Turnitin.com, wtf?

Sorry about this but I really have to say something about this. We had to submit an assignment yesterday via turnitin.com and it broke on me because I wasn’t using a ‘supported operating system’, I was using Ubuntu.

When I logged in I got a message warning me that it might not work, but I honestly don’t see the reason why. Shouldn’t it just be browser specific, not OS specific? I then proceeded to upload my PDF and it seemed to think it actually wasn’t a PDF! Switching to a Windows XP machine and uploading the same PDF worked fine which is the really random thing.

I don’t even see why our University has to use a third party service for this anyway, I’m sure they have the resources to do this in house. Then there is the whole copyright thing, which I’m not altogether happy with either.

Anyway, at least it seems Ubuntu isn’t alone in this, according to a friend Windows 7 also triggers the same error message (albeit without the PDF fail).

Again, sorry for the rant.

3 responses to “Turnitin.com, wtf?”

  1. Turnitin follow up… – Blogging to Nowhere

    […] Rob Connolly on Oct.08, 2009, under Rants Well it’s been a couple of days since I posted my rant about my bad experience with turnitin.com on Ubuntu and (shock horror!) I’ve had a response (thus defying the title […]

  2. Fazy Avatar
    Fazy

    Dude! WTF I cant even see my Assignment on Turnitin.com just because i m using ubuntu

  3. Rob Connolly Avatar
    Rob Connolly

    This just reinforces my point on how crap they are! And really it’s not becuase you’re using Ubuntu, it’s because they won’t support Ubuntu. A possible workaround would be to use a firefox plugin to switch the user agent to a windows based browser, though I haven’t tried it.

    I hope you got your submitted OK, nontheless.

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