Online Computer Courses

e-learning System to Hone Job Skills

In a novel e-learning initiative, engineering students of Karnataka's Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) will be provided an online learning platform to hone their IT and soft skills to help them fare better in a highly competitive job market.To enable about 150,000 engineering students across the state get on to the virtual platform, the VTU has tied up with Liqwid Krystal, a Bangalore-based leading provider of e-learning solutions that has developed the software to access the skills online."On a pilot basis we are enrolling about 50,000 students of fourth semester (second year) in various under-graduate and post-graduate colleges affiliated to the university for learning the soft skills online," said VTU vice-chancellor K. Balaveera Reddy."Complimenting the curriculum for the degree, these students will be trained for gaining proficiency in English language and communication skills so as to compete on par with their counterparts from Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology in campus recruitments and job interviews."Touted to be the first of its kind in the country, the e-platform, christened "gyanX", will have a select catalogue of online courseware, books and other content for empowering students to learn interactively.The e-platform will be extended to all the 121 affiliated engineering colleges of the VTU, besides 25 under-graduate and 60 post-graduate colleges teaching masters in business administration and master of computer application courses."Our aim is to harness the power of the Internet as a learning delivery medium to make our students much more employable and job worthy.

EMT made hearts race on state time, report says

Columbus -- Kevin Evans, an emergency medical technician assigned full time to the Ohio Statehouse, had one of the cushiest jobs in state government.

Paid $33,446 a year, he held down three other jobs, seldom punched a time clock and, with the permission of his supervisors, taught emergency medicine classes and took college courses while being paid by the state.

On those days when he was at the Statehouse, investigators found, he spent an average of five hours a day trolling the Internet on his state computer, talking in chat rooms and setting up online dates.

During their review of Evans' computer activity, investigators for Ohio Inspector General Tom Charles found that the 39-year-old EMS technician had expertise not only in shallow breathing but in heavy breathing, too.

Just In: Online registration fails on first day of scheduling

Ohio University's online class-scheduling system failed to recognize completed prerequisite requirements for almost 5,000 students slated to register for classes today, blocking seniors and others with priority registration from getting into some courses.

A computer program that inputs every student's completed coursework into the online system failed to do so two weeks ago, but the problem was not detected until today, the first day of registration, said associate registrar Patrick Beatty. This blocked students from registering for classes for prerequisites: for example, a student with 100-level Spanish credit would not be allowed into 200-level Spanish because the computer system would not recognize the completed prerequisite.

OU computer technicians plan to run the computer program again tonight and expected registration to function normally when scheduling opens at 7 a.m.

May 18th, 2008 09:17 AM

Dragon vs. Hydra - Competing Development Styles

peterofoz writes "You may recall that we discussed a company which was recruiting talent with a puzzle last December. This turned out to be n-Brain releasing a new product that allows multiple editors to modify the same code in real time to support the collaborative programming paradigm. Now they're back with another challenge: 'Are two heads really better than one? N-BRAIN, Inc. intends to definitively answer this question by sponsoring the Hydra Versus Dragon Coding Competition, a Reality TV-style battle between the world's finest software developers.' Mark June 23rd on your calendars." While n-Brain clearly intends this to promote their software, it will be interesting to see if the competition results support their theory of collaborative development.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

May 16th, 2008 01:36 PM

Keeping Customer From Accessing My Database?

cyteen02 writes "We run a data processing and tracking system for a customer in the UK. We provide a simple Web site where the customer can display the tracking data held in our Oracle database. From these screens they can query based on a combination of 15 different data fields, so it's pretty flexible. We also provide a csv report overnight of the previous day's data processing, which they can load into their own SQL Server database and produce whatever reports they want. Occasionally they also want one-off specific detailed reports, so we write the SQL for that and send them the results in an Excel format spreadsheet. This all ticks along happily. However they have now asked for direct read-only access to our Oracle database, to be able to run ad-hoc queries without consulting us. As a DBA, my heart sinks at the thought of amateurs pawing through my database. Unfortunately, 'because you are stupid' is not considered a valid business reason to reject their request. So can any Slashdotters assist me in building my case to restrict access? Have you experienced a similar situation? Have you had to support this sort of end user access? How would you advice me to keep my customer away from my precious tables?"