This is actually something that universities often complain about. I live in Canada, so the majority of the money a university receives is from the government. However, tuition fees are becoming an increasingly significant portion of the funding, and tuition fees are on the rise. Students begin to view the degree as an end product rather than as a learning process. In essence, they are paying for a degree from a reputable university, learning be damned. This brings with it a number of difficult to solve problems namely:
1) grade inflation - the customer is always right, and students are education customers, so to keep them pleased we give them all A's and B's. There is documented evidence that the average grades given out in university classes is on the rise. If you have time and you care to read it, there's a book called "Ivory Tower Blues" that gives far more detail than a slashdot post ever could. (Be forewarned - for a book written by two academics I was expecting something a little better written and researched, and a little less biased towards their own university, but it's a start I guess. )
2)Students working and spending less time on school work. This would probably be less problematic in high school, but might affect poorer students who want to attend a higher-cost school.
3)The reputation of a school being tied to price. No jokes, one of the arguments the president of our university gave for raising tuition fees was that students, particularly out-of-province or international students without direct knowledge of our university funding system, would assume we were a wal-mart university if we kept costs low. We had to raise them to look like we were the same caliber as other universities in the area. On the flip side of that, another university in our area had a extremely well-regarded engineering program, so they just raised the fees for engineering students because they could. Every year the fees went up, but with very little to show for it. It becomes this insane cycle of raising fees to look good, then raising fees because you look good.
Re:This is why I don't like Master Chief/Solid Sna
on
Second Person
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I wasn't trying to be subtle. I'm female. That's really not the point. I was actually thinking back to another slashdot discussion here on MMOs banning people playing different gendered characters. There was a thread in there where a user commented that he didn't feel like he was deceiving anyone because he didn't think of the character as himself - it was just something he was controlling. It wasn't until then that I realized that I think of my two toons differently. That's all. That's where it was coming from. Like I said, it might not even be the gender thing - could just be that one is my main.
Re:This is why I don't like Master Chief/Solid Sna
on
Second Person
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Strangely enough, I find that sometimes I think of myself as the character, but sometimes I don't. I play WoW, and my main toon is roughly human looking and the same gender as me. When I'm playing on that toon, I find I'll say things like "I need blah", or "I'm almost level blah". When I'm playing on my alt, who is male and looks nothing like a human (giant bull), I find I tend to think of him as just something I'm controlling. So, I'll say things like "Shiftly is almost level blah", or "Shiftly just got a new blah". Maybe it's the look thing, maybe it's because one's my main...who knows. Anyone else find that?
I would care if it's waterproof, even if I do have to pay a premium for it. Water death seems to claim most of my phones, and paying more for a waterproof one just means that I won't be paying for a different phone when I drop mine in the lake or leave it too close to the sink.
What actually surprises me though is not that they have waterproof phones in Japan, but that we DON'T have waterproof phones yet here. I mean, we can make waterproof cameras that can actually be USED under water, but we don't yet have a phone that can land in a puddle and come out alive? Come on now. Of course, if the phone was waterproof then they would probably sell fewer phones. Water death is probably a good source of phone-company income. I mean, if your camera isn't waterproof and gets fried, it's feasible to just let it slide and not buy another one. Not really the same thing with a phone since you're probably stuck paying the contract anyway.
It seems that the number of religious scientists is not insignificant. Greg Graffin's Phd thesis looked at the religious beliefs of scientists and found that many were religious, but that they tended to approach religion slightly differently than people not in the field.
http://www.cornellevolutionproject.org/
Why would such a thing be unsuitable? There have already been robotic surgeries done using tools with only video and no haptic feedback at all. I'm just curious why you think this would not be used for a real surgery.
I can see what you're getting at here, but I think it's a bit more complex than that. The studies were unpublished, and hence not reviewed. The inclination would be that the results of a study that is not published in a peer review journal are not known to be trustworthy. However, it is fairly routine for companies to undertake significant studies and not publish the results, particularly if they are not positive.
A couple of years ago, Nancy Olivieri came to our university and gave a talk on company sponsored research in an academic setting. One of the things she talked about a lot was registering or somehow forcing the results of university-backed clinical trials to be published. That's hard enough as it is, but how do you force company-only studies to be published? Or would you even want to? How can you make a company write up and publish data it knows is only going to hurt it?
It wasn't quite a semi, but my old kyocera phone got run over a few times and kept on ticking. I dropped it in the middle of the road during a rainstorm. When I came back ~ 20 mins later, it was sitting in a puddle getting run over. Two days later it was working fine, but minus the antenna and with some embedded stones in the plastic. Put the thing through the wash cycle twice too and that never stopped it either. Should never have "updagraded". New phone lasted less than a year.
In Canada they won't let you fly even if you have laser surgery. I wanted to be a pilot for a long time, but I inherited some pretty awful eyes. I asked the army peeps about flying if I could get laser surgery, but they said no. This was ~2 years ago. On the other hand, I really doubt I'd be cut out for the military, so really it was more of a case of them rejecting me before I rejected them, but they eye thing was a definite no go for them.
A few places have tried this type of thing already. One the professors at my university developed an e-nose a while ago mostly to look at emissions from agricultural processes.
I wasn't trying to criticize linux as an operating system. Saying I like windows does not mean I automatically hate linux. It's not a one or the other thing. But as a desktop OS, linux has some issues, and they're not even necessarily related to the OS itself.
I do feel the support issue is a big one. You're right, not all hardware is supported under vista. Obviously there is some hardware that doesn't work in XP either. But, I mean, they have to have drivers for SOME os, so XP is less of an issue. The big problem, though, is that most companies will eventually write vista drivers. People will probably start to make the switch when that happens. This isn't necessarily the case for linux. Now, this wouldn't be a problem if everyone did just use the pre-installed stuff and never changed their hardware, but that's not something you can assume. Even add-on hardware usually requires drivers.
Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about MS phone support. I've never tried, but I don't doubt it's probably awful. I was talking about support from other companies in terms of software and drivers for the products. There's just so many companies out there that write windows-only software. If something goes wrong and you're using some third-party software, you're basically on your own. Clearly that's not linux's fault, but it's a definite problem and for me it's a big barrier to using unix for my main machine.
It seems sometimes that slashdot is very black and white on this issue. It's become like a religion. You're either MS or you're unix and never the twain shall meet. All I'm saying is that windows is not inherently evil and unix is not the definition of perfection. I still know a lot of hard-core geeks who still keep windows boxes around because there are things they just can't do with a unix box. I mean, hell, look at the stats for the slashdot site even. Windows users are the silent majority.
Look, I'm not anti-unix. Please no one take this as a personal attack on your computer choices. If it works for you, and you're not having these problems then more power to you. I was just trying to point out some of the reasons why I don't feel a unix desktop works for me. No OS is perfect, and if linux wants to get into the desktop market, these are some of the things I see as barriers. That's all.
ok...cue the insults about my mother and such. I'm a windows user on slashdot - I have thick skin. =)
Amen to that. I love my windows box. I do most of my coding in linux, but my windows machine is my main computer. I find that there are a few (somewhat related) things that really tie me to windows - familiarity, support and ease of use. My windows box is basically for fun and utility. I don't want to baby-sit it. I want the fully-written and company-supported drivers for my strange hardware, and I don't want to be told to re-write the source code myself when I'm having problems. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have the option to do so, but I don't want to do it in my free time. For work, yes. For home, no. Let the company do it. Call me lazy, but my definition of down-time rarely includes doing the stuff I do for work.
I think that's probably one of the major problems for the introduction of linux to the desktop. The average geek likes open source, or at least the thought of it. The average user wouldn't touch the source code with a 20 foot pole anyway. They (and I) want company-written and supported software. Of course, that's a bit of a catch-22 anyway, because companies won't write drivers for linux until there's a demand, but there won't be a demand until there's good software out there.
The other thing I've found with black / white boards is that they force ME to go over the material and know it well enough to present it properly. With slides, I've found it's easier to skim over the stuff right before the class, whereas if I have to put everything down in class I'm more likely to focus on the parts that might be difficult for the students. Whenever I run into one of those "HOW do I get to that next line?" thoughts, that's probably a place students will have trouble. With a power point you get to the next line by moving the laser pointer down x number of inches.
Of course, I might feel differently if I was giving more than just the occasional lecture as a TA, but for now I can be the idealist. On the other hand, I do think power point is great for diagrams because I'm TERRIBLE at drawing on the fly. As long as I reign myself and don't rush, I've found it works quite well.
If I may quote a certain web comic.... "It's a scientifically proven fact that a double dose of the X chromosome also equals a double dose of gaming skill".
In all seriousness though, it's true that there are fewer gamer girls than guys, but we do exist. The funny part is though, that I found things work the other way around - so many guys play female characters that most of the people I meet when I'm playing assume I'm a guy, even though my toon is a female. A lot of people are quite surprised when they find out. Even more so when I play my male alt.
Oh, and a clever insult at that. Think that one up yourself?
So it's not just a single story anymore, eh? It's a full-out *opinion*. Don't you think that might be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? I somehow don't think you're going to think much of any woman you come across in the field regardless of the work. You've already expressed your *opinion* on that. Besides you are clearly such a reasonable person to begin with, telling strangers to fuck themselves on a public forum and whatnot, that there's no way you would ever prejudge someone based on their gender. No way. And there's clearly no confirmation bias at work here.
Maybe you just work with jerks. If you dislike your co-workers and feel you are treated with less respect, then maybe you should start looking for a new job. I'm not trying to say that these things are acceptable, but the fact is that you dislike where you are working and you're clearly unhappy. Not every battle has a good outcome. Now is actually quite a good time to be looking for a job in tech it seems. Besides, the nice thing about computer jobs is that there is such a diversity of work places. Some of the internet startups in particular can be very artsy.
Really? This was modded informative? Ok, yes, you prefaced your comment by saying it was an anecdote, but the fact that you posted it on a public forum suggests one of two things - either you meant it to be something that would be more generally applied, or you're just posting dumb stories on slashdot that you really feel has no bearing on anyone else. My bet is that you're attempting to use this story to generalize, but it's too un-PC to say what you really think, so you prefaced it with your "just an anecdote" comment to have a way out. It's like people who preface insults with "no offense".
Of course, I may be wrong. Either way, clarify it for me...are you saying that these women are a representative sample and you think women are worse and sloppier than men? Or are you saying you just have bad co-workers and women on the whole are not worse and sloppier than men?
I've never used the software, so I really have no idea about the answer to this question, but what if you disallowed the software to write to the registry in the first place? There's software out there that will lock down your registry and notify you when software attempts to write to it. If some random program from the internet decided to write to my registry for some unknown reason, I don't think it would be altogether crazy to not allow that. Would the software then allow me to print more copies, making me guilty of a DMCA violation? If so it's then a case of my computer security vs. their coupon security.
Maybe it's because unix can be a bit needy. Besides, Unix is always so serious...he's always like "let's argue about which text-based editor is more efficient", while windows is all "hey baby, let's play some sweet games".
I used to be a TA for an intro computer class. The last lab of the year wasn't graded and I suggested that we should do a little something on hardware. So I brought in an old computer and we took it apart in the class. I will never forget the look of absolute horror on this guy's face when I pulled out a bunch of stuff and handed it to him. He held it like it was covered in disease and attempted to put it back into the computer like it was made of glass. When I told him to use a little force to push a card in, he looked at me like I was completely out of my mind.
It's not even necessarily that people need to be taught how to put these things together - conceptually it's not terribly hard. It's just that many people haven't done these things before, and they are hesitant to break this expensive stuff. If no one ever tells you that sometimes things take a little pushing, and no, you actually can't physically get that cable in backwards, then it's easy to see how something like that could be a bit daunting. You're right - it's not really about teaching in the theory sense. More like a lab - giving people the opportunity to try something hands on, with a little supervision to calm the nerves.
On a side note, this "story" is ridiculous. Huzzah, she used a screwdriver! If I send in pics of me and my compy can I be on the front page too? I'm female, so clearly this is news....
If you haven't seen it yet, you might be interested in the ALLHAT study (http://allhat.uth.tmc.edu/). They looked at a bunch of blood pressure and cholesterol drugs. It was one of those rare pharmaceutical studies that wasn't commissioned by a company, and it's results are not exceptionally good for a lot of the drugs being marketed. Interesting read if you're into that kind of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
This is actually something that universities often complain about. I live in Canada, so the majority of the money a university receives is from the government. However, tuition fees are becoming an increasingly significant portion of the funding, and tuition fees are on the rise. Students begin to view the degree as an end product rather than as a learning process. In essence, they are paying for a degree from a reputable university, learning be damned. This brings with it a number of difficult to solve problems namely:
1) grade inflation - the customer is always right, and students are education customers, so to keep them pleased we give them all A's and B's. There is documented evidence that the average grades given out in university classes is on the rise. If you have time and you care to read it, there's a book called "Ivory Tower Blues" that gives far more detail than a slashdot post ever could. (Be forewarned - for a book written by two academics I was expecting something a little better written and researched, and a little less biased towards their own university, but it's a start I guess. )
2)Students working and spending less time on school work. This would probably be less problematic in high school, but might affect poorer students who want to attend a higher-cost school.
3)The reputation of a school being tied to price. No jokes, one of the arguments the president of our university gave for raising tuition fees was that students, particularly out-of-province or international students without direct knowledge of our university funding system, would assume we were a wal-mart university if we kept costs low. We had to raise them to look like we were the same caliber as other universities in the area. On the flip side of that, another university in our area had a extremely well-regarded engineering program, so they just raised the fees for engineering students because they could. Every year the fees went up, but with very little to show for it. It becomes this insane cycle of raising fees to look good, then raising fees because you look good.
I wasn't trying to be subtle. I'm female. That's really not the point. I was actually thinking back to another slashdot discussion here on MMOs banning people playing different gendered characters. There was a thread in there where a user commented that he didn't feel like he was deceiving anyone because he didn't think of the character as himself - it was just something he was controlling. It wasn't until then that I realized that I think of my two toons differently. That's all. That's where it was coming from. Like I said, it might not even be the gender thing - could just be that one is my main.
Strangely enough, I find that sometimes I think of myself as the character, but sometimes I don't. I play WoW, and my main toon is roughly human looking and the same gender as me. When I'm playing on that toon, I find I'll say things like "I need blah", or "I'm almost level blah". When I'm playing on my alt, who is male and looks nothing like a human (giant bull), I find I tend to think of him as just something I'm controlling. So, I'll say things like "Shiftly is almost level blah", or "Shiftly just got a new blah". Maybe it's the look thing, maybe it's because one's my main...who knows. Anyone else find that?
I would care if it's waterproof, even if I do have to pay a premium for it. Water death seems to claim most of my phones, and paying more for a waterproof one just means that I won't be paying for a different phone when I drop mine in the lake or leave it too close to the sink.
What actually surprises me though is not that they have waterproof phones in Japan, but that we DON'T have waterproof phones yet here. I mean, we can make waterproof cameras that can actually be USED under water, but we don't yet have a phone that can land in a puddle and come out alive? Come on now. Of course, if the phone was waterproof then they would probably sell fewer phones. Water death is probably a good source of phone-company income. I mean, if your camera isn't waterproof and gets fried, it's feasible to just let it slide and not buy another one. Not really the same thing with a phone since you're probably stuck paying the contract anyway.
It seems that the number of religious scientists is not insignificant. Greg Graffin's Phd thesis looked at the religious beliefs of scientists and found that many were religious, but that they tended to approach religion slightly differently than people not in the field. http://www.cornellevolutionproject.org/
Why would such a thing be unsuitable? There have already been robotic surgeries done using tools with only video and no haptic feedback at all. I'm just curious why you think this would not be used for a real surgery.
I can see what you're getting at here, but I think it's a bit more complex than that. The studies were unpublished, and hence not reviewed. The inclination would be that the results of a study that is not published in a peer review journal are not known to be trustworthy. However, it is fairly routine for companies to undertake significant studies and not publish the results, particularly if they are not positive.
A couple of years ago, Nancy Olivieri came to our university and gave a talk on company sponsored research in an academic setting. One of the things she talked about a lot was registering or somehow forcing the results of university-backed clinical trials to be published. That's hard enough as it is, but how do you force company-only studies to be published? Or would you even want to? How can you make a company write up and publish data it knows is only going to hurt it?
It wasn't quite a semi, but my old kyocera phone got run over a few times and kept on ticking. I dropped it in the middle of the road during a rainstorm. When I came back ~ 20 mins later, it was sitting in a puddle getting run over. Two days later it was working fine, but minus the antenna and with some embedded stones in the plastic. Put the thing through the wash cycle twice too and that never stopped it either. Should never have "updagraded". New phone lasted less than a year.
actually, the article does talk about this on the second page.
In Canada they won't let you fly even if you have laser surgery. I wanted to be a pilot for a long time, but I inherited some pretty awful eyes. I asked the army peeps about flying if I could get laser surgery, but they said no. This was ~2 years ago. On the other hand, I really doubt I'd be cut out for the military, so really it was more of a case of them rejecting me before I rejected them, but they eye thing was a definite no go for them.
As always, thinkgeek has the answer.
A few places have tried this type of thing already. One the professors at my university developed an e-nose a while ago mostly to look at emissions from agricultural processes.
paper abstract
I wasn't trying to criticize linux as an operating system. Saying I like windows does not mean I automatically hate linux. It's not a one or the other thing. But as a desktop OS, linux has some issues, and they're not even necessarily related to the OS itself.
I do feel the support issue is a big one. You're right, not all hardware is supported under vista. Obviously there is some hardware that doesn't work in XP either. But, I mean, they have to have drivers for SOME os, so XP is less of an issue. The big problem, though, is that most companies will eventually write vista drivers. People will probably start to make the switch when that happens. This isn't necessarily the case for linux. Now, this wouldn't be a problem if everyone did just use the pre-installed stuff and never changed their hardware, but that's not something you can assume. Even add-on hardware usually requires drivers.
Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about MS phone support. I've never tried, but I don't doubt it's probably awful. I was talking about support from other companies in terms of software and drivers for the products. There's just so many companies out there that write windows-only software. If something goes wrong and you're using some third-party software, you're basically on your own. Clearly that's not linux's fault, but it's a definite problem and for me it's a big barrier to using unix for my main machine.
It seems sometimes that slashdot is very black and white on this issue. It's become like a religion. You're either MS or you're unix and never the twain shall meet. All I'm saying is that windows is not inherently evil and unix is not the definition of perfection. I still know a lot of hard-core geeks who still keep windows boxes around because there are things they just can't do with a unix box. I mean, hell, look at the stats for the slashdot site even. Windows users are the silent majority.
Look, I'm not anti-unix. Please no one take this as a personal attack on your computer choices. If it works for you, and you're not having these problems then more power to you. I was just trying to point out some of the reasons why I don't feel a unix desktop works for me. No OS is perfect, and if linux wants to get into the desktop market, these are some of the things I see as barriers. That's all.
ok...cue the insults about my mother and such. I'm a windows user on slashdot - I have thick skin. =)
Amen to that. I love my windows box. I do most of my coding in linux, but my windows machine is my main computer. I find that there are a few (somewhat related) things that really tie me to windows - familiarity, support and ease of use. My windows box is basically for fun and utility. I don't want to baby-sit it. I want the fully-written and company-supported drivers for my strange hardware, and I don't want to be told to re-write the source code myself when I'm having problems. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have the option to do so, but I don't want to do it in my free time. For work, yes. For home, no. Let the company do it. Call me lazy, but my definition of down-time rarely includes doing the stuff I do for work.
I think that's probably one of the major problems for the introduction of linux to the desktop. The average geek likes open source, or at least the thought of it. The average user wouldn't touch the source code with a 20 foot pole anyway. They (and I) want company-written and supported software. Of course, that's a bit of a catch-22 anyway, because companies won't write drivers for linux until there's a demand, but there won't be a demand until there's good software out there.
The other thing I've found with black / white boards is that they force ME to go over the material and know it well enough to present it properly. With slides, I've found it's easier to skim over the stuff right before the class, whereas if I have to put everything down in class I'm more likely to focus on the parts that might be difficult for the students. Whenever I run into one of those "HOW do I get to that next line?" thoughts, that's probably a place students will have trouble. With a power point you get to the next line by moving the laser pointer down x number of inches.
Of course, I might feel differently if I was giving more than just the occasional lecture as a TA, but for now I can be the idealist. On the other hand, I do think power point is great for diagrams because I'm TERRIBLE at drawing on the fly. As long as I reign myself and don't rush, I've found it works quite well.
If I may quote a certain web comic.... "It's a scientifically proven fact that a double dose of the X chromosome also equals a double dose of gaming skill".
In all seriousness though, it's true that there are fewer gamer girls than guys, but we do exist. The funny part is though, that I found things work the other way around - so many guys play female characters that most of the people I meet when I'm playing assume I'm a guy, even though my toon is a female. A lot of people are quite surprised when they find out. Even more so when I play my male alt.
Oh, and a clever insult at that. Think that one up yourself?
So it's not just a single story anymore, eh? It's a full-out *opinion*. Don't you think that might be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy? I somehow don't think you're going to think much of any woman you come across in the field regardless of the work. You've already expressed your *opinion* on that. Besides you are clearly such a reasonable person to begin with, telling strangers to fuck themselves on a public forum and whatnot, that there's no way you would ever prejudge someone based on their gender. No way. And there's clearly no confirmation bias at work here.
Maybe you just work with jerks. If you dislike your co-workers and feel you are treated with less respect, then maybe you should start looking for a new job. I'm not trying to say that these things are acceptable, but the fact is that you dislike where you are working and you're clearly unhappy. Not every battle has a good outcome. Now is actually quite a good time to be looking for a job in tech it seems. Besides, the nice thing about computer jobs is that there is such a diversity of work places. Some of the internet startups in particular can be very artsy.
Really? This was modded informative? Ok, yes, you prefaced your comment by saying it was an anecdote, but the fact that you posted it on a public forum suggests one of two things - either you meant it to be something that would be more generally applied, or you're just posting dumb stories on slashdot that you really feel has no bearing on anyone else. My bet is that you're attempting to use this story to generalize, but it's too un-PC to say what you really think, so you prefaced it with your "just an anecdote" comment to have a way out. It's like people who preface insults with "no offense".
Of course, I may be wrong. Either way, clarify it for me...are you saying that these women are a representative sample and you think women are worse and sloppier than men? Or are you saying you just have bad co-workers and women on the whole are not worse and sloppier than men?
I've never used the software, so I really have no idea about the answer to this question, but what if you disallowed the software to write to the registry in the first place? There's software out there that will lock down your registry and notify you when software attempts to write to it. If some random program from the internet decided to write to my registry for some unknown reason, I don't think it would be altogether crazy to not allow that. Would the software then allow me to print more copies, making me guilty of a DMCA violation? If so it's then a case of my computer security vs. their coupon security.
Ghostview will allow you to open and print ps files.
http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
Maybe it's because unix can be a bit needy. Besides, Unix is always so serious...he's always like "let's argue about which text-based editor is more efficient", while windows is all "hey baby, let's play some sweet games".
I used to be a TA for an intro computer class. The last lab of the year wasn't graded and I suggested that we should do a little something on hardware. So I brought in an old computer and we took it apart in the class. I will never forget the look of absolute horror on this guy's face when I pulled out a bunch of stuff and handed it to him. He held it like it was covered in disease and attempted to put it back into the computer like it was made of glass. When I told him to use a little force to push a card in, he looked at me like I was completely out of my mind.
It's not even necessarily that people need to be taught how to put these things together - conceptually it's not terribly hard. It's just that many people haven't done these things before, and they are hesitant to break this expensive stuff. If no one ever tells you that sometimes things take a little pushing, and no, you actually can't physically get that cable in backwards, then it's easy to see how something like that could be a bit daunting. You're right - it's not really about teaching in the theory sense. More like a lab - giving people the opportunity to try something hands on, with a little supervision to calm the nerves.
On a side note, this "story" is ridiculous. Huzzah, she used a screwdriver! If I send in pics of me and my compy can I be on the front page too? I'm female, so clearly this is news....
If you haven't seen it yet, you might be interested in the ALLHAT study (http://allhat.uth.tmc.edu/). They looked at a bunch of blood pressure and cholesterol drugs. It was one of those rare pharmaceutical studies that wasn't commissioned by a company, and it's results are not exceptionally good for a lot of the drugs being marketed. Interesting read if you're into that kind of thing.