Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: software

  • Email Harvesters

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    I missed the story about brothers convicted of harvesting emails the first time. Well, I noticed a followup. Back around 2001, the CIO received complaints about performance for the web server. So, I went log trolling to see what the web server was doing. A single IP dominated the HTTP requests. This one IP passed…

  • Microsoft Outlook 2007 Wishlist

    From 2001 to 2006, Microsoft Outlook was the email client I used for work (and on my home computer to access work stuff). Back then, Exchange was not available, so a number of the features were more hacks than reality. However, it worked pretty well. When I changed jobs, Netscape and Thunderbird were the pre-installed…

  • The LMS is So Web 1.5

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    The claims Blackboard’s Learn 9 provides a Web 2.0 experience has bothered me for a while now. First, it was the drag-n-drop. While cool, that isn’t Web 2.0 in my opinion. A little more on track is the claim: The all-new Web 2.0 experience in Release 9 makes it easy to meaningfully combine information from…

  • Recovering Pictures

    William borrowed my camera to go on his honeymoon. He also lost the photos with a poorly timed crash & drive reformat. So he wants to borrow the card and recover the data. Thankfully I have not used the camera since he returned it despite thinking I should. Luckily I ran across A Computer Repair…

  • Another Way To RAR

    I was sent a RAR file at work. I didn’t want to install WinRAR because it wasn’t clear whether educational institutions are business or not. The PowerArchiver software worked used only pretended the capability of opening the file. A better solution might be 7-Zip? It supports RAR.

  • Most Wired Teacher

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    “Who is the most wired teacher at your college?” (A Wired Way to Rate Professors—and to Connect Teachers) Although the university runs workshops on how to use Blackboard, many professors are reluctant, or too busy, to sit through training sessions. Most would prefer to ask a colleague down the hall for help, said Mr. Fritz.…

  • 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

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    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…

  • Anthropomorphism

    Do you talk about computers, software, or web sites as manifesting human-like behaviors? Personally, I have. At work, we manage several machines who collectively provide the GeorgiaVIEW service. When a machine is completely unresponsive, then we refer to it as having died. When a machine stops a performance issue, we refer to it as happy.…