All points about the language barrier aside, I already receive my daily intake of US and US-centric culture, thus the statement you quoted above. Being just as interested in Korean culture doesn't mean it's just as popular as US culture; conversely, I'm interested/because/ I don't hear about it as often.
I love the way everyone mentions the United States in the few articles that/aren't/ US-centric.
I'm in Australia; I'm just as interested in what Koreans are doing as I am in hearing about what the US is up to. Expressing surprise at seeing posts centering on nations other than the US is just plain silly.
I'm referring to what was classically known as an "idiot savant" (the idiot part being dropped for obvious reasons). If you stopped using dictionary.com's pathetic excuse for an English language reference, you might have also found some other relevant definitions (these ones came from Merriam-Webster):
1 : a person affected with a mental disability (as autism or mental retardation) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (as mathematics or music) -- called also savant
2 : a person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else
In Australia, McDonald's produced Finding Nemo themed Happy Meal boxes which came with a toy plastic fish. When the fish was placed on some bubbles on the top of the box and the user touched the bubbles on the side (which connected to the top ones), the fish made noises and/or lit up (I believe it depended which character you got). This used T-ink - AFAIK it's the first time it's been used in Australia. Has anyone else seen it being used for similar purposes?
I never said the ADULT's lack of attention wasn't their fault.
My point was simply that even in an environment such as the one described above, computers can be detrimental to the learning environment for some people.
This is not to say they aren't useful, they have their place and help immensely. And yes, if you spend the entire term playing flash games and taking nothing in, you deserve to fail.
I'm currently in an adult education scenario, learning software development in a paperless classroom. While I have found it advantageous to be able to look things up during a lecture, I've noted that many people get distracted by the availability of Internet access during class. It's not just a high school problem. The difference is that learning is the student's own responsibility, but in my experience, a lecturer who actively tries to keep the students' attention during a lecture will get better results from them than a lecturer who doesn't care.
Googlewhacking is also somewhat effective for this purpose. Place a phrase or sentence from the paper in quotes, and search for it on Google. If the student cheated off a web resource, it's likely that it'll be one of the first result of the search. I have seen this technique used effectively in practice many times..
I have worked in several "paperless" classrooms (as a student); they have had varying degrees of success. The first non-technical class which worked in this way was a high-school art class. My school, in an attempt to render everything electronic, completely replaced traditional art with multimedia that year. We ended up with half the students there (who couldn't turn the boxen on, let alone make a cohesive art project in photoshop) negotiating with the teacher to be allowed to 'bend the rules' by drawing something. The multimedia art class was a good idea (I, for one, loved it), but sorely needed the availability of a traditional class to complement it.
One thing certainly stands: unless every student present is 100% dedicated to the subject at hand, an Internet connection will always win attention from a lecturer. Asking students not to log in until you've finished lecturing can help avoid this situation.
I'm an Australian ex-Vodafone customer. As well as receiving their advertisements ("Enter our competition to see the Backstreet Boys live!"), I received erroneous missed call messages. (Background info: the carrier has a service where, if the owner doesn't answer their phone, the caller is prompted to enter their phone number into the keypad. This is then SMS'd to the phone's owner.)
Occasionally I would receive such messages, telling me I had missed a call from someone who came up on my calls list fairly often. Suspicions mounted when I received such a message completely at random, without my phone ringing beforehand, when I'd already been connected to the network for at least half a day. Sure enough, said person hadn't tried to call me for over a month -- but in checking out this incident, I'd made a pointless call through their network, using my phone's credit.
At least spam can be disregarded... message forgery is a different kind of pain in the arse. These messages came rarely enough to avoid inciting user backlash, and are subtle enough to make it difficult to cite claims of misinformation on Vodafone's part, particularly on mobile phone plans which completely avoid sending any type of usage records to the owner voluntarily.
I used this download manager to get the video. Having other stuff to do, I left Kontiki to its own devices, during which time it downloaded 2 unwanted promotional Gamespot videos (basically some dude talking about the site) of about 35MB each.
During my quick scan through its preferences menu, I could only tell it to stop downloading them once my HDD was filled to a (user-specified) capacity - seemed somewhat indirect to say the least. But it is possible to curb its rampant data-whoring habits this way, at least.
This software is easy to shutdown and uninstall, and can be configured to stop it doing incredibly stupid things (like downloading 70MB of data you don't want). If you must use it, be draconian about changing its settings first.. happy downloading.
James Gleick's Chaos briefly mentioned experiments in which people were isolated in rooms with constant light, and allowed to deviate to a comfortable sleep pattern. They seemed to converge on a 30 hour biorhythm, while still keeping the 2:1 wake:sleep ratio (20hrs:10hrs).
A similar test was conducted on mosquitoes, who have a 23 hour biorhythm; in nature this anomaly is corrected every morning at sunrise.
Slashdot Mirror
Plenty of slim females peruse Slashdot. I'll leave it up to you to guess why most of us tend not to bother with the forums.
All points about the language barrier aside, I already receive my daily intake of US and US-centric culture, thus the statement you quoted above. Being just as interested in Korean culture doesn't mean it's just as popular as US culture; conversely, I'm interested /because/ I don't hear about it as often.
I'm in Australia; I'm just as interested in what Koreans are doing as I am in hearing about what the US is up to. Expressing surprise at seeing posts centering on nations other than the US is just plain silly.
I'm referring to what was classically known as an "idiot savant" (the idiot part being dropped for obvious reasons). If you stopped using dictionary.com's pathetic excuse for an English language reference, you might have also found some other relevant definitions (these ones came from Merriam-Webster):
1 : a person affected with a mental disability (as autism or mental retardation) who exhibits exceptional skill or brilliance in some limited field (as mathematics or music) -- called also savant
2 : a person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else
He wasn't a retard, he was a savant.
So... you never need to measure anything aside from HDDs?
In Australia, McDonald's produced Finding Nemo themed Happy Meal boxes which came with a toy plastic fish. When the fish was placed on some bubbles on the top of the box and the user touched the bubbles on the side (which connected to the top ones), the fish made noises and/or lit up (I believe it depended which character you got). This used T-ink - AFAIK it's the first time it's been used in Australia. Has anyone else seen it being used for similar purposes?
Then it's clearly not causing a problem. 'Nuff said.
I never said the ADULT's lack of attention wasn't their fault.
My point was simply that even in an environment such as the one described above, computers can be detrimental to the learning environment for some people.
This is not to say they aren't useful, they have their place and help immensely. And yes, if you spend the entire term playing flash games and taking nothing in, you deserve to fail.
I'm currently in an adult education scenario, learning software development in a paperless classroom. While I have found it advantageous to be able to look things up during a lecture, I've noted that many people get distracted by the availability of Internet access during class. It's not just a high school problem. The difference is that learning is the student's own responsibility, but in my experience, a lecturer who actively tries to keep the students' attention during a lecture will get better results from them than a lecturer who doesn't care.
Googlewhacking is also somewhat effective for this purpose. Place a phrase or sentence from the paper in quotes, and search for it on Google. If the student cheated off a web resource, it's likely that it'll be one of the first result of the search. I have seen this technique used effectively in practice many times..
I have worked in several "paperless" classrooms (as a student); they have had varying degrees of success. The first non-technical class which worked in this way was a high-school art class. My school, in an attempt to render everything electronic, completely replaced traditional art with multimedia that year. We ended up with half the students there (who couldn't turn the boxen on, let alone make a cohesive art project in photoshop) negotiating with the teacher to be allowed to 'bend the rules' by drawing something. The multimedia art class was a good idea (I, for one, loved it), but sorely needed the availability of a traditional class to complement it.
One thing certainly stands: unless every student present is 100% dedicated to the subject at hand, an Internet connection will always win attention from a lecturer. Asking students not to log in until you've finished lecturing can help avoid this situation.
I'm an Australian ex-Vodafone customer. As well as receiving their advertisements ("Enter our competition to see the Backstreet Boys live!"), I received erroneous missed call messages. (Background info: the carrier has a service where, if the owner doesn't answer their phone, the caller is prompted to enter their phone number into the keypad. This is then SMS'd to the phone's owner.)
Occasionally I would receive such messages, telling me I had missed a call from someone who came up on my calls list fairly often. Suspicions mounted when I received such a message completely at random, without my phone ringing beforehand, when I'd already been connected to the network for at least half a day. Sure enough, said person hadn't tried to call me for over a month -- but in checking out this incident, I'd made a pointless call through their network, using my phone's credit.
At least spam can be disregarded... message forgery is a different kind of pain in the arse. These messages came rarely enough to avoid inciting user backlash, and are subtle enough to make it difficult to cite claims of misinformation on Vodafone's part, particularly on mobile phone plans which completely avoid sending any type of usage records to the owner voluntarily.
Opera's popup blocking & tabbed windows are quite useful for a fuller porn browsing experience...
During my quick scan through its preferences menu, I could only tell it to stop downloading them once my HDD was filled to a (user-specified) capacity - seemed somewhat indirect to say the least. But it is possible to curb its rampant data-whoring habits this way, at least.
This software is easy to shutdown and uninstall, and can be configured to stop it doing incredibly stupid things (like downloading 70MB of data you don't want). If you must use it, be draconian about changing its settings first.. happy downloading.
James Gleick's Chaos briefly mentioned experiments in which people were isolated in rooms with constant light, and allowed to deviate to a comfortable sleep pattern. They seemed to converge on a 30 hour biorhythm, while still keeping the 2:1 wake:sleep ratio (20hrs:10hrs).
A similar test was conducted on mosquitoes, who have a 23 hour biorhythm; in nature this anomaly is corrected every morning at sunrise.