I've been a Blackboard admin for about seven years now.
The current version of Blackboard is 100% tomcat/jsp. It used to be an ugly combo of perl and tomcat years ago, and I think it used to be just perl a long, long time ago. I have no idea where you're getting php/mysql/access stuff from. Blackboard runs on Windows and Solaris and the databases it supports are SQL server and Oracle. xml files are used for internal configuration files, though usually the files that admins are meant to edit and standard unix-style text-based config files.
The 80 steps to install thing has some truth to it. The install documentation (and the documentation in general) sucks ass and important steps tend to be described badly or left out completely. When things go right (i.e. once you've learned which parts of the documentation are wrong), installation can be a fairly smooth ordeal.
It's equally unreliable on both Windows and Solaris, with Tomcat being the reason. No version of Tomcat I've ever seen has never been able to withstand heavy load for long periods of time without either leaking threads or memory, or both.
As for it's authentication, I know exactly how it works and don't see an obvious design flaws in it. Blackboard is just a big complicated app, which makes for a large surface area to attack.
I would bet this kid just stole the teacher's password.
Perhaps slapping the racism label on it so quickly isn't fair.
But I think it's misguided to say it's a unique attribute of African American culture. Though the specific behaviors that manifest from it may be different, poor white people exhibit the same type of anti-intellectual attitudes that poor black people do.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which happens to be the most important and effective civil rights legislation in our nation's history uses the Census Bureau and the census data it collects to help enforce it's provisions.
The last person I talked to that held your "paying attention to race is racist" attitude also held the attitude that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a racist policy.
My first experience with Android doesn't jive - at least in terms of bugs. My wife got the Motorola Cliq and it was the most unstable piece of shit phone I've ever used. We mailed it back to T-Mobile, and my wife got the HD2 today.
I have to say I did like the Android interface though.
As for Wino 6.1/6.5, while the native interface is dated, it's not buggy or unstable for me.
When it's time for me to get a new phone, hopefully I will be able to find a suitable Android phone.
Yes, we do keep a low profile. We usually hang out at sites like xda-developers where we share the latest reg fixes for our operators' crappy crap-ware infested ROMs. Some of us go even further and learn how to cook our own ROMs.
As for our fingers, it's quite amazing what one can adapt themselves to. There seem to be two groups who have taken two distinct evolutionary paths. The first, the "touch friendly app seeker" group, trolls around the forums seeking finger friendly third-party apps to replace every part of the OS that they commonly use. These people find varying amounts of success. Some claim to have no problems, while others constantly find fault with the solutions they've found and are in never-ending quest for touch friendly nirvana. The other group, the one I fall into, have developed the ability to accurately hit areas the size of a few millimeters with our fingers, using the exact amount of pressure needed. We still appreciate touch friendly replacements - as long as they work perfectly. If they don't, we are content to interact with the built-in OS. Our girlfriends and wives would probably benefit from our uber "touching" skills - if we weren't all constantly trying to fix our god damned phones.
For Windows Mobile fans like me who are not happy with the the direction Microsoft is going with WF7, the HD2 seems to be the last Hurrah for Windows Mobile 6.x series before we are forced to walk the plank and jump to another platform.
People who hate swarms of whiny fanbois that chime in on random discussions with irrelevant comments for the sole purpose of mentioning the Nokia N900.
Sadly, it looks like my Touch Pro 2 will be the last WinMo phone I own. My wife is getting the HD2, and that should be a fantastic phone, but after that, we will probably be moving on to either Android Phones (HTC with SenseUI of course), or maybe even one of those high-end Nokia phones with Linux.
WinMo, despite it's warts, is one of the most open phone platforms out there, partly due to Microsoft and partly due to sites like xda-developers. It's going to tough to find a phone platform that allows me to cook a program like Remote Tracker pre-configured, into my own custom ROM and track my phone using GPS, even if someone hard resets it and changes the SIM card.
As far as I know, no ready made solution quite like that is available (yet) on any other phone platform.:(
I modded you informative, but couldn't help but chime in, because I'm not sure if you realize why you are sick of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is what Mandrake was in the early 2000s. It's the flavor of the day. The problem with Ubuntu is not a drop off in quality - it's a lack of improvement in quality. Ubuntu is little or no better right now than Mandrake was back in 2001. As users realize that it is not the answer to what they are seeking - a desktop system for the masses, another distro (based on Debian/Slackware/CentOS/etc.) will surface with a similar polish that Ubuntu has, and a mass migration will occur. Like Ubuntu recently and Mandrake before it, it will be hailed by many as the precursor to the "year of Linux of the Desktop". After a few years, with still no adoption of Linux by the masses, the Linux community will grow weary and the cycle will repeat itself.
Reminds me of our old SSID (far from DC), "NEVER TRUST REPUBLICANS"
Our current one is, "We can see Russia from our house!"
We live in one of the most conservative counties in California (Still covered by the voting rights Act of 1965! Woot!), and in nice neighborhood full of old white retirees.
I'm pretty sure your employer pays half and you pay half.
290 Euros = $392 US Dollars, so your total health care costs per month are under $800 US dollars, 66% of what mine are.
That's much better than the U.S. but worse than several other countries with universal health care. The reason, I suspect, is Germany's utilization of private insurance companies as the payers. It could also be that your quality of care is simply superior, and you are paying for it.
The idea struck me as a great way to drain the battery before lunchtime, and (aside from the music issue) all the suggestions I read as to why it would be useful struck me as great ways to drain the battery before breakfast was quite over.
Unless the iPhone's battery life is terrible to begin with, or Apple doesn't implement a decent notification system for background apps to use, I don't think multitasking will cause the battery drainage you are envisioning.
I own a HTC Touch Pro 2, that runs Windows Mobile and I commute to work 40 miles every day. Before starting my drive to work every morning, I mount my phone, pair it with my Stereo Bluetooth car kit and start my music. The music keeps the screen on the entire time (I can turn it off manually, but keep it on as it's nice to have on when you're shuffling through tracks). All the while, my phone is connected to my work's Exchange account and periodically checks four personal email accounts. Background apps I use include one that monitors my SMS messages and reminds me if I have unread messages (alerts from work), a third party screen lock app that monitors my proximity sensor, g-sensor and light sensor, and an app that manages screen orientation for legacy apps that don't support the auto rotation via the g-sensor.
Right now, at 1:27PM my battery level is at 82%.
Using GPS based navigation apps during my drive will result in another 10% extra drain over the 40 mile drive. Similarly, streaming music with Pandora takes about 10% of the battery. Either way, I've never had a problem getting through the day on a charge.
This is not an issue for me with Windows mobile. In the wild wild west of Windows mobile, badly behaving apps that needlessly suck battery are shunned via word of mouth and as a result apps are generally battery friendly. I would imagine iPhone's appstore vetting process would take into consideration battery consumption and keep battery killers from the app store.
Windows Mobile has had excellent handwriting recognition built in from the beginning.
One problem with modern phones and handwriting recognition are the new capacitive touch screens. They don't work with traditional phone styluses. HTC recently patented a thin stylus that works with capacitive screens yet has the same accuracy as it would with a resistive screen. I would bet that styluses, and built-in handwriting recognition will be a feature of HTC's Android phones in the near future.
As someone who has never owned an iphone, I never understood why iphone users raved so much about their on-screen keyboards, until I got my current phone. My previous phones were the Blackbery Pearl and then the t-mobile wing. The Pearl of course has no touch screen and the Wing's screen was too small and the hardware too underpowered to make a decent on-screen keyboard feasible. My current phone, the touch pro 2, has the finger friendly on-screen keyboard and on-the-fly error correction that the iphone has had since it's inception and I've come to really enjoy it for typing emails and notes. I still value the slide out keyboard for tasks that require numbers and symbols though. The T-Mobile version of the Touch Pro 2 has a dedicated number row at the top, which is incredibly useful and, IMO, makes it superior to other versions of the Touch Pro 2.
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I've been a Blackboard admin for about seven years now.
The current version of Blackboard is 100% tomcat/jsp. It used to be an ugly combo of perl and tomcat years ago, and I think it used to be just perl a long, long time ago. I have no idea where you're getting php/mysql/access stuff from. Blackboard runs on Windows and Solaris and the databases it supports are SQL server and Oracle. xml files are used for internal configuration files, though usually the files that admins are meant to edit and standard unix-style text-based config files.
The 80 steps to install thing has some truth to it. The install documentation (and the documentation in general) sucks ass and important steps tend to be described badly or left out completely. When things go right (i.e. once you've learned which parts of the documentation are wrong), installation can be a fairly smooth ordeal.
It's equally unreliable on both Windows and Solaris, with Tomcat being the reason. No version of Tomcat I've ever seen has never been able to withstand heavy load for long periods of time without either leaking threads or memory, or both.
As for it's authentication, I know exactly how it works and don't see an obvious design flaws in it. Blackboard is just a big complicated app, which makes for a large surface area to attack.
I would bet this kid just stole the teacher's password.
Mobile is a MUCH improved experience...
Not to mention the latest version of Opera Mobile has built in Flash support that is implemented very well.
Opera Mobile 10 >>>> iPhone Safari
Opera Mini != Opera Mobile
Many (most?) people consider flash video to be an essential feature of the internet.
In a socialist nation, you have no choice.
Socialism != Communism
So, if a black person says it
Touche.
Perhaps slapping the racism label on it so quickly isn't fair.
But I think it's misguided to say it's a unique attribute of African American culture. Though the specific behaviors that manifest from it may be different, poor white people exhibit the same type of anti-intellectual attitudes that poor black people do.
To paint this as a "Black culture" thing smacks of racism.
From the book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus":
"...according to 2005 Census Bureau data, poor whites are the only group that is both growing in number and getting poorer."
Poverty begets poverty.
If the power isn't expressly given to the federal government in the Constitution, then the power lies with the states.
Unless the states start violating the constitution, as they did by denying African Americans the right to vote in FEDERAL elections until the 1960's.
The voting rights act of 1965 uses "race" data from the census to enforce it's provisions.
Are you claiming that the federal government does not have the power to enforce the constitution?
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which happens to be the most important and effective civil rights legislation in our nation's history uses the Census Bureau and the census data it collects to help enforce it's provisions.
The last person I talked to that held your "paying attention to race is racist" attitude also held the attitude that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a racist policy.
But surely you don't think that.
My first experience with Android doesn't jive - at least in terms of bugs. My wife got the Motorola Cliq and it was the most unstable piece of shit phone I've ever used. We mailed it back to T-Mobile, and my wife got the HD2 today.
I have to say I did like the Android interface though.
As for Wino 6.1/6.5, while the native interface is dated, it's not buggy or unstable for me.
When it's time for me to get a new phone, hopefully I will be able to find a suitable Android phone.
Do you suggest to fit a component jack onto a 4"x2" phone and then match it with an RCA stereo jack?
My Touch Pro 2 supports video using a mini-usb to RCA adapter.
HDMI *would* be better though, as Digital > Analog.
Hehe.
Yes, we do keep a low profile. We usually hang out at sites like xda-developers where we share the latest reg fixes for our operators' crappy crap-ware infested ROMs. Some of us go even further and learn how to cook our own ROMs.
As for our fingers, it's quite amazing what one can adapt themselves to. There seem to be two groups who have taken two distinct evolutionary paths. The first, the "touch friendly app seeker" group, trolls around the forums seeking finger friendly third-party apps to replace every part of the OS that they commonly use. These people find varying amounts of success. Some claim to have no problems, while others constantly find fault with the solutions they've found and are in never-ending quest for touch friendly nirvana. The other group, the one I fall into, have developed the ability to accurately hit areas the size of a few millimeters with our fingers, using the exact amount of pressure needed. We still appreciate touch friendly replacements - as long as they work perfectly. If they don't, we are content to interact with the built-in OS. Our girlfriends and wives would probably benefit from our uber "touching" skills - if we weren't all constantly trying to fix our god damned phones.
I think a better comparison (hardware wise) than the Desire would be the HTC HD2, which T-Mobile released today in the U.S.
T-Mobile released the HTC HD2 today.
Here is a superficial comparison of the Evo to the HD2.
For Windows Mobile fans like me who are not happy with the the direction Microsoft is going with WF7, the HD2 seems to be the last Hurrah for Windows Mobile 6.x series before we are forced to walk the plank and jump to another platform.
Who would bother to jailbreak a WinPhone?
People who hate swarms of whiny fanbois that chime in on random discussions with irrelevant comments for the sole purpose of mentioning the Nokia N900.
+1
Sadly, it looks like my Touch Pro 2 will be the last WinMo phone I own. My wife is getting the HD2, and that should be a fantastic phone, but after that, we will probably be moving on to either Android Phones (HTC with SenseUI of course), or maybe even one of those high-end Nokia phones with Linux.
WinMo, despite it's warts, is one of the most open phone platforms out there, partly due to Microsoft and partly due to sites like xda-developers. It's going to tough to find a phone platform that allows me to cook a program like Remote Tracker pre-configured, into my own custom ROM and track my phone using GPS, even if someone hard resets it and changes the SIM card.
As far as I know, no ready made solution quite like that is available (yet) on any other phone platform. :(
I modded you informative, but couldn't help but chime in, because I'm not sure if you realize why you are sick of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is what Mandrake was in the early 2000s. It's the flavor of the day. The problem with Ubuntu is not a drop off in quality - it's a lack of improvement in quality. Ubuntu is little or no better right now than Mandrake was back in 2001. As users realize that it is not the answer to what they are seeking - a desktop system for the masses, another distro (based on Debian/Slackware/CentOS/etc.) will surface with a similar polish that Ubuntu has, and a mass migration will occur. Like Ubuntu recently and Mandrake before it, it will be hailed by many as the precursor to the "year of Linux of the Desktop". After a few years, with still no adoption of Linux by the masses, the Linux community will grow weary and the cycle will repeat itself.
We should.
Less people would die.
Reminds me of our old SSID (far from DC), "NEVER TRUST REPUBLICANS"
Our current one is, "We can see Russia from our house!"
We live in one of the most conservative counties in California (Still covered by the voting rights Act of 1965! Woot!), and in nice neighborhood full of old white retirees.
I'm pretty sure your employer pays half and you pay half.
290 Euros = $392 US Dollars, so your total health care costs per month are under $800 US dollars, 66% of what mine are.
That's much better than the U.S. but worse than several other countries with universal health care. The reason, I suspect, is Germany's utilization of private insurance companies as the payers. It could also be that your quality of care is simply superior, and you are paying for it.
Either way, I envy you.
Cheers!
Health insurance is compulsory. Costs quite a lot: I pay around $200 per month for AOK
Hahahaha!
You silly Europeans with your efficient health care!
(My employer and I pay $1200 a month and my premiums are scheduled to go up 30% next year)
The idea struck me as a great way to drain the battery before lunchtime, and (aside from the music issue) all the suggestions I read as to why it would be useful struck me as great ways to drain the battery before breakfast was quite over.
Unless the iPhone's battery life is terrible to begin with, or Apple doesn't implement a decent notification system for background apps to use, I don't think multitasking will cause the battery drainage you are envisioning.
I own a HTC Touch Pro 2, that runs Windows Mobile and I commute to work 40 miles every day. Before starting my drive to work every morning, I mount my phone, pair it with my Stereo Bluetooth car kit and start my music. The music keeps the screen on the entire time (I can turn it off manually, but keep it on as it's nice to have on when you're shuffling through tracks). All the while, my phone is connected to my work's Exchange account and periodically checks four personal email accounts. Background apps I use include one that monitors my SMS messages and reminds me if I have unread messages (alerts from work), a third party screen lock app that monitors my proximity sensor, g-sensor and light sensor, and an app that manages screen orientation for legacy apps that don't support the auto rotation via the g-sensor.
Right now, at 1:27PM my battery level is at 82%.
Using GPS based navigation apps during my drive will result in another 10% extra drain over the 40 mile drive. Similarly, streaming music with Pandora takes about 10% of the battery. Either way, I've never had a problem getting through the day on a charge.
This is not an issue for me with Windows mobile. In the wild wild west of Windows mobile, badly behaving apps that needlessly suck battery are shunned via word of mouth and as a result apps are generally battery friendly. I would imagine iPhone's appstore vetting process would take into consideration battery consumption and keep battery killers from the app store.
Windows Mobile has had excellent handwriting recognition built in from the beginning.
One problem with modern phones and handwriting recognition are the new capacitive touch screens. They don't work with traditional phone styluses. HTC recently patented a thin stylus that works with capacitive screens yet has the same accuracy as it would with a resistive screen. I would bet that styluses, and built-in handwriting recognition will be a feature of HTC's Android phones in the near future.
As someone who has never owned an iphone, I never understood why iphone users raved so much about their on-screen keyboards, until I got my current phone. My previous phones were the Blackbery Pearl and then the t-mobile wing. The Pearl of course has no touch screen and the Wing's screen was too small and the hardware too underpowered to make a decent on-screen keyboard feasible. My current phone, the touch pro 2, has the finger friendly on-screen keyboard and on-the-fly error correction that the iphone has had since it's inception and I've come to really enjoy it for typing emails and notes. I still value the slide out keyboard for tasks that require numbers and symbols though. The T-Mobile version of the Touch Pro 2 has a dedicated number row at the top, which is incredibly useful and, IMO, makes it superior to other versions of the Touch Pro 2.