Upgrade to Windows today!
Upgrade to Windows today!
132 comments
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They have a really weird definition of "upgrade"
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man i hate those online content that you MUST pay to do homework for the courses. They were over priced and back when i use them, they didnt even grade the homework correctly. E.g. the stupid Mastering series Mastering Physics, Mastering Chemistry and Cengage. I once spent 3 days on a problem because the system didnt like how I wrote the answers. So something like
- coordinate (3x,space herey)
instead of what they want:
- coordinate (3x,y)
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pirate the book, they clearly don't deserve your money
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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.
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The ONLY money I spent during my entire time at uni has been on these stupid Cengage and Connect courses. I blame the teachers, more than anyone, for using these awful services. I also blame the Uni for not advertising that it would be required for the coursework. The teachers are either too lazy or too overworked to make their own materials or teach from an analogue book which doesn't spoon-feed the lessons and grade things for them. It's a shit system and nothing made me madder than a required class using these services.
For a few of them, I just lobbied the department to pay for it saying I wasn't able to afford it, and they paid for my license or whatever.
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Pearaon also has homework on their site these days. I've only used pearson for physics homework, because I didn't have the need to read the book. I needed to buy the book for the homework though
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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...
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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 from my experience easily 25% of recent games there get updates far later than Steam, if they ever receive them… The Escapists is a good example of that.
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Pearson is indirectly asking you to pirate their courses.
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They did a long time ago. Overpriced books that only changed layouts yearly just so that they can charge you for it again. Like having to keep up with the editions so that you can follow the lessons.
Yarrrrrr
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Pearson, HMH, and all the major for-profit educational resource providers (and much of the not-for-profits, too) are literally actually evil.
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Gemini asking: how/why?
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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....
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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.
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However if you tell their api that you are an smart tv running Linux it works....
I wanna figure out how the heck to do this. 1080p doesn't particularly bother me, but it's pretty ridiculous getting discriminated against like that.
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In my case the highest resolution was 360p Because Linux is bad.
Then I installed kodi, amazon vod plug in and it worked.
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The amazon might be due to drm, not OS racism, not that that's a valid excuse
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Drm was not the issue they just refused to run high quality on Linux.
Linux Browsers Support drm too.
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Maybe they should upgrade to support other OSes?
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🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
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"upgrade" no you mean emulate/switch.
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I call it the "shame box."
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I have this exact problem when I have to manage Apple devices for work. Nothing that user agent switcher can't fix.
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Pearson is a testing company. They use all sorts of sketchy shit under the guise of anti-cheating. Much of that requires specific plug-ins and stuff that only work in Windows.
Even if you could get it working, but they'll likely just say you were cheating, and take the $300+ you paid to take that required test.
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Pearson using all sorts of extremely invasive and questionable kernel-level access plugins to make sure people don't open notes to cheat on their test on their computer. People just open their notes on another device. Or, you know, paper.
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The only solution for that is to proctor exams in person on their equipment. Miss me with all that nonsense. Makes me glad I'm done with schoolin' for now...
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All it takes is one class action suit. Wait for it
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This is probably just user-agent sniffing, right? I'd say swap it out to one that claims you're on windows and see if that fixes it. Good luck :)
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I do, my usual go to is windows 10 chrome latest
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Seriously, fuck Pearson. Garbage company.
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Hey now, garbage companies actually do something productive for society. :p
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My bank blocks it completely. I can never log in without changing the user agent.
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Change banks.
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Oh absolutely not. Lmao. Do you know how much work that would need after being with them for 15 years?
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It's easier to spoof user agents.
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It's kinda wild that an IT Certification company can't handle Linux, but I'm sadly not surprised.
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Pearson is the worst
Not surprising
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It's a real bummer how the "education" system is infested with crappy, exploitative grifters. See also textbooks, standardized tests, administrators, etc...
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Not to mention for-profit schools, at least in the US.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Unless the school that has the software dev program forces all their teachers to use this stuff...
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Seems to be that learning sites in general are assholes. I once attended a language course, and while their "solution" was web based, it was focused on IE. I had serious issues attending the course under Firefox.
I logged a lot of errors on their site, but their tech support could only manage accounts, the web site had been built by an external company ages ago, and they had no fingers into that.
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A key difference is that for learning sites, those who hold the purse strings are usually not those who actually use the website. They only need to convince the school administry or corporate procurement, but care little about the actual users.
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Ha ha, that's cute, you think there is are admins and procurement teams involved. The book publishers sell this shit directly to the professors, and usually the university can't get involved because of the way the profs contracts are setup. Pearson builds their platform for making the profs job easier, not for any benefit to the students.
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At my uni they go to the extreme where not only one gets around 20-30 mails DAILY but now to go check your email, which is gmail-based, it hops first into a Cloudflare human verification page that you can never pass in Falkon because it keeps looping after you check the human verification
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Yeah I’m not going to buy ebooks that expire so quickly.
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Books... doing what? Expire?
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Yeah wtf. That's kinda books whole thing. They just sorts exist until they naturally end up in a charity shop.
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Yep. They sell them as an online access model. The professors use them because they can have questions built in during your reading that will give you a grade. It will also have premade tests. It makes it simple for them, and they don't give a shit about your privacy anyway. If you don't buy the online book, you don't get the grades and fail.
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Its kinda fucked, especially since McGH, the other big textbook company, offers theirs online with tuition as built in course materials. Like, on the one hand I understand them only offering access during the course but if they're also charging you for access that's horseshit. Idk, I just open my books in reader mode and then print them 😅
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No ty. :)
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Let me guess, it's a webpage?
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Everyday for me! They let us close and ignore it for now...
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aaaaand uninstalled...
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the "key features" being the ones with drm
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They forgot to put the word 'upgrade' in air quotes.
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Haha eat me :)
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Useragent string parsing, for <whatever excuse that you don't do feature detection>?
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I mean, if somebody calls Linux an operating system, they definitely should not be working as an IT professional
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What you are referring to as "Linux" is actually "Firefox/Linux" or, as I've recently taken to calling it, "Firefox+Linux". Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning Firefox web browser made useful by the systemd components, Sway shell and other vital non-GNU software comprising a full web browsing experience as defined by the internet standards.
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oh, hello stallman! fancy seeing you here
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Take your meds bro
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what
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Does a VM not solve this problem?
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Not for kernel-level stuff, shit like this requires a baremetal Windows install generally.
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Their shitass "system test" when running on a VM says it's fine, but via browser so it's just looking at the user agent. But I'm looking at the online testing app, which I do expect would test for a VM and warms against it. For a course, maybe, maybe not...
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Why would a course material need kernel level access?
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I wonder what message it would show in a Haiku PC.
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Can you run it in a vm?
132 comments
One way to get around that is changing the user agent. I've never changed the user agent and had a loss of functionality, it always seems like they have a stupid user agent check just to make sure you're using windows/chrome.