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longer logged in and dumps you to a login page after which it dumps you not on the page you were working on but on the root page, LOSING YOUR WORK!!!1!! Political Economy Should-Reads Politics and Elections Should-Reads Hot on Google Blogsearch Weblog Home Page Weblog Archives Page 1 of 5 http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/bspace-hellspawn.html Such a content management system is HELLSPAWN!! Is WROSE THAN HILTER!1!!!1!... 925 708 0467; [email protected]. Hot on Google
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8/28/09 6:05 PMbSpace = Hellspawn
Page 1 of 5http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/08/bspace-hellspawn.html
Grasping Reality with Both HandsThe Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong: A Fair, Balanced, Reality-Based, and More than
Two-Handed Look at the World
J. Bradford DeLong, Department of Economics, U.C. Berkeley #3880, Berkeley, CA 94720-3880;
925 708 0467; [email protected].
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Econ 115: 20th Century Economic History
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Brad DeLong's Egregious Moderation
August 26, 2009
bSpace = Hellspawn
May I say that a content management system that--if you have been off dealing with another crisis
in the middle of a task--decides when you come back and try to save your work that you are no
longer logged in and dumps you to a login page after which it dumps you not on the page you were
working on but on the root page, LOSING YOUR WORK!!!1!!
Such a content management system is HELLSPAWN!! Is WROSE THAN HILTER!1!!!1!...
...is bSpace.berkeley.edu:
Visual Representation of bSpace:
8/28/09 6:05 PMbSpace = Hellspawn
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Why does Berkeley think it should be in the business of building its own content management
systems anyway?
bSpace | Educational Technology Services: What is bSpace? bSpace is a web-based
communication and collaboration environment powered by the Sakai community. bSpace
supports teaching and learning, committee-based projects, and research initiatives for the UC
Berkeley community. Using a supported web browser, users may choose from the many tools
in bSpace and combine them to create a site that meets their needs.
For courses, bSpace provides features and technologies that support and enhance teaching and
learning. These include:
Easy file sharing with Resources
Email and message communication with students and groups within your course
Weighting and calculation of course grades with Gradebook
Online assignment submission and feedback
For projects, bSpace provides tools to facilitate communication and organize collaborative
work regardless of the participants’ location.
8/28/09 6:05 PMbSpace = Hellspawn
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To see an overview of the tools and functions available in bSpace, visit our online Help.
Who uses bSpace? Instructors, students (undergraduate and graduate), and staff use bSpace
every semester in a variety of ways. During the 2008-2009 academic year, we had over 50,000
users on our system.
Since its launch on the Berkeley campus in 2006, bSpace has progressively gained more
followers. In Spring 2009, 2722 course sites existed and 3427 project sites existed.
About bSpace and Sakai: bSpace is UC Berkeley’s implementation of the open-source Sakai
CLE (Collaboration and Learning Environment). The Sakai community is made up of over 100
schools, institutions, and commercial affiliates. Other UCs using Sakai are UC Davis, UC
Merced, UC Santa Cruz (in pilot), and UC Santa Barbara. For more information about Sakai,
visit www.sakaiproject.org.
And
Customize Site Info Display: Help for Site Info Display: Page Not Found
http://bspacehelp.berkeley.edu/sakai.iframe.site
And:
From Jon Hays
Dear bSpace course site instructor,
For Fall 2009, the bSpace team will discontinue its support of the Mailtool, which had proved
unreliable for our users over the course of the last couple of semesters. In it's place we have add
a new tool called Messages.
How does this decision affect you?
1. You will no longer be able to add Mailtool to existing or new bSpace sites
2. The Mailtool will not be removed from your site If it was created prior to the release of
Messages.
3. To remove Mailtool, see our FAQ: How do I remove Mailtool from my existing bSpace
course or project site?
And may I say that a maximum allowable title of 32 characters--so that things become "Econ 115
Course Website: Twentie"--is totally lame?
rated 3.0 by 4 people [?]
2 more recommended posts »
Brad DeLong on August 26, 2009 at 10:27 PM in Berkeley: the University, Web/Tech | Permalink
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Comments
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Prof. Delong,
"Hitler" is misspelled in your post. It was supposed to be H1tl3r!!!!1!1!!eleven!! .
Best regards,
Posted by: abuzer | August 27, 2009 at 01:20 AM
This just happened to me yesterday on a umich system! Obnoxious.
Posted by: David T | August 27, 2009 at 05:56 AM
To be fair, the issue is not that Berkeley is trying to create its own CMS from scratch. Instead, it is attempting to
maintain its own implementation of Sakai, a very complex open-source software package (with all the issues that
can sometimes go with that). Due to Blackboard's borg-like swallowing of all its commercial competitors, the only
other options in this space are Blackboard and (the open-source, but less heavy-duty than Sakai) Moodle. I imagine
you could find just as many horror stories about them...
Posted by: Ed | August 27, 2009 at 06:19 AM
A very good picture, but my favorite is a full-page black-and-white from the 1st Edition player's manual for Call of
Cthulhu. Wish I could find it online...
Posted by: John | August 27, 2009 at 10:16 AM
"bSpace"? for an academic CMS? Someone's pulling a collective leg.
Why not just go whole hog and call it "bsSpace"?
Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | August 27, 2009 at 11:36 AM
UCOP genius strikes again?
Posted by: anonymous | August 27, 2009 at 01:37 PM
Conversation that has happened more times in my career than I care to mention:
Someone else: "How long of a title shall we allow? 32 characters? 64?"
Me: "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY DO WE NEED TO SET A MAXIMUM LENGTH? IS THIS 1952???"
Someone else: "But what if they put in a really long title and fill up the database?"
Me: "THE VERY NEXT FIELD - THE 'CONTENTS' FIELD - IS A FREE-TEXT FIELD WITHOUT A LENGTH
CONSTRAINT SO IF THEY WANTED TO FILL THE DATABASE THEY COULD DO IT THERE ANYWAY."
Someone else: "Won't it waste space if we allow a variable-length string in the title?"
Me: "OH MY GOD YES A TERRIFYING LOSS OF ABOUT 3 BYTES ON A RECORD THAT IS A MINIMUM OF
1024 BYTES LONG AND OFTEN OVER A MEGABYTE, YOU ARE SO RIGHT."
Someone else: "Yes but every other system has a length constraint for titles."
Me: "YES AND I SUPPOSE IF EVERYONE ELSE WAS JUMPING OFF A BRIDGE YOU'D DO IT TOO."
etc
Computer programmers are subject to some kind of strange mental degeneration in which they rate the potential
waste of 0.00001% of the capacity of a modern hard disk as more important than the ability to enter titles longer
than 32 characters in length.
Posted by: Jacob Davies | August 27, 2009 at 01:46 PM
I hated blackboard and bspace too. From a student's point of view, it seemed that their primary purpose was to lock
out people who want to evaluate courses or refer back to previously taken classes. Fortunately for me, the classes
that were locked behind CMS walls tended to be the less valuable courses anyway; I never took a math class or a CS
class that used bspace.
Posted by: Yonathan | August 27, 2009 at 07:14 PM
8/28/09 6:05 PMbSpace = Hellspawn
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Me: Economists:
Paul Krugman
Mark Thoma
Cowen and
Tabarrok
Chinn and
Hamilton
Brad Setser
Juicebox
Mafia:
Ezra Klein
Matthew
Yglesias
Spencer
Ackerman
Dana
Goldstein
Dan Froomkin
Moral
Philosophers:
Hilzoy and
Friends
Crooked
Timber of
Humanity
Mark Kleiman
and Friends
Eric Rauchway
and Friends
John Holbo
and Friends
A lot of CMSs will handle this badly. What I do is either write in a text editor and copy and paste to the CMS, or use
Firefox with the Its All Text extension (so you still have what you were writing open in the text editor, even if the
CMS locks you out, your browsers crashes, etc.).
I also find it a lot more comfortable - a browser is not ideal for typing lengthy text into in the first place.
Posted by: Graeme Pietersz | August 28, 2009 at 12:44 AM
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