"How about simply this, guarantee that all quizzes and tests can be made up after hours (before/after class) that were taken in the first half of the semester for a maximum score of 80% of the total points awarded (gotta at least give a small late bloomer penalty)? Higher of the 2 scores will apply. Thoughts there?"
There is work involved for the teacher to create, proctor, and grade makeup tests. Hours are a limited resource. Which would you rather have teachers spend time on: (a) making up duplicate tests for the slackers who failed once, or (b) working on new presentations/feedback to the students who are engaged and attending?
Seems like (a) just makes school even crappier and more boring for smart kids. I call "bad idea".
Here's my take, as a former senior software engineer in gaming (for about 6+ years). As a programmer I don't have any certifications or licensing board that I know of. And hell, I *like* taking tests and solving puzzles. So I'm perfectly happy to do that in the context of a job interview.
The thing I had to kick that was much worse are game companies asking you to do programming work at home, before they are willing to talk about any interview. Maybe several days of programing work so you can chuck down the black hole of their HR who may not actually be looking for anyone. I did do that twice (no response either time) and feel kind of stupid about it now. If anyone younger reads this, don't do what I did -- don't even consider spending a single minute doing coding work for any job if someone doesn't schedule an interview first. On-site tests are beautiful and fun and fine.
With one caveat: I had one test that asked to convert a number representation in ASCII to an integer type. Of course, I used the canonical and fast way to do that from my numerical analysis class (convert each character; multiply by 10 each step). But the interviewer didn't understand that, thought it was backwards, and I had to step through a test case to show him why it worked. Didn't get that job, either.
Every 5 minutes? Must be some alien life form. I can barely drag myself to check my email once every 2 days or so. (And that's almost my only contact with the outside world -- no cell phone, no IM, either.)
"The problem is that they put them in legalese, which might as well be japanese for most people."
You know what? Legalese is just English. Everyone can understand this stuff when you point to the sentences in question. It's just that people are too damn lazy to *read it*.
"I know, there are evil rich people who pay 35% and you pay 28% but its not fair they still have more dollars. What has this country come to if we are so filled with spite and envy that we begrudge anyone doing better than us or set limits on how well any one person is allowed to do?"
I guess you're right. I'd be happy to get back to the good old days of the USA, when "the greatest generation" had a top tax bracket of 70%-94% all the way from 1936 to 1981.
If I was a tech-savvy worker in Ohion, I'd run for the hills before volunteering to be legally responsible, or associated in any way, with these buggy voting machine known to malfunction and dump votes.
Although the guy above with the Boston-tea-party-throw-them-from-a-bridge-accidentally had a really good idea, you don't need to be tech-savvy for that (well, other than working knowledge of the theory of gravity)
"I have a constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures once inside the United States, but not while entering it. The judges decision sounds nice, but I don't think it will stand."
No, whenever I hear government agencies defend their policy it's on the basis that such searches are "reasonable" at the border (i.e., not unreasonable), not that it's outside the U.S. They're always very very careful to argue that things are "reasonable", because the inside-vs-outside US distinction doesn't appear in the Constitution.
I want her sued for everything she's worth. I want her deported to China. I don't want her in my fucking country anymore. I want my America and my Bill of Rights back.
"...That still leaves calculated war crimes by the upper brass, but those things have always happened without unmanned machines as it is."
What the grandparent poster is referring to is the same as what you're call "calculated war crimes by the upper brass". Reduced-cost war makes it easier to declare war. So, the balance of your extremely long post is moot.
The buggest one-day productivity increase I ever experienced in my own coding work was the day I finally stopped trying to use Hungarian Notation. Even now I'm amazed at how much it slowing me down. I got maybe 3 times the work done after the day I ditched that.
"The study... offers evidence that number words are a concept invented by human cultures as they are needed, and not an inherent part of language, Gibson said."
As a mathematician, may I say... "duh".
If you look in our own culture at the evolution of our number system, and the sequential invention of counting numbers > integers > rational numbers > real numbers > complex numbers > etc., it follows the exact same progression.
"There is nothing stopping a studio from pushing their dates back. The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers."
As a former computer game engineer, I'll have to disagree with this part. They reason most game companies run into a hard release date is that they're physically out of money right *now*, to the extent that they can't afford payroll or rent the next month.
"Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene."
The way MMORPG development goes, I do think it's more likely that it's Mythic that's run out of cash, and this is the point where the suits rip their hair hair out and demand income asap. Probably EA has done nothing except given them their last agreed-upon advance check.
It's really way more likely that it's Mythic running out of money than EA. Classic tragedy of computer game companies -- they know how to make stand-alone games, step up to an MMORPG and think they're all set skill-wise, and then get shocked by the time and money it takes, and freak out.
Without being a full-time developer, or terribly invested one way or the other in the licensing issues (I've put the GPL on a couple pieces of code, I bet they've never been used by another person), the first thing I think of when I hear these licenses is something like this:
- BSD ensures freedom of the *producer* of the code to do what they want. - GPL ensures freedom of the *recipient* of the code to do what they want.
This is definitely the most inaccurate headline I've ever seen at Slashdot. The trying-to-save-face Update is also droolingly inaccurate. Others have tried to say it, but I'll reiterate it in different words here:
THE WIRED ARTICLE IS USING THE PHRASE "STRIP HIS POWER" SOLELY AS A METAPHOR.
Congress is not voting on Judge Vaughn Walker in any way, shape, or form. His name doesn't appear in any bill, law, or motion in front of Congress. He just *happens* to be the judge that the warrantless wiretapping suits are in front of in the Northern District of California.
Yes, on Tuesday Congress plans to vote on the intercom wiretapping immunity bill (and it stinks like rotten fish), like they've been planning for some time. And yes, that would mean that the judge then couldn't rule in favor of this lawsuit. But they're not targetting any particular individual, and this is just the exact same story we've been reading about for months now regarding an intercom-immunity bill.
Congress is NOT stripping Judge Walker of any power whatsoever. Congress IS passing a new crappy law that coincidentally affects one of the cases in front of Judge Walker.
"Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.'"
STFU with this bullshit. Just get someone to actually solve my problem. Don't spend cycles getting a robot to figure out my emotional state that you can't do anything about anyway.
"If I were President, I would pardon every single person that was ever arrested for the supposed crime of copyright violation, and i would reply to every law that congress passed at the industry's behest, with a signing statement declaring such law to be unconstitutional and a refusal to enforce."
This is possibly the saddest statement on our political situation I've heard this year. The fact that Bush & Co. have corrupted things so badly that you didn't know the proper action is to VETO a bad law (as opposed to a completely extra-legal, fictitious "signing statement") -- that's really, really sad.
Use of signing statements should be an impeachable offense.
Slashdot Mirror
"How about simply this, guarantee that all quizzes and tests can be made up after hours (before/after class) that were taken in the first half of the semester for a maximum score of 80% of the total points awarded (gotta at least give a small late bloomer penalty)? Higher of the 2 scores will apply. Thoughts there?"
There is work involved for the teacher to create, proctor, and grade makeup tests. Hours are a limited resource. Which would you rather have teachers spend time on: (a) making up duplicate tests for the slackers who failed once, or (b) working on new presentations/feedback to the students who are engaged and attending?
Seems like (a) just makes school even crappier and more boring for smart kids. I call "bad idea".
At first blush, your posts seem reasonable. Then I see the phrase "congress critters" and I am forced to tune the whole thing out. Yucko.
Here's my take, as a former senior software engineer in gaming (for about 6+ years). As a programmer I don't have any certifications or licensing board that I know of. And hell, I *like* taking tests and solving puzzles. So I'm perfectly happy to do that in the context of a job interview.
The thing I had to kick that was much worse are game companies asking you to do programming work at home, before they are willing to talk about any interview. Maybe several days of programing work so you can chuck down the black hole of their HR who may not actually be looking for anyone. I did do that twice (no response either time) and feel kind of stupid about it now. If anyone younger reads this, don't do what I did -- don't even consider spending a single minute doing coding work for any job if someone doesn't schedule an interview first. On-site tests are beautiful and fun and fine.
With one caveat: I had one test that asked to convert a number representation in ASCII to an integer type. Of course, I used the canonical and fast way to do that from my numerical analysis class (convert each character; multiply by 10 each step). But the interviewer didn't understand that, thought it was backwards, and I had to step through a test case to show him why it worked. Didn't get that job, either.
Every 5 minutes? Must be some alien life form. I can barely drag myself to check my email once every 2 days or so. (And that's almost my only contact with the outside world -- no cell phone, no IM, either.)
"The problem is that they put them in legalese, which might as well be japanese for most people."
You know what? Legalese is just English. Everyone can understand this stuff when you point to the sentences in question. It's just that people are too damn lazy to *read it*.
"I know, there are evil rich people who pay 35% and you pay 28% but its not fair they still have more dollars. What has this country come to if we are so filled with spite and envy that we begrudge anyone doing better than us or set limits on how well any one person is allowed to do?"
I guess you're right. I'd be happy to get back to the good old days of the USA, when "the greatest generation" had a top tax bracket of 70%-94% all the way from 1936 to 1981.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States#History_of_progressivity_in_federal_income_tax
"Please give us a hardware-based lockdown solution for software authorization."
If I was a tech-savvy worker in Ohion, I'd run for the hills before volunteering to be legally responsible, or associated in any way, with these buggy voting machine known to malfunction and dump votes.
Although the guy above with the Boston-tea-party-throw-them-from-a-bridge-accidentally had a really good idea, you don't need to be tech-savvy for that (well, other than working knowledge of the theory of gravity)
Does the Panopticon still work, even if it's a result of unintentionally building a prison so shoddy that one of the walls fell down?
Guess we'll find out.
"I have a constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures once inside the United States, but not while entering it. The judges decision sounds nice, but I don't think it will stand."
No, whenever I hear government agencies defend their policy it's on the basis that such searches are "reasonable" at the border (i.e., not unreasonable), not that it's outside the U.S. They're always very very careful to argue that things are "reasonable", because the inside-vs-outside US distinction doesn't appear in the Constitution.
(1) They have a guaranteed, mandatory monopoly forever.
(2) And they don't have to produce anything anymore.
Kill all humans.
I want her sued for everything she's worth. I want her deported to China. I don't want her in my fucking country anymore. I want my America and my Bill of Rights back.
"...That still leaves calculated war crimes by the upper brass, but those things have always happened without unmanned machines as it is."
What the grandparent poster is referring to is the same as what you're call "calculated war crimes by the upper brass". Reduced-cost war makes it easier to declare war. So, the balance of your extremely long post is moot.
Virus writing was part of my assembly & architecture class circa 1990.
The buggest one-day productivity increase I ever experienced in my own coding work was the day I finally stopped trying to use Hungarian Notation. Even now I'm amazed at how much it slowing me down. I got maybe 3 times the work done after the day I ditched that.
"The study... offers evidence that number words are a concept invented by human cultures as they are needed, and not an inherent part of language, Gibson said."
As a mathematician, may I say... "duh".
If you look in our own culture at the evolution of our number system, and the sequential invention of counting numbers > integers > rational numbers > real numbers > complex numbers > etc., it follows the exact same progression.
"There is nothing stopping a studio from pushing their dates back. The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers."
As a former computer game engineer, I'll have to disagree with this part. They reason most game companies run into a hard release date is that they're physically out of money right *now*, to the extent that they can't afford payroll or rent the next month.
"Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene."
The way MMORPG development goes, I do think it's more likely that it's Mythic that's run out of cash, and this is the point where the suits rip their hair hair out and demand income asap. Probably EA has done nothing except given them their last agreed-upon advance check.
It's really way more likely that it's Mythic running out of money than EA. Classic tragedy of computer game companies -- they know how to make stand-alone games, step up to an MMORPG and think they're all set skill-wise, and then get shocked by the time and money it takes, and freak out.
This cycle's all laid out in the book "Developing Online Games" by Mulligan & Petrovsky.
http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Online-Games-Insiders-Nrg-Programming/dp/1592730000
Hey, I like that.
Without being a full-time developer, or terribly invested one way or the other in the licensing issues (I've put the GPL on a couple pieces of code, I bet they've never been used by another person), the first thing I think of when I hear these licenses is something like this:
- BSD ensures freedom of the *producer* of the code to do what they want.
- GPL ensures freedom of the *recipient* of the code to do what they want.
This is definitely the most inaccurate headline I've ever seen at Slashdot. The trying-to-save-face Update is also droolingly inaccurate. Others have tried to say it, but I'll reiterate it in different words here:
THE WIRED ARTICLE IS USING THE PHRASE "STRIP HIS POWER" SOLELY AS A METAPHOR.
Congress is not voting on Judge Vaughn Walker in any way, shape, or form. His name doesn't appear in any bill, law, or motion in front of Congress. He just *happens* to be the judge that the warrantless wiretapping suits are in front of in the Northern District of California.
Yes, on Tuesday Congress plans to vote on the intercom wiretapping immunity bill (and it stinks like rotten fish), like they've been planning for some time. And yes, that would mean that the judge then couldn't rule in favor of this lawsuit. But they're not targetting any particular individual, and this is just the exact same story we've been reading about for months now regarding an intercom-immunity bill.
Congress is NOT stripping Judge Walker of any power whatsoever. Congress IS passing a new crappy law that coincidentally affects one of the cases in front of Judge Walker.
"Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.'"
STFU with this bullshit. Just get someone to actually solve my problem. Don't spend cycles getting a robot to figure out my emotional state that you can't do anything about anyway.
"I thought Slashdot was bad using average in the headline and median in the story..."
"Average" is a category of statistics which can include the mean, median, mode, etc.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
"If I were President, I would pardon every single person that was ever arrested for the supposed crime of copyright violation, and i would reply to every law that congress passed at the industry's behest, with a signing statement declaring such law to be unconstitutional and a refusal to enforce."
This is possibly the saddest statement on our political situation I've heard this year. The fact that Bush & Co. have corrupted things so badly that you didn't know the proper action is to VETO a bad law (as opposed to a completely extra-legal, fictitious "signing statement") -- that's really, really sad.
Use of signing statements should be an impeachable offense.