[H-GEN] Room Bookings Update

Russell Stuart russell-humbug at stuart.id.au
Wed Jan 14 22:21:20 EST 2009


On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 12:46 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 11:15:43AM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote:
> > never seen before and some poor pleb who has downloaded Firefox 
> > can can't understand why it gives him an error when he tries 
> > to connect via HTTPS to port 563 - for example.
> 
> Okay, so I just tried that, and got:
> 
> ] Port Restricted for Security Reasons
> ]
> ] This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes
> ] other than Web browsing. Iceweasel has canceled the request for your
> ] protection.
> ]
> ] The requested address specified a port (e.g. "mozilla.org:80" for port
> ] 80 on mozilla.org) normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. The
> ] browser has canceled the request for your protection and security.
> ]
> ] [Try Again]
> 
> (Try Again obviously doesn't do much...)
> 
> That doesn't really strike me as an error that would inspire someone
> to turn to Unix, or even want to better understand the way computers
> work, though? 

Probably not for most people.  But possibly it would for a
few.  It is a numbers game.  Get 100 people through the door 
asking how fix an error with their open source proggie and 
it seems likely one might like us enough to hang around.

Right now we get 0 people.  That is bad.  Particularly as the
reason UQ gives us free rooms and bandwidth is because we are
supposed to do exactly this for the Uni population.  Or at
least that was true.  I don't know why they do it now.  That 
is a worry, because if they ever ask the question "whats in 
it for us" - how do we answer?

As for numbers the answer is probably to promote ourselves 
around the Uni - at least that is the answer Clinton and I
came to.  Clinton did try, but notwithstanding his positive 
assessment I think it was a failure - simply because it 
didn't get people through the door.  Maybe he got free food
or booze and that effected his view of the event.

So it didn't work.  But there must be ways that will work,
we just have to find them, and you can view Clinton's effort
as one step along that path.  We need to take more.  Possibly 
just hanging notices on board for O'Week would be a good 
start.  I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier.  I 
presume you don't need anybody's permission to do that.  
(Getting perimission to do things at QUT's O'Week is where I
came unstuck last time.  It seems O'Week is run by the 
Student Union, and I could not get past their bureaucracy.)





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