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This sounds absurd. Why should any Internet connection be needed to read a book, do exercising in a book, or anything else with a textbook? Sounds like the sc

This sounds absurd. Why should any Internet connection be needed to read a book, do exercising in a book, or anything else with a textbook? Sounds like the school district made some bad technical choices to me. (edit: perhaps I should have read more of the article, which mentions this...)

freehunter 14y ago
The school district made some bad technical choices, and also forgot one of the most important facets of rolling out a new technology: making sure the users can actually use it. If you can't satisfy the technical requirements, investing the money is flushing it down the drain. Even a survey going out with students asking if their house had broadband would be enough. Sounds like what I'd expect from a committee without oversight, though. Far too often in my own job do I encounter a rogue team or business group that has bought licenses for software that the infrastructure is not prepared to support. It looks cool and they had a great marketing pitch, that's all that matters. IT will take care of the back-end, right?
- betterunix 14y ago
  I suspect that this had more to do with marketing on Pearson's part than anything else -- the officials who made these decisions probably had not paid attention to the fine print about broadband connection requirements. They were probably looking only at the cost per-book or per-student (and it never occurred to them that this makes no sense when talking about computers, since books should be something that computers can rapidly copy) and were dazzled by fancy interactive features. At least that is how things seem to work at the university level. Maybe things are different at a local school district.
csense 14y ago
> Why should any Internet connection be needed The most aggressive DRM schemes require a client-server connection. A lot of content publishers (not just textbooks: think newspapers, video games, movies, music) are really scared by what the Internet is doing to their industry, and a large subset of them turn to the most invasive, aggressive possible DRM as the answer. > Sounds like the school district made some bad technical choices to me. As another commenter pointed out, the people running the school district aren't technically literate, probably aren't even aware of the concerns about DRM, and aren't willing or able to listen to those who are. (By "unable" I mean -- think of non-technically minded people whose eyes glaze over as soon as you start discussing how something works. Not even necessarily a highly technical concept like DRM, maybe something as simple and familiar as the physical reason a bicycle will fall over when it's standing still, but not when it's moving.)
- jgamman 14y ago
  rubbish. their job is to allocate funds and if they aren't competent enough to do that themselves then they need to hire expertise. FFS, they are spending millions and can't afford to spend a few grand on hiring their own technically literate representative? seriously, you're representing yourself in court next week? hhmm get back to me on how that works out for you. it's a level 0 mistake. i could cut you some slack that a lot of people don't kknow how to select a competent representative but that's a good discussion to have and certainly one that you should spend time and effort on _before_ writing the big cheques...

freehunter 14y ago

The school district made some bad technical choices, and also forgot one of the most important facets of rolling out a new technology: making sure the users can actually use it. If you can't satisfy the technical requirements, investing the money is flushing it down the drain. Even a survey going out with students asking if their house had broadband would be enough. Sounds like what I'd expect from a committee without oversight, though. Far too often in my own job do I encounter a rogue team or business group that has bought licenses for software that the infrastructure is not prepared to support. It looks cool and they had a great marketing pitch, that's all that matters. IT will take care of the back-end, right?

betterunix 14y ago
I suspect that this had more to do with marketing on Pearson's part than anything else -- the officials who made these decisions probably had not paid attention to the fine print about broadband connection requirements. They were probably looking only at the cost per-book or per-student (and it never occurred to them that this makes no sense when talking about computers, since books should be something that computers can rapidly copy) and were dazzled by fancy interactive features. At least that is how things seem to work at the university level. Maybe things are different at a local school district.

csense 14y ago

> Why should any Internet connection be needed The most aggressive DRM schemes require a client-server connection. A lot of content publishers (not just textbooks: think newspapers, video games, movies, music) are really scared by what the Internet is doing to their industry, and a large subset of them turn to the most invasive, aggressive possible DRM as the answer. > Sounds like the school district made some bad technical choices to me. As another commenter pointed out, the people running the school district aren't technically literate, probably aren't even aware of the concerns about DRM, and aren't willing or able to listen to those who are. (By "unable" I mean -- think of non-technically minded people whose eyes glaze over as soon as you start discussing how something works. Not even necessarily a highly technical concept like DRM, maybe something as simple and familiar as the physical reason a bicycle will fall over when it's standing still, but not when it's moving.)

jgamman 14y ago
rubbish. their job is to allocate funds and if they aren't competent enough to do that themselves then they need to hire expertise. FFS, they are spending millions and can't afford to spend a few grand on hiring their own technically literate representative? seriously, you're representing yourself in court next week? hhmm get back to me on how that works out for you. it's a level 0 mistake. i could cut you some slack that a lot of people don't kknow how to select a competent representative but that's a good discussion to have and certainly one that you should spend time and effort on _before_ writing the big cheques...