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Harvard, don't lock in your content! Other courses in many formats are available on http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative http://www.extensi
by kpi 15y ago
Harvard, don't lock in your content! Other courses in many formats are available on http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative http://www.extension.harvard.edu/open-learning-initiative Why should this one be iTunes only?
- idspispopd 15y agoThis storm in a teacup fear mongering stuff has to stop. It's silly to suggest this is locking in content, or even bad for anyone, and it's obvious why they use this distribution method over hosting the content themselves. 1. It's not in a proprietary format, the documents are PDF, the videos are AAC/H264. (I give up the h264 debate for today). Having to run iTunes to access the store is hardly "lock in". You might as well suggest turning on your computer is lock in. 2. This is on a CDN managed externally, Harvard don't need to invest in data centers. 3. Harvard don't have to pay for hosting/transmission/upkeep costs. 4. It enables harvard to provide something for free when normally they'd need to allocate budget. (And with that possibly charge for it.) 5. It's part of iTunes U, which is praised by universities across the globe for being an excellent enabler of education.
- ramblerman 15y ago1) As posted in my other comment - I'm currently at the airport with my android, and no way to get this content. If it's not locked in, how do I access the data? When I get home I'll have to install itunes. Which will add the apple updater + bonjour to my system as well. 2-4) I agree completely with your arguments regarding the benefits to Harvard. You're saying the same thing in three different ways though, Harvard has no costs hosting this content, which is true 5) The big enablers of education that have entered my field of view are MIT opencourseware, khan academy and the recent stanford courses. Perhaps iTunesU is among them, but I haven't seen this praise in my feeds.
- idspispopd 15y agoYour definition of lock-in needs a reality check. If my pocket calculator can't access the internet, it doesn't make the internet 'lock-in'.
- fridrik 15y agoPocket calculator designers can implement internet support. Android developers cannot legally implement an iTunes store (I hastily assume).
- wahnfrieden 15y agoThere's software for desktop Linux that lets you access iTunes U, so I don't think there is anything stopping Android from being able to as well apart from developers' motivations.
- resnamen 15y agoPodcasting distribution and aggregation is a problem that is already solved really well in the OSS space; there doesn't seem to be a compelling need to adopt proprietary solutions. Harvard isn't a strappy startup with no funds available to it. I'm pretty sure they have oodles of bandwidth and compute power at their disposal. I don't think they shouldn't use iTunes U, that's fine, but I wish they made it available through alternate channels as well.
- iamabhi9 15y agoWell for people using non-Windows and non-mac operating systems it is pretty much locked. EDIT: Just found out this tool for accessing iTunes University on GNU/Linux: http://tunesviewer.sourceforge.net/ http://tunesviewer.sourceforge.net/
- nhebb 15y agoIf you step back and think about this for a minute, you're getting free access to educational material from a world class university, and the the only prerequisite is that you install iTunes. That's a pretty good trade off.
- tikhonj 15y agoUnless, of course, Apple refuses to support your platform. And if Apple does refuse--and they do--, your only hope would be reverse-engineering: you can't just port the program itself because it isn't open source. Imagine the cry if it was Windows only.