Earn an F with Ubuntu!

[maupin42]

Bummer...
I have been taking classes online for a while. University of Phoenix was having this problem and they realized that they needed to let Mac and Linux users have their way. There are just too many of the non-microsoft people out there now. Your school is bound to find this out.
I recommend virtual box, or try and install this LockDown.exe in wine, however, I do know that browsers do have a hard time running in wine.

[beefcurry]

I suggest you should write to your school about this, obviously they didn't think things through before accepted to use this tool. My University recommends Firefox, I have no problems with that .

[pseudo-random]

Lockdown browser. What a load of rubbish. Thats the most pointless application I've ever seen!
I can think of a dozen ways to circumvent that.
Your school are morons and have the same IT knowledge as the British Home secretary:
"We will make all paedophiles register their email address on a police database so we can warn website admins they are paedophiles..."
Stupid.

[adamos]

this is so useless.. i have 2 pcs, 1 laptop and a server. one more way to rip off universities and create monopolization with windows. i go to IT school and 90% of my classmates are carrying laptops with them as their extra pc. at least every household has 2 pcs. or in the dorms they have 4-5 pcs in each dorm

[phrostbyte]

The whole idea behind the LockDown Browser is retarded. I guess they assume people don't have two computers or run LockDown in a VM? Bahaha. That's what happens when ignoramouses make computer decisions.

[st0n3cutt3r]

this is ridiculous.

If you are determined to cheat, you'll use a second computer, or a cell phone, or a PDA, or a workaround for the software. I have 4 computers at home, and probably 8 at my disposal counting my roommates which I could borrow. What's to keep me (a hypothetical student) from bringing another computer along... or a text book for that matter? ...what an absurd thing to implement...?

[CREEPING DEATH]

Sounds like the University is likely the 'victim' of a good salesman!

Cd

[lavagolemking]

I wrote an article on this program, including the ideas of VMs/second_computers/phones/group_tests, locking out Linux, OS instability from its bugs, ways of running IM clients in the background with it, etc. My school's IT department doesn't really care about my views on the matter, but hopefully some other schools will read it with an open mind. Feel free to reproduce. Personally, I think the admin for this thing here is either in denial of being ripped off on their contract with their limited funds, angry for posting this on a public website, or both.

http://opensource.cse.ohio-state.edu/lockdown

To address other Concerns, no it doesn't run in Wine. It has to hook Windows components, like the task manager, to "lock down" the computer, therefore, it will install, but never start up when run in Wine. It worked ok in QEMU, but QEMU hasn't worked for me in a while. I took a screenshot of it in QEMU with Pidgin in the background on an away message (in a good-natured sense of humor) and Firefox opened to Google (by the way, it's supposed to stop screenshots). See my article for the full story. It does run in Mac OSX now, but not Linux, and I doubt they have any intention of implementing it there.

To those unfamiliar with the anti-cheating toy, it opens in full screen to the site you are supposed to take the exam, with only an [X] (which refuses to close it if you're in a quiz), back, forward, stop, refresh, foreign character toolbar (I wonder who that was for... can we say targeted advertising?), and an update button; hooks the OS to disable right-clicking, task manager, hotkeys, remove the Start menu/taskbar, remove privileges to shutdown Windows, etc.; and checks your running processes for blacklisted "cheating programs" such as "aim.exe" (at the time it didn't detect Pidgin, so I sent myself a link to Google in Pidgin, and opened Firefox on top of their "secure" environment).

Respondus put a cute little marketing demo on their site, for those truly interested in the junkware. It amazes me how so many schools [1], which are supposed to be smarter than this, got suckered into such a product. This just proves how powerful advertising can be.

http://www.respondus.com/LDB_Vista_P...sta_Prod2.html

By the way, if anyone reading this is managing the LockDown Browser for a school or is Respondus themselves, I have 2 more ways of bypassing the restrictions without patching your toy, and they're not yet published. One lets me move the window around (and access my desktop), and the other lets me open any arbitrary program or window location I choose, both while the program is running. Better hurry up and patch them before someone starts cheating!

[ronacc]

As a geezer who predates theese infernal boxes I can testify that people cheated long before pc's were around . And why would you need to have a second PC to cheat can "lockdown browser " stop you from looking in a book or asking your roommate?

[GTengineer]

LMAO at the "lockdown browser" that made me snot a little. Your school seems to be really out of touch with technology. Have they even heard of a phone? txt message? If someone wanted to cheat there are about 1000 ways to do it.

Have you tried to run it in a virtual machine yet?