Campus Pipeline: Schools Selling Students' Eyes 251
magnanamous_cow_herd writes: "This semester i returned to the university to finally finish off my degree,
and after going to the computer center to re-activate my e-mail account, the
helpdesk guy started telling me about this fabulous new service called Campus
Pipeline
I looked into it a bit and found out that there are over 400 universities who
signed up with this company to provide them with a shiny new "free" advertising-supported
student intranet in exchange for many many eyeballs.
They claim they are positioned to become the fifth largest portal on the Internet.
I'd like to know what the Slashdotters think about this. Here is the only article
I found on this "service" that was even questioning it."
Re:Igor,Bring Me The Eyes (Score:1)
I honestly believe the things I posted first.
Info was gleaned over my lifetime from students I have known everywhere,colleges I have seen,and the media.Rice sounds nice.
Re:Wow, 97% of online teens have used the web! (Score:1)
Look for the TEKMOBL, the chevy with an onboard INTEL chip
Nice Ambition... (Score:1)
'Campus Pipeline could become the fifth largest portal on the Web, argues CEO Chad Muir.
"We are looking to become the Windows of the campus Webtop," Muir says.'
Screens all over
Re:Eh. (Score:2)
A) You're assuming that Shasta and Pepsi are otherwise the same product, so that the only reason there is a difference in sales is advertising. Coca-Cola decided to put that theory to the acid test when they introduced "New Coke", reasoning that if they had a product that tasted just like Pepsi, they could slaughter them with advertising dollars. Didn't work so well, did it?
B) You're assuming that banner ads are just as effective as all other forms of advertising. That's hotly disputed.
C) As far as Double-Click making money--Double-Click is selling ads, not products. It's irrelevant whether Double-Click ads really work as long as they can get enough suckers who think that they work. And the dot-com economy proves there's no shortage of suckers willing to throw money at e-commerce.
Here's a pop-quiz for you: Name an e-commerce company that's making money selling to consumers (no infrastructure companies like Cisco). Now, if you've come up with one, describe one of their banner ads.
Billboards (Score:1)
Would you like it if people told you what flags you could hang on your house? Or what clothing you could wear? Free speech must be for everyone or for no one.
-Dave Turner.
Flamebait (Score:1)
Donut
Hmmm... (Score:1)
But you hate advertising. So how do you expect that the reporters will get paid? Or do you expect that they'll all volunteer? [slashdot.org]
sulli
Things to consider... (Score:1)
It it quality software? Is it realtivily bug free? Is it prone to crashes or does it like to crash other systems/software?
Is it platform independent (most Universities have Macs, Windows, UNIX, and what have you to support...)
Is it secure? Plain text passwords on a university network = Very Bad Thing
Does it have support/training options for the IT staff? Will our support staff be able to support our userbase from day one?
Does it depend on systems out of the IT departments control?
Well, the last one pretty much tells us that we don't want it, because what are you going to do if 1,000 students in a large lecture are waiting 24 hours for the assignment that their teacher sent via e-mail, and is due the next day.
And then there are the bandwith considerations. With napster, gnutilla, and the usual heavy trafic, how are we going to deal with ads going out to everyone who access the system? The campus better have a powerful cache server.
Ok, I'm going to go and make that part of the IT departments offical policy at my place of employment now. =)
who needs this? (Score:1)
2. If a student wants to register for a course or section that's filled, the system automatically adds him or her to a waiting list. When a seat opens up, the system auto matically notifies the student by sending an e-mail message.
3. If a drop/add changes a student's bill, the system will notify the student as well as the bursar, who can accept the student's payment on line.
4. When a student loan is approved, the system e-mails the student and adjusts his or her account balance.
5. Graduates keep their e-mail addresses for life, making them always easy to reach.
Those services not already offered at most universities are not really worth doing. Billboard U? Puke!
Hopefully, larger more established universities will help smaller ones get things done.
Virginia Tech has Campus Pipeline, but ... (Score:4)
Re:What's to be outraged about? (Score:1)
Here's the next ad campaigns:
You are driving around with your brand-new car, it cost you 3/4 of what you were expecting. Every 5 minutes of driving, a small heads-up ad appears on the left pillar of the windshield. It catches your eye for just a sec until you realize it's another ad, but ooops, that kid just ran out from nowhere on your right. You swerve left to avoid her and hit a light pole. That ad has been proven not to distract drivers, it's very discreet.
So you go to the emergency room with chest pains. While waiting for someone to tell you if it's a bruise or a heart attack, the nurse asks you to view this brief 5-minute video on a new kind of aspirin. Saves the hospital a lot of money on their drugs! Who could object, you have to wait for the doctor anyway, right? And now you can recognize the pain-reliever he gives you.
You're OK and leave to walk downtown. You need to use a restroom so head into a department store. The restroom is free, except that you have to read an ad on the bathroom door and punch in the correct multiple-choice answer to a question about the ad. Takes only a second, if it's that urgent then you should have started earlier.
Sometime the "free" things just end up costing more in the end.
Re:Just nother dot-com wanting to ride the IPO wav (Score:1)
Campus Pipeline's Commitment to Privacy
Protecting your privacy is of the highest priority at Campus Pipeline. Our
success depends on how much schools and you, the end user, trust us to deliver
valuable services, information, and opportunities.
How the Campus PipelineTM System Works
The Campus Pipeline software relies on information held by your institution
in secure campus databases. With this information, Campus Pipeline technology
provides convenient, around-the-clock, web-based access to critical services
and powerful tools. Our system requires certain limited information about you
that is given to us by your institution in order to function, but Campus Pipeline
personnel do not have access to your school records. In this way, we provide
important functionality to your institution without compromising your security
and privacy.
In order to provide our software to your school at no charge, Campus Pipeline
recoups its development investment by selling sponsor placements and advertising
within the Campus Pipeline interface. Individually identifiable information
about you will not be disclosed for purposes of sponsorship or advertising without
your explicit permission.
Collecting Information about Campus Pipeline Users
Campus Pipeline collects the following types of information about our users:
When you log into the Campus Pipeline site at your institution, the system creates
a log file to record where you go and what you do within the Campus Pipeline
system. Unless you provide voluntary personal information in the Personal Profile
survey, this file contains no personally identifiable information, such as your
name or student ID number, so we cannot connect it back to any individual user.
However, to help us assess traffic and usage patterns within the Campus Pipeline
system, the file may contain other depersonalized information such as major
or degree being sought. (For more detail, see the FAQ on Campus Pipeline
and User Information.)
When you log into the Campus Pipeline system, we invite you to complete the
Personal Profile login survey. In this survey, you can tell us about yourself,
so that the information and features you experience with the Campus Pipeline
system are more customized to your personal interests and educational needs.
We may use this data to provide messages, offers, and opportunities on the Campus
Pipeline interface that are more relevant to your own interests. We do not transfer
your personal information to any third party unless you have given us explicit
permission to do so. You can always edit or change the personal information
you have provided by going to your Personal Profile from the link on "My Pipeline"
or within "Options."
The Campus Pipeline web platform also uses a browser feature called a "cookie."
Cookies are pieces of information that a web site transfers to your computer's
memory for record keeping purposes. The cookie used by the Campus Pipeline web
platform is not saved on the hard disk of your computer, nor does it contain
any personal information. Its sole purpose is to identify a logged in user.
All personally identifiable data collected by the Campus Pipeline system are
protected using industry standard methods such as firewalls and secure socket
layers. Whenever sensitive personal information is involved, such as credit
card numbers, the information is encrypted for secure transmission.
Campus Pipeline's internal policies and procedures also protect your privacy
with respect to any personal information that you have shared with us. Our personnel
are held to the highest standards with regards to the integrity of your personal
information.
How Campus Pipeline Utilizes Information About Users
The information that we collect guides us in enhancing the features, functionality,
and experience that the Campus Pipeline system provides. Specifically, we may
use it in the following ways:
We may aggregate depersonalized log files in order to assess how people use
the Campus Pipeline interface and to understand what they like and what they
do not like about Campus Pipeline, so that we can improve and enhance our services
and offerings. Campus Pipeline personnel cannot tie this aggregate information
to any specific individual's personal information or usage pattern.
We may analyze usage patterns in the aggregate in order to select or place
advertising to be displayed to groups of users of the Campus Pipeline web platform.
We may use information you provide about yourself to personalize portions of
our interface, in order to provide content, offers, and messages that are relevant
to your interests and educational needs.
We may act as an intermediary between you and our sponsors, advertisers and
strategic partners. We never provide your personalized information to sponsors,
advertisers or strategic partners unless you have given us express permission
to do so. Instead, we work with sponsors, advertisers, and partners to understand
the type of audience they wish to reach. We then direct sponsor messages and
advertising to the desired audiences. In this process, only Campus Pipeline
has direct access to your personal data and contact information.
We may disclose aggregate user statistics as we describe our products and offerings
to prospective sponsors, advertisers, partners, and other third parties, and
for other lawful purposes.
We may disclose personal information in limited circumstances to our agents
and subcontractors that assist us in fulfillment. In each case, our agents and
subcontractors are contractually obligated: (i) to keep such information completely
confidential; (ii) to use the information only for the limited purpose for which
they were retained; and (iii) to destroy or return the information to us at
the conclusion of their work.
We may disclose personal information if required to do so by law or in the
good-faith belief that such action is necessary to (a) conform to the edicts
of the law or comply with legal process served on Campus Pipeline; (b) protect
and defend the rights or property of Campus Pipeline Inc. or the users of the
Campus Pipeline system; or (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the
personal safety of users of Campus Pipeline or the public.
We may also disclose personal information in limited circumstances that are
specifically described when we collect the information. For example, we may
reserve the right to publish the names of winners of contests, sweepstakes or
other promotions after informing you of this right in the entry rules.
From time to time, we may send e-mail communications to tell you about commercial
offers, products, and opportunities based on your interests or educational needs.
It is our policy only to send e-mail to users who give us permission to do so.
In every such e-mail, we will also provide instructions on how to unsubscribe
from these communications.
Campus Pipeline and Children The Campus Pipeline system is directed
to higher education students, faculty, and administrative personnel. It is not
directed to children under the age of thirteen. However, we are aware that a
small percentage of higher education students may fall within that category.
We recognize that those students have exclusive rights to their educational
records as set forth in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974
("FERPA"), and acknowledge that those rights afforded by that legislation may
conflict with certain provisions of the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1999 ("COPPA"). Accordingly, Campus Pipeline will comply with the Children's
Online Privacy Protection Act of 1999 to the extent that it does not conflict
with the established rights extended to all higher education students by the
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974.
Other Privacy Considerations
Privacy is a serious issue in the online environment. Whenever you voluntarily
disclose personal information online--through e-mail, message boards, or chat
rooms--this information can be collected and used by others. If you post personal
information online that is publicly accessible, you may receive unsolicited
messages from other parties in return.
While we strive to protect your privacy, Campus Pipeline cannot ensure or warrant
the security of any information transmitted to us through publicly accessible
channels, and you do so at your own risk.
Also, the Campus Pipeline interface contains links to other sites, which have
separate privacy and data collection practices independent of our own operations.
We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of these entities,
and encourage you to read the privacy policies of each outside site that you
visit. We advise you to act carefully and responsibly online, maintain the secrecy
of passwords and account information, and to be aware of the risks and responsibilities
of Internet usage.
Campus Pipeline will post all changes to this policy on this page so that you
will know what information we will collect and how we may use or disclose that
information. We are also available to answer priacy questions or discuss privacy
concerns at privacy@campuspipeline.com. You can also contact us by mail at Campus
Pipeline, Inc., 155 North 400 West, #500, Salt Lake City, UT 84103; by phone
at 801-485-6000; or by fax at 801-485-6606.
Re:Ironic Statement of the Day Award goes to... (Score:1)
--
Re:Advertising, on college campus? (Score:1)
Pepsi actually pays PSU approx. $6 million to drink the stuff everywhere on campus, including football games, cafeterias, etc.
Alternatives (Score:1)
http://www.ja-sig.org
or real content at
http://www.mis2.udel.edu/ja-sig/portal.html
If you got the right stuff you could also roll your own. Good systems to start with are
ArsDigita Community System www.arsdigita.com
The OpenACS (no oracle) www.openacs.org
The Jetspeed Portal java.apache.org/jetspeed
All of these are quality systems that have a lot of potential in the right hands. A good example of an ACS based student portal is my.caltech.edu
If you want to check out some of the portals i helped to make/consult on check out
http://www.sin.ou.edu (zope based:)
http://www.sin.wm.edu (mod_perl)
If you want to go with a commerical company non-opensource, there is always
www.blackboard.com
So if you don't like CampusPipeline support an opensource alternative. If a quality opensource educational intranet is availalbe companies like CampusPipeline will soon be out of business. Making money selling software just seems like a bad business strategy to me these days.
Cheers
Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:1)
All colleges get sucked into that part of the deal. At the University of Kansas, all of their *n?x boxen were running Digital, and they had an exclusive contract that said that ONLY DEC could upgrade any software. That's why at least some mail servers were running sendmail 8.8.7 all the way into mid-1999.
I wonder if any of their machines have been 0wn3d yet. Might be a good wake-up call.
Re:What are they smoking?? (Score:1)
The only thing that sucks is they're turning off our telnet access to our AIX mailserver, for no reason I can see. :(
-David T. C.
Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:1)
fufu
Good point (Score:1)
Not a problem with reform... (Score:1)
I attend MSU, and we do not have it here, however I remember when I was @ Leon High School [k12.fl.us] in the 9th grade that we had AOL cd's in the computer lab... Perhaps this service would be better if when everyone went and got their books it would be in the bags, or maybe there would be a cd already in your dorm when you got there...
Making the system closed like that is no good... And what OS's does it support? Linux (doubt it), MacOS? (maybe), Win 9x and latest versions of NT? of course, 3,1 (doubt it), BeOS (yah right).
Please..... I am a compsci major,.... If my university required me to run windoze exclusively to access the internet and worldwide web i'd drop out......however i did just think of an idea of what students stuck with this system could do (fortunately we don't have it at Mississippi State [msstate.edu] I know that with things like bluelight from AOL and with FreeAV from altavista, which are dialup free internet providers the service requires you to click in the box every so many minutes or you disconnect or at least you have to use the computer.... ping programs won't work....
If it's an 'always on' type deal, set up a cheap box as a router... then everyone behind the router would not have to view the ads... hehehehe...anyway.. just an idea..
Look for the TEKMOBL, the chevy with an onboard INTEL chip
The Wave of the Future (Score:2)
Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:1)
----------------------------
Re:Not a problem with reform... (Score:1)
Look for the TEKMOBL, the chevy with an onboard INTEL chip
The Student Body Cash Cow (Score:2)
Universities should be protecting their students from this crap, not encouraging it. So many students get into big trouble, even being forced to go into bankruptcy, because of the shady credit card companies. Students don't have this much money to spend!
Most student don't yet know how to manage their own assets, however small, and these businesses will take advantage of them. The universities know students are living on a tight budget, given the outrageous tuition and fees these days, yet they seem to conveniently forget this fact when it comes to these questionable business deals, as long as money is involved.
What's to be outraged about? (Score:2)
I don't see the big deal.
A) It's free. No tuition hike for you.
B) So its ads. Whine all you want. You think the coke machine in the student union isn't an ad for coca-cola? I'm sure the Levis t-shirts you wear aren't ads for the jean company, they're an expression of your individuality. Really.
Every time advertising hits the internet in some other new fashion, /. picks it up as if its
something newsworthy. Get over it folks. Ads are
everywhere. The average person in America sees 2000 per day. You just don't realize they're ads.
To think that the internet, and now intranets
and other faces of your wired life are somehow immune, better, different, whatever, is naive.
This sucks but... (Score:1)
While the obligatory use of Pipeline sucks (and also damages UN*X pipes' reputation), it's just a stupid thing(tm). I see from this thread that all the old functionality is still accessible through cosher (read telnet/ssh) means. Such systems should also serve literature/arts/music schools, and I guess that at least for some of them the CLI stuff would be too difficult to comprehend. So you're stuck with it (while I'm missing the whole fun by not living in the US)
Do you have this feeling that ./ threads are occupied with stuff of lesser and esser importance?
Sad sad sad (Score:2)
The universities CHARGE for everything. What the hell are they doing this for?! I can understand the ads--maybe. But the profiling and money-cut from purchases is terrible.
The universities should all chip in a small annual fee to create an organization that would write this type of service themselves. They could even have volunteer work from their C/S department to help write some code for it. All that talent... wasted on Napster. When I was getting my CS degree, I didn't touch the comptuer club with a 10 foot pole, since they weren't doing anything interesting. But this type of work could have had promise.
Check out what my local college did this year (Ball State University , if you were curious) They oversold the Freshman Parking lot by 500! And to make up for this, they ticketed the freshman that had to park on the grass, and are now "correcting" the problem by giving them tickets to a different parking lot... but it's one where the shuttle bus doesn't go too... so 1 mile walk for you!
Rader
Give me that mail alias! (Score:1)
I wonder how robust this system is! You should make _alot_ of friends, and send them all _alot_ of email (all class related of course!) and see how long it takes to bring the system to it's knees.
What's New? (Score:3)
The point is, the advertising is going to be there. Whether it is the big Starbucks sign in the cafeteria, the Coke logo on the scoreboard, or a banner ad on the intranet.
It dosn't really help people buy more (Score:1)
CP: Keeping employees program. . . (Score:1)
not a new problem and a bad one at that (Score:5)
A lot of the problem is with bloated Universities who have no financial feedback mechanism (much like the government) so while the school might be making good money, the budget is streched thin anyway with uneeded high level management types, etc. Not that mass privatising is a good solution (I would never recommend it myself).
These days it's easier to get funding for new prisons than it is for education. I think California is a good example. I beleive they are now putting more money into law enforcement than education. Not a good sign, and not a good way to improve the world.
Years ago I think programs like this would have been rejected out of hand. In today's world colleges and universities are run more as corporations. By this I'm not referring to the increasing corporate control, but as in being bottom line money driven. Therefore money saving schemes like this often look attractive to college administrators at the expense of their students.
This companies business model is also suspect, it's the typical
Advertising can be an art form (Score:1)
It's happening (Score:2)
So, that's all nice and fine. The problem comes in when the universities don't have the money or expertise to create a portal like this from the ground up...which leads them right into application service provider territory. In fact, at Cornell, if I understand correctly, there have been offers to host a portal in exchange for advertising, but I believe those have all been declined, and there is work underway in a cross-university consortium, to come up with a generic portal that each university can tailor to their needs.
Needed: SpamCop for Pipeline (Score:2)
Somebody needs to write a service that reads and forwards Pipeline mailboxes. It would be great if SpamCop [spamcop.net] offered this. They poll POP mailboxes every 10 minutes, deal with the spam, and forward the rest, charging $0.50/megabyte of mail. All they need is another poller that talks to Pipeline instead of a POP.
Consumer training 101 (Score:2)
I'm suprised that it's taken this long... (Score:2)
Re:I'm suprised that it's taken this long... (Score:2)
Where I come from, that's called "tuition" and they've been doing it forever
Shaun
Advertising, on college campus? (Score:3)
Thankfully, there was nothing like this when I matriculated, and I was able to fully enjoy watching the Penn State Nittany Lions beat the Miami Hurricanes in the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl while sipping my Budweiser under the alluring glance of my Free Bud-Girls poster.
Wow, 97% of online teens have used the web! (Score:3)
I noticed this quote in the University Business article which was linked to from the orig. posting...
"According to a study of on-line teens released this spring by Northstar Interactive, 93 percent between the ages of 13 and 18 had used the Web, and 97 percent had sent and received e-mail"
Well...duh. If you're conducting a study of ON-LINE teens, wouldn't you guess that most of them had used the web and/or email? That would be like saying that 97 of teens exiting a voting booth had voted. The only suprise is that the percentage is so LOW. Don't you love statistics? It's a good article otherwise though. :-)
And as for the online teens who hadn't used the web or email... just what the hell were they doing online exactly? There's plenty of things to do online besides the web and email, but it's kind of hard to imagine being online WITHOUT using one of the two...
Re:Advertising can be an art form (Score:2)
No, where I come from we shoot people like that. It has a wonderful effect on the intelligence of our discourse... ;-)
Re:It's not just intranetting... (Score:3)
I remember logging in once long after I signed up (out of curiosity, of course) to check my new, hip CollegeClub e-mail address. It had seven messages, all of which went like this:
The good news: CollegeClub went out of business [dotcomfailures.com] this year. The bad news: they were taken over by Student Advantage [studentadvantage.com], who also pays college students to shill for their crappy discount card. (Wow, 5% off at Joe's Pretzel Shop! Fifty cents off at Starbucks when you buy five lattes! This rules!)
It's not about eyballs, it's about attention (Score:4)
A while back I read a really interesting article in Linux Journal about "Mediated Reality" (using eyeglasses whose display can filter out things you don't want to see in the real world -- like advertisements). The article was fascinating in itself, but it really put a point to why I dislike most of advertising.
It mentioned (animated) web banners which portray a moving mouse pointer and explain that it is an obvious attempt to capture the users' attention. In the end, this is what all advertising is attempting to do. They don't care about eyeballs, they want you to give your attention, your precious time, to their marketroid message.
It's also like a company which I've seen here in Atlanta, GA, USA called "Promove" which has brick-and-mortars set up to connect apartment hunters with vacant apartments. The buildings and signs are painted bright yellow. Why? Because they know that it is a psychological fact that yellow is the most eye-grabbing color. People are just naturally drawn to look at it. In the end, just another scheme to steal peoples' attention.
And that's what all advertising is: A scheme to steal peoples' attention. This is why I hate most advertising. It is the attempt of companies to use psychological tricks to take my attention and my time which is rightfully mine, and which companies have no right to.
I agree that advertising on television is acceptable, for it delivers a free service to the viewers. The viewers pay with their attention. I think that magazines and newspapers which charge a subscription fee are immoral. Why would I pay to have my attention diverted towards someone else's financial gain? I pay to look at what I want to look at, not what Frito-Lay wants me to look at! I think that advertising billboards should be illegal: the advertiser gets the viewer's attention and the viewer gets ... nothing (plus it's unsafe, people are trying to drive for God's sake!). And I think that T-Shirts which say "Tommy Hilfiger" boldly on the front is a testament to how stupid many of us have become.
And to those people who say, "It's just a few more ads, get over it, we're already inundated with ads, stop whining!" I reply: your time and your attention may be worthless to you, but to me they are my most precious resource, and I reserve the right to whine, bitch, and complain about their loss as much as I so please.
Re:It's all about the money (Score:2)
As far as the prof is concerned I'm sure there are plenty of good ones out there. But for every one of them, there are five guys teaching ADA.
Re:The fallacy of the logical conclusion... (Score:3)
Point taken however I think this point in history is far more dangerous than past ones because of the rate at which information (or in this case disinformation) flows. It's much harder to fight something that everybody "knows" is true than something that everybody hasn't heard of yet. That's the danger of the media. Most people out there (a generalization I know) watch the news and take it hook, line, and sinker to be the truth. Unfortunate but also very very real.
Historically trends are cyclical. Stretches of group think are followed by stretches of individualistic rebellion. Look at what's happening right now. We see countless protests being staged by people who are fet up with corporatism and globalization. Are these people becoming drones?
No they are not but I think that they are also too small in number. Corporate America(tm) has a very loud voice - it's going to take a lot of people to drown it out. As for historical trends - you are correct. But do you want to wait that long to get your freedoms back?
I think you are way underestimating the desire to be an individual in human beings. There is a desire to be part of a community and to identify with others, but there is also an ego driven desire to distinguish yourself from the crowd.
I do not count the spirit of the individual out but I also am more pessimistic about the strength of Corporate America(TM). There's a lot of things you can do with large amounts of money to make sure the truth does not get told and I think some of those things are being put in place as we speak.
The Tick - "Spoon!"
NEO - "There is no spoon."
Re:I'm an admin at a place installing this... (Score:4)
I personally don't use it, but it is not an inherently bad thing. Also, I may be mistaken, but it seems like Campus Pipeline helped pay for some of the hardware setup along with software costs for the system. So overall everyone is a winner. Soon with browsers such as mozilla that allow easily blocking images from specific hosts, you won't even have to view the ads.
A place for everything. (Score:2)
However, I don't believe this is aimed at those places (yet). There are far more schools and small colleges with minimal budgets that can't afford a decent computer department.
for thoe places, this kind of deal is a boon all round. Students get access, and the businesses get a cut to keep them happy.
As long as the deals don't tie in 'in-perpetuity' clauses, and allow you to cease the agreement at any time, then, it's a good thing.
The worry is, if it should be a 'tie in' deal with clauses to make it almost impracticable to leave.
It's a good first step to take.
And one thing to remember about trying to hold on to customers.. They have to give what's wanted, and they have to be good...
I think it's a good thing, from what I can see, but, as with all potent tools, the scope for it's misuse is vast, and that would be a serious blow to any academic institution.
Malk
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:2)
Of course not. And neither will our valued business partners.
Here is another article critical of CP. . . (Score:5)
The article mentioned by /. says the software is free, but doesn't mention that you need to buy a pretty expensive Solaris box to run it on. And I guess university IT departments have plenty of available manhours to administrater the system, huh?
Campus Pipeline appears to promise the world to everyone. They say they can tie existing university systems together (with Java). They say they will be coming out with a version that runs on Linux. I think they are simply a company spin-off that was aiming at a big bucks IPO (before that bubble burst).
Faculty on many campuses don't like it and are putting up a fuss. That, plus the fact that the IRS is looking at taxing income unrelated to an educational institutions "primary mission", may be putting the brakes on Campus Pipeline implimentation.
Yes, Campus Pipeline is (at best) tacky but the fact that many institutions are hopping in bed with them is a result of the financial pressure that many universities are under in the face of State government funding cutbacks.
Curious George
Same here (High School) (Score:2)
20 minutes to check my e-mail? (Score:5)
Okay, I attend Westark Community College in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Since our college here has recently inflicted this program upon us, I have a few things to say about it.
I don't mind the ads so much, its just that this whole system is designed not to help the student, but instead to sell them things. Maybe I don't want to spend 20 minutes checking my mail each day..maybe i want to spend them studying.
Anyway, on an unrelated note, yesterday i noticed that one of the e-mails I'd received was sent to "everyone@collegename.edu". Thinking it was too easy to be true, i sent a limerick to the address (really short rhyming dirty poem). Turns out my limerick went to ALL the faculty! Had I been thinking clearly, I would have sent it anonymously, and probably would have sent an essay on why pipeline sucks. As it stands now, my Pipeline access was promptly suspended after a chat with the Dean today. Ah well....i guess i really deserved that. (if any of the faculty read this, i profusely apologize!) I certainly won't miss Pipeline, though.
-- Juju
bureaucracy is the beast with many mouths (Score:2)
They don't consider themselves as delivering the product of education, and justify their expenses based on how they help to deliver this product. Instead, everybody fights for the money to do whatever they want to do, and scrambles to get even more money from outside.
Teaching is just a chore that must be done, not the main purpose. Everyone there has another agenda.
Any chance to grab extra cash is taken. That's why universities have wealth-based "assistance programs"; actually, they have sliding prices based on the principle of "take every penny they can lay their hands on".
It's not just expensive, it's specifically as expensive as they can get away with. Of course, this varies a lot depending on the political climate. In some countries, there is a strong political push for education to be "free", so the students just don't get charged tuition (they get 'em where they can, though).
Everybody's always "short of money" because everybody has a bottomless appetite for the stuff. Anything that can be cut off of someone else's budget will be... at least until they fight back.
So, in a nutshell, universities are bottomless money-sinks by their very nature. Don't expect any relation between what you pay and what you get, there isn't one.
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Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:2)
at a price that is easily underestimated: converting students from thinkers into advanced consumers.
Price? And here I thought all along that was the goal of American education!
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Crappy college media (Score:2)
Clearly someone got paid to distribute these. I suppose the university may have benefited slightly, but I certainly didn't see the value, not after my folks and I had forked over big bucks to get me there.
Sure, the advertising and crap are going to be there. But it is incumbent on the university to make good decisions about same. Seems like Campus Pipeline is one that the good universities should forget about.
Besides, if your university can't even run an email server, what the fuck do you expect to learn there?
sulli
Re:Seeling eyes {shudder} (Score:2)
Depends on the point of view. Having a full personal record from your college years is almost as good as having your immunological footprint. They can do things almost as intrusive as selling your eyes.
Re:Wow, 97% of online teens have used the web! (Score:2)
There was another poll showing that 97% of fucking drama class dorks were fucking drama class dorks, but I lost the link.
I've got you beat (Score:5)
An example: there is, naturally, a section on printers. At the bottom of the page is a picture of a Hewlett-Packard inkjet that looks better than what you see in a four-color catalog. A half-dozen pages later is a focus on two innovators in technology, Mr. Hewlett and Mr. Packard. The facing page has a spotlight on a company on a cutting edge--Hewlett-Packard. Flip to the section on E-Commerce, and there's a screenshot of the Hewlett-Packard online store showing somebody about to buy--you guessed it--a Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer. There are also multiple pictures of Pavillions, etc., scattered throughout the rest of the book.
HP isn't the only offender, not by a long shot. AMD gets an "oh-by-the-way" mention in the body of the text, but all the pictures, charts, and examples show Intel processers, chipsets, etc. Office programs only come from Microsoft, period (and, yes the first technological innovator is Bill and the first cutting-edge company is Microsoft).
The sidebar on how voice recognition works is probably a direct quote from the side of the Via Voice box. It mentions all of the great things that voice recognition can do, and how Via Voice is the best program to do all that. Would you be surprised if I told you that a few pages later was a bio of Lou Gerstner and a puff piece on IBM?
Sun is only mentioned a couple times, and then only for Java. Java isn't even listed as a programming language, but instead as a two-paragraph description of multimedia enhancements to web pages, right after Shockwave.
Iomega is the only company that makes removeable mass storeage.
Oh--and I forgot: this textbook is "web-enhanced" by CNN. At the end of every chapter is instructions to go to a CNN web page where you can watch movie clips about the preceeding material. So, naturally, the chapter on processors has a movie bio of Andy Grove and another multimedia something-or-other about Intel.
I think I should shut up now before I break an O-ring....
Well, okay one last comment: I all but told the students to take the books back, and I'm supplying them with my own resources or pointers to web pages, etc.
0-7895-5937-4
b&
switch publisher and professor (Score:2)
everyone wins then
Re:Nice quote (Score:2)
...phil
Right here. (Score:2)
What's my point? Well, first of all, Universities are some of the last places where the Internet is still more than the web. Another thing too: if there's one big centralized portal, there's one big centralized thing that will break all at once. With one centralized group of people running it. And that's bad. If for some silly reason an email server (for example) goes down, it doesn't take class registration with it, or the newsgroups, or the website, or anything else. In fact, if an email server fails it only takes out _part_ of the mail.
I can see it now... Whoops, campuspipeline.uiuc.edu is broken again, I guess I can't turn in my homework or get my email or get the weather or go to class or...... you get the picture. Not a good thing for 40 thousand some odd students.
Re:Channel One (Score:2)
Is this kind of commercial deal common in the US? Can your children opt out of these "mandatory" ads and newscasts (who selects stories and editorializes them?). Soviet-style "The five year plan again yields record crops for happy farmworkers" news is rightly derided by all - how is this corporate brainwashing any better?
I thought you guys had the Land of the Free...
This needs to become a market factor (Score:2)
TANSTAAFL, so the cost of this computer system has to come from somewhere. There's really only one possibility: it comes from the people who buy the advertised products. Most likely, the people who buy the advertised products are going to be the people who looked at the ads, therefore, when you look at an ad, you are paying for the delivery of that ad. There is a cost to you, both as a monetary (but hard to calculate) expense, and of course there's the whole aesthetic thing.
Therefore, doesn't it follow that when a student chooses what school to attend, they should be made aware of the cost of attending each school or taking advantage of its services? "Free email" is misrepresentative if the school actually uses Campus Pipeline.
We can debate how much that cost is, some say it's so close to zero that it doesn't matter; others say that it is very high and therefore an outrage. I say let the market decide. And the first step toward letting the market decide, is for people (e.g. senior high school students) to be aware of this cost's existence, prior to making a decision about what school to go to.
Hmm.. maybe we can get the word out by buying a spot on Channel 1. ;-)
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Re:The Student Body Cash Cow (Score:2)
I learned a lot about beer. Ask me sometime about Weekender Numbers, the set of numbers where n people drinking at an equal rate can form an arithmetical n-gon with the empties.
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If they don't do it one way, they do it another. (Score:2)
What do you expect? Many Colleges and Universities are no longer institutions of higher learning and research; instead they have become money making institutions. They exist to make money.
My university started putting televisions in public places that constantly blast gubbish music and advertisements targeted at "twenty-something college students who know nothing about debt with credit cards given to them by parents". You can't turn down the volume (they are contractually obligated to keep a particular volume), turn them off, or otherwise exist in a public place without being marketed to. Only after serious complaints (by alumni, I'd wager) did they shut off the televisions in the cafeteria. Not only that, but the shit they blast just plain sucks; the kind of trash music propagated by Mtv and the like.
So my solution is not to go to these public places, and more importantly, not to spend any money at them. Unfortunately, so few other people seem to care. But living in a corporate engineered reality doesn't sit well with me.
Re:Channel One (Score:2)
> Pepsi Co has no gulag.
No, but Nike does.
Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:2)
Hold on, are you trying to say that they have access to your email? This is a whole new ball game
Actually, no (Score:2)
www.campuspipeline.com is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) on Solaris
Re:What is the harm? (Score:2)
Why not simply impliment some banner rotation software and make the money for themselves?. Even better, schools could form a consortium to provide space in the rotation for national advertisers. Give them a place to buy ads on the whole consortium network.
Curious George
Nothing new (Score:2)
For the Universities.. (Score:2)
Ok, I know you're always looking for a way to save money, but what will you do when/if this company goes down the drain?
People who had network access and then lost it can get pretty nasty, and they'll have lots of time on their hands.
Later
Erik Z
Re:What is the harm? (Score:2)
A-fucking-men!
Score: +5 (Insightful)
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Re:Wow, 97% of online teens have used the web! (Score:2)
And as for the online teens who hadn't used the web or email... just what the hell were they doing online exactly?
Napster!
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Re:I'm suprised that it's taken this long... (Score:2)
funny how when I was in college I received about a BILLION long distance/credit card catalogs. Coincindence?
It's unfortunate... (Score:5)
Instead of pimping out students, they could have better software and keep some respect.
Re:Igor,Bring Me The Eyes (Score:2)
Also at Rice, the faculty is well-paid but not ridiculously paid for the most part. And while there are some professors who don't like to teach particular topics to which they have been assigned, by far the majority of my professors have been both amazingly intelligent and dedicated to communicating their knowledge and skills to their pupils. Again, Rice is by no means alone on that front.
I can't speak for everyone, but as for myself, I certainly have not gotten the education that my father got at school- my education has been ten times better, by his accounting and mine.
--
-jacob
Nice quote (Score:2)
Re:Advertising, on college campus? (Score:2)
Now that I think about it, this really gives me the red ass. I thought I paid for student center usage as part of my fees for christsake(holden caulfield). It seems that the university is getting suplemental fees from these credit card whore booths. The more I think about it, this is worse than telemarketing because it is face to face.
Re:What is the harm? (Score:2)
--
Ironic Statement of the Day Award goes to... (Score:3)
I don't feel compelled to go buy the product, check out the website, or punch the monkey to win prizes. Hmmm, perhaps it's the lack of subliminals...
Yeah, those ads just go right under your mental radar...
Jay (=
(OK, to be fair, if you can't name the product/service the ad is for, it's not a very successful ad...)
Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:5)
The first time they approached the people who run the network. They wanted us to use their modifed browser on all computers at the university. This included all privatly owned computers in the dorms as well as faculty computers in offices, and even dial-in users. Additionally the university would be required to provide network access to C.P. so that they could sell their "service" to private appartment complexes in the area. No guarntee that those appartments would not have USU students. We are not allowed by law to provide network access to people not associated with the university. And one other little thing...they wanted a 5-year exclusive contract with no commitment on C.P.'s part that they would upgrade any part of their system to keep up with the times. We were to trust that they would.
So, we were supposed to force everyone associated with the university to use a specific browser. We were also supposed to provide Internet access to anyone that happend to live in an appartment where they resold our bandwidth. We got a 10% kickback on the net proffits and we would be stuck with it for five years. We said no.
The second time they approached the university administration directly. The story they told them was "hey look, FREE MONEY!" Since administrators tend to be whores, they were for it. I mean what problem could there be with free money? FREE MONEY! Additionally they "gave" transmiters, radios, etc., to the university to get a high speed connection to the president's home. This was a gift "free from obligation." It took an act of war on us mere techies to convince the administration that this was not a good idea. After it was clear that we were not going to bite C.P. took back the "gift" of the free radio link equipment.
There are lotst of details that are too messy to get into, but we figured that this would be a tar baby, and we would be sorry if we had taken the offer.
-g
Re:The Student Body Cash Cow (Score:3)
The problem is that these kids have about the same credit history (no credit history) as the ones with no money, so they give the cards to everyone, and eat the poor/irresponsible kids' debt with the profit from the rich parents/irresponsible kids' spending.
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I'm an admin at a place installing this... (Score:5)
The students, staff, and faculty WILL use pipeline for all their e-mail. POP, IMAP, alternate e-mail clients are not allowed because if you get your e-mail that way, you won't see the wonderful advertisements.
It's horrible, but I have no choice besides just up and quit...
(And I *am* an anonymous coward and have good reason to be! :)
Re:20 minutes to check my e-mail? (Score:2)
Colleges and Universities need to be seen as an open marketplace of ideas, meaning giving as much choice as possible. Okay, sometimes they can't. They can't have multiple infrastructure companies available for the students to pick from. But they can make sure that within that choice, students can completely avoid the system if it offends them (i.e. forwarding the mail to another account).
The fact that it was so easy to send all the faculty an email makes me wonder about the security of the system. I understand the ease of usergroups, but at least break it down by department. I would love to get that alias so I can spam it with my offers to decrease mortgage costs, or my new Britney Speares Nude website.
This is nothing new (Score:2)
My point is that advertising is everywhere and we really can't do much about where companies can advertise. Schools are the best place for companies to advertise because the students can't help but see it.
Eh. (Score:2)
What about Academic Software? (Score:4)
I know here at RIT, we can't use systems for comemrcial gain because that's in the terms of our academic licensing... but I wonder how a system like this would affect that status...
What's the big deal? (Score:2)
Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:5)
It really ticks me off that I pay to attend an University and I get spam in my inbox because the university wants more money.
I think the concensious (sp?) here at AppState is that Campus Pipeline sucks major ass. What is happening at other schools?
Re:What's to be outraged about? (Score:2)
Get over it folks. Ads are everywhere.
Yep. Just yesterday I saw a kid with a nike logo dyed into the back of his head in his short cropped hair. (The logo was about 10 cm across). Talk about identifying with a brand. The scary thing is that advertising works.
Re:Sad sad sad (Score:2)
What I really meant was C/S students weren't learning/honing programming skills on a possible fun project, but instead were cruising on the internet, downloading songs on Napster. I almost said playing computer games, but thought that Napster was more suitable, since Napster is also the bandwidth nightmare of many colleges.
So... I didn't really mean Sean Fenning's talent or lack of talent of making Napster, etc, I meant that students were spending more time playing games or playing with Napster, instead of programming.
Not that I don't waste time on MP3's or computer games...
Rader
Youth today is WAY too angry. (Score:2)
It's really sad when noone sees the relationship between this and the constant barrage of psychologically-defined, targeted marketing that is constantly trying to sell, sell, sell.
Already the complaints about kids being distracted in schools is deafening. The only way this marketing model will work is if it further distracts the students...
You've got to ask yourself how much available memory space you have for retaining important information, and how much of that space is taken up by CocaCola campaigns, McDonald's jingles, etc. Billions and billions of dollars are spent each year in a battle for your memory space.
If you get that info into brains when they're young, it's more likely to remain forever. So kids are having attention deficit problems? Retention deficit problems? Jesus, I wonder why...
Re:Nice quote (Score:2)
Ummm, you do realize that Microsoft is consistently named as one most respected and admired companies in the world, usually in the top 5, don't you? I mean, unless you work for General Electric, which beats Microsoft in a lot of those polls, you don't have too much room to talk. At least you're correct about the cash flow part. (On the other hand, if your post was a parody of Slashdot, and you were intentionally pretending to be lacking in the brains department, then Bravo!, and my apologies.)
Cheers,
Campus Pipeline in one quote: (Score:2)
-Chad Muir, CEO
That sums it up for me: evil monopolistic business practices, lousy product, contempt for the user, and a confusing marketing buzzword for spice. They're really setting out to imitate MS in every way they can.
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College Students are poor (Score:2)
Re:Advertising can be an art form (Score:2)
I can't really comment on the US as a whole, so let's look at a subset we're both familiar with, slashdot. Slashdot is easy to understand because everyone's thoughts and opinions are posted
Advertising can be, and often is, much more entertaining than the product it is selling.
I own a tivo. I can rewind tv broadcasts and watch 'em again. I use this feature fairly often, but never for commercials. Only the Superbowl has commercials that are useful in their own right. And I don't watch the Superbowl.
How often has a preview for a movie been more entertaining than the movie itself?
Never. Perhaps more entertainment/minute.
As for newspaper subscriptions, you can subscribe to a newspaper for a couple of bucks a month these days, and you're mainly paying for the priviledge of having it delivered to the door rather than going out to pick it up yourself.
I pay $33/month for cable (AT&T in Woodside, CA; no premium channels). I think we get about 50 channels, that's about 66 cents/channel. Is that much more than the priviledge of having it delivered to the door? How does television survive?
If it's entertaining, then it's worth your time...
Not really. If my goal is to be entertained and the ad is more entertaining than all other currently available activities, then it is worth my time. Otherwise, no. Why are you reading slashdot instead of watching advertisements tv ads or gazing at billboards? (must be for the
And yes, some things annoy me that appeal immensely to a lot of other people...
Overall, advertisements result in net annoyance. If a tv channel had a sister station that broadcast the same programming without ads which would be more popular? No one would watch the station with ads (except during the Superbowl halftime). Why don't premium movie channels have advertisements (last I checked; they might now).
Ryan
Re:Campus Pipeline sucks (Score:2)
School prepares students for life by teaching them to sit quitely at their desks and do what they are told.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
What is the harm? (Score:2)
The risk to watch out for is when commercial interests are interfering with academic liberty. When commercial interests are asking universities to keep controversial professors quiet is when you should be worrying. Frankly I don't see that potential here because the intranet service is just as much in need of the university's positioning as the university is in need of the intranet software. Seems like a mutually beneficial relationship overall.
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Double-dipping (Score:2)
It's all about the money (Score:2)
If I was going to a school because of a well rated Comp Sci program this would scare me off. I think the school should be self supporting in that regaurd.
I think a better question is where all the money in a large school goes. For instance a large group CALC I class being taught by the non-english speaking TA who's getting 50 bucks. Hmm, 200 students in a class, 300 bucks a head. I'm just saying...
Channel One (Score:3)