The good news here is that kyamashita can at least still do the math problems
without using Flash. If another proprietary program was being used to create
content that is only "true" within its own universe, then the only excuse the
university would have is that it is teaching within that proprietary
universe. In kyamashita's university class, the proprietary S/W is being used
to limit access and to exclude a class of different "believers." The U.S.A.
constitution does not allow that. GNU/linux has its own universe too, but the
basis for that universe is available to all without restriction. That's what
this professor needs to learn.
Is Adobe Flash content convertible to Portable Document Format ? Can the math
problems _only_ be posed in a moving picture format ? Are our speaking and
written languages so obsolete that a new and secret language is needed for
conveying ideas ? If the professor's mathematics is only describable in Adobe
Flash, then perhaps that is the only environment in which it works.
The professor's course is mislabeled ... Isn't it "Intermediate Flash" and
not "Intermediate Vector Graphics" ?
I took a course called "Advanced Calculus for Engineers" which consisted
entirely of integrating complex differential equations, namely problems
containing singularities that involved the square root of negative unity, an
imaginary quantity. In spite of that, all the math problems that we did in
that course had real answers that worked in a real universe. The instructor
was excellent, there was no secret handshake, and the steps in all the
problems were real and could be written on the chalkboard without any knowing
winks or handwaving. Even though our verbal descriptions of each problem
appeared to reach to plus and minus infinity (i.e., the dreaded singularity)
the solution revealed that such singularities are of no consequence and exist
only in our minds. The mathematics succeeded in banishing the imaginary
impossible conditions.
