We are required by work to get a particular industry certification.  That’s fine, no big deal.  It’s pretty simple.

So we got some self-study material, a CD-ROM CBT.  It’s pretty basic IT stuff, but there is a second test about clinical that will be more difficult for me.

Anyway, I know my IT shit pretty well.  This thing is flat out wrong on a lot of issues.  There are a lot of grammar errors too.  As I went through the sections I noticed the grammar and info got better on some of the more complex subjects.

They also threw out an acronym I didn’t recognize and wasn’t in their glossary.  I did a Google search for it and Wikipedia was the first hit.  As I’m reading the Wikipedia article I find they lifted it word for word.

Now, with Wikipedia it’s ok to take their info and publish it without prior permission as long as you give them credit via a URL link (as would be simple in a CBT).  I let it slide.

Moving on, they go into detailed tape backup info.  This is a far cry from the very basic stuff they touched on before.  I typed the first sentence into Google and got a direct hit on Encyclopedia.com.  They DO require prior permission as they are copyrighted.

So the training material is either wrong, or when right, they’ve plagiarized.

I’ve alerted my boss to request a full refund on the training materials and that we should tell them exactly why.

Red flag, probably, huh?

LD - 21 March 2008 02:54 PM

We are required by work to get a particular industry certification.  That’s fine, no big deal.  It’s pretty simple.

So we got some self-study material, a CD-ROM CBT.  It’s pretty basic IT stuff, but there is a second test about clinical that will be more difficult for me.

Anyway, I know my IT shit pretty well.  This thing is flat out wrong on a lot of issues.  There are a lot of grammar errors too.  As I went through the sections I noticed the grammar and info got better on some of the more complex subjects.

They also threw out an acronym I didn’t recognize and wasn’t in their glossary.  I did a Google search for it and Wikipedia was the first hit.  As I’m reading the Wikipedia article I find they lifted it word for word.

Now, with Wikipedia it’s ok to take their info and publish it without prior permission as long as you give them credit via a URL link (as would be simple in a CBT).  I let it slide.

Moving on, they go into detailed tape backup info.  This is a far cry from the very basic stuff they touched on before.  I typed the first sentence into Google and got a direct hit on Encyclopedia.com.  They DO require prior permission as they are copyrighted.

So the training material is either wrong, or when right, they’ve plagiarized.

I’ve alerted my boss to request a full refund on the training materials and that we should tell them exactly why.

Red flag, probably, huh?

Uh… YEAH!!!  I would notify Encyclopedia.com if they do give a full refund.

Heh, it gets better.

My teammates and I dug into things.  There is a section lifted from a Sun Microsystems patent.  There is a section lifted from IBM’s site that explicitly denies reproduction without prior permission and reference.

I did start to see some references to Wikipedia later, which makes those references ok, but not all are referenced or just say “wikipedia” with no particular page URL.

We are compiling a list and our manager will be calling them Monday.

LD - 21 March 2008 02:54 PM

Anyway, I know my IT shit pretty well.  This thing is flat out wrong on a lot of issues.  There are a lot of grammar errors too.  As I went through the sections I noticed the grammar and info got better on some of the more complex subjects.

Is the source in a foreign language country? I find a helluva lot of spelling, grammar and syntax errors in things that were written in a foreign language and then translated to English by someone with a less-than-fluent knowledge our language. Its gotten so that when I spot an error on any descriptions or instructions, especially technical stuff, I automatically look and usually find that the source is foreign, and usually somewhere from the far east.