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Canadian University Puts Tech Whiz Kids in 'Dormcubator'
jades writes "The University of Waterloo (Canada), sometimes billed as the 'MIT of the North' is establishing a residence 'incubator'. Meant to challenge 70 of their very top students in the tech and business fields, students will live together and work on 'the future of mobile communications, the web and digital media'. It's called 'VeloCity', and it launches in Fall 2008 after renovations are completed this summer."
Fine - but will they use Linux?
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I was going to say PIX PLZ but then, hey, why not start "Geek Big Brother" or "I'm a Geek... Get Me Out of Here!"
I'm not sure, that it is the best way to get serious things done, but it sounds fun.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
We have a similar thing going at the University I go to. It's nice to be around other people that are as academically minded as yourself.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I have friends who go to The U of Waterloo, and not one has EVER called that school "the MIT of the North"
when asked, "how's your University", most of them just shrug and say "meh, it's alright, its a University."
MIT of the North? who said that? the Marketing department for Waterloo?
-I only code in BASIC.-
That's funny, I never heard of MIT before, I've always heard of it as "The University of Waterloo (Canada) of the South."
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
but known as the "Dorkubator"
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
They wanted an incubator for academically minded people and they called it VeloCity? Seriously? You'd have thought they'd have come up with a decent name rather than trying to combine a word for speed with a word for a large conurbation (which I doubt it is) in some jauntily capitalised construction.
The basic idea is quite good, even if it does just sound like a slightly more segregated version of "Halls of Residence" from the summary.
Waterloo has always fancied itself an industry supplier of productive bodies. My brother the EE went there and benefited from their work-term model. He got lots of practical experience which helped him land a job, although he took longer to get his degree than me.
I did an ME at the U of T. (Funny that the article calls Waterloo "MIT North", because U of T profs liked to call MIT "U of T South". Which is all very embarrassing, like stop with the MIT comparisons for heck's sake.)
The problem I have with this Velocity thing is: who pays and who benefits? Seems to me a chunk of everyone's tuition will go toward it, while only some will be in a position to get in. And those who can get in will be the ones who can deal with the extra work load.
In a perfect world, it would be the more clever who could handle the added work. In reality, it is the ones who have external support, like whose parents live not far away, or who come from richer families, that can focus on the work. The poor slobs who have 2 pair of pants for 4 years and who eat leftover mac & cheese for 5 days in a row wouldn't fit in.
I have no problem with elitism, it's a central component of hereditary capitalism, our beloved system. But not when the winners are being subsidized by the losers, that just strikes me as wrong.
I'm obviously biased, but I like the U of T approach: classical. Give everyone the same education and chuck them all into the market and let life sort them out. I hate the idea of university admins having the power to pick winners.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Did they mean Dorkubator? And what will be the implications of this ungodly dork breeding program, if hell in fact does freeze over and it is successful?
If anybody is interested in further reading, the campus newspaper did a story on this a couple of months ago, as well as the engineering newspaper.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
It realy "grinds my gears" to see bright people waste their valuable time on Web/Social/Communication applications. If one thing in the world is currently going well, it's that field. That field has been developing well, there are plenty of bright minds working on it, no need to direct more geniuses that way.
Let them work on REAL challenges. Like better engines (we've been using the same combustion engine for 100 years now), better flight (which as not progressed much since WW2 jets), new energy sources (we never went beyond nuclear, which was 60 years ago). Why not let them work on wireless power, on indoor agriculture, desalinization technologies ? REAL challenges, not some hyper-popular niche that doesn't suffer from the lack of talented people.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
What is the average air speed VeloCity of an unladen geek?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I have been trying to get the state of Colorado to offer various X prizes for needs of the state. For example, one of the suggestions was to come up with a means of stopping Pine beetles, which are devastating literally 100 of millions worth of lodge pole and other pines. I figured that ppl, roughly students, would go into the woods and look for lodge pole trees that appeared to survive the beetles. Once they do that, they could then look for what is different. What is amazing is that now a company in Mass (from MIT), has a way to stop them. They found it by following the method that I suggested. It appears that Colorado will spend somewhere between 10-100 millions to save just a fraction of the lodgepole pines. I suspect that other states will spend similar amounts or more.
All in all, Gov. CAN help fund ideas. The Canadian approach will help lead to companies with loads of ideas AND ppl to try and incubate them. My suggestion would only have costs iff an idea was worthy. Hopefully more universities will pick up the idea of integrating ppl, rather than separating them (and perhaps offer incentives).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
you code only in basic, and you rip a decent university. Let me guess. You were shot down for admission?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Funny I see this thing the opposite way. We have great technology all around, nothing is impossible. We just lack the reason to do anything and prosperity is distributed very unevenly. Some people are literally bathing in milk when other people are dying of thirst.
Unfortunately I don't think those people were intended to ponder the really important questions of humanity but instead the petty little issues you want them to think about.
Waterloo is only ONE degree north of Cambridge, and not too far west. On a global scale, they're in the same place.
I was just kidding. Every nation has what they regard as their own MIT. Some really do compete, and others do not. All nations are proud of what they have to offer, for in general, they have at least one person in each major fields who is competitive. After all, I noticed that North Korea was matching their child prodigies around the stage for the philharmonic. Says a lot.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Does the business field count with lots of women?
Judging by my freaking freezing ears, MIT is in the North.
Gotta love the article saying how they got applicants from "As far away as Wilfred Laurier" (a university that is literally a block away from UW) and UofT (90 minutes away by the 401). In any case, seems like UW's looking at ways to turn their new company budding into a formal process of sorts.
Is it just me, or does this idea sound straight out of the movie Real Genius??
I am going to be modded down for this, because there is no "+1 I hate this person and he is fucking wrong" mod thingy.
I agree with you, that our great challenges are sociological, economical and political. But Thing is, we are already living in the peaceful times in human history. We have not a single real war outside of Africa. If you think I am wrong, I advise you to take a few history classes.
But the real social challenge is moving away from democracy and capitalism, and embracing a more advanced model which does not revolve around individualism and revenue. Of course, the USSR stands as shining beacon of colossal failure, which simply makes communism and the lack of individual rights look bad, and it pisses me off even more to see China "opening up" instead of other countries taking its model and improving it. Democracy is not the end of political and social evolution. Nothing truly great can be achieved as long as we act as individuals.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
Poor kids is right.
The ones that don't get rich will commit suicide. This project is the academic equivalent of cockfighting.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Gene Ray, is that you?
No one else in college drinks as much as business majors. So by mixing them with engineering types, you are only going to get drunk engineers. Maybe they stay in the Ballmer peak , and make beautiful, functional programs that the business majors will market, giving little of the profit to the computer science majors.
Our government will support social networking DORMS... which will probably lead to research on better methods of intoxication. If we were american, it'd lead to faster methods of (insert aggressive american stereotype here).
"Canadian University Puts Tech Whiz Kids in 'Dorkubator'"
There, fixed it for you.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Shad Valley does this already, doesn't it? They still have it at the U of Waterloo, I think.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada - 43 28'
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA - 42 36'
Most people forget that southern Ontario dips well south into the great-lakes basin.
...I have to say that the geekubator concept is already up and running, and has been for a long time. It's called WCRI. It was well-established when I was there in the 80s.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
We segregate our student athletes at a lot of schools, now we're going to segregate the nerds? Am I the only one who feels uneasy about this?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Where the whole school is that way. Its an amzing experience to be surrounded by people with 140 IQs 24/7 and interested in technology.
2 blocks is considered far away?
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Nice obscure reference. :) Mod parent up!
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
Hey ! Those are my hyphens ! Somebody - stop that man !
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
70 is not enough to form a culture. In fact, it is barely enough to represent most fields.
Waterloo is not "MIT North".
MIT is "Waterloo South".
Sounds like Big Brother. What channel do I tune into to see who gets evicted next?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
As if CS/Engineering majors needed their college experience to be even more of a sausage-fest.
... decorated to look like their mom's basement.
Have gnu, will travel.
That guy behind the counter at Taco Bell -- college dropout
The janitor working the graveyard shift -- college dropout
The attendant emptying bedpans in the nursing home -- college dropout
etc.
The school wants you to think of your profitable ideas while they still have some financial claim to them...
...the Alpha Betas' house doesn't burn down!
I'm serious.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Everyone has a different leartning style. Some think best when in an incubator-like evironment and others think more by walking around outside.
I hope they give these kids lots of healthy fresh air too. No point in burning them out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In their deepest fantasies.
Americans really need to realize that their concept of secondary education is nothing more than football teams with daycare centers bolted to them.
Outside of the US, the schools are pretty much viewed as a joke. Even the supposedly prestigious "ivy league" schools.
Just saying.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You are absolutely right. And having "friends that XXX" means you'd have keen insight to a well established cultural reference like this...that is to say that NOONE has EVER called it MIT of the North.
Jack-ass.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.