Slashdot Mirror
Campus Pipeline: Schools Selling Students' Eyes
magnanamous_cow_herd writes: "This semester i returned to the university to finally finish off my degree,
and after going to the computer center to re-activate my e-mail account, the
helpdesk guy started telling me about this fabulous new service called Campus
Pipeline
I looked into it a bit and found out that there are over 400 universities who
signed up with this company to provide them with a shiny new "free" advertising-supported
student intranet in exchange for many many eyeballs.
They claim they are positioned to become the fifth largest portal on the Internet.
I'd like to know what the Slashdotters think about this. Here is the only article
I found on this "service" that was even questioning it."
thank you,one voice out there anyway.
I honestly believe the things I posted first.
Info was gleaned over my lifetime from students I have known everywhere,colleges I have seen,and the media.Rice sounds nice.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
hmmm... I heard another great study the other day... Did everyone know that three out of four people make up seventy five percent of the nations population? That's right! i would never have guessed.....
Look for the TEKMOBL, the chevy with an onboard INTEL chip
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
'Campus Pipeline could become the fifth largest portal on the Web, argues CEO Chad Muir.
"We are looking to become the Windows of the campus Webtop," Muir says.'
Screens all over
A) You're assuming that Shasta and Pepsi are otherwise the same product, so that the only reason there is a difference in sales is advertising. Coca-Cola decided to put that theory to the acid test when they introduced "New Coke", reasoning that if they had a product that tasted just like Pepsi, they could slaughter them with advertising dollars. Didn't work so well, did it?
B) You're assuming that banner ads are just as effective as all other forms of advertising. That's hotly disputed.
C) As far as Double-Click making money--Double-Click is selling ads, not products. It's irrelevant whether Double-Click ads really work as long as they can get enough suckers who think that they work. And the dot-com economy proves there's no shortage of suckers willing to throw money at e-commerce.
Here's a pop-quiz for you: Name an e-commerce company that's making money selling to consumers (no infrastructure companies like Cisco). Now, if you've come up with one, describe one of their banner ads.
I can tell you what the people who put up billboards have to say about your opinion: "Nuts! It's our land". And they're right - they bought the land, and they can put up any damn thing they like on it.
Would you like it if people told you what flags you could hang on your house? Or what clothing you could wear? Free speech must be for everyone or for no one.
-Dave Turner.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Hey moderators, can you moderate an entire article as flamebait?
Donut
But you hate advertising. So how do you expect that the reporters will get paid? Or do you expect that they'll all volunteer?
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
From just breifly browsing the specs, I can say that it's a well thought out system, but Universities should have a well thought out criteria when evaulating new software:
It it quality software? Is it realtivily bug free? Is it prone to crashes or does it like to crash other systems/software?
Is it platform independent (most Universities have Macs, Windows, UNIX, and what have you to support...)
Is it secure? Plain text passwords on a university network = Very Bad Thing
Does it have support/training options for the IT staff? Will our support staff be able to support our userbase from day one?
Does it depend on systems out of the IT departments control?
Well, the last one pretty much tells us that we don't want it, because what are you going to do if 1,000 students in a large lecture are waiting 24 hours for the assignment that their teacher sent via e-mail, and is due the next day.
And then there are the bandwith considerations. With napster, gnutilla, and the usual heavy trafic, how are we going to deal with ads going out to everyone who access the system? The campus better have a powerful cache server.
Ok, I'm going to go and make that part of the IT departments offical policy at my place of employment now. =)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
2. If a student wants to register for a course or section that's filled, the system automatically adds him or her to a waiting list. When a seat opens up, the system auto matically notifies the student by sending an e-mail message.
3. If a drop/add changes a student's bill, the system will notify the student as well as the bursar, who can accept the student's payment on line.
4. When a student loan is approved, the system e-mails the student and adjusts his or her account balance.
5. Graduates keep their e-mail addresses for life, making them always easy to reach.
Those services not already offered at most universities are not really worth doing. Billboard U? Puke!
Hopefully, larger more established universities will help smaller ones get things done.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This university just started Campus Pipeline this semester. All of the services it encompasses were a part of the university already, their program just provides easy access to all, with only one login. I have used it and it is great, but I still use the normal methods for everything from checking mail to changing courses. They have a great idea and this is perfect for novice computer users, and the great thing is, the advanced users by no means have to use the service. VT did the right thing by leaving the option open and not forcing students to use Campus Pipeline. They should be patted on the back for not screwing that up at least. Go Hokies!
Yep, it's free. Who could object to that?
Here's the next ad campaigns:
You are driving around with your brand-new car, it cost you 3/4 of what you were expecting. Every 5 minutes of driving, a small heads-up ad appears on the left pillar of the windshield. It catches your eye for just a sec until you realize it's another ad, but ooops, that kid just ran out from nowhere on your right. You swerve left to avoid her and hit a light pole. That ad has been proven not to distract drivers, it's very discreet.
So you go to the emergency room with chest pains. While waiting for someone to tell you if it's a bruise or a heart attack, the nurse asks you to view this brief 5-minute video on a new kind of aspirin. Saves the hospital a lot of money on their drugs! Who could object, you have to wait for the doctor anyway, right? And now you can recognize the pain-reliever he gives you.
You're OK and leave to walk downtown. You need to use a restroom so head into a department store. The restroom is free, except that you have to read an ad on the bathroom door and punch in the correct multiple-choice answer to a question about the ad. Takes only a second, if it's that urgent then you should have started earlier.
Sometime the "free" things just end up costing more in the end.
Campus Pipeline's Commitment to Privacy
Protecting your privacy is of the highest priority at Campus Pipeline. Our
success depends on how much schools and you, the end user, trust us to deliver
valuable services, information, and opportunities.
How the Campus PipelineTM System Works
The Campus Pipeline software relies on information held by your institution
in secure campus databases. With this information, Campus Pipeline technology
provides convenient, around-the-clock, web-based access to critical services
and powerful tools. Our system requires certain limited information about you
that is given to us by your institution in order to function, but Campus Pipeline
personnel do not have access to your school records. In this way, we provide
important functionality to your institution without compromising your security
and privacy.
In order to provide our software to your school at no charge, Campus Pipeline
recoups its development investment by selling sponsor placements and advertising
within the Campus Pipeline interface. Individually identifiable information
about you will not be disclosed for purposes of sponsorship or advertising without
your explicit permission.
Collecting Information about Campus Pipeline Users
Campus Pipeline collects the following types of information about our users:
When you log into the Campus Pipeline site at your institution, the system creates
a log file to record where you go and what you do within the Campus Pipeline
system. Unless you provide voluntary personal information in the Personal Profile
survey, this file contains no personally identifiable information, such as your
name or student ID number, so we cannot connect it back to any individual user.
However, to help us assess traffic and usage patterns within the Campus Pipeline
system, the file may contain other depersonalized information such as major
or degree being sought. (For more detail, see the FAQ on Campus Pipeline
and User Information.)
When you log into the Campus Pipeline system, we invite you to complete the
Personal Profile login survey. In this survey, you can tell us about yourself,
so that the information and features you experience with the Campus Pipeline
system are more customized to your personal interests and educational needs.
We may use this data to provide messages, offers, and opportunities on the Campus
Pipeline interface that are more relevant to your own interests. We do not transfer
your personal information to any third party unless you have given us explicit
permission to do so. You can always edit or change the personal information
you have provided by going to your Personal Profile from the link on "My Pipeline"
or within "Options."
The Campus Pipeline web platform also uses a browser feature called a "cookie."
Cookies are pieces of information that a web site transfers to your computer's
memory for record keeping purposes. The cookie used by the Campus Pipeline web
platform is not saved on the hard disk of your computer, nor does it contain
any personal information. Its sole purpose is to identify a logged in user.
All personally identifiable data collected by the Campus Pipeline system are
protected using industry standard methods such as firewalls and secure socket
layers. Whenever sensitive personal information is involved, such as credit
card numbers, the information is encrypted for secure transmission.
Campus Pipeline's internal policies and procedures also protect your privacy
with respect to any personal information that you have shared with us. Our personnel
are held to the highest standards with regards to the integrity of your personal
information.
How Campus Pipeline Utilizes Information About Users
The information that we collect guides us in enhancing the features, functionality,
and experience that the Campus Pipeline system provides. Specifically, we may
use it in the following ways:
We may aggregate depersonalized log files in order to assess how people use
the Campus Pipeline interface and to understand what they like and what they
do not like about Campus Pipeline, so that we can improve and enhance our services
and offerings. Campus Pipeline personnel cannot tie this aggregate information
to any specific individual's personal information or usage pattern.
We may analyze usage patterns in the aggregate in order to select or place
advertising to be displayed to groups of users of the Campus Pipeline web platform.
We may use information you provide about yourself to personalize portions of
our interface, in order to provide content, offers, and messages that are relevant
to your interests and educational needs.
We may act as an intermediary between you and our sponsors, advertisers and
strategic partners. We never provide your personalized information to sponsors,
advertisers or strategic partners unless you have given us express permission
to do so. Instead, we work with sponsors, advertisers, and partners to understand
the type of audience they wish to reach. We then direct sponsor messages and
advertising to the desired audiences. In this process, only Campus Pipeline
has direct access to your personal data and contact information.
We may disclose aggregate user statistics as we describe our products and offerings
to prospective sponsors, advertisers, partners, and other third parties, and
for other lawful purposes.
We may disclose personal information in limited circumstances to our agents
and subcontractors that assist us in fulfillment. In each case, our agents and
subcontractors are contractually obligated: (i) to keep such information completely
confidential; (ii) to use the information only for the limited purpose for which
they were retained; and (iii) to destroy or return the information to us at
the conclusion of their work.
We may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or in the
good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) conform to the edicts
of the law or comply with legal process served on Campus Pipeline; (b) protect
and defend the rights or property of Campus Pipeline Inc. or the users of the
Campus Pipeline system; or (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the
personal safety of users of Campus Pipeline or the public.
We may also disclose personal information in limited circumstances that are
specifically described when we collect the information. For example, we may
reserve the right to publish the names of winners of contests, sweepstakes or
other promotions after informing you of this right in the entry rules.
From time to time, we may send e-mail communications to tell you about commercial
offers, products, and opportunities based on your interests or educational needs.
It is our policy only to send e-mail to users who give us permission to do so.
In every such e-mail, we will also provide instructions on how to unsubscribe
from these communications.
Campus Pipeline and Children The Campus Pipeline system is directed
to higher education students, faculty, and administrative personnel. It is not
directed to children under the age of thirteen. However, we are aware that a
small percentage of higher education students may fall within that category.
We recognize that those students have exclusive rights to their educational
records as set forth in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974
("FERPA"), and acknowledge that those rights afforded by that legislation may
conflict with certain provisions of the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1999 ("COPPA"). Accordingly, Campus Pipeline will comply with the Children's
Online Privacy Protection Act of 1999 to the extent that it does not conflict
with the established rights extended to all higher education students by the
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.
Other Privacy Considerations
Privacy is a serious issue in the online environment. Whenever you voluntarily
disclose personal information online--through e-mail, message boards, or chat
rooms--this information can be collected and used by others. If you post personal
information online that is publicly accessible, you may receive unsolicited
messages from other parties in return.
While we strive to protect your privacy, Campus Pipeline cannot ensure or warrant
the security of any information transmitted to us through publicly accessible
channels, and you do so at your own risk.
Also, the Campus Pipeline interface contains links to other sites, which have
separate privacy and data collection practices independent of our own operations.
We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these entities,
and encourage you to read the privacy policies of each outside site that you
visit. We advise you to act carefully and responsibly online, maintain the secrecy
of passwords and account information, and to be aware of the risks and responsibilities
of Internet usage.
Campus Pipeline will post all changes to this policy on this page so that you
will know what information we will collect and how we may use or disclose that
information. We are also available to answer priacy questions or discuss privacy
concerns at privacy@campuspipeline.com. You can also contact us by mail at Campus
Pipeline, Inc., 155 North 400 West, #500, Salt Lake City, UT 84103; by phone
at 801-485-6000; or by fax at 801-485-6606.
"tension is the great integrity" -R Buckminster Fuller
My brain hurts. I need to buy from Amazon.com.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Don't you mean Pepsi State :)
Pepsi actually pays PSU approx. $6 million to drink the stuff everywhere on campus, including football games, cafeterias, etc.
I've been in the student portal market for a while (3years). There are several alternatives to CampusPipleline for the interested college. First you could join Ja-SIG. which is a collection of higher education universities focused on building an enterprise portal for their students with java, they have alot of corporate backing (sun, etc). and a large number of technically inclined schools. check them out at
http://www.ja-sig.org
or real content at
http://www.mis2.udel.edu/ja-sig/portal.html
If you got the right stuff you could also roll your own. Good systems to start with are
ArsDigita Community System www.arsdigita.com
The OpenACS (no oracle) www.openacs.org
The Jetspeed Portal java.apache.org/jetspeed
All of these are quality systems that have a lot of potential in the right hands. A good example of an ACS based student portal is my.caltech.edu
If you want to check out some of the portals i helped to make/consult on check out
http://www.sin.ou.edu (zope based:)
http://www.sin.wm.edu (mod_perl)
If you want to go with a commerical company non-opensource, there is always
www.blackboard.com
So if you don't like CampusPipeline support an opensource alternative. If a quality opensource educational intranet is availalbe companies like CampusPipeline will soon be out of business. Making money selling software just seems like a bad business strategy to me these days.
Cheers
Papa Smurf Says "When You Live In A Mushroom Everyone Looks Blue"
All colleges get sucked into that part of the deal. At the University of Kansas, all of their *n?x boxen were running Digital, and they had an exclusive contract that said that ONLY DEC could upgrade any software. That's why at least some mail servers were running sendmail 8.8.7 all the way into mid-1999.
I wonder if any of their machines have been 0wn3d yet. Might be a good wake-up call.
The only thing that sucks is they're turning off our telnet access to our AIX mailserver, for no reason I can see. :(
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
as i already posted my university, U of I, wrote its own intranet page with PHP . My ex-boss wrote it and wanted to keep the intranet on the inside and not clutter up our site with ads and spam in students boxes. let me know if you guys like the site, cause if you can write in php you can do a better more effective page than any stupid Campus Pipeline
fufu
Finally, I get a logical and well-put point. You are correct: it would be anti-free speech to ban people the right to do what they wanted to with their land.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I would not have a problem with services like campuspipeline.com if it were an 'opt-in' type system....
I attend MSU, and we do not have it here, however I remember when I was @ Leon High School in the 9th grade that we had AOL cd's in the computer lab... Perhaps this service would be better if when everyone went and got their books it would be in the bags, or maybe there would be a cd already in your dorm when you got there...
Making the system closed like that is no good... And what OS's does it support? Linux (doubt it), MacOS? (maybe), Win 9x and latest versions of NT? of course, 3,1 (doubt it), BeOS (yah right).
Please..... I am a compsci major,.... If my university required me to run windoze exclusively to access the internet and worldwide web i'd drop out......however i did just think of an idea of what students stuck with this system could do (fortunately we don't have it at Mississippi State I know that with things like bluelight from AOL and with FreeAV from altavista, which are dialup free internet providers the service requires you to click in the box every so many minutes or you disconnect or at least you have to use the computer.... ping programs won't work....
If it's an 'always on' type deal, set up a cheap box as a router... then everyone behind the router would not have to view the ads... hehehehe...anyway.. just an idea..
Look for the TEKMOBL, the chevy with an onboard INTEL chip
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
I don't know what you're whining about. This is America at it's finest. If we didn't have advertisements, how would we know what to buy? Geez.
pine is easy to use, reliable, supports HTML formatting and has no problem with attachments. It's MIME support works wonderfully to launch the appropriate viewers as neccessary for them.
----------------------------
Universities seem to be treating their students as just another asset these days to squeeze out more money. First they let the credit card people in, now this. What's next?
Universities should be protecting their students from this crap, not encouraging it. So many students get into big trouble, even being forced to go into bankruptcy, because of the shady credit card companies. Students don't have this much money to spend!
Most student don't yet know how to manage their own assets, however small, and these businesses will take advantage of them. The universities know students are living on a tight budget, given the outrageous tuition and fees these days, yet they seem to conveniently forget this fact when it comes to these questionable business deals, as long as money is involved.
I don't see the big deal.
A) It's free. No tuition hike for you.
B) So its ads. Whine all you want. You think the coke machine in the student union isn't an ad for coca-cola? I'm sure the Levis t-shirts you wear aren't ads for the jean company, they're an expression of your individuality. Really.
Every time advertising hits the internet in some other new fashion, /. picks it up as if its
something newsworthy. Get over it folks. Ads are
everywhere. The average person in America sees 2000 per day. You just don't realize they're ads.
To think that the internet, and now intranets
and other faces of your wired life are somehow immune, better, different, whatever, is naive.
While the obligatory use of Pipeline sucks (and also damages UN*X pipes' reputation), it's just a stupid thing(tm). I see from this thread that all the old functionality is still accessible through cosher (read telnet/ssh) means. Such systems should also serve literature/arts/music schools, and I guess that at least for some of them the CLI stuff would be too difficult to comprehend. So you're stuck with it (while I'm missing the whole fun by not living in the US)
Do you have this feeling that ./ threads are occupied with stuff of lesser and esser importance?
The universities CHARGE for everything. What the hell are they doing this for?! I can understand the ads--maybe. But the profiling and money-cut from purchases is terrible.
The universities should all chip in a small annual fee to create an organization that would write this type of service themselves. They could even have volunteer work from their C/S department to help write some code for it. All that talent... wasted on Napster. When I was getting my CS degree, I didn't touch the comptuer club with a 10 foot pole, since they weren't doing anything interesting. But this type of work could have had promise.
Check out what my local college did this year (Ball State University , if you were curious) They oversold the Freshman Parking lot by 500! And to make up for this, they ticketed the freshman that had to park on the grass, and are now "correcting" the problem by giving them tickets to a different parking lot... but it's one where the shuttle bus doesn't go too... so 1 mile walk for you!
Rader
I will be more than happy to summarize the reasons that campuspipeline sucks in a well written, well mannered message. I mean, there are advertisements all over schools these days, but when the line between official content and advertisements blurs so much, I am greatly offended. Yes, most people can still differetiate between the two, but that's not the point.
I wonder how robust this system is! You should make _alot_ of friends, and send them all _alot_ of email (all class related of course!) and see how long it takes to bring the system to it's knees.
Blar.
The point is, the advertising is going to be there. Whether it is the big Starbucks sign in the cafeteria, the Coke logo on the scoreboard, or a banner ad on the intranet.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
If advertising worked as well as you say it does why then are advertisers having a harder and harder time getting people to buy? Simple psychology. Basically if something is common enough people don't really think about it and therefore it dosn't make them take notice. I don't really get all that excited by commercials and banner ads and I have never bought something just because I saw it on television. It dosn't work for me.
Respond to s
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
Corporate influence in the schools has been covered here on slashdot before and this is a good example of the crap that is going on.
.com model that has been failing pretty badly as a whole. I would never invest in such companies.
A lot of the problem is with bloated Universities who have no financial feedback mechanism (much like the government) so while the school might be making good money, the budget is streched thin anyway with uneeded high level management types, etc. Not that mass privatising is a good solution (I would never recommend it myself).
These days it's easier to get funding for new prisons than it is for education. I think California is a good example. I beleive they are now putting more money into law enforcement than education. Not a good sign, and not a good way to improve the world.
Years ago I think programs like this would have been rejected out of hand. In today's world colleges and universities are run more as corporations. By this I'm not referring to the increasing corporate control, but as in being bottom line money driven. Therefore money saving schemes like this often look attractive to college administrators at the expense of their students.
This companies business model is also suspect, it's the typical
Many people don't understand the value of advertising in our society, which is the reason I posted in the first place. It's obvious that advertising, because of its pervasiveness, is the single most influential force on American culture. Advertising can be, and often is, much more entertaining than the product it is selling. How often has a preview for a movie been more entertaining than the movie itself? As for television, yes, networks are free, but you must have a TV to watch them on. Also, the people who view ONLY network TV and do not pay for cable make up a small percentage of the viewing public. As for newspaper subscriptions, you can subscribe to a newspaper for a couple of bucks a month these days, and you're mainly paying for the priviledge of having it delivered to the door rather than going out to pick it up yourself. The bottom line is, advertising is a necessity. If it's entertaining, then it's worth your time. If not, the product probably won't sell well and the advertising won't last long, anyway. If everyone was so offended by everything advertised, it wouldn't be very effective, and people would let the advertisers know. And yes, some things annoy me that appeal immensely to a lot of other people, which is something to take into consideration. I'm sure you've heard people shouting "WHAZZZUP!" at each other.
...there are over 400 universities who signed up with this company to provide them with a shiny new "free" advertising-supported student intranet in exchange for many many eyeballs.
- Let's see. 2 tablespoons of Newt tongues.
- Check, master...
- Legs of spider, 1 oz.
- Check, master!
- 20 eyes of drama arts students...
- Uh, we're out of those, master!
- WHAT?! Get me some, now!
- Yes, master! I'll send an e-mail to Pipeline right away, master!
- Harumph. Can't do decent witchcraft anymore these days... How in the seven circles of Hell am I suppose to make this Microsoft server to work without black magic?
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
It's happening. Portals are all the buzz (well, they were all the buzz a few years ago, but it takes a while to catch up). As users become more net/web savvy, and expect to be able to access their information from remote devices and places, universities have to cope with that. One solution is to use the web interface that almost every freshman is familiar with by the time they get to college. Also, that way one can stuff a lot of mini-apps (like slashboxes) in one customized portal for the student, so they don't have to obtain and run different clients to do different things.
So, that's all nice and fine. The problem comes in when the universities don't have the money or expertise to create a portal like this from the ground up...which leads them right into application service provider territory. In fact, at Cornell, if I understand correctly, there have been offers to host a portal in exchange for advertising, but I believe those have all been declined, and there is work underway in a cross-university consortium, to come up with a generic portal that each university can tailor to their needs.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Also check out http://wings.buffalo.edu...the system stemmed out of an old Gopher server, and was (probably still is) the easiest way to find info when I was on campus there. Everything was pretty much collaborative content...departments had their own section of Wings, sent updates and things took care of themselves. And when I left, it was run by a relatively small administrative staff.
Somebody needs to write a service that reads and forwards Pipeline mailboxes. It would be great if SpamCop offered this. They poll POP mailboxes every 10 minutes, deal with the spam, and forward the rest, charging $0.50/megabyte of mail. All they need is another poller that talks to Pipeline instead of a POP.
LISA: They can't seriously expect us to swallow that tripe!
SKINNER: (to class) Now, as a special treat courtesy of our friends at the meat council, please help yourselves to this tripe!
---
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Historically trends are cyclical. Stretches of group think are followed by stretches of individualistic rebellion. Look at what's happening right now. We see countless protests being staged by people who are fet up with corporatism and globalization. Are these people becoming drones?
I think you are way underestimating the desire to be an individual in human beings. There is a desire to be part of a community and to identify with others, but there is also an ego driven desire to distinguish yourself from the crowd.
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Why should CS professors be spending their time writing intranet software? Isn't that what an IT staff is for? I'd rather have the CS profs spend their time on curriculum development and research, not writing Java applets for some database-driven web site.
Between all the credit card companies hawking free stuff and ads being plastered to every blank surface that can be found on campus, my school's beginning to feel more like a "good consumer training center" and less like an institution where I'm supposed to be learning things that include critical thinking. They just installed tv's in the dining halls, which pump out crappy music videos (they're all rap and r&b videos since my school is in the middle of what would be called an "urban" demographic). I wouldn't put it past my school to try this either. Whatever happened to the Internet being an educational resource? The only thing I ever see it being used for is an easier way to sell crap to people that don't need it. Pretty soon banner ads are going to be a neccesary component of all internet protocols.
Most kids don't know enough to not like ads... they have no reason to not like them.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Isn't that a monopolistic tactic? Considering a I work for a portol, I think it sucks. It does not lend to fair playing. People use what is convienent. If this new portol is more convienint than others it could poise itself to being the dominant player in the portol world. This is unfair, IMHO. ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't want a lot, I just want it all
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
At the very least the internet should be equal to the rest of the world. I have to look at at the crap that gets plastered everywhere I want to be, but I should not have to look at stuff on the way there. Real communities CAN outlaw billboards.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...for the universities to cash in on their captive audience.
BlackNova Traders
I signed up for the Discover card on campus a few times (even though I already had one). Free t-shirts, candy, they already had my info, and a month later I'd get a "sorry, but you already have a Discover card, you don't get a second one" letter. The best of both worlds.
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
For shame, for shame, bringing commercialism into the sacred grove of academe.
Thankfully, there was nothing like this when I matriculated, and I was able to fully enjoy watching the Penn State Nittany Lions beat the Miami Hurricanes in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl while sipping my Budweiser under the alluring glance of my Free Bud-Girls poster.
While people can argue the commercialism issue in higher ed all day long, the privacy argument agains these sorts of services is pretty straightforward and I would encourage people at institutions considering these services to check them out and raise whatever stink is necessary. We just licensed Blackboard and the new version includes a "search" box when students log in as well as off-site "resources" requiring registration. We are trying to disable those, but it appears to have become part of the profit model even for normal academic web environments.
--chris
Urk.
I thought from the headline they were organ-harvesting or something.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
Everyone but me that listens to Album88 and boortz.
Of course the PSA's on Ablum 88.5 can be a bit annoy. The same for Bootz's ads for new replacement windows and whiteteeth. But at least I don't have to hear a morons ask stupid questions about thier stupid brakes job insult everyone that listens.
MarNuke
MarNuke
Same thing as getting magazine offers in the bags at the bookstore... Really inevitable. All about revenue streams, err increasing the endowment.
I noticed this quote in the University Business article which was linked to from the orig. posting...
"According to a study of on-line teens released this spring by Northstar Interactive, 93 percent between the ages of 13 and 18 had used the Web, and 97 percent had sent and received e-mail"
Well...duh. If you're conducting a study of ON-LINE teens, wouldn't you guess that most of them had used the web and/or email? That would be like saying that 97 of teens exiting a voting booth had voted. The only suprise is that the percentage is so LOW. Don't you love statistics? It's a good article otherwise though. :-)
And as for the online teens who hadn't used the web or email... just what the hell were they doing online exactly? There's plenty of things to do online besides the web and email, but it's kind of hard to imagine being online WITHOUT using one of the two...
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
...those annoying packages I remember getting at the beginning of every school year. They usually had deodorant, shampoo, razors and several credit card offers, offers for record companies (12 CD's for $0.01!), etc. Sounds like the same game.
The books are still there and they are still expensive $100+ hard cover tomes that you cannot sell back and that aren't avaible used. Advertising dosn't change the educational quality of what you are watching just ads more stuff. You can still have a show about quantum physics with commercials every 15 minutes in it.
Respond to s
You have chosen schools wisely. HappyAppy has great alums and I'm gonna see Franklin Graham there this weekend.
We have a POP server here at Virginia Tech. I'm not sure how popular the Pipeline is here. I rarely use the thing and I would be surprised if it gets that much use.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Given they are students, how long will it take for a lot of the students to build and use some kind of proxy that filters all the commercials out?
And what's CP's (pun intended) stand on that?
:wq!
...where I'm going to school, and basically anyone who knew how to change their software to not default to these portals or to ask the lab help technician changed them. People went where they felt like going, and usually set default start pages to be what they had at home or in their dorm room PC if they didn't have lan access. I hope this one flops too, I'm already tired of the commercialization of the student union building, and all of the enormous costs of being in school already...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Are these just schools selling out, for cash, more worried about the bottom line then their students. Or do some smaller schools actualy need this funding, but I could not imagin a school that would even think of holding the designation of a UNIVERSITY slumping to that level of using a service like that. I guarantee you will not see top ranked schools ever use something as stupid as that.
A) need to come from SOMEWHERE (see: "tuition increase" or "additional state aid") or
B) be taken from somewhere else in the departments/university's existing budget dollars. The effects will be tangible somewhere. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The same cannot be said for the advertising on the Coke machines or somebody's t-shirts. Really.
With your current ability to discern issues, here's hoping you aren't a law major, or a university regent.
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
They say they want to be the "Windows" of campus "Webtops". Let's see how they're doing: - Try to force students to have to use their software and no other.
- Get it forced on the techies by going over their heads and giving their bosses a bullshit story.
- Combine programs that already exist, and call it something new.
- Try to spread by convincing the ignorant masses and saing "screw you" to to the knowlegable minority. Yup, they're the Windows of campus webtops alright - good job guys!
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The phrases 'vertical integration' and 'captive audience' come in mind here.
I also wonder if this isn't the kind of deal that people should be writing state legislators and attorneys general about, since it looks like an antitrust action -waiting- to happen.
The CEO basically is openly plotting to be the M$ of the field...we should worry. Education is too valuable to have corps jacking in like this.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
In my high school (in, of all places, Kansas), we payed 25,000 dollars to get services from embark.com for all 1600 students. The "customization" we recieve for all this cash is solely limited to our logo on the page, and a calendar as far as I can tell. All other services are available free of charge to anyone who visits the site. As far as I can tell (from my one visit to the site), we are free from visible advertising. However, this does not preclude embark.com from advertising in the future, nor does it preclude them from selling our information to colleges interested in applicants, or pitching Kaplan SAT preperation books (or something of that nature). Whatever the case, I did not approve this expenditure of my tax money, and I think the employee that could have been hired using this money would have been far more valuable to my education. (25,000 dollars + the time spent on maintaining the site is plenty to hire a new teacher). Not to mention that embark.com should easily be able to give out the service for free based on the high number of opportunities they have to exploit its users for economic gain.
Advertising is all about distribution, and here's just a new way to distribute. Chances are it's something that's already happening to your student body through many other venues (ie: student newspapers, orientation-week booths, stadium names).
For every medium there is a chance to advertize, and these media can be as basic as the corridor walls and the bronze plaque above a new building's wing. As such, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that something like an intranet would be opened up to advertizers as much as it's bigger cousin (the internet) already is.
What's more interesting is the spin-offs that this could cause. Student campuses often vigourously enforce their distribution status (university students are a HUGE market), so you might find that any web pages students post using university facilities will probably have to be very kind to the advertizers, or at least not serve as advertizing to their competitors or generate any sort of revenue through advertizing/advocacy for the student that should (in the eyes of the university) be going to the university. You'll also find that this could lead to serious exclusive advertizing contracts, with universities pushing forward (for instance) Microsoft products with an understanding that competing products won't be given a venue to advertize to the university market.
Finally, don't be surprised if, should the university chose to go through with it, your student government doesn't decide to go through with it too. My old university's student association used whatever media they had at their disposal to advertize, right down to coasters in the bar to designated hallway space for long-distance providers to Pepsi posters everywhere. The degree this exlusivity went? You couldn't get a Coke anywhere in the student union building.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I remember logging in once long after I signed up (out of curiosity, of course) to check my new, hip CollegeClub e-mail address. It had seven messages, all of which went like this:
The good news: CollegeClub went out of business this year. The bad news: they were taken over by Student Advantage, who also pays college students to shill for their crappy discount card. (Wow, 5% off at Joe's Pretzel Shop! Fifty cents off at Starbucks when you buy five lattes! This rules!)
For more information, click here.
A while back I read a really interesting article in Linux Journal about "Mediated Reality" (using eyeglasses whose display can filter out things you don't want to see in the real world -- like advertisements). The article was fascinating in itself, but it really put a point to why I dislike most of advertising.
It mentioned (animated) web banners which portray a moving mouse pointer and explain that it is an obvious attempt to capture the users' attention. In the end, this is what all advertising is attempting to do. They don't care about eyeballs, they want you to give your attention, your precious time, to their marketroid message.
It's also like a company which I've seen here in Atlanta, GA, USA called "Promove" which has brick-and-mortars set up to connect apartment hunters with vacant apartments. The buildings and signs are painted bright yellow. Why? Because they know that it is a psychological fact that yellow is the most eye-grabbing color. People are just naturally drawn to look at it. In the end, just another scheme to steal peoples' attention.
And that's what all advertising is: A scheme to steal peoples' attention. This is why I hate most advertising. It is the attempt of companies to use psychological tricks to take my attention and my time which is rightfully mine, and which companies have no right to.
I agree that advertising on television is acceptable, for it delivers a free service to the viewers. The viewers pay with their attention. I think that magazines and newspapers which charge a subscription fee are immoral. Why would I pay to have my attention diverted towards someone else's financial gain? I pay to look at what I want to look at, not what Frito-Lay wants me to look at! I think that advertising billboards should be illegal: the advertiser gets the viewer's attention and the viewer gets ... nothing (plus it's unsafe, people are trying to drive for God's sake!). And I think that T-Shirts which say "Tommy Hilfiger" boldly on the front is a testament to how stupid many of us have become.
And to those people who say, "It's just a few more ads, get over it, we're already inundated with ads, stop whining!" I reply: your time and your attention may be worthless to you, but to me they are my most precious resource, and I reserve the right to whine, bitch, and complain about their loss as much as I so please.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I'm not talking about a proff lifting a single finger. I'm talking about the comp sci program having enough money that it could afford infrastructure items. A dozen IT staff, wiring contractor, and a dozen racks of computers.
As far as the prof is concerned I'm sure there are plenty of good ones out there. But for every one of them, there are five guys teaching ADA.
THANK YOU!
I'm almost entirely self-taught with computers, fortunately, but I've noticed with great disgust the apparently very limited range of computer knowledge of some of the instructors in some of the CIS classes at my local college. I often wonder if they are just extra instructors for Marketing classes being paid to advertise whatever Microsoft gave them for free THIS year...
Therefore, it's nice to hear not everyone is like this in the CIS teaching field.
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Sounds like the book should have been free.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
I personally don't use it, but it is not an inherently bad thing. Also, I may be mistaken, but it seems like Campus Pipeline helped pay for some of the hardware setup along with software costs for the system. So overall everyone is a winner. Soon with browsers such as mozilla that allow easily blocking images from specific hosts, you won't even have to view the ads.
How about a free car, as long as you agree to have them monitor exactly where you drive (using a GPS and monthly check-ups) and have ads all over the car? It's all the thrill of being a NASCAR driver, at 1/6 the speed!
For more information, click here.
Need I say more?
I'd be terribly saddened to see the great Universities adopting this kind of scheme.. I'd honestly expect them to come up with something better themselves.
However, I don't believe this is aimed at those places (yet). There are far more schools and small colleges with minimal budgets that can't afford a decent computer department.
for thoe places, this kind of deal is a boon all round. Students get access, and the businesses get a cut to keep them happy.
As long as the deals don't tie in 'in-perpetuity' clauses, and allow you to cease the agreement at any time, then, it's a good thing.
The worry is, if it should be a 'tie in' deal with clauses to make it almost impracticable to leave.
It's a good first step to take.
And one thing to remember about trying to hold on to customers.. They have to give what's wanted, and they have to be good...
I think it's a good thing, from what I can see, but, as with all potent tools, the scope for it's misuse is vast, and that would be a serious blow to any academic institution.
Malk
It will not spam the users with promotional email
Of course not. And neither will our valued business partners.
Does anyone else sense a Micro$oft presence somewhere hidden in this [website] ?
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."
The article mentioned by /. says the software is free, but doesn't mention that you need to buy a pretty expensive Solaris box to run it on. And I guess university IT departments have plenty of available manhours to administrater the system, huh?
Campus Pipeline appears to promise the world to everyone. They say they can tie existing university systems together (with Java). They say they will be coming out with a version that runs on Linux. I think they are simply a company spin-off that was aiming at a big bucks IPO (before that bubble burst).
Faculty on many campuses don't like it and are putting up a fuss. That, plus the fact that the IRS is looking at taxing income unrelated to an educational institutions "primary mission", may be putting the brakes on Campus Pipeline implimentation.
Yes, Campus Pipeline is (at best) tacky but the fact that many institutions are hopping in bed with them is a result of the financial pressure that many universities are under in the face of State government funding cutbacks.
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
Because internet ads were so annoying, I took to blocking them. When I see an advertisement (even on top of /.) that isn't blocked, my mind automatically switches it off. I don't feel compelled to go buy the product, check out the website, or punch the monkey to win prizes. Hmmm, perhaps it's the lack of subliminals...
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Anybody have access to this software?
We could reverse engineer the database and create an open and free alternative.
Any takers?
------
wildmage
Memoirs of a Mad Scientist
I noticed that you failed to address a single one of the points I raised in my response to you. Instead you fawned about how wonderful advertising is. What you think of as "art forms" and what you think is "necessary" is not any more compelling than what flavor of ice cream you like best. For the record, I hate advertising and have a low opinion of advertisers for that reason. But my opinions have nothing to do with my argument.
And when you're ready to counter my argument instead of spout your opinions I will be ready to answer.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
People are bitching about the actual ads themselves, when that's not really the terrible part of all this. The terrible part is that it prevents the students from choosing their own software on their own computers. That's a much more blatant abuse of power than the forced advertising (At least from the descriptions I've seen this is what a lot of universities are doing - I don't have firsthand experience with using this system.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
As an advertising major, I can say that you're right about the motives of advertising: it IS to get the consumer's attention. However, you might reconsider your position on advertising. Do you work for a company? Or are you just independently wealthy? Absolutely every person who produces anything must advertise. Think I'm wrong? If you produce a component that another company uses in manufacturing a product, you advertised to bring that component to the attention of that manufacturer. The media that runs the advertising the final consumer sees was advertised to by the companies the advertising is for. Without advertising, you would probably find it difficult to buy what you wanted to buy. Without that Red Hat, Linux wouldn't be as mainstream as it's becoming, because it wouldn't be as accessible as it is. The main concern is where the revenue from this advertising is going. For newspapers and magazines, it's going back into the production of the media. Subscriptions aren't obscene, and neither are they a way for the media to support itself directly. Subscriptions only serve to give the media a means of stable circulation, which in turn enables them to sell advertising. Until we all become psychic, or completely self-sufficient, advertising is an integral part of life. If you don't like it, you should probably stop working and live in a tent.
kids they really don't care about seeing advertisments. You don't really look at the ones at the top of the Slashdot page do you? ... the students can't help but see it.
you contradict yourself, friend.
i would say that the exact problem is that ads are in fact everywhere. and, you don't see them. but, then again, you do.
subconciously or something like that. like that f*ckin' yellow-screen-of-mental-death that ABC (i think) has become so fond of, you don't notice anything there, but you sure as hell see it.
if you didn't see it, why, you'd be downright unAmerican, ya pinko commie longhair fnord subversive liberal, ya!
Love,
A pinko commie longhair liberal subversive... or something.
Don't ask. Go see.
It is a sad time when the state does not invest in education and even sadder when education insitutions turn to corporations for cash. I am sure that if someone managed to find a graph on crime rate over the past 100 years it would be inversly proportional to effort being put into the education system. Crime will go up when people do not have the skills to work in society - after all if they can't earn money legally they will try to earn it illegaly.
I believe that it is actually cheaper to invest in education than in crime enforcement, since education will increase the potential work force and reduce the number of people that have to be locked up. Some jobless people actually find it better to be locked up since the state actually provides all they need to live, bar the freedom.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Last year, my school (WestMoore high in Oklahoma City) got a rather speedy internet connection, and it was simply a direct tcp/ip pipe to the 'net. I returned for my senior year and found that my school is now filtering websites using the 'Bess' system. I now have no access to any webmail, web storage, good content, shockwave games, or anything not using IE to access the 'Net. Many of these restrictions have no base in logic whatsoever. I must have some place to store my C++ files, as a disk doesen't work worth a damn, and the teacher has some mental addiction to ghosting the hard drives on a bi-weekly basis. Another problem is that my school is now pimping my eyes off for some reason. On EVERY webpage, it places its own banner. It can't even detect frames, so it REALLY fux0rs frames. I miss my freedom.
I had Ch1 during my study hall in the library.
:)
I found that in the time it took to watch Channel 1, I could ready USA today, newspapers from a larger city, and a magazine. The magazine would be rotated depending what's new (newspaper was new everyday). The magazine consisted of US News & World Review, Newsweek, Time, Popular Science.
One day the librarian came up to me and told me that I needed to be watching Channel 1. I looked up and said, "If you can honestly tell me that I get more information out of channel one than I do now, I will." She then agreed that I could only get up to switch newspapers during the commercial breaks
Don't you see that there is a cost? Do you really think there's such thing as a free lunch?
Would you take $10 in exchange for getting a Joe Camel ad tattooed on your forehead? Why not? You could put that $10 into other things that ultimately benefit you.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Okay, I attend Westark Community College in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Since our college here has recently inflicted this program upon us, I have a few things to say about it.
I don't mind the ads so much, its just that this whole system is designed not to help the student, but instead to sell them things. Maybe I don't want to spend 20 minutes checking my mail each day..maybe i want to spend them studying.
Anyway, on an unrelated note, yesterday i noticed that one of the e-mails I'd received was sent to "everyone@collegename.edu". Thinking it was too easy to be true, i sent a limerick to the address (really short rhyming dirty poem). Turns out my limerick went to ALL the faculty! Had I been thinking clearly, I would have sent it anonymously, and probably would have sent an essay on why pipeline sucks. As it stands now, my Pipeline access was promptly suspended after a chat with the Dean today. Ah well....i guess i really deserved that. (if any of the faculty read this, i profusely apologize!) I certainly won't miss Pipeline, though.
-- Juju
I think a better question is where all the money in a large school goes.
They don't consider themselves as delivering the product of education, and justify their expenses based on how they help to deliver this product. Instead, everybody fights for the money to do whatever they want to do, and scrambles to get even more money from outside.
Teaching is just a chore that must be done, not the main purpose. Everyone there has another agenda.
Any chance to grab extra cash is taken. That's why universities have wealth-based "assistance programs"; actually, they have sliding prices based on the principle of "take every penny they can lay their hands on".
It's not just expensive, it's specifically as expensive as they can get away with. Of course, this varies a lot depending on the political climate. In some countries, there is a strong political push for education to be "free", so the students just don't get charged tuition (they get 'em where they can, though).
Everybody's always "short of money" because everybody has a bottomless appetite for the stuff. Anything that can be cut off of someone else's budget will be... at least until they fight back.
So, in a nutshell, universities are bottomless money-sinks by their very nature. Don't expect any relation between what you pay and what you get, there isn't one.
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All dem students are gonna be buying neon orange and yellow shoes they are. POLKADOTS AND WONDERLAND JOY FOR ALL! *ahem* Anyone who signs up with a company who says "We'll give you a kickass intranet if you let us brainwash your young" should be taken out back, pistol whipped, shot, pistol whipped, fed tea, shot and killed brutally afterwards with much passion, rage and joy alot. :)
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
at a price that is easily underestimated: converting students from thinkers into advanced consumers.
Price? And here I thought all along that was the goal of American education!
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
/joeyo
2^5
The minute someone figures out how to beam an ad into my head is when I start pulling triggers
Kind of brings new meaning to the term "target audience"...
Just junk food for thought...
The school I just graduated from considered using it (the IDIOT running the IS department will buy anything if she gets a glossy brochure for it). Campus Pipeline uses a single login system to allow access to everything... you login once and you can read your email, register for classes, and look at your grades.
First, if you leave yourself logged in on a shared computer after checking your email, someone else could come along and screw with all your other personal information, too.
Second, the school is completely dependent on the company to maintain confidentiality of information. Who can say for sure that Campus Pipeline doesn't, for example, forward a list of students with high GPA to Who's Who?
The fact that it's full of frames, java, and way too many graphics makes it useless on a modem connection, too. Forget trying to use it over a modem when you're home on a break. I'll take SSH. Sucking in all those ads would have made it almost impossible to support 5000 students on my school's single T1 (which is already saturated in large part due to Napster, according to our network analysis). Of course, we were talking about spending the $100,000 for the ad-free version.
--
10Brett-T
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
I paid over $100 for a marketing book and all it has in it is ads (about 3-5 per page) Don't think that ads would lower und-user cost. It'll only add to others profit margin!
ummmm...shouldn't a marketing text book by its very definition be filled with ads (i.e. examples)?
Although I think putting ads in, say, a math text is pretty low. We don't tend to have a problem with that here, at least not at the collage in the city. The UofA probably does. The schools here are pretty well funded by both the government and donations from local corporations (notice the word donation...as in they don't expect anything in return besides the tax write-off it gets them). As for networking, computing resources, etc. the city government came up with there Cybercity (lame name but good idea) initiative quite a few years ago. Every school (k-12, collage, etc.), major public building, and all businesses that are considered important to the cities growth/image to the rest of the world (the newspaper, radio stations, etc.) are all given a free connection directly into the cities fiber backbone for internet connectivity and really have no shortage of funds available for hardware.
--
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
-John Gilmore
Clearly someone got paid to distribute these. I suppose the university may have benefited slightly, but I certainly didn't see the value, not after my folks and I had forked over big bucks to get me there.
Sure, the advertising and crap are going to be there. But it is incumbent on the university to make good decisions about same. Seems like Campus Pipeline is one that the good universities should forget about.
Besides, if your university can't even run an email server, what the fuck do you expect to learn there?
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Yah, the vast majority of my peers mocked Channel
One openly. However, look where Lisa Ling and
Anderson Cooper are now. One's hawking Old Navy
and the other's actually working as a ABCNews reporter.
Why are they advertising to me? I have no money. After tuition, food, and computer upgrades (For geeks this is a basic necessity :), I don't have money to blow on frivolous purchases.
I'm surrounded by advertising! Aieeeeeee!
However, judging by the amount of screaming and crying followed up by an utter lack of action, geeks are much better at whining than agitating.
Besides, if the company goes down the drain then the universities build up the infrastructure on their own, just like you seem to be suggesting they do without this company. I fail to see a difference.
An example: there is, naturally, a section on printers. At the bottom of the page is a picture of a Hewlett-Packard inkjet that looks better than what you see in a four-color catalog. A half-dozen pages later is a focus on two innovators in technology, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard. The facing page has a spotlight on a company on a cutting edge--Hewlett-Packard. Flip to the section on E-Commerce, and there's a screenshot of the Hewlett-Packard online store showing somebody about to buy--you guessed it--a Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer. There are also multiple pictures of Pavillions, etc., scattered throughout the rest of the book.
HP isn't the only offender, not by a long shot. AMD gets an "oh-by-the-way" mention in the body of the text, but all the pictures, charts, and examples show Intel processers, chipsets, etc. Office programs only come from Microsoft, period (and, yes the first technological innovator is Bill and the first cutting-edge company is Microsoft).
The sidebar on how voice recognition works is probably a direct quote from the side of the Via Voice box. It mentions all of the great things that voice recognition can do, and how Via Voice is the best program to do all that. Would you be surprised if I told you that a few pages later was a bio of Lou Gerstner and a puff piece on IBM?
Sun is only mentioned a couple times, and then only for Java. Java isn't even listed as a programming language, but instead as a two-paragraph description of multimedia enhancements to web pages, right after Shockwave.
Iomega is the only company that makes removeable mass storeage.
Oh--and I forgot: this textbook is "web-enhanced" by CNN. At the end of every chapter is instructions to go to a CNN web page where you can watch movie clips about the preceeding material. So, naturally, the chapter on processors has a movie bio of Andy Grove and another multimedia something-or-other about Intel.
I think I should shut up now before I break an O-ring....
Well, okay one last comment: I all but told the students to take the books back, and I'm supplying them with my own resources or pointers to web pages, etc.
0-7895-5937-4
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
I thought that the professors needed a new down payment for a Porsche, so they add a few paragraphs, change the chapters around, and ask the publisher to make a new edition.
everyone wins then
On the other hand, Netcraft says "www.campuspipeline.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on Solaris".
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
Urbana-Champaign is right here (well, I'm in Urbana-Champaign anyhow). We don't need no steenking web portal that forces everybody to use IE 4.0 or better to check their email when it's just as easy (easier) and more secure to use pine on a cluster server. Don't like CLI? Ok, use the web frontend. And there are no ads on it, for God's sake. Class discussions online? USENET. Registration? Well, it's annoying, but also automated online.
What's my point? Well, first of all, Universities are some of the last places where the Internet is still more than the web. Another thing too: if there's one big centralized portal, there's one big centralized thing that will break all at once. With one centralized group of people running it. And that's bad. If for some silly reason an email server (for example) goes down, it doesn't take class registration with it, or the newsgroups, or the website, or anything else. In fact, if an email server fails it only takes out _part_ of the mail.
I can see it now... Whoops, campuspipeline.uiuc.edu is broken again, I guess I can't turn in my homework or get my email or get the weather or go to class or...... you get the picture. Not a good thing for 40 thousand some odd students.
Is this kind of commercial deal common in the US? Can your children opt out of these "mandatory" ads and newscasts (who selects stories and editorializes them?). Soviet-style "The five year plan again yields record crops for happy farmworkers" news is rightly derided by all - how is this corporate brainwashing any better?
I thought you guys had the Land of the Free...
What the FUCK? They MAKE you watch ADS in SCHOOL?
Did your PTA have nothing to day about this?
I dunno, what with all the 'protect the children' bullshit flying, you would've though this was a no brainer.
This country is seriously fucked.
TANSTAAFL, so the cost of this computer system has to come from somewhere. There's really only one possibility: it comes from the people who buy the advertised products. Most likely, the people who buy the advertised products are going to be the people who looked at the ads, therefore, when you look at an ad, you are paying for the delivery of that ad. There is a cost to you, both as a monetary (but hard to calculate) expense, and of course there's the whole aesthetic thing.
Therefore, doesn't it follow that when a student chooses what school to attend, they should be made aware of the cost of attending each school or taking advantage of its services? "Free email" is misrepresentative if the school actually uses Campus Pipeline.
We can debate how much that cost is, some say it's so close to zero that it doesn't matter; others say that it is very high and therefore an outrage. I say let the market decide. And the first step toward letting the market decide, is for people (e.g. senior high school students) to be aware of this cost's existence, prior to making a decision about what school to go to.
Hmm.. maybe we can get the word out by buying a spot on Channel 1. ;-)
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I am absolutely horrified to see that colleges are beginning to sell out and submit their students to this kind of punishment. Corporations (and most colleges can be classified under that category any more) need to realize that users will not put up with sub-quality products. And users need to stop using those services in order to speak to these corporations the only way they'll listen.
I have just one more rant. All those "Free" Internet providers that force you to have an ad-bar open are not "free" in any sense of the word. I may not be paying cash, but I am paying in Screen Real Estate, Nag messages, poor (no) service, and being forced to use the Windows OS to use them.
FoxxTrot713
-- this
I was one of the main developers of a portal here at the University of Washington, MyUW. We did it all ourselves, although at the time we did look at companies like Campus Pipeline and another product called Blackboard, at least to see what they included. Even if we would have wanted to use these products, it's dubious we could easily do so, due to the wide dispersal of the interesting data here at the UW: one group has the main Student database, with grades, schedules, etc. The Housing and Food Services department has a separate database with dorm info. Financial Aid is elsewhere, etc. I got the feeling that many of the campuses that use services such as this are small enough so that one small group of people is in charge of nearly all the data (as well as probably running the e-mail system and web servers), and thus it's pretty easy for Campus Pipeline or whoever to come in and take over.
After we were pretty much done with version 1.0 of MyUW, another group of schools started a project dedicated to producing a collaborative University Portal Framework. It's called the JA-SIG Portal Framework Project (the J means it's being done in Java), and it's about the closest thing to an open-source portal project I've seen. The license is hard to find, and I think they're still working on it, but the last time I looked, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the Mozilla Public License.
One area where these things are really taking off is Alumni Associations. Companies basically come in, wave some money, offer 'lifetime e-mail' for members, and then set up a 'portal' that directs the members to cool shopping, travel, credit card, and other (for the company) lucrative offers. Now, it's not as if Alumni Associations were ever adverse to such marketing deals, but this is a whole other level, with essentially a 'lifetime' commitment on the part of the Alumni Association, as opposed to the once-a-year 'buy our life insurance' type of offers that were standard in the '80s.
JEff
What do you expect? Many Colleges and Universities are no longer institutions of higher learning and research; instead they have become money making institutions. They exist to make money.
My university started putting televisions in public places that constantly blast gubbish music and advertisements targeted at "twenty-something college students who know nothing about debt with credit cards given to them by parents". You can't turn down the volume (they are contractually obligated to keep a particular volume), turn them off, or otherwise exist in a public place without being marketed to. Only after serious complaints (by alumni, I'd wager) did they shut off the televisions in the cafeteria. Not only that, but the shit they blast just plain sucks; the kind of trash music propagated by Mtv and the like.
So my solution is not to go to these public places, and more importantly, not to spend any money at them. Unfortunately, so few other people seem to care. But living in a corporate engineered reality doesn't sit well with me.
This sig is false.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I'd be interested in hearing from other current and former CP employees who'd care to share info anonymously.
I'd also like to know specifically how the school benefits financially. Does the school get click-through ad money and/or are they paid so much per student??? How are the payments made and to who?
I can't see enough reason in the functionality of the software that they are providing. Many institutions have already chosen commercial packages for online registration, course delivery, etc.. Virtually all had to have an email system prior to Campus Pipeline. So what carrot is dangled in front of the university "powers that be" to make them look at it? (Besides the obvious envelopes of cash slipped to the University Regents, that is.)
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
Actually,they are organ harvesting.The Dean,board members and other asst. vampires will be gnawing on them while sipping bad California wine.
Makes me wonder,having never gone to college,do you really get your moneys worth?
Any other time you spend money(especially that much)you recieve mostly at least good service to excellent service by those filling your needs.But at college you pay a hideous lot of money to be treated hideously,by an OVERPAID,indifferent and sometimes mediocre staff.(That is unless they can't be bothered and send assistants in their stead.)The very same people who in any other case
should drop to their knees and tickle your fuzzy regions.(We ARE talking Vegas V.I.P. amounts of money here)
Another thought.With all the political correctness,special agendas of profs.,cancellations of courses,addition of bullshit courses,doesnt the quality of education suffer.Everyday in the news and the commentaries I
hear about "what graduates are lacking"and that doesn't just mean K-12.Can you honestly say that for the time you've spent in school you've been getting the education your grandfather got? Your father?(assuming they went of course)
I've always taught myself,but I've been lusting the resources.I wouldnt mind to go but I'll be DAMNED if the servants are gonna be the master,that is,I dont want to pay for propaganda,humiliation,indoctrination and solicitation.Where is the moneys worth?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Miami University is shelling out big bucks to purchase and roll out Campus Pipeline without banner ads. I'm not sure, and, it seems neither are the implementors, what the real value of the product is. Whenever I ask why we've spent so much money on a Sun Ultra Enterprise server with gigs of memory and hundreds of gigs of disk, all I hear back is, "Well, it lets you check your email over the web."
I dunno, but it seems like Hotmail might do just as well.
Are these the same people who respect and admire Tommy Hilfiger, McDonalds, Survivor, and Britney Spears?
The very same people who judge the value of a thing by how many suckers have bought it. People who assess the soundness of a company's technology by refering to its stock price. Those people!
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Sounds similar on the surface, but there are some significant differences.
- Channel One brought in advertising, but they called it "News and Current Events." Very easy to manipulate.
- Channel One was aimed at elementary schools. Say what you want about the current crop of college students, but I think they are just slightly more skeptical of corporations than the typical third grader.
That being said, Universities need to be very careful of corporate "gifts", but the mere fact that something has a corporate name behind it isn't a guarantee that it is "evil." Remember that most Universities live by donations and grants from corporate backed foundations or wealthy individuals.--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Sadly, this kind of deal is common, at least in our schools. If I remember correctly, the school that houses our 9th and 10th grades has a scoreboard with the Coke logo right in the middle of it, and Coke vending machines in the lunch area.
As far as I know, there's no way to opt out of this stuff... it's broadcast to every TV in the school every morning. It's pretty bad, but at least our school doesn't make us pay rapt attention to the screen like I'd imagine they're supposed to.
I can't wait until the TVs are turned into telescreens and my school is renamed "The Ministry of Knowledge."
Well, they employ the student anyway. I have no idea how much money they make or lose :-)
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
My school began beta testing Campus Pipeline sometime last fall, and let me tell you it sucks.
This reminds me of my own experience with Channel One. My high school was one of the first to pioneer Channel One in '91. They gave us free televisions in every classroom if 95% of our student body watched a daily program consisting of 8 minutes of "news" and 2 minutes of advertising.
The news was worthless. Complete MTV-style filler, like Bill Nye the Science Guy, but without the science. The advertising was mostly junk products, like Doritos and Snickers. The fact that we were *required* by our teachers to watch the tripe definitely gave me a lower opinion of my school. I really think that it cheated our educational standards by encouraging students to adopt info-tainment as a way to get an education.
One of the pitches for the program was that we could run a tape in the library and have it played in all of the classrooms. That was a nice idea, but we really never used it that way.
I worry that Campus Pipeline is simply another way to sell a low-quality product at a price that is easily underestimated: converting students from thinkers into advanced consumers.
Here in Omaha, we have the same problem in our public schools. Businesses are buying into the educational system in order to condition (this is my personal belief) kids to buy their products later on. Nebraska is mostly Republican, which means schools get very little money and teachers are paid little. When First Data (FDR) came to Omaha, they bargained for some prime land near the University of Omaha, saying they were going to build a technology center and hire more locals. Well, the center doesn't do much, First Data fired a lot of employees (in the thousands) and two people commited sucide because of the stress that they felt because of their jobs their. The losers in this, Omaha, the people and UNO. The winner, First Data, as much throw away talent as they want. When corporations get involved in education, everyone loses. At the start, and in some cases, its a good thing, but now, we are starting to see the down side of all this corporate involvement. Lest we forget, the final and only rule of business, "The bottom line is all that matters." I have a degree in business as well as mainframes and this is what we where taught in our business classes. (Now you know why I stuck with computers). My two cents, Adios, DMad
We had those too... but they kept getting unplugged by annoyed students. It didn't take too long for some engineers to climb the roof and cover the receiver dish with foil. That took CTN off-air for about a week. One of the physics profs suggested coating the dish with a couple of inches of paraffin.
--
10Brett-T
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
>> "how is this corporate brainwashing any better?"
> Pepsi Co has no gulag.
No, but Nike does.
Reality has a liberal bias
GOD DAMN, that pisses me off!
ok, now to make this post somewhat on topic, instead of just a rant....
I would glady look at ads on every other page of my texts if it meant that i didn't have to choose between buying books/eating mac and cheeze every day, and not having books/being able to afford a six pack to go with my mac and cheeze
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Hold on, are you trying to say that they have access to your email? This is a whole new ball game
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Hi guys
A company called red-universitaria (www.netuniversitaria.com) is doing the same in Argentina. I really dislike these kind of portals.
I also dislike the behavior of the offcials of
my university (universidad nacional de la Plata).
OverLord
There are plenty of for profit "student life" sites out there (I can't remember URLs offhand, and I really don't feel like plowing through the crappy web interface for the miserable excuse for an electronic bulletin board system that my home college uses to find them) that are geared toward students at colleges and universities, sometimes without the official sanction of the college (as far as I can tell, they get students at the school to gather information for them).
I don't know whether I think that this is right, wrong, or indifferent (I'm leaning heavily toward "indifferent", if such a thing is possible) but I can see how universities could have issues with people making money with their names, and I'm quite sick of getting spammed by these sites' student employees. "Visit ____.com for everything you could possibly want to know!" Grr.
At least their web site is running:
www.campuspipeline.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on Solaris
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Why not simply impliment some banner rotation software and make the money for themselves?. Even better, schools could form a consortium to provide space in the rotation for national advertisers. Give them a place to buy ads on the whole consortium network.
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
Been to a college sporting event?
Looked at a bulletin board on campus and seen a credit card brocure?
Then you've been exposed to University sanctioned advertising. Universities have sanctioned targetted advertisement and exclusive agreements with companies for years. Think it's a coincidence that you can't get Coke on your Pepsi dominated campus?
Now, I used to be involved working with software the very company who is bankrolling this venture produces (SCT). They make administrative software for universities. They were trying to offer software that would act as a web interface, and not only was this terribly expensive, it was proprietary. So, if you modifed your system, (as most universities do) you couldn't be sure it would work.
This looks like a good thing, especially for smaller universities with understaffed IT departments. At my university we were able to create our own web interface to the SCT software, but that may not be an option for everyone.
You might think this is short sited on the universities part, because they could pick up the cash for the advertising themselves (first, they can't do advertsing, only sponsorships --Talk about a gray area-- in most states) And secondly, they will recieve ongoing benifits because of the reduction of the number of people and hardware that they need to maintain.
Web registration for courses is cheap. Telephone Registration is pretty expensive when it comes to hardware, and maintainence of dedicated lines for the service. Setting up people to register students in an arena is un-godly.
The place where this could get difficult is if this company is gathering personal information from the students transactions and using this. If you're regisistering for a CSCI course and an ad for a laptop pops up, thats not a problem. It's anonymous. If you get an ad in the mail, or email for that matter later, then that is a problem.
Most universities can give out your personal information if you do not explicitly restrict them. (i.e. published directories) What they cannot do however is link that in anyway with private information such as course enrollment, financial aid facts, etc. For instance a published directory cannot list the courses you're taking. If a school violates this, then they are in jeopardy of loosing financial aid funding.
Students have the right to request a copy of their schools Student Record's Policy. They also have the right to sumbit a complaint if they believe that their university is violating that policy.
Basically I think this could be a good thing for all parties involved, but students need to keep the checks in place. If they are being exploited then they need to complain properly.
I guess you never heard of Channel 1. Channel 1 is fluff news with two (or was it three?) commercial breaks. They'd agree to pay for all the equipment at the school end (sat dish, TVs in the classrooms, wiring, etc) and the school would agree expose you to vapid, obnoxious ads for ten minutes a day.
Did anyone else shudder uncontrollably when
they read the quote using the word "webtop"?
These people should be forced out of business
just for that.
Other than that, I'm just surprised it's taken
this long for a company to figure out there's
money to be made in a campus web portal.
If something is that common people will eventually ignore it. Soldiers on a battle field eventually become immune to the shock of death and killing so to will the American consumer. Merit eventually wins.
Respond to s
I speak for Temple University, because that is what I am familiar with. Some of the big schools, like Temple, already offer such a system on their own. Mind you, they don't skim off the profits like this service. But that's good, keeps prices down. I know Temple isn't the top of this technology also. I know that many schools, without help, offer such services, and they are beneficial to many students. I still have my e-mail address at school, and probably always will. I was able to get class information online, and I was able to do sports tickets, etc without any nags. I got free internet access through the school (high-band T3 in the dorms, PPP from home) and I thought everything was smooth.
So, I hope this doesn't become a tradition at every school. I hope the big schools continue their own paths...but the little guy might like this.
When I went to college in the pre-internet era I was presented with ads in the school newspaper, on every telephone pole or other stapleable surface, on the college's radio station, and so on. Now I regularly see ads in the alumni magazine (and still hear them on the radio station). Schools and school organizations selling student eyeballs to subsidize education has a long history. It's rather disingenuous to think the tradition wouldn't be extended to the internet. Interesting thing about the referenced article criticising campus pipeline is that the criticism focuses not on selling student eyeballs, but on schools not getting a big enough cut of the action beyond free software and integration.
In any case, are you saying that Campus Pipeline is responsible for the @appstate.edu email? Ooh, bad -- if I were in the school's administration, I would NEVER let that happen.
--
"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire
To paraphrase what someone else said earlier on this thread we're watching the decline of our society back into the mud because of corporatism. If left unchecked you can be assured that the new "crop" of people will be
drones within a very short time.
That's a paranoid asumption. To have people become drones you would have to simultaneously have to have them indoctrinated and then prevented from getting any competing information at all. That isn't the case here.
How short a time depends on how badly we fight for our freedoms while sinking.
What freedoms are you loosing? These companies are just excercising their freedom to advertise with their money to a school that accepts them. If you don't want to have to access them then by all means pay for an ad free service. Until then deal with the ads like most people ignore them.
Respond to s
The things you listed deal with ratings and popularity (where Microsoft also does well, but isn't what we're talking about), not respect and admiration. Try to keep up with the conversation, okay?
Cheers,
Ok, I know you're always looking for a way to save money, but what will you do when/if this company goes down the drain?
People who had network access and then lost it can get pretty nasty, and they'll have lots of time on their hands.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
A-fucking-men!
Score: +5 (Insightful)
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
The school that I am familar with uses it and I can't say that I really ever used if before or really cared. Just like slashdot advertising banners I rarely if ever click on them at all.
Respond to s
So, when did the first victims of MediaOne advertising in school get to college, 2000?
This just makes for better, compliant, easily brainwashed consumers, which is what keeps our economy humming and growing.
Now, if we can only figure out how to export this to other countries, and show them our great American Way of Life, and make them mindless consumers, too.
George
Online registration is like using a 9600bps modem to view Slashdot.
Let me guess... Banner, right? Thought so. Banner is EVIL.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I also can't figure out the moderation abuse that you get. My guess that some are involuntary eunuchs that don't like your domain name or they are jealous of your low-digit /. user number.:)
As an advertising major,
This definately explains why you're so defensive.
Absolutely every person who produces anything must advertise.
I infer from what you wrote that you gathered that I believe it is wrong to advertise. This is not my position at all. I believe it is wrong to take people's attention without giving something in return. I believe it is wrong to charge people for the "privilege" of looking at advertising.
Subscriptions only serve to give the media a means of stable circulation, which in turn enables them to sell advertising.
"Subscriptions only serve..."? You write as if the little "money" part of the subscription was inconsequential to the purpose of subscription, and as if charging people money for subscriptions actually increased circulation. Tell me, do you think that the circulation would be made more stable if the media was released free of charge? Obviously it would! The moment a subscription-based service starts selling advertising is the moment is loses the right to charge a subscription fee. Case in point: I used to be able to go to a movie theater and pay to see a movie. Nowadays it's common for for a consumer to pay to see a movie and also pay to see the commercials which run before the movie. This is wrong. If the movie theater is going to rent that prime real estate space then it should make the admission price free. This is the way television works, why can't it work for movie theaters? And why can't it work for magazines and newspapers (which are frequently over 50% advertising)?
and neither are they a way for the media to support itself directly.
The television empire (saving a few premium channels which are but a drop in the bucket) which is an industry huger than than any magazine or newspaper could ever dream to be survives solely on advertising.
Until we all become psychic, or completely self-sufficient, advertising is an integral part of life. If you don't like it, you should probably stop working and live in a tent.
This is the same thing as saying "get a life," which I'll interpret as an ad hominem springing forth from your pathetically lame argument.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
No wonder if I hadn't brought my own laptop I would be stuck with a cyr1x-200
Mate Feed Kill Repeat
To answer your question, either charge a subscription fee (like consumer reports), or make the media free because the consumer is the product (like television). It is immoral to do both, for then you are asking people to pay money for the privilege of looking at advertisements.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I couldn't agree more regarding the moderation around here. It seems that certain individuals abuse their moderating power and moderate me down on sight. Looking at my recent posts illustrates this.
Instead of pimping out students, they could have better software and keep some respect.
I would glady look at ads on every other page of my texts if it meant that i didn't have to choose between buying books/eating mac and cheeze every day, and not having books/being able to afford a six pack to go with my mac and cheeze
I paid over $100 for a marketing book and all it has in it is ads (about 3-5 per page) Don't think that ads would lower und-user cost. It'll only add to others profit margin!
That was tried to be pushed on the University I work for as well. Although the site looks good and what not, it's definatly geared for smaller schools and I'm sure helps them a lot. Larger big 10 schools use SCT's banner software, but don't use the Pipeline partner for thier WWW site. IF you want to buy it with no ads, it is like thousands of dollars and there are yearly or the like fees if I recall.
It sounds like today's college students are being assimilated by the marketing and advertising collective rather than going for a higher education.
By the time they leave college, many students will be several thousand dollars in consumer debt, thanks to MasterCard and Visa wooing them to get credit cards with $5000 limits the first week of freshman year, spammers paying them to send UCE, which supports their credit card habit by giving them their minimum payment, and now this portal complete with banner ads. Want to bet that doubleclick is salivating over these ad portals? Just think, by the time they graduate from college, they will have millions of students in debt, and a complete profile of their surfing habits for their database.
--Storm
I find it disgusting that school would sell out to increase the funding available to their programs. It may be nessecary to go corporate to achieve the funding level needed to continue to educate students, but it still makes me wonder if some educational quality is lost in the process.
Pax Digitalia
"We are looking to become the Windows of the campus Webtop," Muir says. ouch! their goal is to become one of the least respected and biggest moneymaking companies in the world, I think he lays out their plans pretty clearly.
-Stype
Bus error -- driver executed.
It's honestly hard to believe that any institution of higher learning (*cough*) could be so short-sighted. This is something universities should have done years ago. They could advertise or not, as they saw fit. Honestly, I wouldn't (in theory - I graduated years ago) mind if my uni ran a few ads to help pay for the service. What really pisses me off is the profiling, targeted marketing, etc.
Dammit, the whole freaking Internet was created at Universities. Why are they resting on their laurels now? Where's Urbana-Champaign when you need it?
10100111101010010
was that engineering students were easily accepted, while liberal arts majors had a harder time.
Though I spent too many times studying in the engineering library to enjoy it, while the liberal arts majors were partying across the street.
They need to skip the techies when they push this stuff. You mention "free money" to a government entity and there are stiffies all around the table. They don't need to get involved in the day to day mundane "will it work" stuff. "Fit? We'll make it fit".
I found it amusing that we were approached and the first concern was......................."We are a Pepsi only campus so we don't want Coke advertising".....Like prostitutes comparing pimps.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
-- If someone sells you software for a discount, they can stipulate that you can't turn around and use that software to make money.
-- If someone gives you a "free" service, they can stipulate that you use their software to gain access to that software (the Juno model).
These are two different situations though. Universities are not making any "commercial gain" off the Internet "service" they are being given. It's given out to students and staff to use, with the assumption that they are buying the students' "eyeballs" for a certain percentage of their time. I can't see how that would affect the universitie's status, or their ability to negotiate for academic pricing from other vendors.
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
At my school, using CP is not mandatory. Standard IMAP clients still work. But it was implemented as a response to some problems we were having. To increase security, they implemented the policy that you can only log into the IMAP server from behind the campus firewall. CP is for off-campus students, and for during the summer. By the way, CP's UI is terrible. As an example, the window size is permanently set at 640x480. You can't resize the window with windows browsers. If you resize it under Netscape under Linux, Netscape crashes. Most people here avoid it like the plauge.
Well, not here -- it's obviously implementation dependant. The existing unix-based mail accounts are being desolved and everyone has to use pipeline to access their new account, which will actually be on a Solaris box on the back end anyway. But no alternate methods will be allowed to get to one's e-mail.
Okay, so perhaps the school is selling out, for a nice Intranet, but consider this. First, if the school doesn't have the money for an Intranet, then they need to get one some way, and free is a very good price. Also since this is on a college campus, ask yourself this, isn't this going to be shown mainly on personal computers. And if so, what about the ad blockers such as ad subtract or such; by the time you are in college you should be able to figure out how to live with the ads or get rid of them. Colleges already make lots of money through advertising, and I see this as another way they are doing so. Instead of money they are getting an Intranet, but it's money they didn't have to spend. So I ask again, (looks above to the ad) is it really that different or wrong to have a service for free, because of ads?
= ==
Of course these are just my ramblings,
as a college student, what do I know?
=================================================
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I was reading their site and the totally realistic examples they give. Just imagine:
.
On the average campus . . . Janet waits in line for 10 minutes to order a copy of her transcript. At the window, she discovers she has an unpaid parking ticket and must clear this up before she can get her transcript. Frustrated, she walks across campus to the parking office, waits in line, pays her ticket and walks back to get her transcript. After another line, she is successful. Approx. time: 45 min. clock reads 3:25pm
Oh no, I must get a transcript... I can't wait for them to send it by mail, and I'm too stupid to use the existing web or phone facilities to check my transcripts. I must wait in line with the other dolts. Dooooooh....
Oh no! a parking ticket! Now I must walk 50 miles across campus to pay fine... doooooooooh....
With Campus Pipeline * . .
Still online, Janet clicks on Academic Services to view a copy of her transcript. She is notified that she has a hold due to an unpaid parking ticket. She enters a credit card number (through Campus Pipeline's secure e-commerce link) and clears her account. She prints out a copy of her transcript and orders an original. Approx. time: 10 min. clock reads 12:40pm
Cool, now I can see all the courses I failed online, thanks to (ad-voice-over) Campus Pipeline!!!! (/ad-voice-over). Tah-dah! Yaaay! I have a parking ticket! Campus pipeline makes paying parking tickets a joy!
Like, get real, dude!
Meanwhile, in the real world, I can use my university's website or phone system to check my account balances, get my schedule, my grades, my exam dates etc.
Campus Pipeline is trying artificially reduce competition to their product. Students will be more likely to buy from their advertisers not because the products are better, but because they managed to trick the system.
--
The harm is the possibility of ending up with a school of "corporate indoctrination" instead of a school of "higher learning".
Isn't it bad enough that we go through our current society being bombarded by ads upon ads for products we don't really need?
I used to respect marketing people back when marketing meant
informing people about our product
rather than
beat people into submission with ads for our product.
To paraphrase what someone else said earlier on this thread we're watching the decline of our society back into the mud because of corporatism. If left unchecked you can be assured that the new "crop" of people will be drones within a very short time.
How short a time depends on how badly we fight for our freedoms while sinking.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
NEO - "There is no spoon."
"Bah!" - Dogbert
Emphasis mine:
I don't feel compelled to go buy the product, check out the website, or punch the monkey to win prizes. Hmmm, perhaps it's the lack of subliminals...
Yeah, those ads just go right under your mental radar...
Jay (=
(OK, to be fair, if you can't name the product/service the ad is for, it's not a very successful ad...)
in exchange for a low volume drone of advertisements in your dorm room. Perhaps free gasoline for listening to ads while in your car. This is really disgusting.
eeewwwww. gross! what kind of sicko are you!
oh, wait. you're talking about the noodles, not my lab TA, huh? well, i like the noodles.
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The pipeline mail system seems to be a pain in the shorts to administer because it actually downloads your mail from the campus POP server to the pipeline intranet when you check your mail through pipeline. its not a truly integrated webmail thing like some providers offer.
If we could only still use pine. (waah) We lost access to that a LONG time ago. Business students don't need shell accounts i guess...
"tension is the great integrity" -R Buckminster Fuller
The first time they approached the people who run the network. They wanted us to use their modifed browser on all computers at the university. This included all privatly owned computers in the dorms as well as faculty computers in offices, and even dial-in users. Additionally the university would be required to provide network access to C.P. so that they could sell their "service" to private appartment complexes in the area. No guarntee that those appartments would not have USU students. We are not allowed by law to provide network access to people not associated with the university. And one other little thing...they wanted a 5-year exclusive contract with no commitment on C.P.'s part that they would upgrade any part of their system to keep up with the times. We were to trust that they would.
So, we were supposed to force everyone associated with the university to use a specific browser. We were also supposed to provide Internet access to anyone that happend to live in an appartment where they resold our bandwidth. We got a 10% kickback on the net proffits and we would be stuck with it for five years. We said no.
The second time they approached the university administration directly. The story they told them was "hey look, FREE MONEY!" Since administrators tend to be whores, they were for it. I mean what problem could there be with free money? FREE MONEY! Additionally they "gave" transmiters, radios, etc., to the university to get a high speed connection to the president's home. This was a gift "free from obligation." It took an act of war on us mere techies to convince the administration that this was not a good idea. After it was clear that we were not going to bite C.P. took back the "gift" of the free radio link equipment.
There are lotst of details that are too messy to get into, but we figured that this would be a tar baby, and we would be sorry if we had taken the offer.
-g
The students, staff, and faculty WILL use pipeline for all their e-mail. POP, IMAP, alternate e-mail clients are not allowed because if you get your e-mail that way, you won't see the wonderful advertisements.
It's horrible, but I have no choice besides just up and quit...
(And I *am* an anonymous coward and have good reason to be! :)
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him ski. The key is to get the students to use the blasted thing. So schools are "trapping" all the useful college stuff in the portal. But the students may not spend enough time using the portal. Look for some school to try that kidnap freeweb thing where you have to live with the advertising to get the access.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
I would check the Ghostscript homepage first... You can certainly use the "stany" driver though.
My point is that advertising is everywhere and we really can't do much about where companies can advertise. Schools are the best place for companies to advertise because the students can't help but see it.
-Elendale (blah)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
a commercial "news" channel in k-12?
Seriously, this company and z-university provide a good service. Z-university actually makes enough money off each alumni "portal" that they can afford to employ a workstudy student *at* the college to update the content. I bet that student wouldn't complain about the commercialization.
Plus the school gets a good feature that underpaid, bureaucraticalized administrators don't have time to create.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
Campus Pipeline is not a passive banner-ad system, as some here have intimated. Instead, it appears CP has the capability to very closely and individually target their ads based on demographic data.
I work at a university that has just gone live with Campus Pipeline, and I attempted the signup process two weeks ago. As part of the signup form, you are instructed -- among other things -- to "Select your favorite pastimes from the list below." (At this point I chose to terminate the signup process by closing my browser.)
The voluntary disclosure of such personal data, when combined with the purely academic-related information already captured by the school's student information system, provides a demographic database of *huge* value to Campus Pipeline.
In my meeting with the CP reps, they said they do not sell the information directly to advertisers. Instead, they say act as an intermediary for a "select group" of advertisers. The advertiser approaches CP and asks for an ad to be delivered to a target group on campus, then CP takes the ad and delivers it. CP says it has "strict criteria" as to the type of ad it will accept for delivery.
It seems to be a system just waiting for fraud and/or corruption -- and to boot, I don't even get a tuition decrease for providing valuable information to advertisers.
Try out Phorecast, open-source email, calendar,
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, a company was launched which brought 10 minutes of advertising into public schools in exchange for free satellite receiving equipment and televisions. Channel One raised quite an uproar, and as a student during those times, I can say the content was just not worth it. This doesn't sound any different. The minute someone figures out how to beam an ad into my head is when I start pulling triggers. In the meantime, we just get to stand around and watch civilization slide back into the muck, greased by the slimy excrement that is the product of the corporate marketing engine.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
I'd be a lot more concerned about all these attempts to capture "eyeballs" if there was any evidence at all that the eyeballs actually resulted in enough sales to make it worth the advertiser's while. As it is, I fully expect all of these schemes to collapse under the weight of massive consumer indifference.
Don't see a problem with it, or maybe I missed something. From what I read, the ads are specifically on the school pages, not like Juno or something. The school gets a free intranet out of it, and its not like you notice webpage adds anymore. Slashdot has adds, doesn't annoy me. So what if someone wants to put adds on a school's website? It is not like www.hsutx.edu is a place I spend a lot of time at. I like many of the ideas that the system does. I have not seen it in action, but sounds like a good deal for everyone involved.
It seems to me that colleges & universities should lose the "Academic" pricing of their computer software because it is now being used for commercial advertising.
I know here at RIT, we can't use systems for comemrcial gain because that's in the terms of our academic licensing... but I wonder how a system like this would affect that status...
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Yes. The advertisements in my textbook don't track my habits, and I only have to take the time to remove them ONCE, and they don't cause a several-second-delay every time I turn the page.
Joe Sixpack is dead!
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
For schools with, for whatever reason, low IT budgets, Campus Pipeline seems like a workable and cost-effective solution. It will not spam the users with promotional email, and it sounds like the banners will be discreet and in every way normal, much like the ones I can see on /. right now. Since universities aren't in the business of generating cash from their intrnets to begin with, there is no reason to complain that Pipeline takes the revenue. The only cost is the learning curve associated with integrating the Pipeline software into the individual environment. And then there is the difficulty, as with any intranet, of getting people to use it (especially faculty, as any of you know who have worked in academic IT).
BTW, the post is misleading in that it sounded at first like schools would be harvesting their students' organs and trading them for an intranet. Makes a great futuristic thriller/social commentary, though.
Oh, wait...forgot about those uber-interest credit cards. Hmmmm.....(sniff, sniff)...something stinks here....
-Kriticism
-PARANOIA is fun. D20 is not fun. The Computer says so.
-The Computer
Yup. I immediately thought of that scene in Blade Runner where Roy puts his hand into the jar of eyes. :)
"Eyes. I just do the eyes"
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
Gee, I wanna buy come stock in this company. They have an excellent business plan it seems, and the technology to back it up.
I only wish my university had a system as capable as Campus Pipline's, it would make my life as a student quite a bit easier compared to the peice of crap system they have now. Online registration is like using a 9600bps modem to view Slashdot.
I certainly would not mind the ads, and if the ads are that targeted, I might actually be interested in them, and Campus Pipeline makes a ton.
Universitys are not making any ad revenue off of their systems now, but they could have something much better for free, even if it does have ads.
Campus Pipeline is one of the best ideas I have seen in a while. Maybe I will contact a sysadmin at my school about it...
-- ERICmurphy -- www.jabber.org for open-source, XML-based IM
I attend Appalachian State University in Boone NC. My school began beta testing Campus Pipeline sometime last fall, and let me tell you it sucks. I work at the help desk on campus and I have had nothing but trouble with the beast. It is slow, requires java and is prone to crashes, which causes a 1000 calls to the help desk "Help I cant get my email". It sucks to have to explain that it is Campus Pipline's fault. Why cant the school just set up a pop server? Hell I had rather use Pine over VMS or UNIX.
It really ticks me off that I pay to attend an University and I get spam in my inbox because the university wants more money.
I think the concensious (sp?) here at AppState is that Campus Pipeline sucks major ass. What is happening at other schools?
ICC has that crap. and I REFUSE to use it.
Thats the 2nd reason i leave my machine online
while im there. So i won't have to use
their shitty so called 'pipeline'.
I was hoping that at least the sacred halls of academia would be protected from being exploited for crass commercialisation - but I guess that was just a PipeDream(TM).
Harry
Statistically even, today's youth has a lot of pent up anger. Just check out the medication levels that the educational facilities are pumping into them...
It's really sad when noone sees the relationship between this and the constant barrage of psychologically-defined, targeted marketing that is constantly trying to sell, sell, sell.
Already the complaints about kids being distracted in schools is deafening. The only way this marketing model will work is if it further distracts the students...
You've got to ask yourself how much available memory space you have for retaining important information, and how much of that space is taken up by CocaCola campaigns, McDonald's jingles, etc. Billions and billions of dollars are spent each year in a battle for your memory space.
If you get that info into brains when they're young, it's more likely to remain forever. So kids are having attention deficit problems? Retention deficit problems? Jesus, I wonder why...
This system, however, appears to go much further than that. The logos and ads are NOT blockable, and apparently the email system doesn't (yet?) support filtering. Also, they claim they will use the ability to automatically email (SPAM) students of specific studies on a regular basis.
This to me would be a HUGE deal! If I were a student, trying to get by on Financial Aid & Parent contributions, I can see a large risk of my studies being hampered by the commercial inundation. If I were the parent of a student, paying my hard earned money to finance my childs education, I'd be absolutely irate that the students are being coopted to increase the schools profits (reducing expenses while maintaining static revenue increases the bottom line profit).
I would expect the focus of a students "eyes" be directed exclusively towards academics by the school, with liesure activities usually tending to themselves. By further exploiting the "commercial value" of students, I'd have to feel the adminstration of the school is not concerned enough about their purpose for being. Definately lowers my rating of the school, and I'd be damned if I were going send my child to such a place - not on my dime!
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Last year I saw an advertising peice for a campus targeted web site. The name doesn't stick in my mind (might have been maincampus), but the form the ad took did. To put it (semi) politely, a "toilet mint". One of those bricks they stick in the stand-up's to deodorize.
Now I have used the net back when it was "our little secret", and we didn't talk about unofficial uses, lest Proxmire find out and pull the plug. (or at least turn next years phone bill appropriation into a milk price support). If you told me that 25 years later, I would be urinating on a reference to the net, I wouldn't have wanted whaterver you were smoking...
Organizer:New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society;The NERDS,first US team in the UK Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars
"We are looking to become the Windows of the campus Webtop"
-Chad Muir, CEO
That sums it up for me: evil monopolistic business practices, lousy product, contempt for the user, and a confusing marketing buzzword for spice. They're really setting out to imitate MS in every way they can.
--------
That's a paranoid asumption. To have people become drones you would have to simultaneously have to have them indoctrinated and then prevented from getting any competing information at all. That isn't the case here.
Hmmm... not to flamebait here but have you even been paying attention to what's been going on in society? Each day we lose more and more true information due to incorrect or purposefully distorted reporting from the media. Just look around you. Anyone who does not take the time to "dig" for the truth ends up believing everything the media says. The media is DESIGNED that way. It may not have been at first but it is now.
What freedoms are you loosing? These companies are just excercising their freedom to advertise with their money to a school that accepts them. If you don't want to have to access them then by all means pay for an ad free service. Until then deal with the ads like most people ignore them.
The freedom that is slowly being lost here is the freedom of choice. I havn't been a student for some time yet I feel that If I had had to sit through a repetitive stream of ads every day I would have ended up quite a different person. As for the "freedom to advertise" that's all very well but consider this: 1) A fair amount of students don't have a lot of regular money to pay for an ad-free service and are thus stuck with the barrage of ads that come with the free service. 2)Ignoring the ads is possible now but how about a week from now? A month? A year? At some point there will almost certainly be some development on free services that require you to click through an ad before being able to do something with the service. It might not be big at first but you can bet, like any advertising, it will increase with time.
I don't think my viewpoint is all that paranoid. We're living in a society run by big corporate interests. Period. We can change that but not without a lot of hard work and not without a fight.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
NEO - "There is no spoon."
"Bah!" - Dogbert
It should be noted that all universities had the option to pay for the service or to let advertising pay for the service. From what i recall, 3 universities are paying out of pocket, the rest are using advertising.
I am a college student so I speak from experience. Even if i saw something I wanted on a banner ad, I wouldn't have the money to buy it. so what is the point? WHAT IS THE POINT?
I personally think that our campus U of I has a good intranet page and its not written by an outside source. Our sysadmin wrote it along with our webmaster in PHP. Its not all fancy but it does the job and it works (without the stupid ads). Also it keeps things on campus and doesn't bring in extraneous outside support. Well thats my 2 cents fufu
Is this any different than the adverts that get stuffed into textbooks? Credit card companies renting space in student unions for application gathering? Corporate sponsorships for BBQs on the quad?
2) System works, users are happy, ads are but a minor nuisance.
3) Later on, Chemistry or Medicine school decides to engage in heavy research of cola X to ascertain its effects on health.
4) Results are less than complimentary for cola X.
5) X is a major advertising in the Campus Pipeline network.
6) Secret license clause kicks in and University faces two options: shut down research and never publish results or get an US$ 10^1,000,000,000 fine. Think UCITA here, people.
(Not related: suggestion to Slashdot: Allow <sup> / </sup> tags.)
And how did you come to this conclusion?
Bookstore sells a new $100 book to me. After the semester, I sell it back to them for $50. They turn around and sell it again for $75. That's an extra $25 for nothing but shelf space for the used books. In fact, they're more likely to pay you $20 or $30 for the book, since they are cheap bastards, but you get the point.
--
Dyolf Knip
The risk to watch out for is when commercial interests are interfering with academic liberty. When commercial interests are asking universities to keep controversial professors quiet is when you should be worrying. Frankly I don't see that potential here because the intranet service is just as much in need of the university's positioning as the university is in need of the intranet software. Seems like a mutually beneficial relationship overall.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I worked with SCT's student, faculty, and employee web systems for two years, before graduating this past spring. The system is designed to be quite flexible, and fairly customizeable (by SCT...you can hack it if you spend enough time trying to reverse engineer the thing, but most of the time you get further by ignoring the problem ;) ). This past year they unveiled additions to their core systems in the form of Campus Pipeline and Kiosk. There used to be online demos at sctcorp.com but I can't find them ATM or would provide links.
:)\n"
The system, as I said, isn't a particularly bad system...I'd describe it as mediocre. It has its flaws but it's better than the in-house system that Auburn University (where I was) had before we bought it. I have seen demos for Campus Pipeline (abbreviated CP in SCT parlance), and it has some interesting features, but Auburn decided against purchasing it. *SHRUG*
I can hear the conspiracy theories whirling in people's minds..."They're profiling us!" No, they aren't. They *ARE* trying to tailor the experience to the user...a very time-honored tradition on the internet. Why do you suppose that slashdot has computer-related banner ads instead of cooking-related banner ads? HMMMM?
The idea behind CP (right or wrong) is that the students will get more out of the student web system if it meets their individual needs...hence auto-emailing them a list of reading material, etc. You might be terribly surprised at the unearthly amount of information the school keeps on you...and while it's generally assumed that they keep track of your grades, the classes you've taken, where the classes were taken, when they were taken, and so on, university computer systems (particularly the SCT system) keep track of your demographic information, your SSN (which is used as a primary database key), and often your campus purchasing information. This is nothing new. It's been going on for a VEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRY long time.
Remember too, that we aren't dealing with DoubleClick here. Universities have to abide by federal individual privacy laws (those laws that keep your parents from calling the school and finding out about that F you made in Intro to Software Engineering). If you really object to CP asking your demographic interests, THEN FEED THE THING FALSE INFORMATION . It's not like CP is a Bene Gessrit Truthsayer.
A word of advice. It's good to be paranoid, and just because you *ARE* paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't *NOT* out to get you. But it *IS* possible to be *TOO* paranoid, and this is an instance of going absolutely, stir-crazy, paranoid. Lighten up.
if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user
}
What is your Slash Rating?
True, newspapers and magazines would be more expensive. But all of the products with huge advertising budgets would be cheaper. How much would an iMac cost if Apple hadn't shelled out for their ubiquitous advertising? How much would a pair of Nike trainers cost if they weren't paying sports stars (or whoever else they pay) to wear the things? (Assuming of course that lower cost base == lower price to consumers.)
:(
Sadly the genie is out of the bottle - now companies know about advertising, they'll keep on in this ridiculous arms race that benefits no-one apart from advertising agencies. Not advertising is no longer an option
Regards,
Tim.
But many magazines, newspapers, and so on accept advertising and yet produce quality work. In some cases the ads make the paper MORE useful. Also, may fewer people would by newspapers, for example, if they cost $2.50 per copy. So ads do serve an important purpose, in my view.
sulli
RTFJ.
For a small university it's a good deal. At least when you compare it to larger institutions that take in huge ammounts of cash for sports.
If I was going to a school because of a well rated Comp Sci program this would scare me off. I think the school should be self supporting in that regaurd.
I think a better question is where all the money in a large school goes. For instance a large group CALC I class being taught by the non-english speaking TA who's getting 50 bucks. Hmm, 200 students in a class, 300 bucks a head. I'm just saying...
...is not quite as big a thing as you think. The SCT (and CP) systems use a one-time string for an authentication key, which gets changed every time you do something in the system (follow that pointless link at the bottom of the page right back to the current page, ad nauseum, for example). The timeout on the key can be set to anything you please...the default is 15 minutes. Most people at least close the browser anyhow, and if your school is reasonably intelligent, you also have to logoff from the computer :)
;) ...TN3270 does, but I'd rather use the GUI than figure out mainframe arcana (I already know enough UNIX arcana).
:)\n"
AFAIK, we only had one case at Auburn of someone assuming another person's identity in the student web system, and that was because the two of them were roommates, and the imposter had the other person's password.
Besides which, most universities keep all this data on a mainframe (usually IBM) running the native mainframe OS. SSH doesn't tend to work on these
if ($user =~ m/shaldannon/i) {
print "\n-- $user
}
What is your Slash Rating?
I think someone mentioned this already, but this is just like Channel One in secondary schools. In exchange for paying for televisions in every classroom and a closed circuit network, schools have to agree to make the national Channel One newscast (and highly targeted commercials) part of the mandatory instructional day. The newscast actually wasn't that bad, but the Pepsi commericials and movie previews were completely mindless drivel.
I guess advertising on the internet is as inevitable as advertising on radio. In twenty years, no-one will even think twice about the fact that the internet requires everyone to watch at ads.
Plenty of projects, not enough developers...