[LUGSB] Blackboard Javascript bug on Linux workaround

[Michael F. Lamb]

> As an aside, the reason most software is crappy and people pay tremendous amounts of money for it is simple: there are no passionate people interested in blackboard systems. 

It's not rather due to Blackboard, Inc. finding nitpicky ways to sue you into the ground if you try to compete with them?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/25/2345211

Happily, their patent has been rejected after review, but that doesn't change my view of their "competetive stance," and the $1.3M they took from their competetor.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/29/0346212

> There are no uber-smart people who think they can turn blackboard systems into an "interesting problem", either.  Once such a group of people comes along, other companies might face heavy competition.

I disagree with that. You don't have to be uber-smart or turn this tool into some kind of heady academic research project to see competetion. Consider blogging, wiki, or bulletin-board software, which have been reinvented so many times that there are far too many to list. Blog software has pretty much become "hello world" to any nerd with a shiny new web framework to play with.

I could build a better Blackboard with no coffee and one hand tied behind my back, and I'm a slacker with a crappy GPA. Give the basic functionality (file upload, easy message posting, gradebook, interaction with SOLAR for rosters, roles) to any undergrad who stayed awake in CSE 336 with the understanding that we'll all use what they make, and you'll get something even better out, a lot more useful and less anoyying than we have now.

Academia is a nice, fat, bureaucratic market to target, and the existing tools are despised, so I can't beleive that this situation exists for lack of people motivated to compete (especially when so many of them have already been forced to use the existing tools.) If I didn't already have a job and I wasn't worried into being sued into oblivion by an opportunist with a patent, I'd think about competing here too.

The only requirement I see (beyond some basic web and intermediate database skills that one need not be "smart" to acquire) are that they care about the software as much as if they'd be forced to use it daily for the next five years of their life; if that's "passion" then yes, I suppose they do need to be "passionate." But I think the people at Blackboard, Inc are passionate about $omething el$e.

> But the real thing these companies get paid for is handling data.  Nobody in school administration gives a damn about functionality -- they care about the data.

Sorry, do you mean, making the software talk to SOLAR for class records? Or maintaining the infrastructure so the school doesn't have to? Or something else?

-- 
Mike