Dec

31

Netscape to Die… Finally!

Filed Under Computers, Interweb, Work | 1 Comment

Just posted an internal email about what we ought to do about the End-of-Service announcement for Netscape. Usage of Netscape browsers has plummet even as Firefox as increased. Its finally hit the floor such that even AOL has given up on it. Why did they make NN 9? A snapshot of its use relative to total hits for the past ~30.5 days at two of the sites we run:

                   CVIEW             OVIEW
  Browser       Hits     %        Hits    %
  Netscape 7  108,739  0.18%    186,105  0.22%
   -- Mac       6,319  0.01%     33,249  0.04%
  Netscape 8   56,655  0.09%     85,817  0.10%
  Netscape 9        0  0.00%          0  0.00%

My first web browser was Netscape 1. Every version up to Netscape 7.0 was at one time my primary web browser until I switched finally to Mozilla Firefox in 2004. Browser crashes are not unknown in testing, so to loose my place with other stuff (wikis, notes, documentation) frustrates even myself, so I still use NN7.2 for testing.

There hasn’t been an update to NN 7.2 in 3 years, so EOS doesn’t really mean anything to those using it still. So, I don’t expect anyone to do anything. I haven’t heard demands that we provide support for NN8, so I doubt NN7 will be much different.

Too bad, it came in with a whimper and will go out with a whimper.

Dec

31

Bicentennial for the Abolition of Slave Trade to US Tomorrow

Filed Under Gov't & Politics, History, Race / Racism | Leave a Comment

An Even Better Reason to Celebrate has a nice longer version of this quote from a NYT OpEd piece on tomorrow being the bicentennial for the ablution of slave trade to the United States.

WE Americans live in a society awash in historical celebrations. The last few years have witnessed commemorations of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase (2003) and the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II (2005). Looming on the horizon are the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth (2009) and the sesquicentennial of the outbreak of the Civil War (2011). But one significant milestone has gone strangely unnoticed: the 200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited. Forgotten Step Toward Freedom - New York Times

Please read this article. It mentions the British celebrated their abolition of slave trade last year. Also, the lack of celebration may be due to the distinction here in the US between the end of importing of slaves vs the end of slavery. I found it a fascinating and well written article. Eric Foner has a several books on United States history between the American Revolution and the Civil War. I’ll have to pick up some of them? I’m already 83 books behind reading everything I own.

Dec

29

RRRv302 REPOST: Did A Stupid Thing

Filed Under About Me | Leave a Comment

Originally posted January 15, 2004.

v4 means its the fourth incarnation of this blog. This post was in v3. Thankfully, MovableType writes the content to files meaning there is a lasting archive. That reminds me… Need to put on the calendar to do regular backups of this blog.

Back to the post:

Did A Stupid Thing

No, really stupid. About the stupidest thing I have done in years. So stupid that it proves my idea that I am the luckiest person ever. No, really!

Soft sand cannot support weight. Small Japanese cars do not have the traction or capability of getting out of it. So even to attempt to turn around on a dirt road where there is a gate and soft sand between is about the dumbest thing ever. I knew it before I tried it. However, I had just spend 1/2 an hour driving around the middle of nowhere to find a friend’s house using only my recollection of the directions and map from several days earlier.

So my car was stuck and my efforts to get it out probably were only making it worse. This is the worst part in terms of my abject stupidity. Decided to ask for help. Walked down the dirt road to the first house and knocked on the rail leading to the mobile home. The people inside obviously did not hear so I stomped on the step and yelled an inquiry as to whether anyone was home. The lady of the house turned on the light, saw me, and freaked. Her husband was not quite as skittish, but still pretty nervous as he asked me to show him my hands and inquired about the availablity of weapons on my person and car. His dad next door had a tractor that might be able to help so he went to ask. While waiting for his dad, he asked all kinds of more questions.

I did lie here. Told him that I was visiting my friend earlier. On my way home, I realized I left something at the house and was going to turn around to go back over there. Because of the hills and speeds of cars on the highway, I didn’t want to turn around in the middle of the road (this sentence is true). Didn’t want to let these people know that I was out here essentially kind of lost and helpless.

The dad came, asked more grilling questions and asking for specifics. Stuff like my name, where I live, where I work, what I do. Turns out he has a web site. They pushed the car enough back with it in reverse that it was able to get traction. I turned around in their driveway and went home.

Called my friend to let him know what happened and that I am okay.

In talking with one of my assistants this morning, I found out that someone had used a ploy of asking for help to murder a family not all that far from there. Their timidity was certainly understandable. Their bravery in assisting me seems so much more impressive. The guy could have seen me there, killed me and probably not gone to prison. That is why I am still the luckiest guy walking on this planet.

Posted by Ezra at January 15, 2004 11:27 AM

Comments

Good story, though. Why didn’t you go to their front door and knock?

Posted by: lacey at January 15, 2004 05:58 PM
Knocked on the railing because I didn’t want to be extremely close to the door. As a black male, I know that white people tend to be a little skittish around “my type”. Them looking out the window and seeing me right there might have been a little nerve wracking.

I did notice that the husband stayed in his truck quite a bit with his right hand on the seat. I really think he might have had something there to take care of me should I have been a threat.

Posted by: ez at January 15, 2004 06:15 PM

Dec

28

Enrollments

Filed Under Blackboard Vista | Leave a Comment

In spelunking the Vista database, the main pieces of an enrollment are the user, the learning context, the membership, the role, and the role’s label. Its almost trivial how easily these tie together. Once you have them, then you can do all kinds of cool things…

  • Administrator reports Section Designer role was deleted but the Build tab is still showing. So, you dump out the user’s enrollments to confirm the role was in fact deleted. It turns out the user had a Designer role at a higher context. [1]
  • Instructor reports students who were never enrolled in the section appear as having missed an assignment. Support at the school says the it has a template, so naturally the vendor thinks it must be a bad template. Wait, you say, I didn’t think student data was part of the template. That changes everything! So, you dump out the enrollments for the members of that learning context to see who is or is not enrolled. Oh, the students were enrolled in the class. They are just deleted now.

[1] Designer access at a higher level means the Build tab shows. So if you hold Institution Designer and Section Instructor, then you have the Build tab you’d normally expect to need Section Designer to use.

Dec

28

Everything to Everyone

Filed Under Blackboard Vista, Education, University | Leave a Comment

This is intended to be a more thoughtful response to Laura regarding Course Management Systems and the need for innovation.

Currently, Course Management Systems are bloatware. They got this way by trying to provide everything to everyone. One instructor wants a feature, the university presses for this feature, the CMS programmers put in the feature. Okay, maybe not even 1/2 the time, but given that we have about 15,000 instructors, even a tenth getting a tenth of what they want adds up very quickly. Where they overlap is where companies feel the pressure to add these features.

In my experience, people have found CE and Vista clunky and difficult to use since 2001ish. Basically, that was when the shiny newness wore off at Valdosta State. If anything, then its gotten worse over time. Personally, I think this is the case because its not easy to use. Part of this lack of ease is because of the sheer number of possible actions required to accomplish frequent tasks. Another part is the overwhelming possible branches one might take [1] in the decision tree. Part of what makes us intelligent is visualizing the goal and taking the steps necessary to get is there. When software is not easy to use, the users feel stupid because they cannot figure out how to get to the goal.

Think about the complaints we have been seeing about CE6 from people using CE4. They are griping about features they are used to using disappearing. No one wants to lose the features or options they frequently use. They also wish the features or options they never use would disappear.

From what I’ve seen, instructors will make use of what the university
provides. When universities don’t provide what instructors want, then
these instructors will find what they want elsewhere and make use of
it. Large companies take a long time to integrate new features. By the
time they figure out the user base wants something, incorporate it,
release it, and customers implement it, the users have become used to
using it elsewhere are not attracted to a feature they’ve been using
for years elsewhere. So then we invoke FERPA and whatever to move them
to the CMS which is more clunky than what they were using already.

So enough with my griping… What is the solution? Well, maybe we should think about what a Course Management System should do?

  1. Course management: This means it provides the university administration means by which they can control access to classes. Its not for the faculty so much as provosts, vice presidents, and registrars to be comfortable the university is not allowing students to take something without paying the institution.
  2. Learning: Specifically, these are communication of concepts and evaluation of concept comprehension.

In a nutshell, #1 is the course list and administration screens while #2 is the course internals. If our focus is recreating the university in an online environment, then the CMS is the right approach. By importing the data from the student information system, we build a hierarchy just like the course catalog and put students into virtual representations of these classes. This mindset is where instructors want to build classes that consist of their lectures, the assignments, and the assessments. Its the face-to-face class online. Thankfully, online classes are moving to using tools to better utilize the advantages of the WWW. However, the focus is more towards improving peer discussion.

Maybe this approach isn’t the best one for learning? Last month I read a few articles off a web site advocating a different model: students gathering and creating information themselves (Personal Learning Environment). The instructor in this model becomes more of a mentor like independent study or how universities functioned at the time of our Founding Fathers. I’ve been hearing this is the direction education ought to take for over a decade now. However, I think its unlikely as its easier on the instructor to use the bird shot approach. :)

My Approach: The CMS is only an integration framework to provide access to tools. It doesn’t try to provide these tools at all. There are hundreds of wiki products who are better at some things depending on how its used. Why should the CMS think it can do it better than all of them? Same thing applies to blogs, social bookmarking, file sharing, etc. This means universities will provide a number of these tools and support dozens of different applications and integrate them all. We will have to better understand data flow, security, how all these pedagogically work well together. It’ll be a nightmare.

[1] One of things I unfortunately still do is recreate the user’s actions by figuring out what they clicked on in the recorded session. Much of the problems we see are user error, probably through not understanding the ramifications of the action.

Dec

25

Emergence

Filed Under Science | Leave a Comment

Right…. Forgot there is a term for growing complexity in the Universe:

Emergence

Dec

25

Merry Christmas

Filed Under Religion / Baha'i Faith | 1 Comment

MERRY CHRISTMAS Back when I was Catholic, the two masses I enjoyed the most were Christmas and Easter. I listen to Christmas music throughout the year.

Birth and death are a fascinating duality of life. A material death is simple… The Second Law of Thermodynamics represents the scattering of the particles of which we are composed. Life at one time represented an enigma to the law. Creationists sometimes use the lack of a oppositional scientific law to describe the attraction and building complexity in the Universe as the evidence for a Creator. Evidence of absence is a tricky thing. :D

Birth is a important milestone for amazing biological processes to compose an all new living creature. Two sets of DNA combine in a single cell. This cell divides until with a solid foundation, where they start building organs. Over time, coordinating with the mother’s body, this individual reaches a state of readiness to leave the mother’s body: birth. Countless opportunities for something to go wrong, and yet, most go right. Such a spectacularly subtle display of the power found in the Universe. We take it for granted.

Christmas is the best birth. The Nativity Story is a major part of what makes Christmas so fantastic. You have the Immaculate Conception, the Star of Bethleham, fulfillment of prophecy, fear of monarchs, and one of the most revered people known to us born in the most humble of places. Though can someone explain to me the lobsters?

Dec

25

Power of Assumptions

Filed Under Humor / Weird, Science | Leave a Comment

Being single, people offer up lots of places to find love offline and more frequently of late online. Almost everyone knows of the common profile browsing or question testing dating web sites. This site scares the hell out of me….

Welcome to a new era of human relationships. We’re the only introduction service that creates matches with actual physical chemistry. Our patent-pending technology uses your DNA to find others with a natural body fragrance you’ll love, with whom you’d have healthier children, a more satisfying sex life, and more*. Our personal-values-analysis provides a deep spiritual bond, to complete your path to truly amazing relationships. ScientificMatch.com

I wonder if a nerd was confused about what “chemistry” meant?

Dec

24

Reflecting on Traffic

Filed Under Photography | Leave a Comment

Reflecting on Traffic

Originally uploaded by Ezra F

tag:

Dec

21

The Golden Compass

Filed Under Movies / Films / TV | 1 Comment

I didn’t have any interest in this book (or the His Dark Materials trilogy books of which TGC is the first book) or the movie. Then I heard about Vatican objection to the movie despite the references to the Church being removed. This kind of objection made me curious.

Does being an atheist make Phillip Pullman a bad person? I’d think the weight of our actions should be the measure by which we are all judged. Certainly, those who read the book will be influenced by a tiny degree. I haven’t seen anything in the first 218 page to make me think Catholics are evil. I understand the bad guys are the Magisterium who are linked to the Vatican. Certainly, I can understand why they would object to being portrayed as evil. However, its clear from the writing that events take place in another world similar to ours but not ours…. Unless we have given up air planes for zeppelins, have our own personal daemons, and have conversations with polar bears.

Its fantasy… aka not real. Which similarly means… the evil Vatican is not real. (I hope this is not a case of the truth striking too close to home.)

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