Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: open source

  • Blackboard Security

    Interesting articles accusing Blackboard of being lax about security. A Black Eye for Blackboard Over Its Response to Major Security Flaws which is about Millions of student exams, tests and data exposed. I saw the security bulletins, but I was not aware of the back story leading to why it was announced. We run an unaffected…

  • LMS Non-Negotiables

    I listened in on the first town hall meeting for our USG LMS Transition Task Force on Thursday. There are 3 more town halls this week and a final one December 9th. It sounds like the task force is looking for what items are non-negotiable, extremely important, nice to have. Here are the non-negotiable items…

  • Computer Metaphors

    An effective way to explain something is to use a metaphor. This can be especially effective by picking an metaphorical object or behavior with which the audience is already familiar. The one I see most often is comparing computers to a car. This morning I saw this on an email list describing a person’s experience…

  • Information Should Be Free

    ,

    Mark Guzdial makes the point teachers add value to the learning process. Normally, I would agree. However, I got hung up on a misquote from a Walter Isaacson article How to Save Your Newspaper in TIME offering micropayments as the solution to newspapers finding a working model to survive since advertisements are not the right one. Mark said it…

  • Course Management Systems are Dead!

    Heh. Blackboard Vista is headed for a brick wall? Who knew? 7. Course Management Systems are Dead! Long Live Course Management Systems! Proprietary course management systems are heading for a brick wall. The combination of economic pressures combined with saturated markets and the maturing stage of the life cycle of these once innovative platforms means…

  • Open Source Is Not Broken

    ,

    Cohen says: Open-source code is generally great code, not requiring much support. So open-source companies that rely on support and service alone are not long for this world. The traditional open-source business model that relies solely on support and service revenue streams is failing to meet the expectations of investors. The whole point is to…

  • We Need a 4th Vista DBA / Technical Support

    , ,

    Work for OIIT! Become our 4th DBA / technical support person for our team. Located in Athens, GA (college town, UGA football) $, benefits, generous leave, rare snow we love open source PDF of GeorgiaVIEW DBA position Check out the PDF (right) for more information. Sorry for the convoluted route to the application… Click this…

  • Blackboard Won Suit Against D2L

    ,

    Blackboard acquired patent ‘138 and brought a lawsuit against Desire2Learn. I would say 80-90% of the commentary about this case has been from anti-Blackboard crowd with about 90% of the rest from the let’s-wait-and-see crowd. Blackboard very much has been mum on the subject. I do not recall a blog of a single Blackboard supporter…

  • Abandoning Pidgin for (Back to) Trillian

    Back in mid August I switched to Pidgin as my IM client. I even found plugins like Guifications and Encryption to add back functionality. Starting now, I am going back to Trillian. The painful behavior I cannot stand is Pidgin removing my accounts without any visual notice. What is the use of an IM client…