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Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

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Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#21

Post by chrismonsanto »

orf wrote: post #10

My University released a web based timetable system that was absolutely shocking - it was an ASP.net based site with the kind of unfriendly interface you expect from a 1990's era intranet site (hint: utterly utterly horrible, it produced one timetable PER MODULE rather than a single combined timetable and every time you selected a module it would refresh the page). I was hungover the day before term started and rathe…

ASP.net? What sorcery! My undergrad website was developed in classic ASP. Our version control was copying files to a networked shared folder.

For an example of how utterly fucked classic ASP is: it has no API for accessing file uploads. If you code it yourself, it disables all of the rest of the parsing (query string, form variables, ...), which you then also have to code yourself. Not to mention the whole "hasn't been supported by Microsoft for a decade" thing.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#22

Post by cinquemb »

obblekk wrote: post #3

Academia, and the Ivy League in particular, prides itself on being rigorously open, on providing broad access to all knowledge to advance intellectualism. In this regard, academic institutions often attack governments and corporations that intend to limit its free speech, but on the rare chance that this spirit of openness works against the institution, they take a hard liner approach to censoring it. The basic reaso…

Universities today have become a text book example of bureaucracy at its finest. Not to say bureaucracy in itself is good or bad, but I think John Stuart Mill was spot on in his remarks upon them: "A bureaucracy always tends to become a pedantocracy". Which I guess in the context of most universities today (at least in the united states from my experience), seem to have become hollow shells of their former selves, or at least towards what most claim to be advocating.

At least that's what came to mind when reading the statement from the university and the students hand-waving remarks that smelled like the typical PR speak we hear in the news (the brown nose kind) upon their reflection on the situation. I can sympathize with the students though, the university threatened to take disciplinary action (whether that means not allowing them to receive a piece of paper from them, or some kind of suspension, who knows) for their efforts in recognizing a problem and applying their knowledge for the betterment of their student body, and maybe with the university staff that had to come to the consensus to do what they did for whatever reasons (maybe ones listed in this thread, but we'll probably never hear a straight answer from them either way). Though this will probably be all forgotten in the upcoming weeks and complacency once more will return to it's familiar home. Rules need to be followed, boots need to be licked, and so it goes on… :S

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#23

Post by rcfox »

I had a similar experience at my university (University of Waterloo), which I discussed some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3682163

In my case, it was internship postings instead of a course calendar, and I was actually "punished" for it.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#24

Post by krilnon »

orf wrote: post #10

My University released a web based timetable system that was absolutely shocking - it was an ASP.net based site with the kind of unfriendly interface you expect from a 1990's era intranet site (hint: utterly utterly horrible, it produced one timetable PER MODULE rather than a single combined timetable and every time you selected a module it would refresh the page). I was hungover the day before term started and rathe…

> Could be a market opportunity.

Perhaps, although I've heard that universities typically (however unfortunate it may be) like to buy huge ERP installations that cost millions but include integrated timetabling / scheduling.

Re: Yale students made a better version of its course catalog. Yale shut it down

#27

Post by pyre »

chrismonsanto wrote: post #21
orf wrote: post #10

My University released a web based timetable system that was absolutely shocking - it was an ASP.net based site with the kind of unfriendly interface you expect from a 1990's era intranet site (hint: utterly utterly horrible, it produced one timetable PER MODULE rather than a single combined timetable and every time you selected a module it would refresh the page). I was hungover the day before term started and rathe…

ASP.net? What sorcery! My undergrad website was developed in classic ASP. Our version control was copying files to a networked shared folder. For an example of how utterly fucked classic ASP is: it has no API for accessing file uploads. If you code it yourself, it disables all of the rest of the parsing (query string, form variables, ...), which you then also have to code yourself. Not to mention the whole "hasn't be…

Who would want to upload files via the HTML standard? Shouldn't you be using some sort of SOAP API with an ActiveX control? Or maybe the users should login to their local ActiveDirectory server and transfer the file to a shared folder via SMB/CIFS. /s
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