Battleangel

I really lost my self control this morning when I casually was browsing thru the web site of my university. It is no secret that I am at odds with every department that I have ever been part of. But seeing a notice that they were developing a new web site really made me snap.

Apparently the site has been in dev since 2002. Very impressive. I imagine there are a number of students, including myself, that could have completed the same task in two weeks for free and using open source software .. but hey .. why choose the obvious path?
Instead, lets go for EPiSERVER which is a very expensive CMS from some virtually unknown company that is all of a sudden everyone’s favorite developer. Apparently the univ has also contracted this company for some sort of software training. I don’t know what is worse … if people need training to use this supposedly great CMS, if they have linguistic difficulties or something and thus aren’t fit in the first place or if they have, as indicated by the site, replaced trusty tech-savvy people with zombies to do their bidding. This could be a silent coup d’etat for all that we know.
I just hope they use their own servers to host the whole shebang at least. And not contract these scammers to set it up for them as well.

And need I point out that EPiSERVER is of course running on NT using ASP / NET and SQL. All in order to hike the server price and then create closed source software so that you can swindle weak or ignorant people. The best part is probably that the software uses web publishing (with no other means of editing being mentioned). I hope this is a joke. Any respectable CMS must support or supply ways to edit and publish online content in vitro (so to speak). For this simple site I use w.bloggar for example but there are more advanced systems out there if you need them.

It’s a clear sign that the univ is shedding its student friendly facade and moving to become a prestigious organization with links to big biz. It’s like this you see. If you want to play with the big boys in the sandbox you have to buy the same toys as they have just to fit in. So that is what it comes down to. My anti-corporation, anti-establishment, Orwellian whiskers are tingling. This feels like another step in a direction I don’t want to be going. One where universities become subsidiaries of certain corporations.

Also, the last quarter of 2003 saw the expansion of the revamped web mail system that could very well replace POP3 accounts in the long run, at least if you want to read the email from a univ terminal. Thank god for forwarding.

To me, this is evidence enough that they have flushed common sense and brains down the drain. Not that they’re the only ones. I see it all around me. Society crumbling before the entry into a new era .. of .. stupidity.