You must log in or register to comment.
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)
Everyday for me! They let us close and ignore it for now…
Have you tried the lutris/steam options? I’d love to know there are options if people can’t avoid it.
Oh, haha. This is for a school homework website called Pearson. I’ve always had it for my math classes.
Since it’s a web application, you can simply change your user agent to get rid of this warning. But it’s annoying since I’d rather not have an extra extension installed to do so. Lol.
They added an OS check to a website? What’s next, checking if your desk is sturdy enough to carry the weight of their javascript?
Does a VM not solve this problem?
Not for kernel-level stuff, shit like this requires a baremetal Windows install generally.
Why would a course material need kernel level access?
To harvest your data! Why else?
For anticheat.
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…
I’m surprised they allow VMs, I would’ve assumed given shit like this is generally even worse than the worst gaming anticheats when it comes to invasiveness, that VMs would’ve been blocked too.
It’s kinda wild that an IT Certification company can’t handle Linux, but I’m sadly not surprised.
“upgrade” no you mean emulate/switch.
I call it the “shame box.”
Maybe they should upgrade to support other OSes?
I have this exact problem when I have to manage Apple devices for work. Nothing that user agent switcher can’t fix.
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 :)
I do, my usual go to is windows 10 chrome latest
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.
Linux will never become relevant on the desktop until its has better spyware support.
All it takes is one class action suit. Wait for it
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…
Oh Pearson definitely does thst as well. But not everyone lives near or has reliable transit to a testing facility. Online testing is essentially a requirement for those people.
They actually already do that. Many schools will have dedicated exam rooms setup (some are even certified by Pearson) where you empty your pockets before entering, cameras are trained on you while you take the test, recorded for future review if needed, the computer is configured to be locked down to only the test site and there’s a test proctor actively monitoring as well.
Honestly just give me a printed packet in a classroom with a teacher watching the test takers any day
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.
They use massively privacy-invading measures to ensure that you don’t do that. I don’t know about Pearson specifically, but there are horror stories from the “proctoring” industry about what people have to put up with.
For example: “facial detection, eye tracking, and algorithms that measure “anomalies” in metrics like head movement, mouse clicks, and scrolling rates to flag students exhibiting behavior that differs from the class norm” As is widely known, facial detection doesn’t work as well for dark-skinned people, and eye and head movement of so-called “normal people” is not fair to people who are not cheating, but not “normal”.
And you can’t leave your desk because you might have something out of camera sight to help you cheat. Straightforward right? Not really: “A University of Florida student felt forced to vomit at her desk when the proctor threatened to fail her if she left the screen (Harwell, 2020). She vomited at her desk in front of the stranger.”
Maybe you can get away with hiding notes on another device or paper, but they try hard to make that impossible. They want to you to get up and show them everything in the room before you start your test. They want to see your hands at all times, and even track your eye movements. If your eyes are always darting to a certain area off screen where you might have notes, they might interrupt your test and demand to be shown what you’re looking at. If you look up or off to the side when you’re thinking, they’re going to demand that you show them what you’re looking at too. If you think you can scroll through notes on your phone… maybe. But, they often demand that your hands be visible on-camera at all times.
It’s an arms race, and sometimes people do manage to cheat, but when that happens the proctoring companies just implement more and more outrageous surveillance.
Or, you know, paper.
- That’s what desk/workspace scanning in the most extreme cases is meant to detect. This is why I really don’t like online schooling, because in the absolute worst case, your school will literally scan your place.
You know what would be a really good way to show if your students learned your course material? Let them show it with a practical test of some kind…
Easy enough to put notes or a phone on the backside of your monitor. Pearson doesn’t check there during their room scans
Source: Took dozens of exams through them
Mine had an external webcam that had to be purchased, and you had to have the laptop webcam on. It was ridiculous.
My daughter had to write a university paper once. They required two cameras to be running. One atop the screen like you use for meetings, and one showing the whole desk and the tested person.
Redhat would randomly interrupt your test and ask you to stand up, pick up the camera and show the room
It’s really useless too. If I wanted to cheat on a test so fucking bad, I’d learn to read braille and just stick reference material under my desk.
I’d clone my monitor to a second monitor in another room and then use an AirPod or something similar to communicate with someone searching for the answers using the second screen and a second device.
Privacy invasion. I doubt that would hold water in the EU.
Also, do we really want to normalize mandatory cameras broadcasting from people’s homes? Where’s the outrage?That was in the EU
Thats not necessary for online teaching. I just got my degree and there were some online courses too, never had to deal with any of this anti cheating crap.
We just have open book exams, problem solved
My bank blocks it completely. I can never log in without changing the user agent.
Change banks.
Oh absolutely not. Lmao. Do you know how much work that would need after being with them for 15 years?
It’s easier to spoof user agents.
pirate the book, they clearly don’t deserve your money
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.
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.
Hold up, I can trigger a trauma response:
Answer entered:
25
Incorrect. The correct answer is:
25
Fucking goddamn bullshit
I also blame the Uni for not advertising that it would be required for the coursework.
Just like Steam now says "REQUIRES KERNEL LEVEL ANTICHEAT" like a big ugly Surgeon General’s warning, I think college courses should say stuff like this too.
Along with “REQUIRES INVASIVE KERNEL LEVEL REMOTE ACCESS MALWARE BROWSER TO TAKE EXAMS”
100% agree on both counts
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
The homework code is what I meant. Sorry for not being clearer in my comment.
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.
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.
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.
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
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
No ty. :)
the “key features” being the ones with drm
That’s fine, I don’t know what Pearson’s course is and I’m not really interested. So, ah, “Remind me later”, I guess…
It seems like it’s required course materials at a university.
You have to go through Pearsons 101?
It’s the name of a publisher famous for overpriced courses full of typos and inaccuracies
Excellent summary.
You have to press the little x in the corner :)
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…
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.
I use the Heroic launcher with GOG and it works fantastic. Official apps are less needed if the open source ones are great.
Heroic is so aptly titled. Combined with one of those helper apps to install “Proton GE”, it makes you just about unstoppable.
I’m finding that Linux has given me better compatibility with my game library as a whole!
For real legacy stuff, Bottles also works a treat. Never thought I’d get Sims 1 working again with so little hassle.
It’s a wonderful time.
I agree. I run Heroic as well, but it’s not as straightforward for most people. GOG should at least redirect Linux people to Heroic or something. Having to find it by myself isn’t great
Have an official tutorial for the normies
easily 25% of recent games there get updates far later than Steam, if they ever receive them
Blame the publishers, not GOG
I have contacted some of them and what they said was often: GOG’s tools suck, their support team suck…
I don’t know how a company could fuck this up so I take it as is, and don’t fully trust it, but they haven’t improved their store in years
their support team suck…
Eastern European customer service, argh.
