students got hit in face about DRM and Microsith/Apple proprietary software

[woodsmoke]

This was choice to say the least.

A very good student, who has an Iphone, but runs a Windblows machine at home, and of course runs the Windblows machines at the college....

Had to make "videos" and embed them into a .pptx for an IT class.

Of course the Iphone runs .................. ".MOV". lol

And............Windblows OH SHOCK, OH HORROR!!!! said, she e-mailed them to her college account, and tried to insert them in here latest Win8 ".pptx".......

Windblows ..........complained that it did not know that file type and that it was suspect and did not even offer to "find a converter" for them!

So...........she came to me since I do............

Lennox!!! lol

At least she had the general name correct!

I tried to get it to work, and couldn't, on the college machine.

I found her a real, free, convertor which I could not put on the school machine, but she then checked it on her machine and it did download and run the .exe but, she stopped it from installing when it wanted to install some "enhancement" tools on the machine........

SMART YOUNG LADY!!!

So, I converted them to .wmv using ffmpeg on my LENNOX machine and sent them to her..........

BUT, the larger thing here is that she was talking to me prior to class and the rest of the class was LISTENING!!!

And then a very BRIGHT young fellow that has a dual boot, XP/Ubuntu lappy chimed in about DRM and proprietary software!!

LOVERLY!!!!

And......this after they had seen how the school Windblows puts:

a) changed formatting on my .ppts
b) "replacements" for slides on my .ppts

And have had many listens to music streamed from SHOUTCAST .....and SOMAFM ...... the school allows a popup player.

Again LOVERLY!!

poco a poco se va lejos

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

The young fellow with the Ubu/Win lappy, he streams Shoutcast.

woodsmoke

[MoonRise]

poco a poco se va lejos


Verdad en palabras!

[Feathers McGraw]

When you lecture, can't you use a laptop of your own connected to whatever projector you're using?

Or when you mentioned replacement slides were you talking about the class opening them on their own laptops?

At least Libreoffice is cross-platform. Baby steps...

[woodsmoke]

Hi, good questions!

I was able to use a lappy only once, and that was because there was a network outage an I just happened to have mine with me, another Linux, a long time ago and far away.... but the "node" remembered that I had been on and informed the thought police.

I was sternly warned to NEVER do that again.

And that being that the hardware for the teachers is on a seperate server system than the public system that the students can access.

As far as I have been able to determine when the students "see" Blackboard what they are really seeing is some kind of "cloned" Blackboard that goes to the "public" servers to reduce the chance of hacking.

What I mean by "white sheets/slide".

When Windblows at the college sees a .ppt it inserts a script that "presents" a "white slide" where there was supposedly a corrupted slide.

It apologizes mightily about it and recommends a "repair" which does nothing, one is merely directed to MS and there is a canned page that says that it can't be fixed and recommends an unpgrade to .pptx.

Actually Microsith has inserted a "script" in the file which places a "white sheet" "in front of" the slide. The original slide is sitll there.

When one tries to run the file on a Linux machine one can see the original slide.

The script is in properties. When one removes the script the white slide goes away.

I have shown this to the IT people and they very curtly said that I "need to get on with the progam".

The above bahaviour only occurs if the presentation is physically ON the teacher server drive. The same behaviour follows me from one classroom to another.

This only occurs if one physically "moves" the .ppt file from a cd or a usb/pen drive.

If one tries to run it from a pen drive then MS places the script on the file in the pen drive.

At first I thoughbt that if I merely ran it again from the cd that it would be ok, but, alas, no, the information on the server drive is somehow "mind melded" with the information on the cd and one gets the version that is on the server drive, not the cd.

One can take original .ppt file, change the name, put it on a cd and attempt to run it and Microsith complains mightly, placing a "black sheet" in the folder when it first opens it, the original file/folder icon, then complains with several popups that the file is corrupted.

Two things could be done.

a) If one attempts a "repair" then it will move the file to the teacher server, suppposedly go out to MS, and then say that it is either COMPLETELY corrupted or again, insert the white sheets over the supposedly offending slides.

b) if one merely lets the boxes sit several will disappear on their own, but one or maybe two will remain, and if one clicks the "x" box, they close and the ppt appears in full.

However, MS did a trick this last semester to get even at that. If there is an embedded .mpeg or .mp3 file then MS says that it possibly is malware, does not recognize it and will not play it.

The same thing happens if one goes to Shoutcast or SOMAFM and attempts to play the .mp3 music stream. MS says it is malware, and will not play it.

MS will play exactly the same stream if one does it using the .wmv format, a MS format.

The college, after having so many complaints from ................MACINTOSH users, added RealPlayer to the desktop so that .mpeg and .mp3 can be played through it.

A "popup" player from either Shoutcast or SOMAfm will work.

Now, to repeat what I have said in another post, .............. the Win7 version the college uses ALLOWS one to use the .odp extension from LibreOffice with caveats.

a) One has to be very judicious in using the "boxes" that are the various styles of a slide. One MUST actually use one of the basic style types for inserting text or an image. if one just "right clicks" to insert text or an image the formatting will explode to 48 point and the slide is basically useless. Images will be doubled and tripled in size.

b) One must also use the basic "arial" text only or, again, the point size will explode, and formatting such as "returns" will be removed so that a sentence will extend well off the screen to the right. I assume that Arial is "allowed" because it is the basic HTML font.

c) an embedded animated .gif will appear but not play.

I really do not have a problem "using" .ppt because it does work and I have a LEGAL copy which I purcased years ago but, MS again.....complains that even when I use it to make the original .ppt that there is a problem.

So the situation is not that of LO putting something in the file, it is that MS does not want people to use .ppt at all. UPgrade to .pptx....."get on with the program".

And....to back up a bit, there are now at least 24 students that have now actively seen what Microsith does, and has seen an ACTIVE user of Ubuntu. And, this fellow is not a "geek" he is an attractive, personable fellow that gets along with both the males and females.

I have other hopes in that, as I posted elsewhere, tthe college now has the complete server stack under both the public and closed systems running Linux.

And, the admins know, that, each semester, I will advocate for open source Blackboard type software.

If they ever wrap their minds around the idea that an already closed system does not need to interact with MS then they might just jump to it.

However, another situation has reared it's head.

Other windwos centric software has appeared for doing "videos" of the teachers so that they can make "offline" lessons......

Another way to keep the whole system windows, on the surface.

I mean....give me a break....

Some of the academics that I have run into over the last many decades are just absolutely worthless in terms of they "just don't want to think about" and ESPECIALLY they just do NOT want to actually DO anything out of their only little corner of academia.

This from people who were among the first to obtain images of atoms to the rest of them. I spent four years at a major "land grant" research insitution in Physics and one would have thought that out of the box thinking would be going on there but no....

I took a course in development of alternate methods of teaching physics as part of the grant package. The prof actually developed a VERY INNOVATIVE way to have students do inquiry based activities.

He SAID that he wanted people to use it, take it away with them, because it was, by definition, in the public domain.

I was the ONLY teacher that actually USED it and a few years later, when I gave a presentation on it for the National Science Foundation and asked him to be with me in the presentation.....he said:

"Ummm no...."

When I asked why he said; "It was never actually intended to be USED, it is just a research tool."

He actually appeared at the conference and met me outside the room in the lobby, shook my hand, bought me a drink in the bar and....left!

At the college a few weeks ago we actually had a woman in the faculty Senate yammering about whether a change from "opening" Blackboard from the first day of classes to three days early, was "research based".

WHAT!!! a change in when Blackboard is "opened" has to be "research based"!?? :0

We have created a society of dependant people in Academia that will hesitantly "do research" in their fields, but that is about all of the independent thinking that most do.

If there is anything that is outside their little box they want "somebody else" to give the imprimature and then it is ok.

But....since this place is bursting at the seams .....and since the Niagra of money that was being poured into the colleges for the last 5 years ago is being shut off.....it might just pull the trigger in a few years, at least I am hopeful!

I hope I answered your questions, and if you have any other just holler!

woodsmoke

[Feathers McGraw]

I was imagining a far simpler setup, my school and university both had fairly simple projectors or screens that you could connect to with a VGA cable.

They also had computers at each station that you could use... IF you wanted to, if it was convenient.

I can't imagine why they wouldn't provide something like the VGA option, surely it's much easier to allow people to bring their own device & software and just provide a means of projecting it? You don't even need to say that you support their software, the connector is just there and if you can get it working then good for you!

[woodsmoke]

lol one would THINK!
It is paranoia about "something" getting "into the system".



woodsmoke