Celestia Educational Activities - 2006 - now with SOUND

[fsgregs]

Hi.

EDITED:

I am pleased to announce the new update for Celestia Educational Activities for 2006. The Activities have been updated to include the use of Celestia 1.4.1, plus new astronomical features, new add-ons, and ... ... SOUND. Now, as you cruise Celestia educational space, you will be able to not only see planets, moons, asteroids, comets, spacecraft, nebula, galaxies and deep space objects, but will be able to HEAR sound effects. These include winds within the atmospheres of planets, earthquakes and eruptions on volcanic worlds, ambient sounds from inside your spaceship, radio pulses from the Crab pulsar, radio transmissions from "alien" worlds that our talented creators have designed ... and lots more!!

Celestia Educational Activities represent 12 detailed journeys through Celestia space to over 300 destinations. They were developed by a Celestia volunteer high school teacher in the U.S. as a means of thoroughly exploring the visually stunning world of Celestia, while also teaching you astronomical facts along the way. Each journey consists of a detailed Activity document written in MS Word (Adobe PDF coming soon), which guides you through the trip and gives you complete instructions on how to operate Celestia, while also explaining what science has discovered about what you are seeing. If you pilot your ship through all 12 trips, you will explore the universe for over 30 hours. Best of all, all Activities are FREE to download.

To visit the Celestia educational website and see what the Activites offer, simply click this link below:

http://celestiamotherlode.net/educational.html

Enjoy

Frank (fsgregs)

[t00fri]

Frank,

while I am convinced your new educational collection is great , my personal preference would still be to have it announced without the sticky tag. Neither Chris anounces new Celestia versions with a sticky tag nor did we in case of FT1.x.
Just as an illustration.

Bye Fridger

[fsgregs]

Fridger:

The sticky is for the benefit of first time visitors to the forum, who may not know that there are 30 hours of educational journeys and tours through Celestia space available for their use. It is also for the benefit of the over 2,500 forum visitors who drop by only occasionally and are unaware that the activities have been updated. I would guess that even the Celestia motherlode.net parent site is unknown to many visitors to the forum. Without the sticky, the posting would disappear off the first page within a few days. With it, visitors will be able to learn of the existance of a wider world of Celestia, outside of the forum, at least for a while.

For all you regulars, feel free to ignore the sticky if you wish.

Regards

Frank

[BlindedByTheLight]

Hey... been out for a while. What's the status with the Educational Activities and Mac OS X? Anything you still need to make it work?

[t00fri]

Fridger:

The sticky is for the benefit of first time visitors to the forum, who may not know that there are 30 hours of educational journeys and tours through Celestia space available for their use.
...

That sort of argument certainly would also apply to Celestia updates, wouldn't it? Every new visitor will surely be interested to use the latest version.

I think we should not /advertise/ in a "sticky" manner projects that do have a commercial tag, even though in your case, the money involved is modest.

The CD set is available for sale for a modest fee. Class Licenses are available for a modest increment in price. For further inquiries, contact Frank Gregorio at: fsgregs@comcast.net

While you will surely disagree, I consider this sort of thing a matter of principle rather than by the /amount/ of money involved...

As I emphasized repeatedly, there is nothing bad about making some money this way, after you spent hundreds of hours to put this all together. Yet as you know well, also the Celestia developers and other contributors have invested a huge amount of their time into Celestia without having it "reimboursed" .

Personally, I just don't like to see commercially inspired advertisements
with a "sticky" label in a GPL license "environment" which this forum is to represent.

Bye Fridger

[fsgregs]

Well ... thanks Fridger, for filling up an innocent announcement about an upgrade to a great educational project offered to all Celestia users, with some crap about "commercial" interests. For your information, I established the CD because so many people asked me to do so. They did not want to download 2 GB of Activity add-ons. Obviously, I am not going to package up the CD set and send it to them for free.!!!! I have already devoted far more time to Celestia than is healthy

As you said, I am making very little on this.

In addition, the quote you included above to boister your argument is NOT from this forum. You took a line from the educational page on the Motherlode and quoted it out of context. All I said on this forum is that a CD was available for a modest fee!

In the future, if you have a personal issue of this nature, send me a PM about it.

Frank

[t00fri]

Well ... thanks Fridger, for filling up an innocent announcement about an upgrade to a great educational project offered to all Celestia users, with some crap about "commercial" interests. For your information, I established the CD because so many people asked me to do so. They did not want to download 2 GB of Activity add-ons. Obviously, I am not going to package up the CD set and send it to them for free.!!!! I have already devoted far more time to Celestia than is healthy

As you said, I am making very little on this.

However you turn it, I am sure that your modest fee exceeds the cost for the 2 CD's and the mailing. Hence it is commercial. Selling "Class Licenses" is commercial. If so many people request the CD's, great for you!

Look, I did not intend to expose my real reasons for asking you to remove the /sticky/ label. After you just gave me a fuzzy answer, I had to become more explicit. That's all.

In addition, the quote you included above to boister your argument is NOT from this forum. You took a line from the educational page on the Motherlode and quoted it out of context.

I disagree: I just clicked your link that you gave above in your announcement and directly faced that statement written in boldface!

http://celestiamotherlode.net/educational.html


Bye Fridger

[BrainDead]

If I may here, Good Doctor...

I disagree with your disagreement. With all respect , sir.

Mr. Gregorio has devoted probably over a thousand hours
to his educational activities and has offered to send these
to dial-up users, or others too lazy to spend the time it
takes to download these sizeable packages from the net.

He can certainly NOT be expected to provide the CD's to
those who request them for nothing. As to whether he's
making a profit or not, I very much doubt that.

Sorry, just my two-cents worth. You yourself have
devoted over a thousand hours to Celestia. Maybe not in
coding, but with your intelligent explanations of the facts,
and your efforts to make the facts evident to all.

If someone asked you to send them a CD with all of your
brilliant textures, for example, wouldn't you expect to be
reimbursed for the CD's, the postage and the time it takes
to do all of this?

Also, what about the amount of time it takes Frank to
prepare, organize and post the CD's?

I know I'm butting in where I don't belong, but I
honestly believe that Frank has every right to state what
he did.

I believe that what you are disagreeing with is the wording of
Frank's "Marketing" statements... so I do understand where
you're coming from. It does sound as if Frank is trying to
sell the product, so maybe he just needs to change his
wording a bit.

I just don't believe that Frank is trying to SELL the product
though.

Again, with all respect sir... Thanks.

[fsgregs]

This argument ends here!

I included lots of detail in this posting so people who don't know anything about the Activities can learn a little about them.

To placate you, I have edited the post to remove all reference to the CD.

Selden is the moderator of this forum. If he thinks the posting regarding the presence and updating of the Activities should not be a sticky, he can remove it!

Frank

[t00fri]

Bob,

once more: it's perfectly fine with me and everyone else I suppose, if Frank is making some amount of money by selling his CD's. The actual amount he charges is of no relevance to me, be it little or much.

+++++++++++++++
What I like quite a bit less is the fact that Frank does not stand /openly/ behind this fact. Moreover, I definitely think neither this forum nor the Motherlode should serve in any way as a platform for commercial ads related to Celestia! Be it via links or directly.
+++++++++++++++

Frank once told me what he is charging for the CD's. On the one hand, it's not much. On the other hand, it is FAR more than the cost of 2 CD's + mail. So there is NO doubt whatsoever that this is a commercial venture. Furthermore, his ad on the ML also talks about him selling "Class Licenses", which to me sounds like fees for whole school classes for being allowed to use his CD's. Any form of license for which one has to pay money is COMMERCIAL. As far as I can tell Frank's ad on the ML is the ONLY such post on this server.

++++++++++++++
I am against placing links to this ad in this forum with a "sticky label"!
++++++++++++++

Bye Fridger

[selden]

Unfortunately, as best I can tell, this thread has degenerated because of a misunderstanding on all sides. I've asked Frank to write a more appropiate post describing the Addon.

I'm locking this thread and moving it to "purgatory"