So, your solution is to lower the bar? And, thereby, lower the value of EVERY degree that is granted? If the professors make the classes harder, I say bring it on. Then maybe the ones who can't hack it will find their rightful place in the many community colleges. Why does ANYONE deserve a degree? You don't! So many incompetent people attend college now that SOMETHING has to be done to raise the bar and let the true stars shine.
I know a woman who moved from Russia ten years ago. Spoke not a word of English when she arrived and she works her god damn ass off always. She has a 3.95GPA and she does it by herself. She is a star. And she will deserve her degree when she finally gets it later this year.
I just find it baffling how many people think that college is a right. These types of people are turning a college degree into the new high school. Already, having a college degree is always suspect because there are so many ways to fake your way through. We need MORE of these types of crack downs. At Ryerson you for sure know a whole generation of students will do their own damn work. And they will actually maybe deserve their degrees. They will not offer the false advertising that many of today's grads offer--acting like they deserved their degrees. Isn't this obvious?
No! It means he who WANTS TO EARN the gold must PLAY BY THE RULES. Why do you think you DESERVE a degree? You deserve absolutely NOTHING. IF you are willing to work and play by the rules, THEN AND ONLY THEN you deserve a degree. It is fools like you who devalue a college degree. No one is FORCING him to attend that school.
So, in the guise of absurdity, you are basically trying to hide the cheating. There is no grey area here. The rules for the class said students should work "independently". This is not googling for APIs or reading textbooks--this is SHARING ANSWERS. It's cheating. You can try to hide that fact with your ridiculous example but it does not change the bare fact that this student cheated by sharing answers with others or getting answers from others. He deserves totally to get that F. Your absurd arguments do not alter that fact.
So, once again, when caught people paint the behavior in the best light. The student's professor saw the Facebook group. It was clearly stated in the course's rules that students must work independently. What part of "independent" don't you understand? You describe it innocently but the actual professor saw what actually had been going on in the Facebook group and he gave the student an F. I trust the professor, not the self-serving, cheating student. He got what he deserved.
When they're defending the indefensible, people always paint the behavior in the best light. You're short on time, stressed--and you're going to cheat if you can get away with it. So, the system has to be designed to prevent cheating--just like happened in this case. The student got busted and deserves what he got. The student in this case was just taking the easy way out. He got what he deserved and I know that professors around the country are pumping their fists in the air, saying "Yeah!" when they heard of this. As a former college professor, I worked my ass off writing the lectures that are in my sig and I wanted students to learn. If I ever caught cheaters, I myself would feel gyped. Cheaters never prosper. Allowing students to have the delusion that cheating is ever right is just a fool's game. I am glad this professor gave the student an F. Good job.
No one is saying you can't use APIs, Javadocs or any textbook that you can get your hands on. I applaud that almost as much as I cheer you for doing it nightschool, which likely means you also work (as did I). In the business world, nobody is going to begrudge you using any textbooks you can get. What they WOULD complain about is if you had another developer at your side, writing code for you and basically doing your job. My objections start and end with you taking somebody else's work. I taught Java at the University of Nebraska. I admire and respect students who figured it out on their own. I would flunk any student who turned in verifiably stolen work. Even if the source of the theft consented. If you took somebody else's program, that's cheating. If you studied the textbooks, that's not stealing. I hope the difference is obvious.
If you were not sharing answers, you as a student would have nothing to fear. The students who are scared are the ones who know they are in danger of getting caught. Lazy people will always act shocked shocked shocked when they are caught.
I would write the university's leadership and say: RIGHT ON! Kick his ass out of school before he graduates and gets a job on the basis of a degree he did not earn.
when I taught programming at the University of Nebraska, it was obvious when students cheated. They would not even bother to change method or variable names. These were the same people who got indignant when you called them on it. In fact, they were just lazy and did not want to work.
Yes, it might have been good for YOU to teach your peers but it was not better for them. Also, there is a difference between giving a person pointers and giving answers. The latter prevents the students from learning. I just find it distressing how many people here are bending over backwards to justify or enable cheating. To me--a former college professor and long time developer--this is a sign of why our jobs are going over seas.
Sorry to disappoint you, I did all my own work when I took CS. Is it that hard? You--like so many others--want to find a way to justify weenying out. Sorry to disappoint you. Do you know what happens to people who don't do their own work in the business world? Their ass gets fired. If EVER you are going to learn to fend for yourself, now is the time. I just find it shocking and depressing that so many people here are looking to enable and be enabled in taking the loser's way out.
Just do your own damned work! When I studied computer science, I did every single problem in the book--even the ones that were not assigned. And you know what? I learned a hell of a lot. By the end of that Deitel book there was not a single problem I could not handle. That's the way it works--bozo--do your own work. There is no other way. How do you think all these innovations in the world were found? By somebody wimping out and having somebody else do their work? Nope! By doing the hard work that is really required. If you want to take the lazy way out then you are a loser who deserves to be flipping burgers.
People like you are the reason that this world is falling apart. What happened to the notion of quality and honesty? If you were a doctor, I would not want you treating me. If you were a software developer, I would expect you to work for Microsoft. Don't you get it? SURE you can cheat your way to a degree. Absolutely stunning that you would admit to cheating if it works. Well, I would NEVER hire someone like you. I've worked with people who cheated their way through college--and it shows! You say it's self correcting but it should not require the system to catch you. Have you no self respect? Have you no shame? Are you TRYING to be mediocre? If you were--this is the way to accomplish that.
I just love how much slack you all are giving this student. You cast this in the most favorable light when we all know in the real world that people will cheat to the edge of what they can get away with. If this was YOUR class then you would understand how these students are just CHEATING! There is no way to avoid it. You can sugar coat it and cast it in all the favorable lights you wish but it does not change the fact that IT'S CHEATING!
What the hell is the point of hiring a "college graduate" if all they have done is cheated their way through college. There comes a point when these "students" need to act like adults and not just get away with what they can get away with.
Having also taught large groups of college students, I agree with you for falling on your sword. So, you're willing to grade 800 different problems? That, my friend is a tough job for the teacher.
When I took C at the University of Nebraska, our professor assigned the "8 Queens" problem. Well, I worked all weekend and was only moderately successful. Then, this prick comes in Monday morning with a "solution" that was basically a compact little gem of a for loop. The teacher asked him to explain how it worked and the guy had not the slightest idea. He just googled the answer and copied it down.
Would you hire that guy? While I exercised my critical reasoning all weekend, he just stole the answer. What happens the first time he can't "google" the damned answer?
There is no "teaching" going on in one of these "study" groups--which planet do you live on? All they are doing is CHEATING by SHARING the answers. You know these students are just trying to get the answers as fast and as easily as possible and nobody gives a damn if they understand.
You forget: what is the point of going to college? To get a degree? No, not really. The point is to learn! To develop critical skills!
In the business world, you can always tell who bullshitted and cheated their way through college: they expect that to go on, they want you to do their work for them and basically lead them by the nose to solutions.
I think this school did PRECISELY the right thing in expelling this guy. He is wasting a slot in that school.
Sorry, I disagree. I've worked with junior developers who can't think their way out of a paper bag. Frankly, they are often from India. They ask for help at each and every turn. Do you know how annoying that is? That comes from doing college by committee. Sure, there are collaborative opportunities but you must be able to work by yourself.
A few years ago, I worked for Hewlett-Packard in Houston (former Compaq facility). Well, we were getting a significant amount of development from some offshore teams. I looked over some CMP entity beans and I kept seeing the same thing over and over at the beginning of their persistence methods:
public void persistThisData()
{
Connection con = null;
Statement stmt = null;
ResultSet rs = null;...
These three variables were not used in the bean but, class after class, I saw these exact same three variables at the head of the methods.
This were Container-Managed persistence beans! Anybody who knows their CMP EJBs knows that you DO NOT do anything with Connection, Statement or ResultSet variables. Yet, each and every various class with CMP EJBS in them came back with these same exact three unused references in them. What was going on? THEY WERE COPYING AND PASTING WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING A DAMN THING.
So, I would say that it IS important for EACH INDIVIDUAL to know what and why they are doing stuff. If not, you end up with stupid crap like that above.
I think the college is fully justified in kicking this guy out. When I was in college, the point was that I myself solve those differential equations problem. If I had somebody else figure it out for me, then I missed the point of the class.
Too many students these days think the point of college is getting your homework done. It's not! The point is to DEVELOP YOUR MIND! Part of that occurs when you yourself figure out the various approaches to a problem and work out the answer entirely for yourself. What does this student think is going to happen in the business world? You don't go asking a committee to dream up new innovations--you do it yourself. And if you have failed to develop those critical thinking skills in college, where the fuck are you going to develop them?
No, this is just another example of a LAZY STUDENT trying to get help so he can get his assignment done.
I remember in college that I would work alone and then I discover that some of the other "A" students worked as a team. So, how f'n fair is that? But now, years later, I'm sure those people have stagnated in their careers while I have flown pretty high--because I can think on my feet.
I seriously doubt the patterns would match. What I find most interesting is that--no matter the sense involved (touch, sight, hearing) every one of them comes into the brain as a pattern of signals. And the brain knows--because this came in on the touch channel--that this pattern represents something that was touched. This is great news for those of us trying to replicate the functions of the brain in an AI environment. The brain is so flexible because all it is doing is decoding patterns.
They did an experiment--however gruesome--where they took the area of the brain that normally processes speech and cut out that area and moved it to a different place. They found that the function is not defined by where the brain tissue is located but merely by what the tissue is needed to do. For example. In a blind person, braille processing happens in the same area where vision is normally processed in a sighted person. So, get that: a portion of the brain that is devoted to processing images can suddenly be processing the FEELING of raised dots! The brain is just an incredible pattern-interpretation engine.
This is interesting because it is a form of pattern matching. Anyone who has studied the actual way the brain processes information from the senses knows that the brain receives a pattern--regardless of which sense it comes from--and interprets that pattern in such a way that it can make the interpretation.
A great example of this is a device that has been built for the blind. The device consists of a grid of pressure-causing pins that are laid on the tongue of a blind person. If an image of some object is represented in the grid, the wearer's tongue can transmit this image to the brain and, with practice, a blind person's brain can learn to interpret that image and act on the basis of the information.
I cannot stress the magnitude of this type of thing: the brain does nothing but pattern interpretation. It matters not where the pattern comes from, only the interpretation that is applied matter.
To all the Microsoft apologists out there--this is your Waterloo. Here we have a concrete example of how Microsoft decided to do one of their corporate buddies a huge favor--letting them meet their f'n quarterly numbers. So, Microsoft chose to help one of their rich pals over every single one of their users. That should tell you who they value. And the common perception that Vista is a piece of crap? Confirmed internally! This is just despicable.
Well, though I expect a firestorm for this comment, I would say find one who is left handed. In my career--coincidence or not--the most superior performers: creative, energetic, thinking-out-of-the-box, were the Left Handed developers.
This is just a brilliant idea! The boat is propelled no matter the direction of the waves, and the side effect being that the boat is mostly insulated from the wave motion? How f'n brillian is that!
As I have always said, the "difference between Smart and Genius is not just a few iffy percentage points, it's orders of magnitude.
I lived in Utah for three years and there is no more beautiful place in the United States. The people of Utah--that I met--were extremely nice and it broke my heart to leave. But, there is indeed a battle over morality in the Beehive State. For a while, there were companies that rented out movies--but with the naughty bits taken out. So, after the directors in Hollywood produced their final cut, they were in for yet another cut in Utah. Didn't fly.
Then again, though we all hate the idea of any type of censorship, this is kind of gray. Since these are local ISPs, it really doesn't affect anybody else. Should we oppose this on the grounds of the "slippery slope"?
So, I would say, knock yourself out, Utah. If this is what you want, who are we to rain on your parade.
Actually, I think you're right on the money. Though I too am not a neuroscientist, I can read and research.
The precise solution to the visual-simultaneous processing is exactly as you described: massively parallel processing of fairly simple processes. Again, the solution to AI will NOT be found in making ever more powerful left brain [linear-sequential processing].
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So, your solution is to lower the bar? And, thereby, lower the value of EVERY degree that is granted? If the professors make the classes harder, I say bring it on. Then maybe the ones who can't hack it will find their rightful place in the many community colleges. Why does ANYONE deserve a degree? You don't! So many incompetent people attend college now that SOMETHING has to be done to raise the bar and let the true stars shine. I know a woman who moved from Russia ten years ago. Spoke not a word of English when she arrived and she works her god damn ass off always. She has a 3.95GPA and she does it by herself. She is a star. And she will deserve her degree when she finally gets it later this year. I just find it baffling how many people think that college is a right. These types of people are turning a college degree into the new high school. Already, having a college degree is always suspect because there are so many ways to fake your way through. We need MORE of these types of crack downs. At Ryerson you for sure know a whole generation of students will do their own damn work. And they will actually maybe deserve their degrees. They will not offer the false advertising that many of today's grads offer--acting like they deserved their degrees. Isn't this obvious?
No! It means he who WANTS TO EARN the gold must PLAY BY THE RULES. Why do you think you DESERVE a degree? You deserve absolutely NOTHING. IF you are willing to work and play by the rules, THEN AND ONLY THEN you deserve a degree. It is fools like you who devalue a college degree. No one is FORCING him to attend that school.
So, in the guise of absurdity, you are basically trying to hide the cheating. There is no grey area here. The rules for the class said students should work "independently". This is not googling for APIs or reading textbooks--this is SHARING ANSWERS. It's cheating. You can try to hide that fact with your ridiculous example but it does not change the bare fact that this student cheated by sharing answers with others or getting answers from others. He deserves totally to get that F. Your absurd arguments do not alter that fact.
So, once again, when caught people paint the behavior in the best light. The student's professor saw the Facebook group. It was clearly stated in the course's rules that students must work independently. What part of "independent" don't you understand? You describe it innocently but the actual professor saw what actually had been going on in the Facebook group and he gave the student an F. I trust the professor, not the self-serving, cheating student. He got what he deserved.
When they're defending the indefensible, people always paint the behavior in the best light. You're short on time, stressed--and you're going to cheat if you can get away with it. So, the system has to be designed to prevent cheating--just like happened in this case. The student got busted and deserves what he got. The student in this case was just taking the easy way out. He got what he deserved and I know that professors around the country are pumping their fists in the air, saying "Yeah!" when they heard of this. As a former college professor, I worked my ass off writing the lectures that are in my sig and I wanted students to learn. If I ever caught cheaters, I myself would feel gyped. Cheaters never prosper. Allowing students to have the delusion that cheating is ever right is just a fool's game. I am glad this professor gave the student an F. Good job.
So, having been a college professor, I can interpret this to mean that your professors were too overwhelmed or lazy to grade homework. My condolences.
No one is saying you can't use APIs, Javadocs or any textbook that you can get your hands on. I applaud that almost as much as I cheer you for doing it nightschool, which likely means you also work (as did I). In the business world, nobody is going to begrudge you using any textbooks you can get. What they WOULD complain about is if you had another developer at your side, writing code for you and basically doing your job. My objections start and end with you taking somebody else's work. I taught Java at the University of Nebraska. I admire and respect students who figured it out on their own. I would flunk any student who turned in verifiably stolen work. Even if the source of the theft consented. If you took somebody else's program, that's cheating. If you studied the textbooks, that's not stealing. I hope the difference is obvious.
If you were not sharing answers, you as a student would have nothing to fear. The students who are scared are the ones who know they are in danger of getting caught. Lazy people will always act shocked shocked shocked when they are caught. I would write the university's leadership and say: RIGHT ON! Kick his ass out of school before he graduates and gets a job on the basis of a degree he did not earn.
when I taught programming at the University of Nebraska, it was obvious when students cheated. They would not even bother to change method or variable names. These were the same people who got indignant when you called them on it. In fact, they were just lazy and did not want to work.
Yes, it might have been good for YOU to teach your peers but it was not better for them. Also, there is a difference between giving a person pointers and giving answers. The latter prevents the students from learning. I just find it distressing how many people here are bending over backwards to justify or enable cheating. To me--a former college professor and long time developer--this is a sign of why our jobs are going over seas.
Sorry to disappoint you, I did all my own work when I took CS. Is it that hard? You--like so many others--want to find a way to justify weenying out. Sorry to disappoint you. Do you know what happens to people who don't do their own work in the business world? Their ass gets fired. If EVER you are going to learn to fend for yourself, now is the time. I just find it shocking and depressing that so many people here are looking to enable and be enabled in taking the loser's way out. Just do your own damned work! When I studied computer science, I did every single problem in the book--even the ones that were not assigned. And you know what? I learned a hell of a lot. By the end of that Deitel book there was not a single problem I could not handle. That's the way it works--bozo--do your own work. There is no other way. How do you think all these innovations in the world were found? By somebody wimping out and having somebody else do their work? Nope! By doing the hard work that is really required. If you want to take the lazy way out then you are a loser who deserves to be flipping burgers.
People like you are the reason that this world is falling apart. What happened to the notion of quality and honesty? If you were a doctor, I would not want you treating me. If you were a software developer, I would expect you to work for Microsoft. Don't you get it? SURE you can cheat your way to a degree. Absolutely stunning that you would admit to cheating if it works. Well, I would NEVER hire someone like you. I've worked with people who cheated their way through college--and it shows! You say it's self correcting but it should not require the system to catch you. Have you no self respect? Have you no shame? Are you TRYING to be mediocre? If you were--this is the way to accomplish that.
I just love how much slack you all are giving this student. You cast this in the most favorable light when we all know in the real world that people will cheat to the edge of what they can get away with. If this was YOUR class then you would understand how these students are just CHEATING! There is no way to avoid it. You can sugar coat it and cast it in all the favorable lights you wish but it does not change the fact that IT'S CHEATING! What the hell is the point of hiring a "college graduate" if all they have done is cheated their way through college. There comes a point when these "students" need to act like adults and not just get away with what they can get away with.
Having also taught large groups of college students, I agree with you for falling on your sword. So, you're willing to grade 800 different problems? That, my friend is a tough job for the teacher.
When I took C at the University of Nebraska, our professor assigned the "8 Queens" problem. Well, I worked all weekend and was only moderately successful. Then, this prick comes in Monday morning with a "solution" that was basically a compact little gem of a for loop. The teacher asked him to explain how it worked and the guy had not the slightest idea. He just googled the answer and copied it down. Would you hire that guy? While I exercised my critical reasoning all weekend, he just stole the answer. What happens the first time he can't "google" the damned answer?
There is no "teaching" going on in one of these "study" groups--which planet do you live on? All they are doing is CHEATING by SHARING the answers. You know these students are just trying to get the answers as fast and as easily as possible and nobody gives a damn if they understand. You forget: what is the point of going to college? To get a degree? No, not really. The point is to learn! To develop critical skills! In the business world, you can always tell who bullshitted and cheated their way through college: they expect that to go on, they want you to do their work for them and basically lead them by the nose to solutions. I think this school did PRECISELY the right thing in expelling this guy. He is wasting a slot in that school.
Sorry, I disagree. I've worked with junior developers who can't think their way out of a paper bag. Frankly, they are often from India. They ask for help at each and every turn. Do you know how annoying that is? That comes from doing college by committee. Sure, there are collaborative opportunities but you must be able to work by yourself. A few years ago, I worked for Hewlett-Packard in Houston (former Compaq facility). Well, we were getting a significant amount of development from some offshore teams. I looked over some CMP entity beans and I kept seeing the same thing over and over at the beginning of their persistence methods: public void persistThisData() { Connection con = null; Statement stmt = null; ResultSet rs = null; ...
These three variables were not used in the bean but, class after class, I saw these exact same three variables at the head of the methods.
This were Container-Managed persistence beans! Anybody who knows their CMP EJBs knows that you DO NOT do anything with Connection, Statement or ResultSet variables. Yet, each and every various class with CMP EJBS in them came back with these same exact three unused references in them. What was going on? THEY WERE COPYING AND PASTING WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING A DAMN THING.
So, I would say that it IS important for EACH INDIVIDUAL to know what and why they are doing stuff. If not, you end up with stupid crap like that above.
I think the college is fully justified in kicking this guy out. When I was in college, the point was that I myself solve those differential equations problem. If I had somebody else figure it out for me, then I missed the point of the class. Too many students these days think the point of college is getting your homework done. It's not! The point is to DEVELOP YOUR MIND! Part of that occurs when you yourself figure out the various approaches to a problem and work out the answer entirely for yourself. What does this student think is going to happen in the business world? You don't go asking a committee to dream up new innovations--you do it yourself. And if you have failed to develop those critical thinking skills in college, where the fuck are you going to develop them? No, this is just another example of a LAZY STUDENT trying to get help so he can get his assignment done. I remember in college that I would work alone and then I discover that some of the other "A" students worked as a team. So, how f'n fair is that? But now, years later, I'm sure those people have stagnated in their careers while I have flown pretty high--because I can think on my feet.
I seriously doubt the patterns would match. What I find most interesting is that--no matter the sense involved (touch, sight, hearing) every one of them comes into the brain as a pattern of signals. And the brain knows--because this came in on the touch channel--that this pattern represents something that was touched. This is great news for those of us trying to replicate the functions of the brain in an AI environment. The brain is so flexible because all it is doing is decoding patterns. They did an experiment--however gruesome--where they took the area of the brain that normally processes speech and cut out that area and moved it to a different place. They found that the function is not defined by where the brain tissue is located but merely by what the tissue is needed to do. For example. In a blind person, braille processing happens in the same area where vision is normally processed in a sighted person. So, get that: a portion of the brain that is devoted to processing images can suddenly be processing the FEELING of raised dots! The brain is just an incredible pattern-interpretation engine.
This is interesting because it is a form of pattern matching. Anyone who has studied the actual way the brain processes information from the senses knows that the brain receives a pattern--regardless of which sense it comes from--and interprets that pattern in such a way that it can make the interpretation. A great example of this is a device that has been built for the blind. The device consists of a grid of pressure-causing pins that are laid on the tongue of a blind person. If an image of some object is represented in the grid, the wearer's tongue can transmit this image to the brain and, with practice, a blind person's brain can learn to interpret that image and act on the basis of the information. I cannot stress the magnitude of this type of thing: the brain does nothing but pattern interpretation. It matters not where the pattern comes from, only the interpretation that is applied matter.
To all the Microsoft apologists out there--this is your Waterloo. Here we have a concrete example of how Microsoft decided to do one of their corporate buddies a huge favor--letting them meet their f'n quarterly numbers. So, Microsoft chose to help one of their rich pals over every single one of their users. That should tell you who they value. And the common perception that Vista is a piece of crap? Confirmed internally! This is just despicable.
Well, though I expect a firestorm for this comment, I would say find one who is left handed. In my career--coincidence or not--the most superior performers: creative, energetic, thinking-out-of-the-box, were the Left Handed developers.
This is just a brilliant idea! The boat is propelled no matter the direction of the waves, and the side effect being that the boat is mostly insulated from the wave motion? How f'n brillian is that! As I have always said, the "difference between Smart and Genius is not just a few iffy percentage points, it's orders of magnitude.
I lived in Utah for three years and there is no more beautiful place in the United States. The people of Utah--that I met--were extremely nice and it broke my heart to leave. But, there is indeed a battle over morality in the Beehive State. For a while, there were companies that rented out movies--but with the naughty bits taken out. So, after the directors in Hollywood produced their final cut, they were in for yet another cut in Utah. Didn't fly. Then again, though we all hate the idea of any type of censorship, this is kind of gray. Since these are local ISPs, it really doesn't affect anybody else. Should we oppose this on the grounds of the "slippery slope"? So, I would say, knock yourself out, Utah. If this is what you want, who are we to rain on your parade.
Actually, I think you're right on the money. Though I too am not a neuroscientist, I can read and research. The precise solution to the visual-simultaneous processing is exactly as you described: massively parallel processing of fairly simple processes. Again, the solution to AI will NOT be found in making ever more powerful left brain [linear-sequential processing].