Bevan Rudge JavaScript and web technologist

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mar 17, 2008 9:49 AM
Subject: Microsoft Student Partners 2008
To: all@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz

Hey everyone,

My name is Janina Voigt and I am one of the three Microsoft Student
Partners for 2008. The other Student Partners are Yugan Yugaraja and
Mayur Sampat.
Our role is to bridge the gap between students and academics at
Canterbury, and Microsoft.

We will be carrying out presentations and/or workshops throughout the
year on a variety of topics such as .NET Framework, C#, Popfly,
Silverlight, XNA and Visual Studio 2008. We will also be supporting
Microsoft student events in Christchurch such as Student Day and we are
also looking to organise a few social events such as an XBOX360 night
and Quiz night.

The first of our presentations will be next Tuesday (18th of March)
from
12-1 in room 315 in the Cosc building . In this presentation, we will
introduce Popfly, which can be used to create some cool gadgets on the
internet. No programming experience is required, so even if this is your
first year, you should come along and check it out. There will be some
cool prizes, including a copy Microsoft Office 2007 Professional, and
free chocolate for everyone.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please don't hesitate to
contact us at: mssrep@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz

And remember to check out our blog: http://mspcanty.spaces.live.com/

Regards,
Janina Voigt
Microsoft Student Partner

Yay! Free chocolate to suck on Microsoft's [marketing campaign]. If there's free chocolate I'll definitely go!

.
.
.

Not.

This is my first year at the University of Canterbury as a COSC student. I'm doing a couple of second year papers after having done 1st year CS papers at Massey last year. Is Microsoft normally this persistent?

On a funny side note, one of the biggest computer labs at uni is full of iMacs, all running XP. It's creepy:

Update. Several hours later this email came through.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mar 17, 2008 5:07 PM
Subject: Not Microsoft Student Partners 2008
To: all@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Cc: freeculture@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz

Hey everyone,

My name is Raffael and I am not one of the three Microsoft Student
Partners for 2008. I want to introduce you to the Free Culture Club. Our
belief is to be free to study, understand, participate in and build upon
the culture that surrounds us. We will highlight the benefits of Free
and Open Source Software over proprietary software, and restrictive
licences that aim to lock down culture and control our interaction with
it.

We might prepare some presentations and workshops[1], but much more we
want to inspire your mind, support students and clubs, artists and
writers -- we want to share creativity and work together.

Help us to make a difference at the University of Canterbury. Share your
ideas with us at freeculture@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz or come to our
fortnightly meeting. Our next meetings are:
Tuesday, March 18th, 5pm (tomorrow) and
Tuesday, April 1st, 5pm in the
"Student Hub" (Psychology Building)

For more information check our website:
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/freeculture/

Cheers,
Raffael

[1] e.g. on why so many people are switching from Microsoft Office to
OpenOffice.org, from Internet Explorer to Firefox, and from Windows to
free Operating Systems like Ubuntu and other flavours of GNU/Linux.

--

"There has never been a time in history when more of our 'culture' was
as 'owned' as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the
concentration of power to control the /uses/ of culture has been as
unquestioningly accepted as it is now." --Lawrence Lessig "Free Culture"
(2004)