[school-discuss] Crash the Super Bowl

[Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks to the folks who replied to my EPS query.
As Burkhard Wölfel indicated, the issue seems to
be related to GhostScript. I'm still untangling
things, but I believe it might be more productive
at this point to discuss why I'm dealing with EPS
files at all right now. Please bear with me; I
promise to tie FLOSS into this at the end.

The story begins here:

http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/

For those who don't want to wait for the site to
load--or if you are having problems loading it,
as I did several times--here is the gist.

Frito-Lay, the Pepsi-Cola Company, and the National
Football League have joined forces to crowd-source
three TV commercials for the Superbowl this coming
February. The idea is for each contest entrant to
submit a thirty-second spot for either Doritos or
Pepsi Max. The absolute top possible prize, in a
best-case scenario, is two million US dollars and
a consulting gig for another commercial.

Now the bad news:

==> The submission deadline is midnight, Central
Time, November 15, 2010.

==> The contest is only open to legal residents of
the United States over the age of eighteen.

==> With this kind of money and status at stake, the
competition is brutal. If your browser cooperates,
take a look through the submissions already present
in the gallery on the site.

In the toolkit of images &c provided as raw material
for ads, the zipped picture files unzip to EPS; that
is how my EPS questions got started.

Now, at last, the FLOSS connection: if an ad made
with FLOSS tools won any of the grand prizes, it
would be the biggest promotional opportunity for the
FLOSS movement ever. And a million bucks or so would
certainly be an excellent pool for funding FLOSS
projects. What would *your* school do with it?

While I'm wrestling with my own ad ideas, I'm also
harshly realistic: I don't have the hardware, the
software, or the expertise to be a really major
contender entirely on my own. A class of smart and
ambitious high school students, on the other hand,
might be just the right kind of gang to get serious
with this. Their teacher, of course, would be the
over-18 contest entrant of record.

If anyone wants me to participate in their project,
let me know. In any case, best of luck to everybody,
and I'll see you at the Superbowl (yeah, right). :-)

Joel