Apparently nowhere.com belongs to an artist by the name of Nick Phillip. It seems that he has hooked it up to a bank of fax machines to print out the mail bounces that get sent to it due to spammers using that domain name for their return email addrees.
Perhaps someone should contact him and suggest that he sue the BSA for attempted identity theft?
Just stand up for yourself once or twice, and the bullies look for easier targets.
Tried that, didn't work. They just formed bigger gangs and/or attacked me when I was sleeping (it was a boarding school).
The school seemed to think it was character building. The police believed the school when they said the problem was in hand. My parents believed the school when they said it was in hand.
Isn't that covered by 'Planned' since Catholics have to have a baby every time they have sex. Cue gratuitous Monty Python segment and exit stage left singing "Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great, if a sperm is wasted, God get quite irate....."
My father told me, when I was 15, that I owe my existance to a combination of some very loud crickets and the impossibility of easily obtaining contraception in Cairo in 1969. My parents decided to "Risk it".
This explains a lot about my life. I haven't shot up a KFC yet, although I do eat there a lot.
Maybe this is the next/. poll?
I was...
Planned
Unplanned, but my parents have figured out the cause.
Unplanned, and my parents still haven't figured out the cause.
Found under a bush.
Brought into this world by the gentle hands of CowboyNeal.
Apparently (according to today's Metro, a UK national newspaper) shortly after the explosion the NASA/JPL webserver was cracked and the web pages plastered with anti-US and Pro-Iraqi material. Coincidence?
1. No Surface to Air missile can reach above 100k feet.
True of shoulder launched missiles, but I'm not so sure about things like the Aegis SM2's, or fighter launched air-to-air missiles. However, it's safe to say, it's very very unlikely it's a missile.
I'd go with one of:
Deliberate sabotage, possibly by deepcover sleeper agents or Iraqi/al-Queda sympathizers.
Accidental damage/technical failure. The shuttle is a very complex piece of equipment so there's a lot that can go wrong, no matter how careful you are things can still go wrong.
Concealed explosives.
Given the fact that the flight was the first Israeli in space and the current situation wrt Iraq and al-Queda (amongst other organisations) I think terrorism has got to be the first question to be answered. Prove it or rule it out, but answer it one way or the other. Then deal with what ever you turn up. If it was terrorism then deal with the terrorists, if it was a technical failure then find out the cause and make sure it doesn't happen again.
5. This does not bode well for manned space exploration
Agreed. I think we need to replace the shuttle system. It's 30 year old technology.
Airliners over 30 years old still fly. That's not just 30 year old technology, that's planes that were built over 30 years ago. With proper maintenence old vehicles can still work perfectly. Just because the technology is old doesn't mean it's junk. If you can replace it with something better and more reliable then go ahead, until then make the best of what you have.
I will be saying a prayer, I have no other way to be involved in the aftermath and follow up to this disaster. I'll also be hoping that sometime soon there will be a monument to those who have died placed on Mars, or on one of the moons of the outer gas giant planets. Space flight is difficult and dangerous, things worth doing often are.
Firstly I think that you're giving the average user too much credit. Secondly I'd envisage the virus having a small infecting agent that then downloaded what it needed on demand to infect other systems, perhaps using P2P methodology.
The case zero (the initial infection) would probably have to be manually placed. It would then track what other systems are known to the machine it's on and identify them. It would then download, from the source machine, the code it needed to crack into the systems it found (possibly including versions of the infecting agent for other OS's, so an infected Windows machine could infect a Linux machine for example). Each infected machine logs into an IRC channel and advertises itself and what it has interms of exploits and other info. When a new exploit is found the writer can distribute the code to a few of the infected machines via the IRC channel and then those will distribute to the rest of the machines on demand or when ever a machine is idle but connected. If an infected machine locates a victim machine it doesn't know how to crack it can ask for the required exploits on the IRC channel. Very little true AI would be required as all each install needs to do is identify target systems and download the rule sets and codes to crack them. Rule/code sets that haven't been used in a while could be removed to minimise disk space usage and therefore reduce the chance of detection.
Individually the file sizes and downloads could be quite small (tens to hundreds of K) and could even be timed to take place during idle time and to suspend when the machine is in use to resume when it goes idle again.
When you're asleep you move around more than when you're sitting at a terminal/PC/whatever. Also your weight is spread along your full height, not concentrated on your butt and the back of your thighs/knees, which probably helps reduce the chance of DVT.
Don't know if libraries work the same in the US or whereever.tk is, here in the UK (all price coversion approximate)...
It's very common to be able to read a book/magazine/newspaper or listen to a COPYRIGHTED music CD, or watch a COPYRIGHTED DVD, or surf the internet on a rather large pipe all for the low cost of NOTHING at your local library.
Books are free to borrow and you can read any of the magazines/newspapers in the library (so long as you cna pry it from the hands of the OAP who's come in to keep warm and catch a nap but is hanging onto the latest issue of "IEEE News" so it looks likel they're there for a valid reason. Whilst some libraries do have study carrels with CD players they're pretty much impossible to book unless you're a music student on an acredited course and none that I've seen have DVD players. Borrowing a CD generally costs about $1.60-$2 (usually 2 weeks) and borrowing a DVD or video anything up to $5 (usually 1 week). Internet varies from free to $2/hr and you have to fight the 12 year olds downloading porn and $LATEST_PLAYGROUND_CRAZE graphics to use it. Oh, and when you do get on you're sharing a 10Mb pipe with about 500 other people scattered around the various branchs plus library staff (who, due to QoS and similar settings, get a much bigger share of the pipe than the public do)
You want to make an illegal copy of a book, then walk to your local library and use their copy machine and whamo you've got a copy of the book, AND you've violated a copyright law,
All the libraries I've seen charge $0.15 per A4 page (single sided) and have someone watching like a hawk (similar attack pattern to) to make sure no-one exceeds copyright/fair-use bounds in their copying.
The difference between p2p and the library is a lack of hardcore porn.
Depends on how well you know the librarians. If you know them well enough they'll let you into the restricted "Serious Scholars Only" sections.
Also here in the UK a library will typically only get a book, CD or DVD 6 months to a year after it's initial publish date and there'll be very few copies. Usually to get a popular book in it's first year in the library you'll have to make a reservation (costs about $1-$2 per item) and have no chance of renewing it once the loan period is up (have to pay another $1 and wait till your turn comes around again). Bear in mind that we have already paid for all these items through local taxes, the reservation fee probably doesn't even cover the cost of collecting it most of the time.
Given that every text I've seen on XML seems to use XMLing a book as at least one of the examples I don't think there's exactly a shortage of candidate schema designs.
However, I also bought a book that explained what W.I.N.E. is and provided some usage examples at about the same time. Unfortunately, that book is incredibly out of date now and since it was also published in 1999. At this point, it's just s brick. (The W.I.N.E. project changed the way the config files work, so this book is really useless as a reference book)
Surely the advantage, for the readers, of these books is that when something changes the electronic version can be updated to reflect that. To take your example of the WINE book, when the project changed the format of the files someone could have edited the book to add a section on the new format.
How are you going to handle forking of the text? If two different authors both make mods will their versions be merged or left to exist as separate entities? Will there be a CVS (or other source control system) tree of the books?
But there's something that your meatspace filing system has (or at least all the ones I've ever used have) that a HFS doesn't have. That's a metadata index.
When an item is filed in a meatspace filesystem entries are made into an indexing system. Your files may be ordered by an attribute but for each other attribute that you might want to search by there will be an index that tells you where to find the files that match that attribute.
For example if your filesystem stores patient records for a hospital your records will most likely be ordered by an arificial key like 'patient number' to ensure uniqueness. To locate a record by that you would probably either apply some decoding algorithm to the patient number (e.g. first two characters are the cabinet, next character is the drawer, next two are the folder &c) or look it up in an index which will tell you the location of the file. Suppose you then want to see all patients treated by Dr Jones in the last 6 months? You can't use patient number to look that up so you would have a separate index which gives you locations of files for patients treated by a particular doctor with the dates of treatment. And now suppose you want to see the records for patients treated in a particular time period? You could either use the doctor index but check all doctors or have a calendar based index that records when files were updated. And if you wanted to see all records for patients who had reported with certain conditions you'd need an index by condition.
HFSs don't tend to have these extra indexes, the DMS adds them. If you know that the only way anyone could possibly want to access a set of documents is always via the same criteria then you can get away with just a HFS, but such situations are uncommon in real world organisations.
Firstly, IANALecturer, I have done some teaching, mainly technical/IT subjects, to adult learners (mid 20s and onwards) tho'.
I have always found that the best method is to mix teaching styles and be prepared to adjust to the group. When setting assignments I generally make sure that it includes a research element either implicitly or explicitly; just regurgitating what was said in class will not get a good grade, I want to see evidence that the student did at least some reading (most students are part timers in work so not too much reading but at least some). Often a session will start of with a short Socratic session then a lecture or/and demonstration followed by Q&A to re-enforce the material and cover any gaps in the students understanding.
I also make it clear from the start that due to time limitations it's not possible to cover all of the required material in class time, to pass they're going to have to do some self study.
Stephen
Re:The teacher passes responsiblity to student
on
Professors vs. WiFi
·
· Score: 2
Kinda half agreeing, half disagreeing with you here. Ideally the learning process will involve a participation by both tutor and student, that I definately agree with. However if the teaching method used by the tutor is so poor or ill fitting to the students needs that a student can get a better result by surfing the web or hitting the books outside of class then why should the student be compelled to attend sessions that actually have a negative effect on their education by taking up time that could be more usefully spent on other things?
Between tutor and student it is the tutor's participation in the learning process that can be optional. And that's entirely inline with the Twain quote you refer to.
If you don't want to pay attention then simply don't go.
Unfortunately, as has been mentioned elsewhere, some lecturers automatically fail students who don't show up to listen to them drone on. Personally I'd argue that if you have to threaten students with an automatic fail or ejection from the course for not attending lectures that's a sign that you need to do something about the lectures, not the students. Monitor progress through assignments and tutorial sessions, not by counting (sleeping) heads.
Stephen
Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea
on
Professors vs. WiFi
·
· Score: 2
yeah, I can't count the number of times I've had professors try and open up alternative demensions to summon demons to torment me and my friends, and I'm paying these people's salaries!
At Keele the demons were largely metaphorical or induced by over imbibement of alcoholic beverages. There were legends, mainly based around the interest Alistair Crowley had paid to the site, and rumours but little definate. Also our Wiccan/Pagan group was a lot more serious and much less Wannblessedbe than the one in Buffy.
Stephen
Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea
on
Professors vs. WiFi
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That is, part at least, of the point! As an adult (and yeah college students should be considered adults, heck HS Seniors deserve at least some degree of adult treatment) I am responsible for getting the most out of my educational experience at college. If I believe that the best use of my time is not attending a particular lecture and am prepared to justify that then it should be my decision.
At 18 a US college student has a minimum of 12 years of experience of studying, a UK student 14 years. If the primary and secondary educators have done a good enough job then the student should be able to make reasonable decisions as to if they need to attend lectures. I don't see it as the lecturers job to police attendance to sessions where the student could make up the work on their own time. It might be required to attend lab sessions and tutorials, sessions where practical skills must be demonstrated or where progress is checked, but lecturers need to realize that their prefered style of lecture may not be the best method of learning for all their students.
There's an old joke about lectures being the transfer of information from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without lingering in the brains of either. Unfortunately many lecturers, and students, see that as the truth or even a requirement.
If I'm signed on a course because it is a requirement but it's for something I already can do then why should I be made to attend lectures telling me what I already know. As part of an electronics programme I was doing I had to do a course in Pascal programming. Assessment was based on a single programming assignment that had to be completed by 3 weeks after the end of the 10 week course. At the end of the first session I asked what the assignment was (it was to write a program to perform polynomial arithmatic) and by the start of the second I handed in the completed program with fully documented source code and printouts of test series performed. I already knew more about Pascal than I would ever learn on that course and I could look up what I needed to know about Polynomials (I'd never even heard the term before that assignment, and weren't covered on the course anyhow) so I didn't need to attend the course.
Failing a student for non-attendance of lectures is pure abuse of power.
As for universities, grades are the answer. My guess is that these students want to work chat and email in class, yet pull an easy "A" at the end of the semester. When they get a "C", or fail a class, perhaps they will make the right decision. If not, it's evolution in action.
If a student feels they already have the requisite knowlege to get an 'A' why shouldn't they skip class entirely or work on other things in the class so long as they aren't disrupting other students? At the end of the year they'll either get the 'A' and be vindicated or not and have learned a valuable lesson. I've already mentioned elsewhere in this discussion that for one of the courses I did at uni the entire class decided after the first few weeks that their learning experience would be better served by self study than by attending the lectures. Not one of us got below a 'B' (infact there were only a few people didn't get an 'A') mainly because instead of spending 3 hours a week listening to him droning on we just read the material and discussed it in informal sessions in the pub.
Part of the learning experience at college is learning to manage your time. If a student believes that their learning would be better served elsewhere why should they waste time at a lecture (maybe skip lectures in a subject they already know well to spend more time on a subject they are struggling with). If students abuse that then, like you indicated, their grades will reflect that.
Stephen
Re:Maybe if teachers worked with technology instea
on
Professors vs. WiFi
·
· Score: 2
This is college not highschool, a teacher cannot try to blame the students for lack of attention, students pay you with THEIR money so that you can get their attention, these people want to learn and pay to learn, if you arent doing a good job and they think your lecture is a complete waste of time they dont have to pay attention.
I totally agree! At college students are responsible for their own learning so if the lecturer is failing to provide a suitable learning environment then they can't blame the students for not showing up or for doing other things whilst sitting in class and then getting their learning another way (if they choose to not show up and don't make up the learning elsewhere then they, the student, have a problem but that's a separate issue).
One of the things that suprised me, not having attended a US college, about Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the attitude exhibited to the students by the lecturers, dissmissive or even downright hostile. At first I thought it was just the fact that it was fictional but what suprised me even more was talking to friends who had attended, and were still attending, US colleges and being told that that was normal and expected. Seriously, if a UK lecturer tried any of those things then, based on my own experience at University of Keele in North Staffordshire (1989-93), they would be on academic disiplinary charges within days.
I did have some crap lecturers, one's 'lectures' consisted of him reading out the handouts verbatim in a dull monotone. In this case by the 4th week the entire class were just showing up to pick up the hand outs then disapearing off to read them in the Student's Union bar. By the 6th week we had got into the habit of getting together for informal bull sessions after reading to work out what the heck it was all about, leading to a discursive learning method, one of the best courses I ever did actually!
In another course I stopped attending after the 3rd session because it was an area I already knew a lot about. In the exam I got the best grade out of the entire group for that course.
Instead of running your mail server on a PC running Linux or a low - mid range Sun/IBM/HP/whatever box you have to run it on a Beowulf cluster of E10,000/s390/V-Class/Indian Supercomputers. Perfectly scalable, it's just that your hardware and support costs have gone up by several orders of magnitude.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently nowhere.com belongs to an artist by the name of Nick Phillip. It seems that he has hooked it up to a bank of fax machines to print out the mail bounces that get sent to it due to spammers using that domain name for their return email addrees.
Perhaps someone should contact him and suggest that he sue the BSA for attempted identity theft?
Stephen
Tried that, didn't work. They just formed bigger gangs and/or attacked me when I was sleeping (it was a boarding school).
The school seemed to think it was character building. The police believed the school when they said the problem was in hand. My parents believed the school when they said it was in hand.
Stephen
A while back I read the following somewhere:
Seems to have a strong element of truth to it. Surviving the damage can make you realise just how far you can go and still function.
Stephen
How much money did you contribute to the Republican party last year?
Stephen
Isn't that covered by 'Planned' since Catholics have to have a baby every time they have sex. Cue gratuitous Monty Python segment and exit stage left singing "Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great, if a sperm is wasted, God get quite irate....."
Stephen
My father told me, when I was 15, that I owe my existance to a combination of some very loud crickets and the impossibility of easily obtaining contraception in Cairo in 1969. My parents decided to "Risk it".
This explains a lot about my life. I haven't shot up a KFC yet, although I do eat there a lot.
Maybe this is the next /. poll?
I was...
Stephen
Apparently (according to today's Metro, a UK national newspaper) shortly after the explosion the NASA/JPL webserver was cracked and the web pages plastered with anti-US and Pro-Iraqi material. Coincidence?
Stephen
I'd go with one of:
Given the fact that the flight was the first Israeli in space and the current situation wrt Iraq and al-Queda (amongst other organisations) I think terrorism has got to be the first question to be answered. Prove it or rule it out, but answer it one way or the other. Then deal with what ever you turn up. If it was terrorism then deal with the terrorists, if it was a technical failure then find out the cause and make sure it doesn't happen again.
Airliners over 30 years old still fly. That's not just 30 year old technology, that's planes that were built over 30 years ago. With proper maintenence old vehicles can still work perfectly. Just because the technology is old doesn't mean it's junk. If you can replace it with something better and more reliable then go ahead, until then make the best of what you have.
I will be saying a prayer, I have no other way to be involved in the aftermath and follow up to this disaster. I'll also be hoping that sometime soon there will be a monument to those who have died placed on Mars, or on one of the moons of the outer gas giant planets. Space flight is difficult and dangerous, things worth doing often are.
Firstly I think that you're giving the average user too much credit. Secondly I'd envisage the virus having a small infecting agent that then downloaded what it needed on demand to infect other systems, perhaps using P2P methodology.
The case zero (the initial infection) would probably have to be manually placed. It would then track what other systems are known to the machine it's on and identify them. It would then download, from the source machine, the code it needed to crack into the systems it found (possibly including versions of the infecting agent for other OS's, so an infected Windows machine could infect a Linux machine for example). Each infected machine logs into an IRC channel and advertises itself and what it has interms of exploits and other info. When a new exploit is found the writer can distribute the code to a few of the infected machines via the IRC channel and then those will distribute to the rest of the machines on demand or when ever a machine is idle but connected. If an infected machine locates a victim machine it doesn't know how to crack it can ask for the required exploits on the IRC channel. Very little true AI would be required as all each install needs to do is identify target systems and download the rule sets and codes to crack them. Rule/code sets that haven't been used in a while could be removed to minimise disk space usage and therefore reduce the chance of detection.
Individually the file sizes and downloads could be quite small (tens to hundreds of K) and could even be timed to take place during idle time and to suspend when the machine is in use to resume when it goes idle again.
Stephen
When you're asleep you move around more than when you're sitting at a terminal/PC/whatever. Also your weight is spread along your full height, not concentrated on your butt and the back of your thighs/knees, which probably helps reduce the chance of DVT.
Stephen
Weren't we talking about this yesterday?
Stephen
Don't know if libraries work the same in the US or whereever .tk is, here in the UK (all price coversion approximate)...
Books are free to borrow and you can read any of the magazines/newspapers in the library (so long as you cna pry it from the hands of the OAP who's come in to keep warm and catch a nap but is hanging onto the latest issue of "IEEE News" so it looks likel they're there for a valid reason. Whilst some libraries do have study carrels with CD players they're pretty much impossible to book unless you're a music student on an acredited course and none that I've seen have DVD players. Borrowing a CD generally costs about $1.60-$2 (usually 2 weeks) and borrowing a DVD or video anything up to $5 (usually 1 week). Internet varies from free to $2/hr and you have to fight the 12 year olds downloading porn and $LATEST_PLAYGROUND_CRAZE graphics to use it. Oh, and when you do get on you're sharing a 10Mb pipe with about 500 other people scattered around the various branchs plus library staff (who, due to QoS and similar settings, get a much bigger share of the pipe than the public do)
All the libraries I've seen charge $0.15 per A4 page (single sided) and have someone watching like a hawk (similar attack pattern to) to make sure no-one exceeds copyright/fair-use bounds in their copying.
Depends on how well you know the librarians. If you know them well enough they'll let you into the restricted "Serious Scholars Only" sections.
Also here in the UK a library will typically only get a book, CD or DVD 6 months to a year after it's initial publish date and there'll be very few copies. Usually to get a popular book in it's first year in the library you'll have to make a reservation (costs about $1-$2 per item) and have no chance of renewing it once the loan period is up (have to pay another $1 and wait till your turn comes around again). Bear in mind that we have already paid for all these items through local taxes, the reservation fee probably doesn't even cover the cost of collecting it most of the time.
Stephen
Oh well. I thought it was that every 18 months you'd need a machine twice as powerful to run the current version of the Micro$oft OS.
Stephen
Given that every text I've seen on XML seems to use XMLing a book as at least one of the examples I don't think there's exactly a shortage of candidate schema designs.
Stephen
Surely the advantage, for the readers, of these books is that when something changes the electronic version can be updated to reflect that. To take your example of the WINE book, when the project changed the format of the files someone could have edited the book to add a section on the new format.
Stephen
How are you going to handle forking of the text? If two different authors both make mods will their versions be merged or left to exist as separate entities? Will there be a CVS (or other source control system) tree of the books?
Stephen
But there's something that your meatspace filing system has (or at least all the ones I've ever used have) that a HFS doesn't have. That's a metadata index.
When an item is filed in a meatspace filesystem entries are made into an indexing system. Your files may be ordered by an attribute but for each other attribute that you might want to search by there will be an index that tells you where to find the files that match that attribute.
For example if your filesystem stores patient records for a hospital your records will most likely be ordered by an arificial key like 'patient number' to ensure uniqueness. To locate a record by that you would probably either apply some decoding algorithm to the patient number (e.g. first two characters are the cabinet, next character is the drawer, next two are the folder &c) or look it up in an index which will tell you the location of the file. Suppose you then want to see all patients treated by Dr Jones in the last 6 months? You can't use patient number to look that up so you would have a separate index which gives you locations of files for patients treated by a particular doctor with the dates of treatment. And now suppose you want to see the records for patients treated in a particular time period? You could either use the doctor index but check all doctors or have a calendar based index that records when files were updated. And if you wanted to see all records for patients who had reported with certain conditions you'd need an index by condition.
HFSs don't tend to have these extra indexes, the DMS adds them. If you know that the only way anyone could possibly want to access a set of documents is always via the same criteria then you can get away with just a HFS, but such situations are uncommon in real world organisations.
Stephen
Firstly, IANALecturer, I have done some teaching, mainly technical/IT subjects, to adult learners (mid 20s and onwards) tho'.
I have always found that the best method is to mix teaching styles and be prepared to adjust to the group. When setting assignments I generally make sure that it includes a research element either implicitly or explicitly; just regurgitating what was said in class will not get a good grade, I want to see evidence that the student did at least some reading (most students are part timers in work so not too much reading but at least some). Often a session will start of with a short Socratic session then a lecture or/and demonstration followed by Q&A to re-enforce the material and cover any gaps in the students understanding.
I also make it clear from the start that due to time limitations it's not possible to cover all of the required material in class time, to pass they're going to have to do some self study.
Stephen
Kinda half agreeing, half disagreeing with you here. Ideally the learning process will involve a participation by both tutor and student, that I definately agree with. However if the teaching method used by the tutor is so poor or ill fitting to the students needs that a student can get a better result by surfing the web or hitting the books outside of class then why should the student be compelled to attend sessions that actually have a negative effect on their education by taking up time that could be more usefully spent on other things?
Between tutor and student it is the tutor's participation in the learning process that can be optional. And that's entirely inline with the Twain quote you refer to.
Stephen
Unfortunately, as has been mentioned elsewhere, some lecturers automatically fail students who don't show up to listen to them drone on. Personally I'd argue that if you have to threaten students with an automatic fail or ejection from the course for not attending lectures that's a sign that you need to do something about the lectures, not the students. Monitor progress through assignments and tutorial sessions, not by counting (sleeping) heads.
Stephen
At Keele the demons were largely metaphorical or induced by over imbibement of alcoholic beverages. There were legends, mainly based around the interest Alistair Crowley had paid to the site, and rumours but little definate. Also our Wiccan/Pagan group was a lot more serious and much less Wannblessedbe than the one in Buffy.
Stephen
That is, part at least, of the point! As an adult (and yeah college students should be considered adults, heck HS Seniors deserve at least some degree of adult treatment) I am responsible for getting the most out of my educational experience at college. If I believe that the best use of my time is not attending a particular lecture and am prepared to justify that then it should be my decision.
At 18 a US college student has a minimum of 12 years of experience of studying, a UK student 14 years. If the primary and secondary educators have done a good enough job then the student should be able to make reasonable decisions as to if they need to attend lectures. I don't see it as the lecturers job to police attendance to sessions where the student could make up the work on their own time. It might be required to attend lab sessions and tutorials, sessions where practical skills must be demonstrated or where progress is checked, but lecturers need to realize that their prefered style of lecture may not be the best method of learning for all their students.
There's an old joke about lectures being the transfer of information from the lecturer's notes to the student's notes without lingering in the brains of either. Unfortunately many lecturers, and students, see that as the truth or even a requirement.
If I'm signed on a course because it is a requirement but it's for something I already can do then why should I be made to attend lectures telling me what I already know. As part of an electronics programme I was doing I had to do a course in Pascal programming. Assessment was based on a single programming assignment that had to be completed by 3 weeks after the end of the 10 week course. At the end of the first session I asked what the assignment was (it was to write a program to perform polynomial arithmatic) and by the start of the second I handed in the completed program with fully documented source code and printouts of test series performed. I already knew more about Pascal than I would ever learn on that course and I could look up what I needed to know about Polynomials (I'd never even heard the term before that assignment, and weren't covered on the course anyhow) so I didn't need to attend the course.
Failing a student for non-attendance of lectures is pure abuse of power.
Stephen
If a student feels they already have the requisite knowlege to get an 'A' why shouldn't they skip class entirely or work on other things in the class so long as they aren't disrupting other students? At the end of the year they'll either get the 'A' and be vindicated or not and have learned a valuable lesson. I've already mentioned elsewhere in this discussion that for one of the courses I did at uni the entire class decided after the first few weeks that their learning experience would be better served by self study than by attending the lectures. Not one of us got below a 'B' (infact there were only a few people didn't get an 'A') mainly because instead of spending 3 hours a week listening to him droning on we just read the material and discussed it in informal sessions in the pub.
Part of the learning experience at college is learning to manage your time. If a student believes that their learning would be better served elsewhere why should they waste time at a lecture (maybe skip lectures in a subject they already know well to spend more time on a subject they are struggling with). If students abuse that then, like you indicated, their grades will reflect that.
Stephen
I totally agree! At college students are responsible for their own learning so if the lecturer is failing to provide a suitable learning environment then they can't blame the students for not showing up or for doing other things whilst sitting in class and then getting their learning another way (if they choose to not show up and don't make up the learning elsewhere then they, the student, have a problem but that's a separate issue).
One of the things that suprised me, not having attended a US college, about Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the attitude exhibited to the students by the lecturers, dissmissive or even downright hostile. At first I thought it was just the fact that it was fictional but what suprised me even more was talking to friends who had attended, and were still attending, US colleges and being told that that was normal and expected. Seriously, if a UK lecturer tried any of those things then, based on my own experience at University of Keele in North Staffordshire (1989-93), they would be on academic disiplinary charges within days.
I did have some crap lecturers, one's 'lectures' consisted of him reading out the handouts verbatim in a dull monotone. In this case by the 4th week the entire class were just showing up to pick up the hand outs then disapearing off to read them in the Student's Union bar. By the 6th week we had got into the habit of getting together for informal bull sessions after reading to work out what the heck it was all about, leading to a discursive learning method, one of the best courses I ever did actually!
In another course I stopped attending after the 3rd session because it was an area I already knew a lot about. In the exam I got the best grade out of the entire group for that course.
Stephen
Instead of running your mail server on a PC running Linux or a low - mid range Sun/IBM/HP/whatever box you have to run it on a Beowulf cluster of E10,000/s390/V-Class/Indian Supercomputers. Perfectly scalable, it's just that your hardware and support costs have gone up by several orders of magnitude.
Stephen