With the VPN workaround Netflix offered a good deal with its 6000+ titles worldwide, but now without it I get a mere 1600+ titles in The Netherlands. As much as I dislike geofencing, that could still be a good offer because Netflix adds (and removes) titles periodically, but only if the price was adjusted accordingly. But now I am paying slightly more than an American customer, for a third of the content. How is that fair?
I switched from commercial television channels to Netflix, but without access to the much larger US catalogue its offering is starting to lose its shine. My VPN connection still works fine with bittorrent though, but I doubt that this is the effect the content owners want to see.
A columnist in one the better Dutch newspapers observed quite correctly that Wilders is a lot, but not a racist. He is condemning a religion, not a race. He is a right-wing populist extremist.
So when will Slashdot have an element with a hslice class? Nothing major, just a or perhaps the ? Just to pick on the Internet Explorer users? Aw common Slashdot, we know you want to.
This seems to be the sad truth. A lot of large companies and institutions appear reluctant to finally bury Internet Explorer 6. I wish they would, it will save developers of (X)HTML projects so much time.
I understand that there are cases when dependencies of in-house software on the specific ways of Internet Explorer 6 hold back the inevitable upgrade, but sometimes I don't see why. For example, why would my university (Leiden University) still cling to this over five year old browser? Microsoft already pushed the updates, so why is IT keeping them back?
Of course, there's the downside. No more sex, since necrophilia is also against the law...
I don't think it is illegal for the dead person to have sex in any jurisdiction, just find yourself another dead person to do it with and you are both in the clear.
You are confusing universities with IT departments. Sad but true, the IT departments of many universities operate as independent enterprises, supplying services to the university, usually their sole client. You are right, a group of universities with decent computer science departments could make this happen, but they have little to no say in the university's software policy. The academic IT department is a commercial entity dependant on having a network full of commercial software with little to no OSS alternatives.
Of course it isn't right to coorperatize the academic world like that, but it seems to be the sad truth, even outside of the IT aspect. (Perhaps read Masao Miyoshi's "Ivory Tower in Escrow" for a worrying look at the current state of academic coorperatization).
You have hit the nail on the head there. The people who decide about such a purchase and the people who use these tools -- the teachers as well as the students -- are predominantly not capable of judging BlackBoard in the way we can. We see a horrible, horrible piece of software with many faults. BlackBoard is largely ignorant of web-standards (we need a Doctype?) and the interface is confusing (have you ever tried using their discussion forum for a class?) and ugly (Windows 95 had better icons). Not too mention that most of the courses use BlackBoard just for posting documents or sending e-mails to the whole class.
But the decision makers at the faculty or university level don't want to know about these issues. They have an IT department for that which recommends BlackBoard. Perhaps because it seemed like a good idea at first, or because everybody is already using it, or because all universities use it, or because OSS alternatives should be avoided at all cost in their mindset. (Leiden University's Arts faculty for example is still stuck with computers offering only Internet Explorer 6, and apparently installing a free browser to compliment it is too much trouble. Literally, you can't install extra software because one or two students ask you too, this is an Arts faculty remember? Most students don't even know what browser they are using.)
The choice for BlackBoard is made on grounds of political reasons, incompetence or status quo. There is not much we can do about that.
I don't buy that they're supporting ODF for a second. I believe they're against OOXML, but that's because almost everyone uses HanSoft's Han Office, which doesn't support it. This is one of the few places in the world where MS Office doesn't have a majority of installs.
All of the computers I have used in South Korea ran Windows XP with Internet Explorer 6 and Microsoft Office (2000 I think?). No variation at all beyond that. I never ran once into Han Office, but my experience is mainly limited to Kyunghee University and youthhostels. Perhaps their policy makers have realised that they are at the extreme edge of vendor lock-in and are therefore taking the ODF route, but I fear this is just a bit of misinformation. I can only imagine what a paradise South Korea must be for ne'er-do-wells deploying worms and whatnot.
One factor that may contribute to a possible policy-shift is the domestic desire to lessen US economic and cultural influence, but I don't see South Korea embrasing open standards and a sane IT-policy any time soon. The status quo of this ActiveX dominated monoculture weighs them down more than you can imagine.
Slashdot Mirror
With the VPN workaround Netflix offered a good deal with its 6000+ titles worldwide, but now without it I get a mere 1600+ titles in The Netherlands. As much as I dislike geofencing, that could still be a good offer because Netflix adds (and removes) titles periodically, but only if the price was adjusted accordingly. But now I am paying slightly more than an American customer, for a third of the content. How is that fair?
I switched from commercial television channels to Netflix, but without access to the much larger US catalogue its offering is starting to lose its shine. My VPN connection still works fine with bittorrent though, but I doubt that this is the effect the content owners want to see.
Have a look at OpenTTD. It's a train game rather than a full-blown transport sim, but it can be as challenging as you want.
A columnist in one the better Dutch newspapers observed quite correctly that Wilders is a lot, but not a racist. He is condemning a religion, not a race. He is a right-wing populist extremist.
Am I the only one who immediately thought of the computer scientist in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency?
So when will Slashdot have an element with a hslice class? Nothing major, just a or perhaps the ? Just to pick on the Internet Explorer users? Aw common Slashdot, we know you want to.
This seems to be the sad truth. A lot of large companies and institutions appear reluctant to finally bury Internet Explorer 6. I wish they would, it will save developers of (X)HTML projects so much time.
I understand that there are cases when dependencies of in-house software on the specific ways of Internet Explorer 6 hold back the inevitable upgrade, but sometimes I don't see why. For example, why would my university (Leiden University) still cling to this over five year old browser? Microsoft already pushed the updates, so why is IT keeping them back?
Of course, there's the downside. No more sex, since necrophilia is also against the law ...
I don't think it is illegal for the dead person to have sex in any jurisdiction, just find yourself another dead person to do it with and you are both in the clear.
You are confusing universities with IT departments. Sad but true, the IT departments of many universities operate as independent enterprises, supplying services to the university, usually their sole client. You are right, a group of universities with decent computer science departments could make this happen, but they have little to no say in the university's software policy. The academic IT department is a commercial entity dependant on having a network full of commercial software with little to no OSS alternatives.
Of course it isn't right to coorperatize the academic world like that, but it seems to be the sad truth, even outside of the IT aspect. (Perhaps read Masao Miyoshi's "Ivory Tower in Escrow" for a worrying look at the current state of academic coorperatization).
You have hit the nail on the head there. The people who decide about such a purchase and the people who use these tools -- the teachers as well as the students -- are predominantly not capable of judging BlackBoard in the way we can. We see a horrible, horrible piece of software with many faults. BlackBoard is largely ignorant of web-standards (we need a Doctype?) and the interface is confusing (have you ever tried using their discussion forum for a class?) and ugly (Windows 95 had better icons). Not too mention that most of the courses use BlackBoard just for posting documents or sending e-mails to the whole class.
But the decision makers at the faculty or university level don't want to know about these issues. They have an IT department for that which recommends BlackBoard. Perhaps because it seemed like a good idea at first, or because everybody is already using it, or because all universities use it, or because OSS alternatives should be avoided at all cost in their mindset. (Leiden University's Arts faculty for example is still stuck with computers offering only Internet Explorer 6, and apparently installing a free browser to compliment it is too much trouble. Literally, you can't install extra software because one or two students ask you too, this is an Arts faculty remember? Most students don't even know what browser they are using.)
The choice for BlackBoard is made on grounds of political reasons, incompetence or status quo. There is not much we can do about that.
Just about every university not in the US doesn't use .edu top-level domain, but rather the local country code top-level domain.