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DRM - the bane of good user experience.
GOG nailed it - no DRM, low prices, convenience.
If most book publishers released their texts with new features (e.g. linking references, or adding additional notes to proofs/solutions) they’d get their sales. Instead they just slap DRM on and…
Low prices end GOG ? Yea nah, not really. Sorry but their UI is kinda shitty, hasn’t improved in years, they don’t have a client of Linux, they take 30% just like Steam, and 20% of recent games there get updates far later than Steam, if they ever receive them… The Escapists is a good example of that.
pirate the book, they clearly don’t deserve your money
The problem is most courses require a code that costs about ten dollars less than the book. Pearson did this to destroy the used book market.
My bank blocks it completely. I can never log in without changing the user agent.
Change banks.
It’s easier to spoof user agents.
“upgrade” no you mean emulate/switch.
I call it the “shame box.”
Pearson is indirectly asking you to pirate their courses.
Pearson, HMH, and all the major for-profit educational resource providers (and much of the not-for-profits, too) are literally actually evil.
Gemini asking: how/why?
Maybe they should upgrade to support other OSes?
They can’t even use proper punctuation in their error messages? Is this that AAAA+ software I keep hearing about?
I fail to see any mistake. A comma belongs to either side of the word “Linux” there.
What about the period at the end of the sentence tho?
Titles, headers, and other web elements typically have punctuation standards that differ from the punctuation standards for body text.
That’s fine, I don’t know what Pearson’s course is and I’m not really interested. So, ah, “Remind me later”, I guess…
It seems like it’s required course materials at a university.
You have to go through Pearsons 101?
It’s the name of a publisher famous for overpriced courses full of typos and inaccuracies
Excellent summary.
You have to press the little x in the corner :)
Some websites do this.
Change the user agent to windows and it works.
Fuxk you piece of shit!
Amazon does this too. After you bought a movie you can’t watch it in full hd on Linux. User agent doesn’t help.
However if you tell their api that you are an smart tv running Linux it works…
Same goes if you’re running Firefox.
I once had Hotmail take forever to get past the loading screen, then actually navigating my mail was hellishly slow. Switched my user agent to Edge and “magically” it loaded instantly and everything was snappy…
Had a few other sites do similar slowdowns but that and Youtube were the most unashamedly blatant.
The amazon might be due to drm, not OS racism, not that that’s a valid excuse
Drm was not the issue they just refused to run high quality on Linux.
Linux Browsers Support drm too.
Ughgggh. Am I gonna need to get a device I can put propriety garbage on for school?
I should be fine right? A software dev program couldn’t possible force you to use windows right?
All my professors taught and programmed in linux, but when it comes to exams, you need windows for the lockdown browser to do your exams. If you only had a linux machine, you won’t be passing your classes!
At least for assignments, the professors requested pdfs and not docx or smth.
I used a Windows VM when I was in college. Even if you are pursuing a computer science degree, yes, some professors assume/expect that everyone will be using Windows. Using a VM also has the added benefit of you being easily able to get rid of all the programs they made you install as well once the semester is over.
Computer science was all Linux at my college. Xubuntu, specifically.
CS for me was on SunOS / Solaris.
Tell us about punchcards again, grandpa! 😉
Just kidding. Solaris came out after I got my undergraduate degree…
Same.
Then I went to work for the company whose code Solaris was derived from. Back in time almost!
Comically, now, my C and Solaris experience is a marketable skill for reliable employment, albeit less fun.
That’s is really cool. There were a lot of Windows fanboys at my college unfortunately.
They can force you to use Windows.
What you can do is ask if using a virtual machine is fine. or don’t ask at all and have a virtual machine image of windows ready.
As someone who’s worked for several years in higher ed IT and used Linux during my studies, this’ll only get you most of the way there. Unfortunately some proctoring software (Respondus Lockdown Browser comes to mind) can be incredibly invasive, and to my knowledge will refuses to run in a VM.
Instructors also have a tendency of not disclosing during registration whether or not they use these proctoring softwares.
I’m lucky enough that by the time I was all-in on Linux, I wasn’t taking courses that used that exam model, but it’s why I make sure that the helpdesk at my current institution offers loaner devices to students who either have computers incapable of running the proctoring software, or who simply don’t want that kind of software on their own machine. It’s a pain in the ass to work with, but apparently it’s enshrined in our faculty’s union contract.
Kernel-level anti-cheat, it’s not just for gamers.
There are some fairly in depth setups to hide the fact that its a VM normally used for testing malware, I winder if those would fool it.
I’ve heard of some methods to bypass it, but unfortunately to test them I’d need to run a real proctored exam, or have our academic technology group set up a “pentesting” one that I can abuse for this software we pay for a license to. Assuming that didn’t land us on Respondus’ bad side and jeapordize our license, it would at best be a waste of time and resources since we couldn’t guarantee students that it wouldn’t get patched or flag them for cheating in the future. The obvious answer is for us as an institution to use better software (or adopt better assessment methods) but software this invasive by nature is generally not going to be open to running on platforms like Linux. And use of proctoring software is unfortunately enshrined in our faculty’s contracts.
And yeah, on the individual level, students themselves can’t really toy with getting it to run in a VM without risking failing an exam. Shit sucks.
Thankfully our uni forces us to use Linux at least in a form of WSL.
worked for several years in higher ed
softwares
/Sigh
I’m writing a Lemmy comment, not my thesis. Sorry my casual and lazy word choice upset you for not being grammatically correct.
Unless the school that has the software dev program forces all their teachers to use this stuff…
Everyday for me! They let us close and ignore it for now…
Have you tried the lutris/steam options? I’d love to know there are options if people can’t avoid it.
Oh, haha. This is for a school homework website called Pearson. I’ve always had it for my math classes.
Since it’s a web application, you can simply change your user agent to get rid of this warning. But it’s annoying since I’d rather not have an extra extension installed to do so. Lol.
They added an OS check to a website? What’s next, checking if your desk is sturdy enough to carry the weight of their javascript?
“Upgrade”
“Operating”
“System”
"Win"dows
“Pornography-related virus”
Just like they asked you to upgrade to ie in the 90s a d early 00s.
This is like “upgrading” from a Ferrari to a Ford.
Hey Ford beat Ferrari in Le Mans
And Ford beat the entire world into a 48h workweek
Harrison ford shummed on my dog
“Upgrade?”
Also I remember these Pearson pricks downgraded everyone’s BTEC results for an assignment on “the future of the media industry” as they got some boomer to mark it who didn’t do any research himself
Seriously, fuck Pearson. Garbage company.
