I had the pleasure of attending an IEEE Internet Conferencing entitled "Overview of IEEE specialised to the IT industry" 2003-11-18. I was impressed with very professional and extremely competent IEEE staff (Ruth Wolfish, Karen L. Hawkins) who coordinated and presented the online conference. Thank you!
It was awkward to have video on a computer monitor screen and audio on a telephone set, so the Internet audio option should be adopted as soon as it becomes practical (e.g., Apple iChat AV). The slides should use standard HTML or PDF format instead of proprietary PowerPoint format.
Although the IEEE webpage includes Netscape Navigator on the list of System Requirements, I soon found out that neither Safari on Mac OS X nor Netscape on Mac OS is supported because I could not join the Live Meeting from the 2 Macintosh computers in my office. Thus, the claim on the Live Meeting website "attendees can view on Mac running OS 8 or 9 with Netscape 4.7.5" is not true. Since I am completely Microsoft-free, I was not able to read the PowerPoint slides, either.
PlaceWare, Inc. which hosts the conference servers replied to me: "We don't support Safari on the Mac. Please try using Internet Explorer 5.1 or later." Upon further investigation, I found a notice: "PlaceWare, Inc. is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation." No wonder Netscape and Safari are discriminated as "non-compliant system".
3 days later, I received an E-mail message asking me to participate in a customer satisfaction survey. To my astonishment, PlaceWare had audacity to state the following.
You have recently requested assistance from our support team and we believe that incident has been resolved.
I encourage the IEEE authority to put pressure on PlaceWare and Microsoft for non-discriminatory treatment, or else to switch the conference service provider to a more generic one.
Speaking of predatory behaviours, Microsoft continues to designate "Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)" despite protests and lawsuits by provincial and state professional engineer's licensing bodies who have registered trademark "engineer". The IEEE should also insist that anybody calling himself/herself "engineer" have a real engineering degree.
