Questions

I really love asking questions and finding answer. In my home office I have a number of Post-Its with questions on them. I thought I'd share them with you all online.
Contact me if you know the answer to any of these questions, or would like to work together to find them.

Environment

• What should be humanity's total annual carbon budget/limit?
  How much carbon can safely be put into the atmosphere without negatively impacting global temperatures?

  • What should be our individual total annual carbon budget/limit?
    If we were divide humanity's total figure equally amongst the world's population (Wikipedia) what would our individual amount be?

• What is my carbon footprint?

Feminism

• What is the participation rate of females in free software projects?
  What are the causes? How can the situation be improved?

  • Nafus et al. (p.4) found that the participation rate for females was only 1.5%!

    Nafus, D., Leach, J., & Krieger , B. (2006) D16 - Gender: Integrated Report of Findings, [online], Free/Libre/Open Source Software: Policy Support (FLOSSPOLS), Available from: http://www.flosspols.org/deliverables/FLOSSPOLS-D16- Gender_Integrated_Report_of_Findings.pdf (Accessed 18 April 2010).

Free software

To learn more see the free software definition; why I use the term "free software" instead of "open source"; and why I call the operating system "GNU/Linux" not just "Linux".

• How many Australians are using a GNU/Linux operating system and different free software programs?

  • Why aren't more using GNU/Linux and free software?

• How many Victorian schools/universities are using a GNU/Linux operating system and different free software programs?

  • Why aren't more using GNU/Linux and free software?

• Are there any computer manufactures that allow you to buy a computer in Australia without Microsoft Windows pre-installed?

User Experience (UX) & usability

• What do Victorian UX practitioners think of CHISIG?
  What would they like CHISIG to provide?

• How do UX practitioners recruit participants?

Web accessibility

• Are there research based personas for:

  • Users with visual disabilities (WebAim);
  • Users with auditory disabilities (WebAim);
  • Users with motor disabilities (WebAim);
  • Users with cognitive disabilities (WebAim).

• Could web browers communicate web accessibility settings (example: screen reader, screen magnifier, zoom left, etc.) to site owners?

  Browsers presently communicate browser and platform being used via the User Agent String (Wikipedia):
  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; pl-PL; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/20121223 Ubuntu/9.25 (jaunty) Firefox/3.8

Other questions

• What is love? Where is happiness? What is Life? Where is peace? ^{Note 1}

Note 1: Obscure Jeff Buckley reference.

About this document

Author: Scott Rippon
Date: Wednesday April 6, 2011
Version: 0.1

Version history

Version	Date	Update
0.1	Wednesday April 6, 2011	Created initial list of questions.