MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-04-24 |
| FROM | Ruben I Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] nyu dental school vitalbooks dvd
|
sounds about right to me
> I plan on sending something similar to the following to the Washington
> Square News tomorrow. Any comments from anyone? I just typed this up
> quickly. It may need to be cut in half.
>
> ---
>
> To the editor:
> On April 23rd, in the front page article entitled "DVD Texts Make
> Lukewarm Debut," both the Washington Square News and the NYU Dental
> School exhibit a profound misunderstanding of technoligical and
> legal/technological issues that vitally affect and will continue to
> vitally affect the students of this university. In the article in question, WSN
> fails to mention or emphasize many signicicant facts concerning the
> Vital Book DVD that drastically affect the way in which students use
> their textbooks, and facts concerning the adoption of the Vital Book DVD
> in the Dental School. First of all, the NYU Dental School, though
> perhaps the only school remaining in NYU that has its own large IT
> staff, made no consultation with its tech department before adopting the
> DVD as its sole source of textbooks. This itself is a major problem
> point in the adoption of the DVD, considering the technical nature of
> storing textbooks on a digital medium, and especially considering the
> fact that the NYU Dental School has an excellent intranet (read
> "internal internet") with which it is fully capable of deploying videos
> and other multimedia material to students. The textbooks themselves may be
> stored on DVD, but these textbooks are stored using proprietary
> encryption software that requires Vital Book reader software to be
> installed on the computer that will be used to read the DVD. This means
> that though the DVD may be usable for the life of the student, the
> material will not be available to the student unless the student happens
> to be running something that is compatible with whatever Vital Books has
> to offer. Apparantly, these DVDs are currently only readable on
> Macintosh Systems, locking out any alternatives. Moreover, these DVDs
> can only be read on one single computer, which in the case of NYU
> students happens to be the laptop that they hand over to have Vital
> Books software installed. If a Dental School student has a home desktop
> compter, this cannot be used to access the materials, as the materials
> are only accessible from the single laptop computer. Moreover, although these
> DVDs may be touted as something that will be an invalueble resource to
> students down the road, the fact of the matter is that it is highly
> unlikely that the DVD will be readable for the life of the student, for
> two different reasons. The first is that technology changes. It is
> very unlikely that the DVDs of today will be readable by the computers
> of tomorrow. Not long ago, the 3 and 1/2 inch floppies of today
> replaced inferior 5 and 1/4 inch floppies. Today, DVD are replacing
> CDs, and floppies have great shortcomings that will cause them to be
> phased out in the next few years. (Already, Apple systems do not come
> with floppy drives installed.) Especially as the trend towards smaller
> computing deviced continues, we can expect the DVDs of today to be
> phased out, and backwards compatibility can only be maintained for so
> long. 20 years down the road, when the textbooks will be so valueble to
> the student-become-dentist, it is unlikely that DVDs will even be
> readable by standard computing devices. In addition to this, the
> encryption of the textbooks on the DVD means that
> students-become-denstists will always be forced to rely on Vital Books
> for the readability of their DVD. The encryption means that the student
> cannot back the textbooks up somehow in order to circumvent the future
> obsoleteness of the DVD and it also means that the student cannot read
> the books on their own. If Vital Books goes out of business down the
> line, students will be left with an unreadable, useless piece of
> software that they paid thousands of dollars for. In short, the Vital Book
> DVD, though promising sounding, suffers from myriad problems that hurt
> the student purchasing it. Through heavy-handed copyright measures and
> technological shortcomings, the DVD program promises to be a large
> failure where students are concerned. This student has many 20 year old
> math textbooks that he has no problems reading whenever and wherever he
> wants, and which may be readable for another thousand years (if the
> historians of the future are interested.) On the other hand, the Vital
> Book DVD may not even be readable for the next ten.
>
> On Tue, 23 Apr 2002 22:30:28 -0400
> Ruben I Safir wrote:
>
> >
> > It runs on a mac and we were never consulted.
> > It was rammed down our throats.
> >
> >
> > > If so, was anyone in the Dental School tech
> > > department consulted on the matter?
> > >
> > > On Tue, 23 Apr 2002 22:10:26 -0400
> > > Ruben I Safir wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > The students didn't protest, and they genuinely dislike the media.
> > > >
> > > > It forces them to buy books they don't want, and how can 1/2
> > > > remain for life.
> > > >
> > > > It should ALL remain for life....period.
> > > >
> > > > And it shouldn't be encrypted.
> > > >
> > > > Which half goes out?
> > > >
> > > > Ruben
> > > >
> > > > On 2002.04.23 18:44 Jonathan Bober wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > A new story on the Vital Book DVD...
> > > > >
> > > > > http://www.washingtonsquarenews.com/getstory.php?id=20003044
> > > > >
> > > > > "One year after the NYU College of Dentistry announced that new
> > > > > students would be required to purchase a DVD that replaces all
> > > > > textbooks, students and faculty have received the new technology
> > > > > with mixed feelings.
> > > > >
> > > > > The DVD, known as the Vital Book, contains a student?s entire
> > > > > four-year curriculum, including 161 textbooks, course syllabi,
> > > > > handouts, lecture notes, slide presentations, video clips, a
> > > > > clinic manual, internally created material and other reference
> > > > > materials. The material is searchable, giving users the
> > > > > opportunity to research efficiently.
> > > > >
> > > > > Last year, students and faculty protested the DVD because it was
> > > > > supposed to expire after each semester. However, now the DVD
> > > > > does not expire, and students can keep at least half of the
> > > > > information for life.
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > [...]"
> > > > > ____________________________
> > > > > New Yorker Linux Users Scene
> > > > > Fair Use -
> > > > > because it's either fair use or useless....
> > > > >
> > > > --
> > > > __________________________
> > > >
> > > > Brooklyn Linux Solutions
> > > > __________________________
> > > > http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
> > > > http://www.brooklynonline.com - For the love of Brooklyn
> > > > http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
> > > > http://www.nyfairuse.org - The foundation of Democracy
> > > > http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or
> > > > stories and articles from around the net
> > > > http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/mp3/dr.mp3 - Imagine my surprise when I
> > > > saw you... http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New
> > > > Downtown Brooklyn....
> > > >
> > > > 1-718-382-5752
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ____________________________
> > > > New Yorker Linux Users Scene
> > > > Fair Use -
> > > > because it's either fair use or useless....
> > > ____________________________
> > > New Yorker Linux Users Scene
> > > Fair Use -
> > > because it's either fair use or useless....
> > >
> > --
> > __________________________
> >
> > Brooklyn Linux Solutions
> > __________________________
> > http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
> > http://www.brooklynonline.com - For the love of Brooklyn
> > http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
> > http://www.nyfairuse.org - The foundation of Democracy
> > http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories
> > and articles from around the net http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/mp3/dr.mp3 -
> > Imagine my surprise when I saw you...
> > http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown
> > Brooklyn....
> >
> > 1-718-382-5752
> >
> >
> >
> > ____________________________
> > New Yorker Linux Users Scene
> > Fair Use -
> > because it's either fair use or useless....
>
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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