I attended Rose Hulman (www.rose-hulman.edu), and as incoming freshman, we were forced to buy a laptop with both network capability and a very specific software suite. It was much easier, of course, for them to select a software suite for an all engineering/science college, since our freshman classes were virtually identical.
Observations: a) make sure it's a laptop that can handle being setup and tore down four-eight times a day. The crappy, crappy AMS Soundwaves we had (yay, 486 laptops, yay 1995) ended up with memory coming loose, broken wires to the screen and cracks in the cases. Two years later they switched to TI (eventually Acer) and the problems went away.
b) Make sure the whole faculty is ready to handle this transition. My freshman year, all the classes were ready, really, but the laptops were very much less integrated in subsequent years. I'm sure that's changed a lot by now, since I was in the class of 1999.
c) Make sure the network is ready for this. I'm not sure what percentage of these students wouldn't have brought a computer of their very own, but chances are that people that would have a desktop still have one with them, AND their laptop is on the net most of the time.
d) Professors should be ready for students to be distracted. They can now much more easily visit slashdot or Neopets or their email in the middle of the lecture.
1) Comic books have nothing to do with his topic, really. They are typically written with the same grammar and spelling as anything else, and like most mediums, comics are what the writer puts in. There was some very serious and philosophical stories written in a graphic medium. In addition, they are a means to grab a reader's attention that might otherwise slip away; comics inspired, for example, my brother to start reading for pleasure as a child when he was otherwise uninterested.
2) Like the above hypothetical comic book author, writing informally is all about what the person wants to put into it. If there is a probably with decreased literacy levels in informal writing, I suspect it's a product of overall drop in individual standards and desire to put more effort into the work.
I grew up with a computer in my home of some type from when I was four years old on, starting in 1980. I played a great many games that had extensive text to read, games that taught me problem solving, that probably helped my hand eye coordination. Some of my early reading was helping my dad type in programs in BASIC from his computer magazines. When I got older, IRC chat rooms taught me to type faster. Obviously none of this has reduced my level of literacy and in some cases has helped it.
In the midst of a time where children are very interested in reading, due to the popularity of fantasy novels, why do we need to make excuses, rather than trying to fix the problem?
And, I'm not sure why, but I didn't really find the humor in this. Maybe part of it is because it's taking the stereotypes and then moving them down the slider past funny to stupid. IMHO. I mean, yes, I know plenty of gamers who claim to be Wiccans or whatever, and some of them are creepy and weird... but nothing to even suggest that behavior.
Basically, they took a grab bag of gamer stereotypes (unrelated gamer stereotypes, in some cases) and tried to be funny and to me it just fell flat on it's face. Even the name doesn't seem to have much to do with the content.
The believably suffered in other areas. 3.x D&D tactical mat with a 2nd edition GM screen. People who played Vampire in high school and then "moved on" to D&D. Playing fantasy LARP with two people.
Indeed, I remember watching it in the school media center, only I was in fourth grade. It was particularly anticipated at my school because a teacher there had made it quite a ways down the path to being on that shuttle. But I do remember, if my memories ARE correct, seeing the streak of light as it went up, and then just a fireball, which seems to jibe with their description under Myth #2.
I do recall discussions of O-rings, and cool temperatures at the launch making them not expand properly but that doesn't seem to be in the article at all. And, face it, I was ten years old at the time...
Oh, woah. I didn't received any extra help, nor did I ever hear of any programs at my school that specifically helped girls. My school district was lucky to have things like Art classes at an elementary level. We had pay-for-play sports and the marching band paid for their own busing to competitions. They did not have the money to pay teachers to specifically support girls in anything.
I _did_ attend several summer programs at local colleges with district monetary support, but that's because I was a top student, not because I was female.
Now, on the other hand, I have spoken with many fellow engineering/science professional women and heard about the discouragement they received to focus on those classes, though I was lucky enough to not have that problem, either.
Interesting when observed evidence suggests that in the US, males don't catch up to females until after high school. For example, my high school graduating class had eight girls in the top ten.
And you know, I was going to say that I loved ICQ back before AOL got it's hands on it. Since then, they've steadily degraded the things I loved, and stuck advertisements on it. *sigh*
Re:For the same reason Black Friday *does* exist!
on
Cyber Monday Doesn't Exist
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In addition, of course, most stores have huge sales on that Friday. It would be interesting to see the order that all this occured in, but I suspect that the sales just made a fairly popular shopping day into a very popular one.
Of course, even Black Friday is only the Fifth Largest Shopping Day of the year. Apparently weekends leading up to Christmas are bigger, and I suspect that peaks in online shopping will occur based on when things can be shipped to get to people in time for Christmas. This year, with Christmas on a Sunday, I suspect that Christmas Eve will be an astounding shopping day.
At least, at my company, that is why there are very few real requirements on how we dress. Jeans are fine. T-shirts that do not have writing or pictures are fine, and manufacturer logos seem to be an exception to that. There are plenty of people who still wear a polo or a dress-shirt sans tie, but unless the customer is coming in, there's not really any reason for the average code monkey at my company to dress up.
When the customer is coming in, people who will meet with them know it, and generally are in a little nicer attire.
I've heard that in the past, this company at one point required suits... all I can think is the discomfort with no really good reason for it. That, and wondering if that means I would have had to wear dresses all the time, and pondering the calluses I would get from the shoes.
Although I'm sure that BlizzCon was cool, GenCon will no doubt remain the king of geek gatherings. And I enthusiastically attend with my husband every year.;)
My father worked for AT&T and then Michigan Bell (and then Ameritech) for 30 years. He was a lineman, a cable installer and repairman. I saw him spend late hours and sometimes weekends repairing storm damage (sometimes out of town), so that they could get service back up. I remember him quoting that at one point their informal motto was "less than zero mistakes".
He does complain about some of the work now... more because of hired contractors and the like, however.
Yes, as long as I can avoid reading the entire long chapter on some princess (IIRC) packing up all of her clothes, coming to court Humperdinck or whatever, and then unpacking them. It was supposed to be some kind of commentary, but, you know, it's packing.
I admit it, the first time I read Les Mis, I skipped the 40 pages on the battle of Waterloo.
I'm not sure how much help I can be in that department, since my situation is a little odd. I originally vaguely knew my husband in college (we were two years apart at an engineering school that only finally admitted women with my class). We met each other again in the work cafeteria, and found a shared interest in gaming, etc. We particularly bonded over him introducing me to Live Action Vampire.:)
If you ARE into gaming, that's at least a social occupation that may allow the meeting and interacting with of women. If someone is "just" a computer geek, it becomes a bit tougher since it's less of a social hobby.
If you're so unhappy, get divorced. No one is forcing you to be unhappy, are they?
Personally, I'm thrilled that I'm in a marriage that is an equal partnership with someone that I share about 75% of my interests. Oh, and we've yet to find an amount of time together we can call "too much".
My husband and I are deeply in love, and I should hope that others are so lucky.
They're going to lose a lot more people - essentially, unless they change things from what I last read, groups which charge money for playing have to follow a certain set of rules, including mandatory Cam membership for all players. Sorry, but as a former Vampire LARPer, the average player can barely afford the fees (used to cover the location!), let alone paying for Cam membership.
I arrived in Indy Thursday afternoon for some shopping and then dinner with friends. I settled down to serious gaming Friday morning.
Except for one slot of Shadowrun Missions, I played Living Arcanis and Living Force the entire time. These are two of the ongoing campaigns in the RPGA, and two of the best, IMHO.
Living Force had a relatively strong trilogy, though the third part was a little weak. They've been hampered all year by the forces as Lucasfilm, who get to approve everything in the campaign, which generally sucks. It is also going to end at the Winter Fantasy convention next year. Will there be a second campaign? Unfortunately, things point to no - WotC hasn't put out a real supplement for Star Wars in quite a while, preferring to put out minatures "supplements" to meet their contractual obligations. And why build a campaign if there's nothing that it will help sell? (blech)
Living Arcanis was a joy as always. Arcanis is a world designed by Paradigm Concepts, who snagged an Ennie award as the Fan Choice! (more info on the campaign at Onara Online) These people are a joy to deal with (Hi, Henry!), and employ/are some of the best storytellers I've see in gaming. Best of all, of course, was a chance to play an important NPC in the LARP they held Saturday night.... speaking of gamers freaking out the mundanes on their way to the game, since it took place at the Omni instead of the convention center. (I couldn't even tell you what kind of game.)
My husband and I more or less met at work. We were vaguely aware of each other from college, but if we hadn't started talking to each other in the cafeteria at work, we would never have gotten together.
Work is a major avenue of relationship forming, both romantic and platonic, and without it you're left primarily with either church, bars or mutual friends as ways to meet people. (Yes, clubs and other hobby oriented activities exist, but I wouldn't consider them a major avenue.)
At home, I can use Firefox however much I want, but unfortunately if I put that on my box at work, I suspect someone would notice and I would be in Big Trouble.
At least we don't use Outlook Express for email...
Now the question is... is the difference between the price of a downloaded set of music and the same music on CD just the price of production/shipping/other things that I don't know about? Because, well, it really should be, shouldn't it?
Hmmm, but reading the article, I see that the legal downloads != lost cd sales. I wonder if some of the lost sales relate to people listening to the music first illegally, and then deciding NOT to buy.
I concur, though I'm certainly no photographer - I took a course about six years ago in college. We did black and white work, and commercially developed color work. The black and white photo paper that most of us used was Ilford.
While I suppose digital has it's niche, we did a lot of tricks with developing, just for fun and effect, that would just not have turned out the same with digital.
Ooo, hadn't thought of that, but yes. I've read a couple of those books, and like that.
If you think about it, it would also be a great way to make budget aliens that make sense to be so similiar to humans. (Without having a hokey episode like the ST:TNG one that explained about the alien race seeding many worlds with a certain DNA.)
I don't know about Joss's thought processes, but one of my favorite sci-fi series of books has absolutely no aliens in it. It's the Vorkosigan Series, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Basically, rather than aliens, she relies on the fact that if you seperate groups of humans, like having more than one planet, you're going to obviously end up with some changes in behavior even greater than the differences between different cultures on one planet. She commented at one point that someday her humans will meet aliens... but they're really just be other humans who've changed so much from the "base", physically, intellectually and emotionally.
I don't see where you need aliens for Sci-fi. Sci-fi is about theories about how what humanity and possibly it's techology will become in the future.
Even the Animaniacs, nominally a kids' show, made fun of Fox:
Miles: Be gone, pests, and give me the bird. Yakko: We'd love to, really, but the Fox censors won't allow it.
Yakko: It's that time again! Wakko: To make the Fox censors cry?
Dot: Who came up with this stupid 'Wheel of Morality' idea anyway? Yakko: The execs at the Fox Kids' Network. Dot: Ohhhh... They did? What a great idea!
Slashdot Mirror
I attended Rose Hulman (www.rose-hulman.edu), and as incoming freshman, we were forced to buy a laptop with both network capability and a very specific software suite. It was much easier, of course, for them to select a software suite for an all engineering/science college, since our freshman classes were virtually identical.
Observations:
a) make sure it's a laptop that can handle being setup and tore down four-eight times a day. The crappy, crappy AMS Soundwaves we had (yay, 486 laptops, yay 1995) ended up with memory coming loose, broken wires to the screen and cracks in the cases. Two years later they switched to TI (eventually Acer) and the problems went away.
b) Make sure the whole faculty is ready to handle this transition. My freshman year, all the classes were ready, really, but the laptops were very much less integrated in subsequent years. I'm sure that's changed a lot by now, since I was in the class of 1999.
c) Make sure the network is ready for this. I'm not sure what percentage of these students wouldn't have brought a computer of their very own, but chances are that people that would have a desktop still have one with them, AND their laptop is on the net most of the time.
d) Professors should be ready for students to be distracted. They can now much more easily visit slashdot or Neopets or their email in the middle of the lecture.
This man is an idiot.
1) Comic books have nothing to do with his topic, really. They are typically written with the same grammar and spelling as anything else, and like most mediums, comics are what the writer puts in. There was some very serious and philosophical stories written in a graphic medium. In addition, they are a means to grab a reader's attention that might otherwise slip away; comics inspired, for example, my brother to start reading for pleasure as a child when he was otherwise uninterested.
2) Like the above hypothetical comic book author, writing informally is all about what the person wants to put into it. If there is a probably with decreased literacy levels in informal writing, I suspect it's a product of overall drop in individual standards and desire to put more effort into the work.
I grew up with a computer in my home of some type from when I was four years old on, starting in 1980. I played a great many games that had extensive text to read, games that taught me problem solving, that probably helped my hand eye coordination. Some of my early reading was helping my dad type in programs in BASIC from his computer magazines. When I got older, IRC chat rooms taught me to type faster. Obviously none of this has reduced my level of literacy and in some cases has helped it.
In the midst of a time where children are very interested in reading, due to the popularity of fantasy novels, why do we need to make excuses, rather than trying to fix the problem?
And, I'm not sure why, but I didn't really find the humor in this. Maybe part of it is because it's taking the stereotypes and then moving them down the slider past funny to stupid. IMHO. I mean, yes, I know plenty of gamers who claim to be Wiccans or whatever, and some of them are creepy and weird... but nothing to even suggest that behavior.
Basically, they took a grab bag of gamer stereotypes (unrelated gamer stereotypes, in some cases) and tried to be funny and to me it just fell flat on it's face. Even the name doesn't seem to have much to do with the content.
The believably suffered in other areas. 3.x D&D tactical mat with a 2nd edition GM screen. People who played Vampire in high school and then "moved on" to D&D. Playing fantasy LARP with two people.
Indeed, I remember watching it in the school media center, only I was in fourth grade. It was particularly anticipated at my school because a teacher there had made it quite a ways down the path to being on that shuttle. But I do remember, if my memories ARE correct, seeing the streak of light as it went up, and then just a fireball, which seems to jibe with their description under Myth #2.
I do recall discussions of O-rings, and cool temperatures at the launch making them not expand properly but that doesn't seem to be in the article at all. And, face it, I was ten years old at the time...
I realized that most of my complaints boiled down to "it would have been so much better as the entire second season instead of a movie".
I guess I'll just have to live with watching Battlestar Galactica instead.
Oh, woah. I didn't received any extra help, nor did I ever hear of any programs at my school that specifically helped girls. My school district was lucky to have things like Art classes at an elementary level. We had pay-for-play sports and the marching band paid for their own busing to competitions. They did not have the money to pay teachers to specifically support girls in anything.
I _did_ attend several summer programs at local colleges with district monetary support, but that's because I was a top student, not because I was female.
Now, on the other hand, I have spoken with many fellow engineering/science professional women and heard about the discouragement they received to focus on those classes, though I was lucky enough to not have that problem, either.
Interesting when observed evidence suggests that in the US, males don't catch up to females until after high school. For example, my high school graduating class had eight girls in the top ten.
And you know, I was going to say that I loved ICQ back before AOL got it's hands on it. Since then, they've steadily degraded the things I loved, and stuck advertisements on it. *sigh*
In addition, of course, most stores have huge sales on that Friday. It would be interesting to see the order that all this occured in, but I suspect that the sales just made a fairly popular shopping day into a very popular one.
Of course, even Black Friday is only the Fifth Largest Shopping Day of the year. Apparently weekends leading up to Christmas are bigger, and I suspect that peaks in online shopping will occur based on when things can be shipped to get to people in time for Christmas. This year, with Christmas on a Sunday, I suspect that Christmas Eve will be an astounding shopping day.
At least, at my company, that is why there are very few real requirements on how we dress. Jeans are fine. T-shirts that do not have writing or pictures are fine, and manufacturer logos seem to be an exception to that. There are plenty of people who still wear a polo or a dress-shirt sans tie, but unless the customer is coming in, there's not really any reason for the average code monkey at my company to dress up.
When the customer is coming in, people who will meet with them know it, and generally are in a little nicer attire.
I've heard that in the past, this company at one point required suits... all I can think is the discomfort with no really good reason for it. That, and wondering if that means I would have had to wear dresses all the time, and pondering the calluses I would get from the shoes.
Although I'm sure that BlizzCon was cool, GenCon will no doubt remain the king of geek gatherings. And I enthusiastically attend with my husband every year. ;)
My father worked for AT&T and then Michigan Bell (and then Ameritech) for 30 years. He was a lineman, a cable installer and repairman. I saw him spend late hours and sometimes weekends repairing storm damage (sometimes out of town), so that they could get service back up. I remember him quoting that at one point their informal motto was "less than zero mistakes".
He does complain about some of the work now... more because of hired contractors and the like, however.
Yes, as long as I can avoid reading the entire long chapter on some princess (IIRC) packing up all of her clothes, coming to court Humperdinck or whatever, and then unpacking them. It was supposed to be some kind of commentary, but, you know, it's packing.
I admit it, the first time I read Les Mis, I skipped the 40 pages on the battle of Waterloo.
*waves!!! frantically*
I'm not sure how much help I can be in that department, since my situation is a little odd. I originally vaguely knew my husband in college (we were two years apart at an engineering school that only finally admitted women with my class). We met each other again in the work cafeteria, and found a shared interest in gaming, etc. We particularly bonded over him introducing me to Live Action Vampire. :)
If you ARE into gaming, that's at least a social occupation that may allow the meeting and interacting with of women. If someone is "just" a computer geek, it becomes a bit tougher since it's less of a social hobby.
If you're so unhappy, get divorced. No one is forcing you to be unhappy, are they?
Personally, I'm thrilled that I'm in a marriage that is an equal partnership with someone that I share about 75% of my interests. Oh, and we've yet to find an amount of time together we can call "too much".
My husband and I are deeply in love, and I should hope that others are so lucky.
They're going to lose a lot more people - essentially, unless they change things from what I last read, groups which charge money for playing have to follow a certain set of rules, including mandatory Cam membership for all players. Sorry, but as a former Vampire LARPer, the average player can barely afford the fees (used to cover the location!), let alone paying for Cam membership.
I arrived in Indy Thursday afternoon for some shopping and then dinner with friends. I settled down to serious gaming Friday morning.
Except for one slot of Shadowrun Missions, I played Living Arcanis and Living Force the entire time. These are two of the ongoing campaigns in the RPGA, and two of the best, IMHO.
Living Force had a relatively strong trilogy, though the third part was a little weak. They've been hampered all year by the forces as Lucasfilm, who get to approve everything in the campaign, which generally sucks. It is also going to end at the Winter Fantasy convention next year. Will there be a second campaign? Unfortunately, things point to no - WotC hasn't put out a real supplement for Star Wars in quite a while, preferring to put out minatures "supplements" to meet their contractual obligations. And why build a campaign if there's nothing that it will help sell? (blech)
Living Arcanis was a joy as always. Arcanis is a world designed by Paradigm Concepts, who snagged an Ennie award as the Fan Choice! (more info on the campaign at Onara Online) These people are a joy to deal with (Hi, Henry!), and employ/are some of the best storytellers I've see in gaming. Best of all, of course, was a chance to play an important NPC in the LARP they held Saturday night.... speaking of gamers freaking out the mundanes on their way to the game, since it took place at the Omni instead of the convention center. (I couldn't even tell you what kind of game.)
My husband and I more or less met at work. We were vaguely aware of each other from college, but if we hadn't started talking to each other in the cafeteria at work, we would never have gotten together.
Work is a major avenue of relationship forming, both romantic and platonic, and without it you're left primarily with either church, bars or mutual friends as ways to meet people. (Yes, clubs and other hobby oriented activities exist, but I wouldn't consider them a major avenue.)
At home, I can use Firefox however much I want, but unfortunately if I put that on my box at work, I suspect someone would notice and I would be in Big Trouble.
At least we don't use Outlook Express for email...
Now the question is... is the difference between the price of a downloaded set of music and the same music on CD just the price of production/shipping/other things that I don't know about? Because, well, it really should be, shouldn't it?
Hmmm, but reading the article, I see that the legal downloads != lost cd sales. I wonder if some of the lost sales relate to people listening to the music first illegally, and then deciding NOT to buy.
I concur, though I'm certainly no photographer - I took a course about six years ago in college. We did black and white work, and commercially developed color work. The black and white photo paper that most of us used was Ilford.
While I suppose digital has it's niche, we did a lot of tricks with developing, just for fun and effect, that would just not have turned out the same with digital.
Ooo, hadn't thought of that, but yes. I've read a couple of those books, and like that.
If you think about it, it would also be a great way to make budget aliens that make sense to be so similiar to humans. (Without having a hokey episode like the ST:TNG one that explained about the alien race seeding many worlds with a certain DNA.)
I don't know about Joss's thought processes, but one of my favorite sci-fi series of books has absolutely no aliens in it. It's the Vorkosigan Series, by Lois McMaster Bujold. Basically, rather than aliens, she relies on the fact that if you seperate groups of humans, like having more than one planet, you're going to obviously end up with some changes in behavior even greater than the differences between different cultures on one planet. She commented at one point that someday her humans will meet aliens... but they're really just be other humans who've changed so much from the "base", physically, intellectually and emotionally.
I don't see where you need aliens for Sci-fi. Sci-fi is about theories about how what humanity and possibly it's techology will become in the future.
Even the Animaniacs, nominally a kids' show, made fun of Fox:
Miles: Be gone, pests, and give me the bird.
Yakko: We'd love to, really, but the Fox censors won't allow it.
Yakko: It's that time again!
Wakko: To make the Fox censors cry?
Dot: Who came up with this stupid 'Wheel of Morality' idea anyway?
Yakko: The execs at the Fox Kids' Network.
Dot: Ohhhh... They did? What a great idea!