spiky purple hair, think Hackers)
  - 20-something attractive blonde sysadmin lady (Trained on windows, switched to linux cause it wasted less of her time)
  - My uncle, who works in a sawmill. He heard about it on CBC and bought Suse to install just to screw around with it. Guess he falls into the hobbyist category.
  - All sorts of CTO/CIO types looking to save a buck.
  - High Performance Computing people in physics labs (admittedly, there are more mac people here that I know).

and the list goes on.