Slashdot Mirror
British Colleges Selling Screen Saver Ad Space
gotroot801 writes: "The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that eighteen British institutions plan to generate income during the coming academic year by displaying advertisements on the computer screen savers of students, professors, and staff members. Why does this remind me of that Simpsons episode where Troy McClure is teaching a Pepsi-sponsored class?"
It's not entirely clear whether they intend to do this only for university-owned computers or for student-owned computers as well. If this is only for the school's computers, I don't see too much problem with it. (I would see a problem if it turned into anything more than a screensaver, though). After all, it's the school's hardware, and a screensaver really can't interfere with work.
If they're talking about putting it on machines that belong to students, then this is objectionable in the extreme. Students have the right to control what software runs on the hardware they pay for, and I can imagine bad things happening when faculty demand to install it on incompatible platforms such as Linux.
Obviously this is a good thing as many colleges are under funded in the UK (my dad works at a college where they are facing redundancies like several others here in Scotland) but there must be control as education should not be too dependant on companies. For example microsoft sponsored computer science departments serving up propaganda from the evil empire.
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Emacs is a nice OS - but it lacks a good text editor. That's why I am using Vim.
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
Has anyone else thought about how stupid this is? Screensavers come on WHEN NO ONE is at the computer!