OK, despite having read the article, the thread, and working for a major US university, I still have no clue what this Blackboard thing does, or what LMS stands for (though I have learned that everybody hates Blackboard). Can someone explain what class of product we're discussing?

LMS = Learning Management System

Blackboard hurts Universities because it's overly expensive and unintuitive for the price.

This new site looks great. I worked on http://moodle.org/ back in the day which is a great opensource alternative. It's now deployed in most if not all California State Universities. This is a great space to work in.