I don't think so. People are not so apathetic as you seem to think. They will take notice as soon as it impacts on their ability and their freedom to do things they have been able to do since they bought their first VCR recorder 25 years ago.
Microsoft has been putting too much faith into its monopoly position. The more people this affects, the more people WILL move to alternative systems, and the more those alternative systems will improve.
Absolutely. As a CS student myself, I know that there are plenty of undergrads that would love to have the chance to work on something, particularly if it's going to be used by, and benefit, they Uni they attend.
You didn't actually read the example. Do so. This isn't an example of open source, it's an example of a company using the advantages of open source (Many developers, all bugs are shallow, you know what I mean) and still subjugating their customers. It's like MS Shared Source.
Makes me wish everybody had just stuck with "Free Software".
Eric Levin, the executive vice president of Techno Source, suggests that KMS take a middle path: license its software to third-party companies and add features to promote community building.
I, personally, hate it when this occurs. In my experience these companies never seem to get it right and usually end up tarnishing the entire brand. I hate to be so black-and-white, but the mix of company policies could just... be awful. If they licensed an add-on to a company who hired crap programmers that could tarnish the entire line.
Maybe I'm just bitter because then it seems like a game of "monkey in the middle" and they're tossing the code around and won't let me have it. Jerks. It's a prime example of a business trying to get the advantages of the open source development model without giving back to the community. I think you'd be quite right in saying this is Doing It Wrong.
"I have been offered 100,000 dollars for the break, but I replied that it was not enough." Any 4 year old can break an XBox 360 with their own toys.
Tonka trucks > all.
Yes, the University of Newcastle (Australia) uses it (I'm a student there).
By the look of my Uni's website, it hasn't been updated since 2003. I don't know if there are security issues with this, or perhaps it's just that the copyright notice hasn't been updated with version updates.
In any case, my Uni uses it for classes. Lecturers upload all their lecture slides, tutorial questions, etc. onto the course's Blackboard section, our grades are given on Blackboard, staff make announcements for their course, there's a discussion board with a really annoying interface and a chat feature. I'm missing a few other things as well.
The user interface is probably about as hostile as it gets. I can't help but feel that whoever designed the thing actually wanted the students to feel like they've been trapped with the typical web design of the mid-90s.
I have Apache and MySQL installed on my home computer, and I installed Moodle to take a look at it. While I can't compare the staff's interface to the system as I've never used Blackboard's, it was certainly a beautiful system to use, staff members could customise the front page for their course, uploading resources was a breeze, as was adding things to the calender, etc.
The interface from the student's POV was equally as good - things are organised on a week-by-week basis (According to the discretion of the course coordinator), and so grabbing the lecture notes for the current week (Or for any week) is easy straight from the front page, announcements and new forum posts are easily seen...it seems to have been designed by people who actually care about their students and the time that they will spend using the thing. It's not so much a site for staff to post lecture slides, but more of a place online where students can (And are encouraged) to visit and chat and collaborate constructively with their peers...it's a breath of fresh air after such a long time using a stagnant system like Blackboard.
Sorry for the offtopic. Basically, I hope Blackboard goes down so that my Uni and others can consider viable alternatives.
Replication! That way, every Slashdot guy and gal can have his or her very own CowboyNeal!! Even your pet CowboyNeal can have his or her very own CowboyNeal!!
There's a difference between people posting answers up for people to copy and paste verbatim, and people providing help for others to solve problems themselves.
If you're submitting a piece of work that's worth anything to your mark, and you copy the work of another student verbatim, that's cheating, there's no doubt about that.
But that's not what is happening here. As TFA says, Each student is given different questions:
Each student in the course received slightly different questions to prevent cheating, she said, and she did not see evidence of students doing complete solutions for each other. Instead, she said, they would brainstorm about techniques.
Under these conditions, it's not really possible to copy another student's work directly. The students help each other and give each other advice on how to approach certain problems. In effect, they're just re-iterating what their lecturers did in class. It's no different from people being tutored, reading their textbook, or asking their lecturer how to solve a particular class of problem.
The day that students are not able to seek peer assistance in their education will be a very sad day. Shame it's already come.
Free Software friendly
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'll admit I don't know much about the matter, but they seem to be fairly Free Software friendly, in terms of their releasing of documentation for both their CPUs and the ATI GPUs.
Does anyone have any detailed information on this? Perhaps the Free Software community can support AMD's openness by buying AMD hardware, *and letting them know this is the reason*.
Have you noticed what clicking on any of the labels (As in , for those of you that know what that means) does? No matter which one you click on, it selects "Zero" as the option. You have to click on the radio button directly to get the desired option.
Those who know HTML will instantly recognise this as a deliberate hack to capitalise on accidental "Zero" votes.
Catching this guy could prove to be a win for alternative operating system choices like GNU/Linux. It's likely these copies are sold very cheaply to people who can't afford to buy from a real vendor - they may be only seeing the lower price and have no idea that they're getting a non-genuine copy.
If these previous customers can't afford the real copies the stores are selling and don't want to buy bad-quality obvious non-genuine versions, they may decide to switch to a cheaper solution.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why I love maddox. He tells it like it is.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=banish
Incidentally, she should just do with her hate mail what maddox does with his:
http://maddox.xmission.com/hatemail.cgi?p=1
One is a large collection of 14-year olds screaming, bitching, and generally harrassing and trolling as many people as they can.
The other is some blogging site.
I had no idea that anybody sold computers as expensive as Apple!
I don't think so. People are not so apathetic as you seem to think. They will take notice as soon as it impacts on their ability and their freedom to do things they have been able to do since they bought their first VCR recorder 25 years ago.
Microsoft has been putting too much faith into its monopoly position. The more people this affects, the more people WILL move to alternative systems, and the more those alternative systems will improve.
DRM will never survive.
Little do the public know, Admiral Ackbar has already sold out to Microsoft
Absolutely. As a CS student myself, I know that there are plenty of undergrads that would love to have the chance to work on something, particularly if it's going to be used by, and benefit, they Uni they attend.
Finally, I can test out Duke's new high-powered rocket launcher on my Hurd system!
That was a beautiful, beautiful game.
You didn't actually read the example. Do so. This isn't an example of open source, it's an example of a company using the advantages of open source (Many developers, all bugs are shallow, you know what I mean) and still subjugating their customers. It's like MS Shared Source.
Makes me wish everybody had just stuck with "Free Software".
Yes, the University of Newcastle (Australia) uses it (I'm a student there).
By the look of my Uni's website, it hasn't been updated since 2003. I don't know if there are security issues with this, or perhaps it's just that the copyright notice hasn't been updated with version updates.
In any case, my Uni uses it for classes. Lecturers upload all their lecture slides, tutorial questions, etc. onto the course's Blackboard section, our grades are given on Blackboard, staff make announcements for their course, there's a discussion board with a really annoying interface and a chat feature. I'm missing a few other things as well.
The user interface is probably about as hostile as it gets. I can't help but feel that whoever designed the thing actually wanted the students to feel like they've been trapped with the typical web design of the mid-90s.
I have Apache and MySQL installed on my home computer, and I installed Moodle to take a look at it. While I can't compare the staff's interface to the system as I've never used Blackboard's, it was certainly a beautiful system to use, staff members could customise the front page for their course, uploading resources was a breeze, as was adding things to the calender, etc.
The interface from the student's POV was equally as good - things are organised on a week-by-week basis (According to the discretion of the course coordinator), and so grabbing the lecture notes for the current week (Or for any week) is easy straight from the front page, announcements and new forum posts are easily seen...it seems to have been designed by people who actually care about their students and the time that they will spend using the thing. It's not so much a site for staff to post lecture slides, but more of a place online where students can (And are encouraged) to visit and chat and collaborate constructively with their peers...it's a breath of fresh air after such a long time using a stagnant system like Blackboard.
Sorry for the offtopic. Basically, I hope Blackboard goes down so that my Uni and others can consider viable alternatives.
show me a linux distro that compets on price with security updates for even 5 years, let alone 12.
Take your pick:
http://distrowatch.com/
Finally, we can get rid of those cranks in the XO....
Replication! That way, every Slashdot guy and gal can have his or her very own CowboyNeal!! Even your pet CowboyNeal can have his or her very own CowboyNeal!!
Long time lurker (many years), first time poster. I just created a slashdot login, just so I could comment on this story.
Shame on you - you DO realise that you could have had a UID < 1000000, right!?!?
There's a difference between people posting answers up for people to copy and paste verbatim, and people providing help for others to solve problems themselves.
If you're submitting a piece of work that's worth anything to your mark, and you copy the work of another student verbatim, that's cheating, there's no doubt about that.
But that's not what is happening here. As TFA says, Each student is given different questions:
Each student in the course received slightly different questions to prevent cheating, she said, and she did not see evidence of students doing complete solutions for each other. Instead, she said, they would brainstorm about techniques.
Under these conditions, it's not really possible to copy another student's work directly. The students help each other and give each other advice on how to approach certain problems. In effect, they're just re-iterating what their lecturers did in class. It's no different from people being tutored, reading their textbook, or asking their lecturer how to solve a particular class of problem.
The day that students are not able to seek peer assistance in their education will be a very sad day. Shame it's already come.
I think he meant "Compare (Linux and Minix) to (Singularity)"
I, for one, welcome our new helium-filled, earth-devouring overlord!
Repent, and thou shalt be saved!
I'll admit I don't know much about the matter, but they seem to be fairly Free Software friendly, in terms of their releasing of documentation for both their CPUs and the ATI GPUs.
Does anyone have any detailed information on this? Perhaps the Free Software community can support AMD's openness by buying AMD hardware, *and letting them know this is the reason*.
It is a tribute to Slashdot that your comment was modded Insightful instead of Funny...
That was meant to say "As in "
Have you noticed what clicking on any of the labels (As in , for those of you that know what that means) does? No matter which one you click on, it selects "Zero" as the option. You have to click on the radio button directly to get the desired option.
Those who know HTML will instantly recognise this as a deliberate hack to capitalise on accidental "Zero" votes.
Catching this guy could prove to be a win for alternative operating system choices like GNU/Linux. It's likely these copies are sold very cheaply to people who can't afford to buy from a real vendor - they may be only seeing the lower price and have no idea that they're getting a non-genuine copy.
If these previous customers can't afford the real copies the stores are selling and don't want to buy bad-quality obvious non-genuine versions, they may decide to switch to a cheaper solution.