Yes, because you have to be sick in the head to be an engineer.
I sometimes think it takes a certain level of psychosis to get through the degree. That being said, I haven't found religion to be an obstruction for myself or many of my classmates. I think the op's cranky 'cause he can't reconcile the two and thinks everyone else is limited by his lack of flexibility and imagination.
Seriously, college students aren't exactly known for being wealthy and/or having significant amounts of disposable income.
But they do need to eat, so at the very least they're spending as much on food as the poorest people in the community, and many kids are probably spending more. Then there are incidentals like toiletries, clothes, and linens-stuff that can be bought at home but is just as likely to be bought in town for a number of reasons. Plus municipal services like public transportation and the average student likely isn't contributing any less then the average person in one of the lower income brackets (and possibly middle income brackets.) And, most of the kids I knew who didn't get decent allowances from their parents worked some sort of job and pay taxes on that, or have a fellowship (on which either the organization or student pays taxes.)
I had to use autocad in high school and it was pretty straightforward. When I had to touch ProE a few years back, didn't find it that disorienting once I got some instructions on how to use it. The circuit simulation programs I currently use (modelSim and multiSim) are similar in UI and therefore not totally evil. They've generally all got the same UI principal: default to a clean interface with just the simple options, but customizable so you can have all the tools you need/use visible at all times. (OpenOffice got for more usable once it started embracing this approach too.) I haven't used gimp for a few years, but from what you're saying it seems it hasn't yet transitioned to an easy default but utterly customizable UI.
why can't they do something similar and temporarily be celebate to avoid being responsible for all of that misery and suffering?
The social/cultural issues are for more complex then that. A vast majority of women in these countries can't because they don't have the rights to. The stats on rape in some countries are hideous, and many women are stuck in relationships where they can't tell their partner to use birth control and they can't get out of these relationships for any number of religious/socio-economic/cultural reasons. The guys in many of these countries still have this idiotic notion that using a condom isn't manly and therefore won't, hence why HIV/AIDs rates are also awful in many of these countries. Irresponsible sex is gonna happen 'cause of social/religious/cultural reasons so long as the men in these cultures believe that sex makes them a man and women find that one of the most reliable forms of security/employment is prostitution or being someone's girl.
But wait, it gets worse. Assuming you can change cultural ideas of sex and gender, birth control isn't the easiest thing to get because of foreign aid policies concerning family planning. In countries where people can barely eat, reliable birth control is often considered an unnecessary expense by many, so the options boil down to condom giveaways and (often illegal) abortions. Currently organizations that provide abortions can get aid, but this stance changes every administration (Bush banned aid to these organizations.) A good number of the organizations that provide abortions are also the ones that provide family planning support and information, like condoms. Then there are the organizations that are limited in what they can provide because the regions are too dangerous to work in or there are religious/cultural barriers to birth control.
Or you google your problem and see how other people have solved it, or ask a mentor or labmate or classmate if one's around. Then google what FFTS are. I work as a writing tutor (compE major), so when I run into formats or approaches I haven't seen, I ask a coworker. Over the years, I've had fewer questions. I also disagree with the original poster 'cause I've met plenty of English majors who can't write a coherent essay, much less a book, and some of the worst coders I know are seniors in cs/cpe. Lots of the guys/girls in my algorithms and data structures class were beyond lost on the content, and I know a guy with an excellent grasp who's never had formal cs schooling, but worked as a programmer for years. If college has taught me anything, it's that everything rests on the person.
[quote]So, have requirements changed or was the CUNY test absurd?[/quote] Possibly both. CUNY requirements are getting stricter again 'cause of the various issues with open admissions-requirements have been sliding for 30 years-and the test could have been strange.
Plus the math regents are all sorts of wonky in their own right. They've changed the math standard twice in the past 9 years, going from the sequential I,II,III sequence (roughly algebra, geometry, trig, one each June) to Math A and B (algebra + 1/2 geometry and test in january of 2nd year, 1/2 geometery+ trig and test in june of 3rd year) and then back to sequential, renamed Algebra, Geometry, and Trig (or something of the sort) 'cause Math A and B failed so badly.
I go to one of the CUNY's, even had one of the paper authors as a professor. Our admissions requirements are downright sad, and the kids who can't even muster those can usually get in as transfers from community schools or by getting into one of the many remedial programs. A lot of these kids end up either flunking out or ending up as liberal arts majors. (Writing skills are just as pathetic, but it's more complicated because of the large ESL population, which the administration doesn't really want to admit we have.) Though I'm totally curious about the sampling bias here, 'cause a first math class at CUNY could be elementary math, pre-calc or anything in the calc sequence, so lots of freshman don't have the same first math course. The amount of kids who can't do fractions in an elementary math course is much higher then the amount of freshman who can't do fractions in calc II. It's also the daily news, which is about as tabloid as you get. I'm also curious how other schools stack up, and especially how majors/course of study effects the distribution.
Wow you're optimistic. Many of the guys I know who just wanted an A either cheated their way to an A, took the easiest professors in the school, or some combination thereof. I know a few who worked hard, but not a majority by any stretch of the imagination.
My Operating Systems class had several good slide animations on stuff like thread scheduling
Same with my professor for algorithms and assembly. Animations are awesome for explaining how the different sorts and searches work, and worked well for stepping through some algorithms in assembly. I could also see 'em used brilliantly in intro for explaining recursion and loops.
and for some reason students want to print everything they get their hands on
I have a professor who uses textbook powerpoints and gives open note exams, so almost everyone in my class printed out the slides. It was useful during the exam, 'cause two questions came right from the slides. Thankfully, he adds a lot of material to the slide, so his use of them isn't awful. My professors have been a mixed bag: some have made their own excellent slides, some have horrible self made slides, some customize book slides well, and some just toss out any all thing. I've had maybe two professors who were better when they couldn't use their slides.
Actually, I just changed my password. (I really need to proofread instead of going to another tab while waiting for the submit button to come up.) I know the account wasn't mine 'cause of the details associated with me, but now I'm realizing it was probably an accident at school: I forgot to log out of google while on some comp and some guy registered a youtube account not realizing I was still logged on.
I learned that a youtube account was registered using my email address, and that I could access the account with my gmail account. So dashboard forced me to change my email address and try to navigate youtube's awful (non-existent) reporting pages. I finally got the right page by sending an email to the wrong people. Otherwise, dashboard showed the existence of things that clicking didn't show up, and the whole thing comes across as a gimmick to get people to sign up for the google services they're not already signed up for.
If I did my math right, based on that poll on ubuntuforums fewer than 40% of people were able to install/update successfully. That is pitiful.
You mean the poll on the forum someone's only likely to end up at if things go wrong? I'm surprised the number isn't lower considering the inherent sampling bias.
Granted, I had a friend attempt to install karmic and it didn't work out so well for him, but he also had some funky hardware. I didn't even attempt it 'cause I've finally gotten 9.04 working mostly sanely. At this point, most people should know to install earlier versions or the LTS if they want stability. (Ubuntu tells people to install the LTS versions for large deployments for just that reason.)
Can't you email costumer support and sort it out? Dunno about MS, but when I had to reinstall matlab a couple of times they sorted it out for me. MS also sent me a new activation key when my vista install went all screwy.
I've never really understood why Fantasy would necessarily be classed with Science Fiction.
'cause they both started out as genres of speculative fiction, which basically meant anything set in an alternate/different world or the future. This is how magical realism usually ended up not lumped in with sci-fi/fantasy.
A while back a slashdot comment had a link to security cartoon. The cartoons are cute and pretty thorough, though the may be a bit simple and are somewhat outdated. It's visual and pretty straightforward.
Parent probably meant $30,000 a year, 'cause the only places were you can get the entire thing for $30,000 in the states is at a public university in a large city (basically a step up from the community colleges on the reputation scale.) Mine's one of the cheapest at about 2,500 a semester, and tuition's going up. Very few private schools are under $30,000 a year, much less $30,000 for 4 years.
Except that 10% of nurses are now male, rising every year. On top of that 20% of current nursing students are male, again, rising every year.
And female participation in the tech fields rise every year too. Especially when there are financial incentives, which is also the same reason why guys go into nursing and the like. Nursing being a growing field takes away the stigma associated with it. I don't really care what the gender distro is, but I just don't believe the reasoning behind women not going into engineering is 'cause they're not tough enough to stick it out, which is what the parent poster implied.
You make it seem so damn simple, like confidence is the key to everything. That actually works really great when you're working with guys on the more enlightened side of the scale, the respectful team workers everyone wants to work with. The assholes are the problem, 'cause as much as they don't listen to anyone, they'll ignore girls even more so. All the grace and confidence in the world doesn't work all the time, neither does being bitchy. Look, I think handing out special favors to girls based on gender is idiotic and I hate it as much as any guy does. What would be awesome is if guys in tech could treat the girls as they do any guy, but I haven't seen nearly enough of that.
Men already have a culture of approval, as they're never the only guy in the room in science and tech. (The average upper level electrical-engineer course in my school has 3-5 girls for 30 guys.) Guys rarely go into female only fields like nursing or pre-school teaching for the same reasons girls don't do tech, so guys being tougher to social pressures is total bs. Even when guys do take female dominant classes like psychology, they often give macho excuses like they're doing it for the hot chicks.
Now, if they were talking about 5,000 - 25,000 words, there'd be a chance of actually getting to know a bit about the person behind the writing - sometimes.
Very few people, even talented writers, are capable of writing good 15-100 page essays about themselves. Even if the interview committee had a chance to read these things, they'd probably be bored out of their mind by most of them.
A better "test", if you really are interested in getting some insight into the person's capabilities, would probably be to have candidates take part in an online debate, subject not disclosed beforehand.
They could probably just modify the interview to include bits and pieces of this. They could even throw a short essay into the interview if the interviewers were willing.
Cooper Union's take home exams seem like a very sensible approach to admissions, but MIT sees many more applicants so it may not be practical for the size.
Just a thought... but anything's got to be better than a twitter-sized "essay".
The twitter sized essay though is perfectly serviceable for quickly explaining who a person is. It's not any shorter than a personal statement, and almost every grad school under the sun requires those in their applications.
Dude, I posted a correction (before your post) 'cause I knew I screwed up.
Better to contact the teachers, and ask for examples of submitted work that weren't written with MIT in mind, no?
Most teachers will encourage their students to polish the essays up for MIT, and some will even help with the polishing. Also, the personal essay isn't required to see if the student can write, it's to gain a glimpse into the students psyche.
From what I've heard, essays barely count anyway; they only help borderline candidates and don't affect stellar ones at all (unless there's a major discrepancy between the essay and the rest of the applications package). For borderline cases, word count isn't going to affect their ability to convey the core of who they are all that much. I've read tons of personal statements/personal essays/etc. and just don't see that many that couldn't be shortened and still retain their essence.
And especially since you KNOW that there's a lot of apple-polishing and "writing to the test".
Essays should be written such that they answer the question being asked, and evidence that the student can edit probably doesn't hurt.
Contrast with: "Shorter = less crap.", 1 symbol, 3 words, vs your 1 number, 7 words.
That's not even a repentance, so it's a bad comparison. As, I now realize, your original claim 'cause the "500 words are longer" was part of a 177 word discussion I was actually answering.
Couldn't do it in 125 the first time?
No, which is why editing is a good thing. Sorry I didn't think a response for a slashdot post required lots of fine tuning.
"Does this dress make me look fat?" A simple "Yes" will condemn you. A "No", without any other words of reassurance, likewise is a major faux pas.
I'm a girl, so if I'm being asked it's usually 'cause they want the truth.
Look, words are how we communicate - sometimes less is more, sometimes less is less.
To an extent I agree with you, which is why I like flexible word limits, but I think most things can be pared down and just as brilliant if need be.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because you have to be sick in the head to be an engineer.
I sometimes think it takes a certain level of psychosis to get through the degree. That being said, I haven't found religion to be an obstruction for myself or many of my classmates. I think the op's cranky 'cause he can't reconcile the two and thinks everyone else is limited by his lack of flexibility and imagination.
Seriously, college students aren't exactly known for being wealthy and/or having significant amounts of disposable income.
But they do need to eat, so at the very least they're spending as much on food as the poorest people in the community, and many kids are probably spending more. Then there are incidentals like toiletries, clothes, and linens-stuff that can be bought at home but is just as likely to be bought in town for a number of reasons. Plus municipal services like public transportation and the average student likely isn't contributing any less then the average person in one of the lower income brackets (and possibly middle income brackets.) And, most of the kids I knew who didn't get decent allowances from their parents worked some sort of job and pay taxes on that, or have a fellowship (on which either the organization or student pays taxes.)
gimp and CAD programs
I had to use autocad in high school and it was pretty straightforward. When I had to touch ProE a few years back, didn't find it that disorienting once I got some instructions on how to use it. The circuit simulation programs I currently use (modelSim and multiSim) are similar in UI and therefore not totally evil. They've generally all got the same UI principal: default to a clean interface with just the simple options, but customizable so you can have all the tools you need/use visible at all times. (OpenOffice got for more usable once it started embracing this approach too.) I haven't used gimp for a few years, but from what you're saying it seems it hasn't yet transitioned to an easy default but utterly customizable UI.
why can't they do something similar and temporarily be celebate to avoid being responsible for all of that misery and suffering?
The social/cultural issues are for more complex then that. A vast majority of women in these countries can't because they don't have the rights to. The stats on rape in some countries are hideous, and many women are stuck in relationships where they can't tell their partner to use birth control and they can't get out of these relationships for any number of religious/socio-economic/cultural reasons. The guys in many of these countries still have this idiotic notion that using a condom isn't manly and therefore won't, hence why HIV/AIDs rates are also awful in many of these countries. Irresponsible sex is gonna happen 'cause of social/religious/cultural reasons so long as the men in these cultures believe that sex makes them a man and women find that one of the most reliable forms of security/employment is prostitution or being someone's girl.
But wait, it gets worse. Assuming you can change cultural ideas of sex and gender, birth control isn't the easiest thing to get because of foreign aid policies concerning family planning. In countries where people can barely eat, reliable birth control is often considered an unnecessary expense by many, so the options boil down to condom giveaways and (often illegal) abortions. Currently organizations that provide abortions can get aid, but this stance changes every administration (Bush banned aid to these organizations.) A good number of the organizations that provide abortions are also the ones that provide family planning support and information, like condoms. Then there are the organizations that are limited in what they can provide because the regions are too dangerous to work in or there are religious/cultural barriers to birth control.
Or you google your problem and see how other people have solved it, or ask a mentor or labmate or classmate if one's around. Then google what FFTS are. I work as a writing tutor (compE major), so when I run into formats or approaches I haven't seen, I ask a coworker. Over the years, I've had fewer questions. I also disagree with the original poster 'cause I've met plenty of English majors who can't write a coherent essay, much less a book, and some of the worst coders I know are seniors in cs/cpe. Lots of the guys/girls in my algorithms and data structures class were beyond lost on the content, and I know a guy with an excellent grasp who's never had formal cs schooling, but worked as a programmer for years. If college has taught me anything, it's that everything rests on the person.
I'll pre-empt the grammar nazis:
CUNYs, not CUNY's
majors affect/course of study affects, not effects
[quote]So, have requirements changed or was the CUNY test absurd?[/quote]
Possibly both. CUNY requirements are getting stricter again 'cause of the various issues with open admissions-requirements have been sliding for 30 years-and the test could have been strange.
Plus the math regents are all sorts of wonky in their own right. They've changed the math standard twice in the past 9 years, going from the sequential I,II,III sequence (roughly algebra, geometry, trig, one each June) to Math A and B (algebra + 1/2 geometry and test in january of 2nd year, 1/2 geometery+ trig and test in june of 3rd year) and then back to sequential, renamed Algebra, Geometry, and Trig (or something of the sort) 'cause Math A and B failed so badly.
I go to one of the CUNY's, even had one of the paper authors as a professor. Our admissions requirements are downright sad, and the kids who can't even muster those can usually get in as transfers from community schools or by getting into one of the many remedial programs. A lot of these kids end up either flunking out or ending up as liberal arts majors. (Writing skills are just as pathetic, but it's more complicated because of the large ESL population, which the administration doesn't really want to admit we have.)
Though I'm totally curious about the sampling bias here, 'cause a first math class at CUNY could be elementary math, pre-calc or anything in the calc sequence, so lots of freshman don't have the same first math course. The amount of kids who can't do fractions in an elementary math course is much higher then the amount of freshman who can't do fractions in calc II. It's also the daily news, which is about as tabloid as you get. I'm also curious how other schools stack up, and especially how majors/course of study effects the distribution.
Wow you're optimistic. Many of the guys I know who just wanted an A either cheated their way to an A, took the easiest professors in the school, or some combination thereof. I know a few who worked hard, but not a majority by any stretch of the imagination.
My Operating Systems class had several good slide animations on stuff like thread scheduling
Same with my professor for algorithms and assembly. Animations are awesome for explaining how the different sorts and searches work, and worked well for stepping through some algorithms in assembly. I could also see 'em used brilliantly in intro for explaining recursion and loops.
and for some reason students want to print everything they get their hands on
I have a professor who uses textbook powerpoints and gives open note exams, so almost everyone in my class printed out the slides. It was useful during the exam, 'cause two questions came right from the slides. Thankfully, he adds a lot of material to the slide, so his use of them isn't awful. My professors have been a mixed bag: some have made their own excellent slides, some have horrible self made slides, some customize book slides well, and some just toss out any all thing. I've had maybe two professors who were better when they couldn't use their slides.
Actually, I just changed my password. (I really need to proofread instead of going to another tab while waiting for the submit button to come up.) I know the account wasn't mine 'cause of the details associated with me, but now I'm realizing it was probably an accident at school: I forgot to log out of google while on some comp and some guy registered a youtube account not realizing I was still logged on.
I learned that a youtube account was registered using my email address, and that I could access the account with my gmail account. So dashboard forced me to change my email address and try to navigate youtube's awful (non-existent) reporting pages. I finally got the right page by sending an email to the wrong people. Otherwise, dashboard showed the existence of things that clicking didn't show up, and the whole thing comes across as a gimmick to get people to sign up for the google services they're not already signed up for.
If I did my math right, based on that poll on ubuntuforums fewer than 40% of people were able to install/update successfully. That is pitiful.
You mean the poll on the forum someone's only likely to end up at if things go wrong? I'm surprised the number isn't lower considering the inherent sampling bias.
Granted, I had a friend attempt to install karmic and it didn't work out so well for him, but he also had some funky hardware. I didn't even attempt it 'cause I've finally gotten 9.04 working mostly sanely. At this point, most people should know to install earlier versions or the LTS if they want stability. (Ubuntu tells people to install the LTS versions for large deployments for just that reason.)
Can't you email costumer support and sort it out? Dunno about MS, but when I had to reinstall matlab a couple of times they sorted it out for me. MS also sent me a new activation key when my vista install went all screwy.
I've never really understood why Fantasy would necessarily be classed with Science Fiction.
'cause they both started out as genres of speculative fiction, which basically meant anything set in an alternate/different world or the future. This is how magical realism usually ended up not lumped in with sci-fi/fantasy.
A while back a slashdot comment had a link to security cartoon. The cartoons are cute and pretty thorough, though the may be a bit simple and are somewhat outdated. It's visual and pretty straightforward.
Parent probably meant $30,000 a year, 'cause the only places were you can get the entire thing for $30,000 in the states is at a public university in a large city (basically a step up from the community colleges on the reputation scale.) Mine's one of the cheapest at about 2,500 a semester, and tuition's going up. Very few private schools are under $30,000 a year, much less $30,000 for 4 years.
Except that 10% of nurses are now male, rising every year. On top of that 20% of current nursing students are male, again, rising every year.
And female participation in the tech fields rise every year too. Especially when there are financial incentives, which is also the same reason why guys go into nursing and the like. Nursing being a growing field takes away the stigma associated with it. I don't really care what the gender distro is, but I just don't believe the reasoning behind women not going into engineering is 'cause they're not tough enough to stick it out, which is what the parent poster implied.
There is the occasion idiotic comment, but I have never seen "flooding."
Wade through the comments on any post concerning outsourcing.
You make it seem so damn simple, like confidence is the key to everything. That actually works really great when you're working with guys on the more enlightened side of the scale, the respectful team workers everyone wants to work with. The assholes are the problem, 'cause as much as they don't listen to anyone, they'll ignore girls even more so. All the grace and confidence in the world doesn't work all the time, neither does being bitchy. Look, I think handing out special favors to girls based on gender is idiotic and I hate it as much as any guy does. What would be awesome is if guys in tech could treat the girls as they do any guy, but I haven't seen nearly enough of that.
Men already have a culture of approval, as they're never the only guy in the room in science and tech. (The average upper level electrical-engineer course in my school has 3-5 girls for 30 guys.) Guys rarely go into female only fields like nursing or pre-school teaching for the same reasons girls don't do tech, so guys being tougher to social pressures is total bs. Even when guys do take female dominant classes like psychology, they often give macho excuses like they're doing it for the hot chicks.
Now, if they were talking about 5,000 - 25,000 words, there'd be a chance of actually getting to know a bit about the person behind the writing - sometimes.
Very few people, even talented writers, are capable of writing good 15-100 page essays about themselves. Even if the interview committee had a chance to read these things, they'd probably be bored out of their mind by most of them.
A better "test", if you really are interested in getting some insight into the person's capabilities, would probably be to have candidates take part in an online debate, subject not disclosed beforehand.
They could probably just modify the interview to include bits and pieces of this. They could even throw a short essay into the interview if the interviewers were willing.
Cooper Union's take home exams seem like a very sensible approach to admissions, but MIT sees many more applicants so it may not be practical for the size.
Just a thought ... but anything's got to be better than a twitter-sized "essay".
The twitter sized essay though is perfectly serviceable for quickly explaining who a person is. It's not any shorter than a personal statement, and almost every grad school under the sun requires those in their applications.
Dude, I posted a correction (before your post) 'cause I knew I screwed up.
Better to contact the teachers, and ask for examples of submitted work that weren't written with MIT in mind, no?
Most teachers will encourage their students to polish the essays up for MIT, and some will even help with the polishing. Also, the personal essay isn't required to see if the student can write, it's to gain a glimpse into the students psyche.
From what I've heard, essays barely count anyway; they only help borderline candidates and don't affect stellar ones at all (unless there's a major discrepancy between the essay and the rest of the applications package). For borderline cases, word count isn't going to affect their ability to convey the core of who they are all that much. I've read tons of personal statements/personal essays/etc. and just don't see that many that couldn't be shortened and still retain their essence.
And especially since you KNOW that there's a lot of apple-polishing and "writing to the test".
Essays should be written such that they answer the question being asked, and evidence that the student can edit probably doesn't hurt.
sentence, not repentance
Contrast with: "Shorter = less crap.", 1 symbol, 3 words, vs your 1 number, 7 words.
That's not even a repentance, so it's a bad comparison. As, I now realize, your original claim 'cause the "500 words are longer" was part of a 177 word discussion I was actually answering.
Couldn't do it in 125 the first time?
No, which is why editing is a good thing. Sorry I didn't think a response for a slashdot post required lots of fine tuning.
"Does this dress make me look fat?" A simple "Yes" will condemn you. A "No", without any other words of reassurance, likewise is a major faux pas.
I'm a girl, so if I'm being asked it's usually 'cause they want the truth.
Look, words are how we communicate - sometimes less is more, sometimes less is less.
To an extent I agree with you, which is why I like flexible word limits, but I think most things can be pared down and just as brilliant if need be.