151–160 of 577 posts
"Our system broke, you're screwed now, sorry" is never an acceptable answer. Do they really not have anyone who knows how to get stuff done? 1. Take the files and figure out what to do with them so they can be read. This isn't a hard problem. 2. Ask everyone affected to email you the photo or a new photo of the documents. We'll just take it on trust that you do so honestly because there's no way you would've seen thi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comment was edited to show that iOS does in fact do this. But even if it did send HEIC, if you're going to fail to handle "any" format, then you better specify the one you can handle. By the same token, why shouldn't my computer convert every .docx to PDF, or some other "more universal" format? Instead of specifying the requirement programmatically, they spent their time sending out tweets and writing help docs.
When was the accept attribute added to the input tag?
I am 100% on the side of the school. Unlike with JPEG, everybody who wants to work with HEIC should pay licence fees. Also, HEIC is like 50x more complex than JPEG. I hope the world will never get to a point, where each phone brand stores photos in their own format, and you need a special software from the phone manufacturer to view the photos (that is what we have now with raw photography formats, and what we used t…
I've never even heard of HEIC before, I'd probably make the same mistake.
"Our system broke, you're screwed now, sorry" is never an acceptable answer. Do they really not have anyone who knows how to get stuff done? 1. Take the files and figure out what to do with them so they can be read. This isn't a hard problem. 2. Ask everyone affected to email you the photo or a new photo of the documents. We'll just take it on trust that you do so honestly because there's no way you would've seen thi…
Far too many technology decisions and implementations in post-secondaries are made by academic/bureaucrats who have no expertise or background in technology. It's honestly one of the biggest conundrums facing academia. Year by year, incoming students generally have a higher base level of digital literacy than their instructors, because academic institutions did not prioritize developing those skills 10-20 years ago a…
Many people who are very knowledgable in technology (the SV bubble is rather an exception) are very conservative in terms of it. Don't confuse good programmers with "technology hipsters".
While it sounds like the College Board may be at fault for some of the issues, like the test timing out when HEIC images were sent or the initial communication of the issue, I wouldn't be so quick to place all of the blame on them. Part of the problem is how we more-or-less glorify an ignorance of technology. This can be seen in both students trying to change the file type by changing the file extension and JPEG bein…
Exactly. Simple tech literacy was missing in the 1% of students that failed this test through their HEIC submissions. Even though I acknowledge the panic of a weird circumstance during an important test, editing the extension in file explorer is just too far from logical. Apps are becoming so streamlined and gesture intuitive that children and young adults might actually be regressing in their tech competence while i…
I don't think this is a fair statement. Image file formats are something that very few people need to think about these days. As another commenter pointed out, why wouldn't changing the extension trigger the OS to convert the file? It was worth a try.
Not everyone needs to be an expert in everything.
If I were a tort lawyer, I'd be salivating right now.
This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…
Missing HEIC support (and Apple support in general) is not an issue of quality; it's an issue of "knowing your customers". I doubt there could be any certification body for that.
The test portal "not responding" when receiving an unexpected file format is a quality issue. Not making it clear to the user that the upload has failed before it is too late is another quality issue.
What saddens me the most is to see those kids who grew up with a smartphone in their hand trying to convert a picture by renaming it. It is a problematic form of computer illiteracy.
It gives the appearance of working on Windows. If you change the file extension of a picture, you can still open it, so it may come from that experience.
> Basically, only Apple (and, more recently, Samsung) use the HEIC format — most other websites and platforms don’t support it. Even popular Silicon Valley-based services, such as Slack, don’t treat HEICs the same way as standard JPEGs. This is the key part. Many in the software industry still believes that the start-up mindset of break things move fast applies to us. The economy depends on software, governments depe…
Plus the backend doesn't move fast. The .net framework only got a json serializer recently. I am not holding my breath for system.drawing to handle HEIC!