(It is a horrible site, not only because it discriminates against the visually impaired, but also because it uses Java and image-navigation which make it difficult to be viewed by folks with older computers, slow connections, etc.)
If this company will not listen to their employees, they may pay attention to outside opinions. Of course, if we could convince them that they are losing potential clients, that would be the most effective strategy, though I am not sure how many of us here could cconvince them of that...;-)
Has anyone notified some of the associations involved in rights for the blind (National Federation of the Blind)? Certainly, the Aventis site will not be Bobby approved!
Ah, the C64. Sometimes I miss the old games I used to play (maybe I should look for another C64 emulator - I didn't have much success last time I tried one, a couple of years ago.) Our old Atari game system probably influenced me, too... Yes, we should definitely get 'em while their young!;-)
It's hard for me to really know the extent of female programmers who are involved in the community... sadly, I don't know any! Myself, I made a bit of a career change, and have been spending more time trying to get my job done, and learn as much as possible. I hope to have more free time Real Soon Now.
I do enjoy the coding, though. I love that feeling when you are coding and it all makes sense - you lose track of time, and almost feel like you are "one" with the computer... I like the logic, the problem-solving, the cool toys. (Oh, I am such a geek...)
Anyhow, that's just my POV - I can't speak for "my kind"...:-)
Another organization that has a mandate of trying to encourage girls/women in following interests in IT is SWIFT (Supporting Women in Information Technology). They have some girl-oriented games, and a lot of information about issues facing women in computer science and engineering. (Their "Virtual Family" is an introduction to Java programming - I got to present it to several sessions of Grade 9 girls in November, who seemed to really enjoy working through the tutorial!)
I'd be bored to tears if I had to discuss fashion trends with my coworkers!:-P
I am still trying to figure out whether I am an anomoly being a (happy) female computer geek or if I've just been lucky enough to manage to escape or overcome some of the societal pressures that apparently discourage females from going into some of the engineering/technical fields. My parents were cool and encouraged me to play with science-related toys, and nobody seemed too surprised when I started programming in BASIC on our Commodore 64, so I guess the stage was set before I hit those nasty peer-pressure years!
At any rate, so long as my coworkers treat me like a human being, and accept that I can do my job, I'll be happy (even if I am the only female programmer). Maybe I am lucky, but so far people have overtly appreciated my programming skills and my interpersonal skills (which may be slightly better than those of the other programmers).
Anyhow, any additional skills a programmer brings to the table can be considered assets, so I guess we should encourage women to value their other skills. But we should encourage men to do that, too. When I think about women-in-IT, I am much more interested in encouraging younger (pre-teen?) girls to explore science and technology despite the somewhat negative perceptions about the 'geekiness' of it all.
Maybe I am missing something, but how would the UDP (which will go into effect on the 18th, and involves USENET, not email, AFAICT) affect you getting your business emails???
I am also paying $40/month for @Home. An extra ip address is another $10. Sometimes the service is good, occasionally it is terrible. When I own my own home, I'll probably get wired for DSL... In the meantime, I am looking for an email address to complain to @Home about this UDP. I could just use my Deja account, but figure I should make a point...
According to Steve Wozniak's website comments area, "Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology". They may have "given away" their GUI concept, but they did so willingly and got something in return...
My experience ordering online from Thinkgeek and Copyleft was great! I also live in Canada, and both my orders arrived well before Christmas! I was very happy ordering from the Geekware vendors!
Unfortunately, a friend of mine ordered from Archie McPhee, and has yet to see his order... He ordered back in early November, I think.
I would have to agree with the Futurama observations! Futurama is the one show each week I try not to miss...
In terms of pre-80s sci-fi, I can't say I totally agree. I think some sci-fi is very dated, irrelevant and doesn't push the boundaries anymore. However, I think that there are many stories/novels that deal with issues that remain relevant today. Like other books, if the story is good, the appeal endures (IMO). (I still read some Asimov, Bradbury, Herbert, Wyndham, and am amazed that the stories are still relevant and captivating, even if some of the details are dated.) In a lot of sci-fi, the stories are based on societal and relationship themes, which seem to hold up reasonably well for the most part.
When I first read "Neuromancer", I thought it was an incredible book. I find it interesting that when I re-read it a while ago, I was much more critical of it. (This may have to do with the fact that I have learned a lot more about computers in this time, and that cyberpunk has been around for a while...) Anyhow, I think that anything written some time ago may be regarded as "dated", depending on your perspective.
I am embarrassed for scientists everywhere, when one of them makes a statement like this:
'Scientists are not sure yet how long frozen embryos can be kept, but Dresser said they might be good for hundreds of thousands of years. "If this technology had been available during the age of the dinosaurs, we might have dinosaurs today," she said. '
Now I have a mental image of dinosaurs running around in lab coats, freezing their own embryos to forestall extinction! Or would that have been the little rodent mammals harvesting the saurian embryos?;-)
South Park clips in Shockwave have been available at Shockwave.com for a while now... Anyone know what the deal was before? Is this current deal for brand new SPs that won't be shown on TV or what?
I think if you watch your own karma, you can see the effects of meta moderation... i.e. if your karma increases a point or two (without you having had a post moderated up), you know people felt your moderations were fair, and that the converse is true if you go down a point or two.
However, right now it is pretty difficult to know WHICH of your moderations were meta moderated in either direction. Not much help if you really want to know what the meta moderators liked and disliked.
I also have some fears about meta moderation... I suspect that the good meta moderators will look at the original articles and other posts to gain some context and perspective, but it is just too easy to click away without taking the time to really think about it.
I suspect in a lot of cases early posts tend to catch the eye of eager moderators, who perhaps both moderate the post up at almost the same time (i.e. one doesn't see that the post has already been moderated up).
Another moderator can always moderate the post down... although this may not be the best use of moderator points, it appears to be one of the intrinsic problems with the current moderation system.
I do agree that a lot of good comments later in stories do not seem to attract the notice of moderators... not sure how to get them to read that far, though! Sometimes it seems that/. is just too popular these days, and it is getting increasingly difficult to sift through the chaff to get to the wheat!
My letter(with obvious influences from Scott's letter):
Please direct this message to the corporate officers and lawyers who work for/at etoys.com.
Much of my Christmas shopping will be done online this year. However, I will NOT be buying from eToys, in protest against the current lawsuit pending against the owners of "etoy.com". I will be sharing information about this petty lawsuit with my friends and family.
The world wide web is not the exclusive property of US businesses. eToys may have the financial clout to intimidate smaller organizations, but this does not mean that such intimidation is morally or legally correct. Given the guidelines at the ICANN site (http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm ),it appears your lawsuit is on very shaky ground.
I hope that the courts rectify this situation in favour of etoy.com. Nonetheless, your actions have ensured that I will never be a customer of your company.
If I am at home, I would much prefer to watch a real TV... But this is quite nice for when I am at work (with our T1), trying to finish up some stuff, but I want to catch a show...
Unfortunately, daytime TV pretty much sucks no matter where you watch it (unless you are a fan of children's programming or those trashy talk shows)! Actually, now that I think about it, that is probably a Good Thing - I don't really need another distraction during my work day!:-7
When I buy something on my credit card, I am aware that someone is probably warehousing this information. If I wanted to keep this information private, I would use cash. When I use my "Airmiles" card, it is with the knowledge that companies are giving me something (airmiles) in return for the consumer tracking info. This isn't hidden. I can bypass this tracking by not getting an Airmiles card, or by not using it.
The companies that have been found to send info without your permission (RealJukebox, ID, Comet) are only admitting that they do this AFTER the fact. I suspect that there are many other programs out there doing the same thing, only nobody has discovered what is happening yet. I doubt very much that most people downloading cute cursor software would even consider the fact that using the software might yield data for consumer tracking. If people were aware of this (perhaps soon they will be!) they might think twice about downloading it.
Most areas REQUIRE teachers to get continuing education. So many credit hours every so many years. I don't doubt that may be true where you live, but it isn't true everywhere (both my parents were teachers, too, and neither of them ever HAD to take any continuing education). The only teachers I know who continued to take classes did so in order to be promoted (i.e. to administration or at least to the next pay tier).
How many businesses would get away with requiring an employee to take a class AND work a full day? Actually, I think in some circumstances it is fair. I realize many people do not enjoy continuous learning (I took a job that REQUIRES it, because I do enjoy learning), but in some cases it really does help people do their jobs well. It seems sad to me that people expect medical and technical professionals to be up to date, but not the professionals who are educating their children.
Also, people seem to be of the opinion that "wire up the school, and presto! Magic Learning!" You need to spend a fair amount of time teaching the teachers how to wisely use the new resource, and even afterwards, remember that this is only a resource, not the Super Magic Teacher Replacement. Actually, my statement was simply that teachers would have another resource to help them get access to current information. I would never suggest that computers could replace human teachers! You have a point about training, and again it is an unfortunate likelihood that little or no funds will be made available for this type of support.
I mentioned this subject to a scientist friend of mine who devotes much of his (limited) free time to promoting science education. He said:
"There are lots of ways to stay current, ie workshops by science networks, in-class visits by scientists (all things that we are doing) but MOST teachers don't want to use them and take the tiny bit of initiative. Which is very frustrating for networks like ourselves - here we are a free, useful service and only a few teachers are using us."
Now you may not see a need for teachers to make any additional efforts outside of their immediate job descriptions, and you have every right to that opinion. I suspect that teachers who really care about teaching DO try to keep themselves informed, just as many of us who care about our own work take steps to do the same. But the fact that this "Ask Slashdot" question was posed suggests that there is a concern about the teachers out there who are teaching out-of-date material.
For most professionals, there is an impetus to keep up-to-date on current material. Many health-care professionals (nurses, pharmacists, etc) are forced to write exams or take courses to keep certification. For other professionals, there is usually encouragement to take continuing education courses, or learn on your own. (In some fields you need to do so just to remain competitive!)
I must admit it is probably difficult to teach current information when you are using 15-year-old teaching aids. And, in many cases, teachers tend to be overworked (during the school year, anyhow) and perhaps not paid as well as many other professionals, which may be a factor in the reluctance to do additional upgrading work. I think as more schools become wired, it should at least give teachers easy access to more of this information.
Unfortunately, at the moment, only certain teachers will take advantage of this technology. (They are probably the same ones who would have sought information elsewhere, too.) Without some sort of regulation about continuing education or recertification, there is no guarantee that teachers will keep themselves up to date.
Interesting... they think if they ignore ecommerce, it will go away?
Recently I was disappointed to see how few local malls had webpages of their own, listing what stores were in the mall. This would have saved me some time (I was looking for a particular item I knew would be sold at a particular store.) Buying the item online wasn't really an option. The malls that were embracing the web got my attention, and made it more likely that I would visit them in the future.
Ecommerce is probably here to stay. However, not everyone will use it, and even those of us who are not afraid to use SSL ordering will still be using the real-life mall for some things. FUD tactics like this one will only alienate the informed consumer.
YS
Totally OT - Cheesecake ads
on
Copyright!
·
· Score: 1
According to this/. poll, only 5% of/. readers are female. (The demographics may have altered since last February, of course.) But the advertisers are probably aware that the readership here is primarily male, and make some assumptions as to what will get their attention!;-)
Anyhow, as a chick, I ignore those ads. (ZDNet shows them all the time.) Certainly, they may be denigrating to women - but then again, how many women are going to buy from them? (I should mention I have bought from Copyleft and Thinkgeek, who have more tasteful banner ads on/., so companies like X10 are losing a chance to get my business.) I don't think I care if/. runs the cheesecake ads... but I won't be clicking on those ad banners!!!
The lazy students/profs will always find a way to avoid doing their own work. Before use of the WWW became commonplace, students would bribe other students to write their papers; profs got grad students to do their marking for them. (Hmmm... I am wondering if bot-graded papers might be graded more fairly than papers graded by a cadre of grad students!)
Although the technology may exist to allow profs to grade papers via the machine, I doubt that many professors will choose to use such methods. There are always exceptions of course, but most professors (IMHO) care too much about the subject matter, and their own professional reputation to rely on a bot to do their jobs. (Students, meanwhile, are often taking a course because it is required, not for interest's sake - the class means very little to them beyond being a hurdle in their scholastic career.) If a class size is too large for a prof to handle a huge pile of essay-type questions, there are other alternatives... giving different types of questions, for example.
The FUD towards technology that I have seen exhibited by many professors here also suggests a large number of profs won't trust a computer to mark for them...:-)
There are so many things that are disturbing about these badges:
a) Constant identification of humans by ID number b) Use of the SSN for the ID number c) Involuntary advertising for Pepsi
The new policy was instituted in response to the numerous shootings at schools around the country.
In the recent school shootings, weren't the shooters students of those schools? In what possible way would these ID badges have prevented the attacks? I saw no other possible reasons for the badges given in the article - except possibly the advertising revenue gained from Pepsi for slapping their logo onto all those units of their target demographic! Ugh, what won't people sell out these days?
All the more reason for home-schooling your kids, methinks!
I currently subscribe to @Home... and have been wrestling with the Cable modem/DSL dilemma for a while. For most of what I do at home, cable is great - except for the rather frequent outages! I get the impression that @Home (at least here in Calgary, via Shaw/Rogers Cable) is oversubscribed, and they do not have enough support in place. Can anyone else confirm/deny this?
There are a couple of options if I want to go DSL... but they are *pricey*. Until my cable performance degenerates until a point where it isn't worth keeping it, or I really need to set up a server at home, I probably won't switch. (Of course, I am hoping DSL prices will drop a little by that time!)
Slashdot Mirror
... make your opinions known!
... ;-)
(It is a horrible site, not only because it discriminates against the visually impaired, but also because it uses Java and image-navigation which make it difficult to be viewed by folks with older computers, slow connections, etc.)
If this company will not listen to their employees, they may pay attention to outside opinions. Of course, if we could convince them that they are losing potential clients, that would be the most effective strategy, though I am not sure how many of us here could cconvince them of that
Has anyone notified some of the associations involved in rights for the blind (National Federation of the Blind)? Certainly, the Aventis site will not be Bobby approved!
YS
Ah, the C64. Sometimes I miss the old games I used to play (maybe I should look for another C64 emulator - I didn't have much success last time I tried one, a couple of years ago.) Our old Atari game system probably influenced me, too ... Yes, we should definitely get 'em while their young! ;-)
... sadly, I don't know any! Myself, I made a bit of a career change, and have been spending more time trying to get my job done, and learn as much as possible. I hope to have more free time Real Soon Now.
... I like the logic, the problem-solving, the cool toys. (Oh, I am such a geek ...)
... :-)
It's hard for me to really know the extent of female programmers who are involved in the community
I do enjoy the coding, though. I love that feeling when you are coding and it all makes sense - you lose track of time, and almost feel like you are "one" with the computer
Anyhow, that's just my POV - I can't speak for "my kind"
YS
If you're interested, here's their site:
YS
I'd be bored to tears if I had to discuss fashion trends with my coworkers! :-P
I am still trying to figure out whether I am an anomoly being a (happy) female computer geek or if I've just been lucky enough to manage to escape or overcome some of the societal pressures that apparently discourage females from going into some of the engineering/technical fields. My parents were cool and encouraged me to play with science-related toys, and nobody seemed too surprised when I started programming in BASIC on our Commodore 64, so I guess the stage was set before I hit those nasty peer-pressure years!
At any rate, so long as my coworkers treat me like a human being, and accept that I can do my job, I'll be happy (even if I am the only female programmer). Maybe I am lucky, but so far people have overtly appreciated my programming skills and my interpersonal skills (which may be slightly better than those of the other programmers).
Anyhow, any additional skills a programmer brings to the table can be considered assets, so I guess we should encourage women to value their other skills. But we should encourage men to do that, too. When I think about women-in-IT, I am much more interested in encouraging younger (pre-teen?) girls to explore science and technology despite the somewhat negative perceptions about the 'geekiness' of it all.
YS
Maybe I am missing something, but how would the UDP (which will go into effect on the 18th, and involves USENET, not email, AFAICT) affect you getting your business emails???
YS
I am also paying $40/month for @Home. An extra ip address is another $10. ... ...
Sometimes the service is good, occasionally it is terrible.
When I own my own home, I'll probably get wired for DSL
In the meantime, I am looking for an email address to complain to @Home about this UDP. I could just use my Deja account, but figure I should make a point
YS
According to Steve Wozniak's website comments area, "Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology". They may have "given away" their GUI concept, but they did so willingly and got something in return ...
YS
Unfortunately, a friend of mine ordered from Archie McPhee, and has yet to see his order ... He ordered back in early November, I think.
YS
I would have to agree with the Futurama observations! Futurama is the one show each week I try not to miss ...
...) Anyhow, I think that anything written some time ago may be regarded as "dated", depending on your perspective.
... ;-)
In terms of pre-80s sci-fi, I can't say I totally agree. I think some sci-fi is very dated, irrelevant and doesn't push the boundaries anymore. However, I think that there are many stories/novels that deal with issues that remain relevant today. Like other books, if the story is good, the appeal endures (IMO). (I still read some Asimov, Bradbury, Herbert, Wyndham, and am amazed that the stories are still relevant and captivating, even if some of the details are dated.) In a lot of sci-fi, the stories are based on societal and relationship themes, which seem to hold up reasonably well for the most part.
When I first read "Neuromancer", I thought it was an incredible book. I find it interesting that when I re-read it a while ago, I was much more critical of it. (This may have to do with the fact that I have learned a lot more about computers in this time, and that cyberpunk has been around for a while
This is a *highly* subjective topic, tho
YS
I am embarrassed for scientists everywhere, when one of them makes a statement like this:
;-)
'Scientists are not sure yet how long frozen embryos can be kept, but Dresser said they might be good for hundreds of thousands of years.
"If this technology had been available during the age of the dinosaurs, we might have dinosaurs today," she said. '
Now I have a mental image of dinosaurs running around in lab coats, freezing their own embryos to forestall extinction! Or would that have been the little rodent mammals harvesting the saurian embryos?
YS
South Park clips in Shockwave have been available at Shockwave.com for a while now ... Anyone know what the deal was before? Is this current deal for brand new SPs that won't be shown on TV or what?
YS
I think if you watch your own karma, you can see the effects of meta moderation ... i.e. if your karma increases a point or two (without you having had a post moderated up), you know people felt your moderations were fair, and that the converse is true if you go down a point or two.
... I suspect that the good meta moderators will look at the original articles and other posts to gain some context and perspective, but it is just too easy to click away without taking the time to really think about it.
However, right now it is pretty difficult to know WHICH of your moderations were meta moderated in either direction. Not much help if you really want to know what the meta moderators liked and disliked.
I also have some fears about meta moderation
YS
I suspect in a lot of cases early posts tend to catch the eye of eager moderators, who perhaps both moderate the post up at almost the same time (i.e. one doesn't see that the post has already been moderated up).
... although this may not be the best use of moderator points, it appears to be one of the intrinsic problems with the current moderation system.
... not sure how to get them to read that far, though! Sometimes it seems that /. is just too popular these days, and it is getting increasingly difficult to sift through the chaff to get to the wheat!
Another moderator can always moderate the post down
I do agree that a lot of good comments later in stories do not seem to attract the notice of moderators
YS
Well, it is nice to see that someone fixed that little bug, and quickly!
:-)
YS
I just have to test this, even if it will add those nasty karma points ... ;-)
YS
My letter(with obvious influences from Scott's letter):
m ),it appears your lawsuit is on very shaky ground.
Please direct this message to the corporate officers and lawyers who work for/at etoys.com.
Much of my Christmas shopping will be done online this year. However, I will NOT be buying from eToys, in protest against the current lawsuit pending against the owners of "etoy.com". I will be sharing information about this petty lawsuit with my friends and family.
The world wide web is not the exclusive property of US businesses. eToys may have the financial clout to intimidate smaller organizations, but this does not mean that such intimidation is morally or legally correct. Given the guidelines at the ICANN site (http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.ht
I hope that the courts rectify this situation in favour of etoy.com. Nonetheless, your actions have ensured that I will never be a customer of your company.
Sincerely,
(My real name)
If I am at home, I would much prefer to watch a real TV ... But this is quite nice for when I am at work (with our T1), trying to finish up some stuff, but I want to catch a show ...
:-7
Unfortunately, daytime TV pretty much sucks no matter where you watch it (unless you are a fan of children's programming or those trashy talk shows)! Actually, now that I think about it, that is probably a Good Thing - I don't really need another distraction during my work day!
YS
When I buy something on my credit card, I am aware that someone is probably warehousing this information. If I wanted to keep this information private, I would use cash. When I use my "Airmiles" card, it is with the knowledge that companies are giving me something (airmiles) in return for the consumer tracking info. This isn't hidden. I can bypass this tracking by not getting an Airmiles card, or by not using it.
The companies that have been found to send info without your permission (RealJukebox, ID, Comet) are only admitting that they do this AFTER the fact. I suspect that there are many other programs out there doing the same thing, only nobody has discovered what is happening yet. I doubt very much that most people downloading cute cursor software would even consider the fact that using the software might yield data for consumer tracking. If people were aware of this (perhaps soon they will be!) they might think twice about downloading it.
YS
I don't doubt that may be true where you live, but it isn't true everywhere (both my parents were teachers, too, and neither of them ever HAD to take any continuing education). The only teachers I know who continued to take classes did so in order to be promoted (i.e. to administration or at least to the next pay tier).
How many businesses would get away with requiring an employee to take a class AND work a full day?
Actually, I think in some circumstances it is fair. I realize many people do not enjoy continuous learning (I took a job that REQUIRES it, because I do enjoy learning), but in some cases it really does help people do their jobs well. It seems sad to me that people expect medical and technical professionals to be up to date, but not the professionals who are educating their children.
Also, people seem to be of the opinion that "wire up the school, and presto! Magic Learning!" You need to spend a fair amount of time teaching the teachers how to wisely use the new resource, and even afterwards, remember that this is only a resource, not the Super Magic Teacher Replacement.
Actually, my statement was simply that teachers would have another resource to help them get access to current information. I would never suggest that computers could replace human teachers! You have a point about training, and again it is an unfortunate likelihood that little or no funds will be made available for this type of support.
I mentioned this subject to a scientist friend of mine who devotes much of his (limited) free time to promoting science education. He said:
Now you may not see a need for teachers to make any additional efforts outside of their immediate job descriptions, and you have every right to that opinion. I suspect that teachers who really care about teaching DO try to keep themselves informed, just as many of us who care about our own work take steps to do the same. But the fact that this "Ask Slashdot" question was posed suggests that there is a concern about the teachers out there who are teaching out-of-date material.
For most professionals, there is an impetus to keep up-to-date on current material. Many health-care professionals (nurses, pharmacists, etc) are forced to write exams or take courses to keep certification. For other professionals, there is usually encouragement to take continuing education courses, or learn on your own. (In some fields you need to do so just to remain competitive!)
I must admit it is probably difficult to teach current information when you are using 15-year-old teaching aids. And, in many cases, teachers tend to be overworked (during the school year, anyhow) and perhaps not paid as well as many other professionals, which may be a factor in the reluctance to do additional upgrading work. I think as more schools become wired, it should at least give teachers easy access to more of this information.
Unfortunately, at the moment, only certain teachers will take advantage of this technology. (They are probably the same ones who would have sought information elsewhere, too.) Without some sort of regulation about continuing education or recertification, there is no guarantee that teachers will keep themselves up to date.
YS
Interesting ... they think if they ignore ecommerce, it will go away?
Recently I was disappointed to see how few local malls had webpages of their own, listing what stores were in the mall. This would have saved me some time (I was looking for a particular item I knew would be sold at a particular store.) Buying the item online wasn't really an option. The malls that were embracing the web got my attention, and made it more likely that I would visit them in the future.
Ecommerce is probably here to stay. However, not everyone will use it, and even those of us who are not afraid to use SSL ordering will still be using the real-life mall for some things. FUD tactics like this one will only alienate the informed consumer.
YS
According to this /. poll, only 5% of /. readers are female. (The demographics may have altered since last February, of course.) But the advertisers are probably aware that the readership here is primarily male, and make some assumptions as to what will get their attention! ;-)
/., so companies like X10 are losing a chance to get my business.) I don't think I care if /. runs the cheesecake ads ... but I won't be clicking on those ad banners!!!
Anyhow, as a chick, I ignore those ads. (ZDNet shows them all the time.) Certainly, they may be denigrating to women - but then again, how many women are going to buy from them? (I should mention I have bought from Copyleft and Thinkgeek, who have more tasteful banner ads on
YS
The lazy students/profs will always find a way to avoid doing their own work. Before use of the WWW became commonplace, students would bribe other students to write their papers; profs got grad students to do their marking for them. (Hmmm ... I am wondering if bot-graded papers might be graded more fairly than papers graded by a cadre of grad students!)
... giving different types of questions, for example.
... :-)
Although the technology may exist to allow profs to grade papers via the machine, I doubt that many professors will choose to use such methods. There are always exceptions of course, but most professors (IMHO) care too much about the subject matter, and their own professional reputation to rely on a bot to do their jobs. (Students, meanwhile, are often taking a course because it is required, not for interest's sake - the class means very little to them beyond being a hurdle in their scholastic career.) If a class size is too large for a prof to handle a huge pile of essay-type questions, there are other alternatives
The FUD towards technology that I have seen exhibited by many professors here also suggests a large number of profs won't trust a computer to mark for them
YS
There are so many things that are disturbing about these badges:
a) Constant identification of humans by ID number
b) Use of the SSN for the ID number
c) Involuntary advertising for Pepsi
The new policy was instituted in response to the numerous shootings at schools around the country.
In the recent school shootings, weren't the shooters students of those schools? In what possible way would these ID badges have prevented the attacks? I saw no other possible reasons for the badges given in the article - except possibly the advertising revenue gained from Pepsi for slapping their logo onto all those units of their target demographic! Ugh, what won't people sell out these days?
All the more reason for home-schooling your kids, methinks!
YS
I currently subscribe to @Home ... and have been wrestling with the Cable modem/DSL dilemma for a while. For most of what I do at home, cable is great - except for the rather frequent outages! I get the impression that @Home (at least here in Calgary, via Shaw/Rogers Cable) is oversubscribed, and they do not have enough support in place. Can anyone else confirm/deny this?
... but they are *pricey*. Until my cable performance degenerates until a point where it isn't worth keeping it, or I really need to set up a server at home, I probably won't switch. (Of course, I am hoping DSL prices will drop a little by that time!)
There are a couple of options if I want to go DSL
YS