I'd think it's obvious by now that the world doesn't really work that way. You could just as easily be saying, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if countries with all these rich oil resources could share it with countries who don't have any oil?" But multi-billion dollar wars are fought over those countries if they don't get into the market with the rest of the players.
So I figure if you had a nice sunny country all to yourself and had a huge suply of clean energy, you'd be looking at the "liberation" of your people by a world superpower in no time. No one is going to tolerate cheap energy these days.
To me the whole thing comes off as the U.S. rolling its belly up for a scratch from a company they've currently, to whatever small degree, convicted of performing illegal business practices. And now they're doing buisiness with them. That certainly seems a reasonable case for a conflict of interest, to my mind.
I guess it would be fine if it didn't seem so grossly evil(legal though I guess it may be). It doesn't really give me much hope that the government is faithfully dealing with Microsoft on our behalf.
We use it at our university too. We've integrated it to some extent with our student user account system and with our student information system. We run it on RH 6.2 on a netfinity machine. We use perl scripts with SQL to bridge the gap between our student information system and webct's database. It works out that when students have a course, all they need to do is create a user account at the U and then go to a web address and click "log in." Their course(s) will be there for them. The API might be rudimentary, but it works for us. I guess in WebCT 4.0, they're integrating some kind of SQL based db to house their data. Better indexing, I'm thinking.
So the "learning curve" for webct on our campus consists of stuff a college student (e.g. people who need to learn how to think and explore anyway, nobody said everything is easy) should know/understand. Difficulty with understanding user accounts, chat rooms and bulletin boards are not webct's fault, they are basic facts of web life that people need to be familliar with anyway.
I think it's decent software, it's getting better (1.3 = pretty primitive in comparison to now), and it's certainly not as commercial as it could be, though at times it is irritatingly so. For example, when we upgraded this time, the user-defined bookmark section on each user's homepage is now full of webct defined links as a default. That's just sad. It would be better if it were one link to somewhere else that had a bunch of stuff. I'm mostly worried that the students will think those links come from us, and that as the Univeristy, we're recommending this stuff.
But I should end by saying that we like it, pretty much. It kicks blackboard's ass (so the profs tell me) and its db can handle the 30k + accounts we stuck in it. That's what we need and it runs quick and fine on our server. It has a plethora of tools and some pretty novel solutions to online educational problems, like homework dropoffs, etc. They've usability tested the hell out of it, and the result is something that isn't any more confusing than amazon.com. They have really great support for licensed users, mailing lists, searchable archives of past problems, etc. Worth it all if you don't mind someone sneaking ads at your students (though they're everywhere anyway - I've got a Tommy Hilfiger dayplanner gratis a local mall putting them out in our union). It's good stuff, but there are concerns.
Lots of Democrats defected to another candidate as well, Bush. More than went to Nader, I'd bet. You saw how many states went to Bush that went to Clinton last time, and Nader wasn't even a factor in those.......
So why don't you stop being such a whiney little prat? You're only blaming Ralph Nader because that's the only target your media infected brain can find. It's the only reason the media outlets are giving you, so you're obediently parroting it around the net. It'd be cute if it wasn't so pervasive. You need more information, ya fool.
Got this from Tor's site:
December 2000 mass-market paperbacks
The Man from Mundania, Piers Anthony
Candle, John Barnes
Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card
Voyage to Eneh, Roland Green
Dragon Weather, Lawrence Watt-Evans
So don't go and put yourself on backorder for a 20 buck hardback at fatbrain.
fc.
yeah, that's just the point: nobody's got any stats. There are tons of other circumstances that they didn't even look at.
college enrollment
how long napster has been running, how much data, etc.
if its curve of growth matches the decline of sales
if other stores opened in the area (best buy, etc)
whether sales still dropped near universities that banned napster traffic, etc.
The story and the study are bunk. The moral issue is something else entirely, of course. But I think on some level that widespread piracy is a valid form of discourse in an oligarchical system like the record industry. Would people be doing it anywhere near as much if cd's were fairly priced? fc
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I'd think it's obvious by now that the world doesn't really work that way. You could just as easily be saying, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if countries with all these rich oil resources could share it with countries who don't have any oil?" But multi-billion dollar wars are fought over those countries if they don't get into the market with the rest of the players.
So I figure if you had a nice sunny country all to yourself and had a huge suply of clean energy, you'd be looking at the "liberation" of your people by a world superpower in no time. No one is going to tolerate cheap energy these days.
To me the whole thing comes off as the U.S. rolling its belly up for a scratch from a company they've currently, to whatever small degree, convicted of performing illegal business practices. And now they're doing buisiness with them. That certainly seems a reasonable case for a conflict of interest, to my mind.
I guess it would be fine if it didn't seem so grossly evil(legal though I guess it may be). It doesn't really give me much hope that the government is faithfully dealing with Microsoft on our behalf.
fc
We use it at our university too. We've integrated it to some extent with our student user account system and with our student information system. We run it on RH 6.2 on a netfinity machine. We use perl scripts with SQL to bridge the gap between our student information system and webct's database. It works out that when students have a course, all they need to do is create a user account at the U and then go to a web address and click "log in." Their course(s) will be there for them. The API might be rudimentary, but it works for us. I guess in WebCT 4.0, they're integrating some kind of SQL based db to house their data. Better indexing, I'm thinking.
So the "learning curve" for webct on our campus consists of stuff a college student (e.g. people who need to learn how to think and explore anyway, nobody said everything is easy) should know/understand. Difficulty with understanding user accounts, chat rooms and bulletin boards are not webct's fault, they are basic facts of web life that people need to be familliar with anyway.
I think it's decent software, it's getting better (1.3 = pretty primitive in comparison to now), and it's certainly not as commercial as it could be, though at times it is irritatingly so. For example, when we upgraded this time, the user-defined bookmark section on each user's homepage is now full of webct defined links as a default. That's just sad. It would be better if it were one link to somewhere else that had a bunch of stuff. I'm mostly worried that the students will think those links come from us, and that as the Univeristy, we're recommending this stuff.
But I should end by saying that we like it, pretty much. It kicks blackboard's ass (so the profs tell me) and its db can handle the 30k + accounts we stuck in it. That's what we need and it runs quick and fine on our server. It has a plethora of tools and some pretty novel solutions to online educational problems, like homework dropoffs, etc. They've usability tested the hell out of it, and the result is something that isn't any more confusing than amazon.com. They have really great support for licensed users, mailing lists, searchable archives of past problems, etc. Worth it all if you don't mind someone sneaking ads at your students (though they're everywhere anyway - I've got a Tommy Hilfiger dayplanner gratis a local mall putting them out in our union). It's good stuff, but there are concerns.
Lots of Democrats defected to another candidate as well, Bush. More than went to Nader, I'd bet. You saw how many states went to Bush that went to Clinton last time, and Nader wasn't even a factor in those.......
So why don't you stop being such a whiney little prat? You're only blaming Ralph Nader because that's the only target your media infected brain can find. It's the only reason the media outlets are giving you, so you're obediently parroting it around the net. It'd be cute if it wasn't so pervasive. You need more information, ya fool.
fc
Got this from Tor's site: December 2000 mass-market paperbacks The Man from Mundania, Piers Anthony Candle, John Barnes Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card Voyage to Eneh, Roland Green Dragon Weather, Lawrence Watt-Evans So don't go and put yourself on backorder for a 20 buck hardback at fatbrain. fc.
- college enrollment
- how long napster has been running, how much data, etc.
- if its curve of growth matches the decline of sales
- if other stores opened in the area (best buy, etc)
- whether sales still dropped near universities that banned napster traffic, etc.
The story and the study are bunk. The moral issue is something else entirely, of course. But I think on some level that widespread piracy is a valid form of discourse in an oligarchical system like the record industry. Would people be doing it anywhere near as much if cd's were fairly priced? fc