I logged in for the first time in years to answer your question. I used D2L extensively in my graduate program. I will say that it was a horribly clunky, ugly, slow system. The thing that most got me was that it could not the space character correctly. It continually dropped spaces between words, spaces between sentences, spaces everywhere just >poof went away. It was not a hardware issue, it was completely software related, since no other web page nor application was affected similarly. I never saw the faculty side of it, but my professors complained about it regularly. They kept saying, "We were promised that X was supposed to work, but when we actually got it, it doesn't. Now we complain about it and nothing happens."
I will say, it's been two years since I used it last, and there is certainly a chance that it has been updated since then. I hope it has been fixed, but it left an incredibly sour taste with me.
Actually, the climate IS different. I live in Memphis. We've needed air conditioning for over a month now. I was in France last week. It was downright cold in Paris. Air conditioning wasn't even an option in the other hotel I stayed in--and it was along the southern coast. The best thing was that I didn't need it. Look at a map. See how so much of Europe is located at higher latitudes than New York?
For further evidence, consider this: One of the reasons why the southern US historically had such a lower population than the northern US is that it gets so bloody hot here in the summers.
I am tired of hearing this "trek needs a break" comment from the producers of Star Trek. Trek does NOT need a break for the reasons the producers say! What it needs is good writing. It needs to break itself away from being a action-oriented series where every episode is predictable. All of those episodes are nothing more than an old western gunfight redressed with new technology. Its all been done before.
The reason why nobody was watching Enterprise was that there was real reason to watch it. The writing was okay at best. It seemed like there were too many episodes that were created to titilate, and not enough episodes to provoke thought. We need to have some depth in the characters. In Enterprise, there is only depth in T'pol and Tucker. I have found their relationship to be one of the hilights of the series. OTOH, there is the pilot Mayweather who is still on the opening credits, but hasnt had any significant development since the first season. Why do you have a character in the spotlight, yet give us nothing intriguing about him?
What we need is another DS9. That series was great in that it had continuity. The characters actually *gasp* changed over the few years! I find it sad that we know more about Garak, a plain simple tailor, than we do Jonathan Archer. Or Will Riker.
I will welcome a new Trek series with open arms, IF they can provide character development worthy of my time.
I have a moderate hearing loss, and have found that using cellular phones with my hearing aides is nearly impossible. I look forward to this technology and hope that it will eventually lead towards my being able to use my hearing aids and cell phone simultaneously.
There are a few things that I have found work moderately well to compensate for the interference. I have a clamshell cell phone, a Samsung x-427. The clamshell design helps keep the antenna another couple of inches away from the hearing aide, and its enough to make a conversation tolerable. My old phone was a non-clamshell Nokia, and its interference was horribly bad. My hearing aids also have a background noise canceling feature that, when I turn it on, takes out quite a bit of interference. Unfortunately it also makes understanding conversations harder. I am left with having to take out my aids completely to talk on the phone. its quite annoying.
For those of you who wonder exactly what the interference sounds like, check out
http://commerce.motorola.com/consumer/QWhtml/acces sibility/hearingAid.html
there are a few.wav files on this page which sound very familiar to me. Imagine those sounds blaring over every conversation on your phone. It gets to be where you just cant tolerate it anylonger.
To my knowledge, only Nokia has an attachment for their phones to allow for use of the Telecoil. Information is at http://www.nokiaaccessibility.com/loopset.html.
If anybody out there has used one of these, i'd love to hear your testimonial on how they work...
Garth
I too wear hearing aides, and mine have the ability to use the inductive loops for hearing aides or from regular landline phones.
I think this magnetic field idea is extremely bad because of all the interference it would create. I have noticed that I cannot talk on ANY telephone with my hearing aides within about 10 feet of a computer monitor. The magnetic humm creates noise that drowns a conversation out. Luckily I can hear well enough to talk on a phone without my aides, and that is what I have to do. People who have worse hearing than me would be stuck.
I do not like the sound of this technology because it would mean that there would be more magnetic fields that would be picked up by the hearing aides. It would make it so that a person who is hard-of-hearing would not get the clear signal from their own phone like they are accustomed. Instead they would get a cross combination of the signal from their phone and the guy's headphones the next cubicle over. The end result is that the person with the hearing aides suffers, and they cannot hear a telephone conversation because their neighbor has a bluetooth replacement.
I fear this technology. Its hard enough to live in a world with bad hearing. This would make it just a bit worse.
Slashdot Mirror
I logged in for the first time in years to answer your question. I used D2L extensively in my graduate program. I will say that it was a horribly clunky, ugly, slow system. The thing that most got me was that it could not the space character correctly. It continually dropped spaces between words, spaces between sentences, spaces everywhere just >poof went away. It was not a hardware issue, it was completely software related, since no other web page nor application was affected similarly. I never saw the faculty side of it, but my professors complained about it regularly. They kept saying, "We were promised that X was supposed to work, but when we actually got it, it doesn't. Now we complain about it and nothing happens."
I will say, it's been two years since I used it last, and there is certainly a chance that it has been updated since then. I hope it has been fixed, but it left an incredibly sour taste with me.
Actually, the climate IS different. I live in Memphis. We've needed air conditioning for over a month now. I was in France last week. It was downright cold in Paris. Air conditioning wasn't even an option in the other hotel I stayed in--and it was along the southern coast. The best thing was that I didn't need it. Look at a map. See how so much of Europe is located at higher latitudes than New York?
For further evidence, consider this: One of the reasons why the southern US historically had such a lower population than the northern US is that it gets so bloody hot here in the summers.
I am tired of hearing this "trek needs a break" comment from the producers of Star Trek. Trek does NOT need a break for the reasons the producers say! What it needs is good writing. It needs to break itself away from being a action-oriented series where every episode is predictable. All of those episodes are nothing more than an old western gunfight redressed with new technology. Its all been done before.
The reason why nobody was watching Enterprise was that there was real reason to watch it. The writing was okay at best. It seemed like there were too many episodes that were created to titilate, and not enough episodes to provoke thought. We need to have some depth in the characters. In Enterprise, there is only depth in T'pol and Tucker. I have found their relationship to be one of the hilights of the series. OTOH, there is the pilot Mayweather who is still on the opening credits, but hasnt had any significant development since the first season. Why do you have a character in the spotlight, yet give us nothing intriguing about him?
What we need is another DS9. That series was great in that it had continuity. The characters actually *gasp* changed over the few years! I find it sad that we know more about Garak, a plain simple tailor, than we do Jonathan Archer. Or Will Riker.
I will welcome a new Trek series with open arms, IF they can provide character development worthy of my time.
I have a moderate hearing loss, and have found that using cellular phones with my hearing aides is nearly impossible. I look forward to this technology and hope that it will eventually lead towards my being able to use my hearing aids and cell phone simultaneously. There are a few things that I have found work moderately well to compensate for the interference. I have a clamshell cell phone, a Samsung x-427. The clamshell design helps keep the antenna another couple of inches away from the hearing aide, and its enough to make a conversation tolerable. My old phone was a non-clamshell Nokia, and its interference was horribly bad. My hearing aids also have a background noise canceling feature that, when I turn it on, takes out quite a bit of interference. Unfortunately it also makes understanding conversations harder. I am left with having to take out my aids completely to talk on the phone. its quite annoying. For those of you who wonder exactly what the interference sounds like, check out http://commerce.motorola.com/consumer/QWhtml/acces sibility/hearingAid.html
there are a few .wav files on this page which sound very familiar to me. Imagine those sounds blaring over every conversation on your phone. It gets to be where you just cant tolerate it anylonger.
To my knowledge, only Nokia has an attachment for their phones to allow for use of the Telecoil. Information is at http://www.nokiaaccessibility.com/loopset.html.
If anybody out there has used one of these, i'd love to hear your testimonial on how they work...
Garth
I too wear hearing aides, and mine have the ability to use the inductive loops for hearing aides or from regular landline phones.
I think this magnetic field idea is extremely bad because of all the interference it would create. I have noticed that I cannot talk on ANY telephone with my hearing aides within about 10 feet of a computer monitor. The magnetic humm creates noise that drowns a conversation out. Luckily I can hear well enough to talk on a phone without my aides, and that is what I have to do. People who have worse hearing than me would be stuck.
I do not like the sound of this technology because it would mean that there would be more magnetic fields that would be picked up by the hearing aides. It would make it so that a person who is hard-of-hearing would not get the clear signal from their own phone like they are accustomed. Instead they would get a cross combination of the signal from their phone and the guy's headphones the next cubicle over. The end result is that the person with the hearing aides suffers, and they cannot hear a telephone conversation because their neighbor has a bluetooth replacement.
I fear this technology. Its hard enough to live in a world with bad hearing. This would make it just a bit worse.