There have been plenty of recommendations for Moodle, but just to throw it out there... it's not open source, but GradeConnect is a hosted course management system and is designed to do exactly what you're looking for (and a whole lot more) and has a free version. I used to do some development work for GradeConnect 6+ years ago, so I know the folks who run it and they're all educators. It really is a system designed by teachers, for teachers. Worth checking out at least!

http://www.gradeconnect.com/

In my years in IT I've been least impressed with the usability of the BES. When it's installed properly and configured correctly it generally just works, and I really appreciate its integration with corporate mail systems, but actually getting in and using the product could not be less intuitive. It's just an ugly and horribly designed piece of software, and their new version 5, which went mostly web based is even worse than their older non-web based app.

FTA, "We plan to refocus on the enterprise business and capitalize on our leading position in this segment." If that truly is the case, they need to seriously attend to BES and its usability because that's really the biggest thing that differentiates BlackBerry from other smart phone experiences in the enterprise.

IMHO... A hacker is anyone who derives joy from discovering ways to circumvent limitations.

If you get any signal outside your house then a cell repeater is the way to go. It takes the strong signal outside, and... repeats... it inside. If you get 3+ bars outside then an omni directional antenna (outside) is the quickest and easiest. Otherwise a directional antenna (or two if the 800 and 1900 band towers are in different directions) is the way to go.

I've put up two of these solutions, one at work to extend the excellent signal outside into our warehouse, and another at a location that barely gets 1 bar outside, using two directional antennas to point at different towers.

Not trying to advertise for anyone, but I got my stuff from http://www.cellantenna.com/ using modified versions of their CAE700-70 system. Granted, that's an expensive and powerful package, you might not need that high end a system for your needs. Give them a call, or try hitting up http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/ as I got some great advice from the folks there.

Good luck!

They found that security is pretty much an afterthought in the current crop of robotic devices.

That pretty much defines how security is thought of most of the time, it's why software is so easily compromised, and why even physical security is often easily broken through. Why do they expect it to be any different with robots? Not that that justifies it, it just doesn't surprise me.

I read it again but I still don't agree with him. I'm also a BES admin, and it's not that big a deal to set up a BES server... anyone w/ basic Windows experience can do so, tying it to Exchange isn't as easy as it could be, but there are much harder things out there. Once you have it set up, in my experience it's not "vaguely okay" and "a pain in the ass" it actually provides very good sync and user experience between Outlook and the BB.

The company I'm working for now is starting to go crazy about KPI's, Key Performance Indicators... Total tickets closed is ridiculous, the only metric that shows (more tickets closed is better??) is how much stuff is screwed up and needs to be fixed. There are only two things I can think of that have any value to IT.

MTBF - Mean Time Between Failures
How long have we gone between thing X breaking?

MTTR - Mean Time To Recovery
How long does it take you to fix thing X when it breaks?

Both of these metrics have the benefit of expressing the value of proactive IT work.

The point being missed here is that a used product like a TV or a car actually has less value than a used game because they experience "wear and tear." A game (unless it has a scratch on the disc, or maybe a missing manual..) is still the identical game you could have bought new; your experience with the product doesn't change.