People always say this, and I never know what they mean.
No more journalists? Seriously? No more people who go find out news and then write about it? The demand for that content is obscene, and the web is only increasing that demand.
Print media is hindered primarily by their physical capital. Maintaining the zillion dollar presses, delivering the paper, creating the paper, the gigantic circulation infrastructure, the accounting infrastructure.
That stuff accounts for more of the costs than the circulation revenue covers, which is why loss of ad revenue hurts traditional print journalism so badly.
But cut out the physical product, and you could support plenty of journalists on pure ads revenue. Where I'm working the journalists account for less than 10% of the staff, where ads account for almost 25% of the revenue.
I actually work tech at a big media organization, so this is something I think about constantly, and the article is a perfect example of the media missing the goddamn point.
The way to persist is to deliver a better product. Print journalism is by far the most prolific news medium in existence, and traditional print newspapers are still the biggest providers of that content...right now.
But increasingly they're cutting jobs and reducing the quality of their physical product in order to try and retain their profitability, and, magically, it's not helping their product.
At the same time they're investing in ideas like the ones described in the article, which are 100% substance-free, cute little web 2.0 widgets that may occupy a few minutes of someone's time, but don't add any lasting value to the product, and don't pull the new users they need (people like us), but instead appeal primarily to the same technophobes who are their core market already.
What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregators and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.
It's inevitable that the print product is going to get superceded by a web product. The industry is dragging its feet, however, on really dealing out a first class web product, and so they're basically guaranteeing that when the first really savvy web-based news organization comes along, that they're going to get their marketshare ripped away.
Physics was what I was thinking as well, though I was a CS major and only needed 2 years. B+ the first year, when I sporadically attended class. A the second year when I just went to the first one (to get a copy of the syllabus).
Everything was in the book. Do the homework, go to the practicals, and it was easy.
It's more just a "don't take on the prof when the prof determines your grade" sort of thing. I never actually encountered any of those in my first few years...It was in the later years where you'd run up against prima donnas who couldn't handle having their opinions contradicted.
Those classes are easiest to spot because the prof will try to build a sort of "Cult of Personality" around themselves, and they usually cultivate groups of students who take all their classes...They are the ones who fail you for a difference of opinion.
I've seen some of that in gender issues classes, but the worst I ever came across was a philosophy prof: I took the class because I wanted a better understanding of a specific philosophy, and didn't drop when it became clear that the class was far below my level (easy A, 300 level class), but I lost my objectivity about half way through and started arguing, and it cost me about 40% of my grade.
The second most blatant one I ever experienced wasn't even related to the material...I accidentally killed the class by informing ~40 freshpeoples that the requirement that the class satisfied could be satisfied by any english class that required 3 papers.
Next class there were only 8 people there...ooops. I was too dumb to leave at that point (I actually wanted the class), and I ended up having to go to arbitration over my grade (arbitration magically raised it 20 points).
Yes and no. You understand the number of people who don't get it, but it still doesn't solve the problem of helping the 10% or so who aren't going to get it without a little face time...Something you can't give in a huge class.
I can't see any benefit for a class of 30; you can usually get a little extra time there just by asking a question. That 10% is just a handful of questions there.
Blah blah blah. There are plenty of good liberal arty classes that aren't taught by morons, and frankly, a weekly "research project" is a terrible idea: how can you fully develop a real idea in a bare week? You're talking a make-work snippet with zero depth.
Though, yea, you have to watch out for profs in classes where the grades have an arbitrary element. I got screwed a couple of times by that myself, though I've never heard of actually being removed from a class without some exceptional situation.
A good lecturer absolutely makes a huge difference, but they're rare enough to call the whole format into question.
Mandatory attendance makes me homicidal. Every class I've been in that took strict attendance was a waste of time. Now, classes that grade based on participation I have no problem with; that's a much more valid metric for a lot of classes.
But yea, the ability to fill a seat shouldn't factor in your grade. If that's all you need to do, you don't need to be there, and if you can do well in the class without attending, then that's the prof's problem, not yours.
(as an aside, I always wondered about getting a buddy to take your remote to class and punch the buttons. Seems like all they really need is for the remote to attend, right?)
Curves are fine until they start promoting people who don't understand the material. I had CS classes where people who couldn't code a decent "Hello World" were being passed because they could regurgitate the theory for the exams, and the curve was flattened by too many people who couldn't do the projects.
If you're a school like MIT, with a strong reputation to uphold, you can't afford to pass people who don't meet your standard.
I always loved the question part(sarcasm/irony). A lot of my lecture profs would ask this question like, "Everyone who doesn't get it, raise their hand" and if enough people raised their hand, he'd go over the topic again, and if that didn't do it, you had to ask the TA anyway.
My brains a bit odd: when I don't get it, I don't get it differently from most people, so I always had to ask the TA, or figure it out for myself. At that point, there ceases to be a reason to go to the class. Add to that the psychological torment of being the only moron who has to raise his hand twice...Ugh.
Honestly I don't know how they did it; I was gone before that point, thank god, (though I swear I remember that the remotes were transferable). I always put my lecture classes in really awful time slots...I can't imagine actually GOING to class then.
In the really big classes the exams were these HUGE affairs and they were held for multiple sections, and always at night and not usually in the same lecture halls, so I never even had to get up for the exams.
I disagree. I never learned anything from a huge lecture that I couldn't have gotten just as well by reading the stupid textbook.
It's different with a discussion class, where you have to participate and that participation is useful in refining ideas and exploring the material.
But the giant lecture format is a 1-way flow of information in an inefficient medium (voice), which is seldom delivered by an engaging or articulate individual.
Yes and no. If you're looking for a lot of individual time and supervision, no, a big school is not the place to go.
But if you're looking for great resources and opportunities, then a big school is far superiour. I jumped into a graduate research lab my junior year for credit, experience, and references that were a huge benefit to me, and that sort of opportunity was impossible for me at the smaller school where I'd spent my first two years.
The gotcha is that you have to go looking for those opportunities. No one is going to try and force you to take them.
Massive lecture halls were completely pointless in my experience. The only correlation between attendance and my grade was actually a negative correlation: the less I went, the better my grades got.
I had one class, a planetary geology course, where I was told in the first class that there was no way I could pass without attending class (to watch his boring-ass slideshows, which were going to be on the exam). That was the last class I went to, and I aced the class and the final.
Likewise physics, and all the gut CS classes (everything up to the 300 level). If you have a question, you're fucked anyway, because with 200+ students, you'll never be able to ask it...Half the time they put you off to the end of the lecture anyway, and then they tell you to ask the TA during the practicum or the lab.
After I graduated I heard that they'd put in this system where you had to "rent" this fricking remote control, register it (unique serial number, so they could track you attendance) and use it to input multiple choice answers to questions the prof put on the board. I can only imagine the benefits felt by the students [/sarcasm]
Save your time for the practicum, keep on top of the syllabus, and let the prof drone on at 8:00am while you get an extra hour of shuteye.
Well, on the one hand, (working in a high stress field here) you can eventually work through the PTSD and become functional as a high strung person in a high stress environment, but on the other hand, that road is long and evil and you'll probably live a better life if you don't walk down it.
There is always a lower stress way to apply your knowledge. Even if your specialty is something psycho like bomb-dismantling, you can teach it rather than doing it.
Learn your strengths, accept your weaknesses, and try to find a spot where the strengths matter and the weaknesses don't.
Wow. I love TF2; Steam aside, the game play is good, the weapons are good, the level design is good, the aesthetic is a little cartoonish, but I don't see a problem with that.
The only thing I have complaints about is that every few months, when they release a class update, you have to suffer through a month of everyone playing the same class, trying to get the achievements...Though there is occasional humor in that: when the first update came out you could attract a swarm of doctors by playing a scout. When the Heavy update came out, you'd see dozens of big guys drop their guns and try to beat you down with their bare hands.
Otherwise a very solid game. Not big on realism, but if I wanted realism I'd go play paintball.
The line response is usually a level of insane fury toward the other side which results in massive cases of prisoner abuse, and the strategic response is to develop terror weapons of their own.
Atrocities tend not to break the will of the people they're perpetrated against, terrorist ideology to the contrary.
I'll preface this by saying that I program primarily in brace-based languages.
Braces suck in the worst possible way as a method of delineation. Let me give an example:
while(...){if(...){if(...){}elseif(...){}}}
That's clearly the suck, so we break it out like:
while(...){
if(...){
if(...){
}elseif(...){}
} }
...at which point we realize that the braces are basically useless, since the code is unreadable without the whitespace. Python just forces you to use a readable formatting, and it's not all that hard to get used to.
Spending money on infrastructure is rarely a waste. This is infinitely better than depression-era "Dig this ditch, now fill it in" make work; a standardized digital system will save lives and cut costs, and the way the healthcare industry is going right now, both of those goals are extremely worthwhile.
Work for any big company, and suggest an idea that will save X money over the next 10 years, but that will cost X/5 money today, and you'll get shot down. It's extremely difficult to get stuff approved that doesn't have immediate benefits.
A lot of it has to do with the traditional budget process. Expenses dealing with a traditional filing system are already in the budget, so you don't have to fight to get them continued from year to year, whereas a big new expense will encounter massive resistance, especially in cases like this where the proof of savings is theoretical.
Anyone who has ever worked on a giant data digitization project can confirm that the gains in efficiency are dramatic, and the costs of storage, duplication, and extra personnel are far lower with a digital system.
But the way people seem to work these days, the long view is completely absent. They want big gains now, and not big gains 10 years from now. Future gains can't be put on a resume.
Thermite isn't controlled, and frankly, it couldn't be because the parts are easy to obtain. 3 parts aluminum powder, to 8 parts iron oxide (by weight), and you're good to go. You'll need to throw in a little magnesium to get it started.
Make some, set fire to something on your lawn, have fun. People are too scared of chemicals these days.
It depends on what was on it before. If I was wiping my gaming PC, I'd say it was fine. But I'd never do that for a work computer. The cost of it not working is vastly higher than the cost of a new drive.
My local range is actually indoor, and they frown on people bringing in things to blow up.
I guess I could hike 'em out to the quasi-private area where the local rednecks go to shoot cans (and out of season deer), but it's inevitable that that one time would be the time I ran into their damn worthless security guys.
Closet redneck that I am, I usually just make a big pile of wood, drives, old backup tapes, and add gasoline. You can pass the melting point of lead in a wood fire, easy.
The waste is an issue though. I wouldn't want to eat out of the oven either, and I'm not too keen on breathing/cleaning up drive slag either.
Paranoid jackass that I am, I tend to do both BFT and then (once the platters are lying exposed) I set the whole mess on fire. Trying to burn the whole drive is a huge pain in the ass for the same reason you mentioned above: the outer case is so damn tough.
If all you've got is a clawhammer though, you might as well use a screwdriver. You need a big ass sledgehammer to crack a drive quickly. Wear eye protection, because crap will start flying off at hyper velocity. I had a piece of board shrapnel actually penetrate a 2x4 in a garage where I was pummeling drives...It didn't go in very far, but I've worn protective gear ever since.
I tend to only do the full "orgy of destruction" thing for work related drives. The problems with work-related retirements are legion, and the liability is so high that you need to be sure. You can't run a secure wipe on a dead drive, but the platters are fine, so you can't just toss it.
Likewise, you can't run a secure wipe on the box of assorted drives that's been filling up in the server room for 2 years without essentially building a computer to put them in, and inevitably some will be dead anyway, so you'll have to figure out which ones...Huge pain in the ass.
A software wipe (in my opinion) is an option when you're passing the computer, fully functional, to someone you know for minimal lucre in exchange. If you're even going eBay, I'd be leery of selling the drive.
Remember kids, if it's 100% encrypted, you stop taking it seriously. Use encryption on data that's important, so there is a sharp divider in your mind between secure, and vulnerable.
Slashdot Mirror
People always say this, and I never know what they mean.
No more journalists? Seriously? No more people who go find out news and then write about it? The demand for that content is obscene, and the web is only increasing that demand.
Print media is hindered primarily by their physical capital. Maintaining the zillion dollar presses, delivering the paper, creating the paper, the gigantic circulation infrastructure, the accounting infrastructure.
That stuff accounts for more of the costs than the circulation revenue covers, which is why loss of ad revenue hurts traditional print journalism so badly.
But cut out the physical product, and you could support plenty of journalists on pure ads revenue. Where I'm working the journalists account for less than 10% of the staff, where ads account for almost 25% of the revenue.
Only if you're looking at the title alone.
I actually work tech at a big media organization, so this is something I think about constantly, and the article is a perfect example of the media missing the goddamn point.
The way to persist is to deliver a better product. Print journalism is by far the most prolific news medium in existence, and traditional print newspapers are still the biggest providers of that content...right now.
But increasingly they're cutting jobs and reducing the quality of their physical product in order to try and retain their profitability, and, magically, it's not helping their product.
At the same time they're investing in ideas like the ones described in the article, which are 100% substance-free, cute little web 2.0 widgets that may occupy a few minutes of someone's time, but don't add any lasting value to the product, and don't pull the new users they need (people like us), but instead appeal primarily to the same technophobes who are their core market already.
What they need to do is push an actual, meaningful, web presence, one with persistence, where content lasts longer than a week or so, and where the web content is clear, clean, and accessible to aggregators and search engines, so they can take advantage of the long tail.
It's inevitable that the print product is going to get superceded by a web product. The industry is dragging its feet, however, on really dealing out a first class web product, and so they're basically guaranteeing that when the first really savvy web-based news organization comes along, that they're going to get their marketshare ripped away.
Physics was what I was thinking as well, though I was a CS major and only needed 2 years. B+ the first year, when I sporadically attended class. A the second year when I just went to the first one (to get a copy of the syllabus).
Everything was in the book. Do the homework, go to the practicals, and it was easy.
It's more just a "don't take on the prof when the prof determines your grade" sort of thing. I never actually encountered any of those in my first few years...It was in the later years where you'd run up against prima donnas who couldn't handle having their opinions contradicted.
Those classes are easiest to spot because the prof will try to build a sort of "Cult of Personality" around themselves, and they usually cultivate groups of students who take all their classes...They are the ones who fail you for a difference of opinion.
I've seen some of that in gender issues classes, but the worst I ever came across was a philosophy prof: I took the class because I wanted a better understanding of a specific philosophy, and didn't drop when it became clear that the class was far below my level (easy A, 300 level class), but I lost my objectivity about half way through and started arguing, and it cost me about 40% of my grade.
The second most blatant one I ever experienced wasn't even related to the material...I accidentally killed the class by informing ~40 freshpeoples that the requirement that the class satisfied could be satisfied by any english class that required 3 papers.
Next class there were only 8 people there...ooops. I was too dumb to leave at that point (I actually wanted the class), and I ended up having to go to arbitration over my grade (arbitration magically raised it 20 points).
Yes and no. You understand the number of people who don't get it, but it still doesn't solve the problem of helping the 10% or so who aren't going to get it without a little face time...Something you can't give in a huge class.
I can't see any benefit for a class of 30; you can usually get a little extra time there just by asking a question. That 10% is just a handful of questions there.
Blah blah blah. There are plenty of good liberal arty classes that aren't taught by morons, and frankly, a weekly "research project" is a terrible idea: how can you fully develop a real idea in a bare week? You're talking a make-work snippet with zero depth.
Though, yea, you have to watch out for profs in classes where the grades have an arbitrary element. I got screwed a couple of times by that myself, though I've never heard of actually being removed from a class without some exceptional situation.
A good lecturer absolutely makes a huge difference, but they're rare enough to call the whole format into question.
Mandatory attendance makes me homicidal. Every class I've been in that took strict attendance was a waste of time. Now, classes that grade based on participation I have no problem with; that's a much more valid metric for a lot of classes.
But yea, the ability to fill a seat shouldn't factor in your grade. If that's all you need to do, you don't need to be there, and if you can do well in the class without attending, then that's the prof's problem, not yours.
(as an aside, I always wondered about getting a buddy to take your remote to class and punch the buttons. Seems like all they really need is for the remote to attend, right?)
Curves are fine until they start promoting people who don't understand the material. I had CS classes where people who couldn't code a decent "Hello World" were being passed because they could regurgitate the theory for the exams, and the curve was flattened by too many people who couldn't do the projects.
If you're a school like MIT, with a strong reputation to uphold, you can't afford to pass people who don't meet your standard.
I always loved the question part(sarcasm/irony). A lot of my lecture profs would ask this question like, "Everyone who doesn't get it, raise their hand" and if enough people raised their hand, he'd go over the topic again, and if that didn't do it, you had to ask the TA anyway.
My brains a bit odd: when I don't get it, I don't get it differently from most people, so I always had to ask the TA, or figure it out for myself. At that point, there ceases to be a reason to go to the class. Add to that the psychological torment of being the only moron who has to raise his hand twice...Ugh.
Honestly I don't know how they did it; I was gone before that point, thank god, (though I swear I remember that the remotes were transferable). I always put my lecture classes in really awful time slots...I can't imagine actually GOING to class then.
In the really big classes the exams were these HUGE affairs and they were held for multiple sections, and always at night and not usually in the same lecture halls, so I never even had to get up for the exams.
I disagree. I never learned anything from a huge lecture that I couldn't have gotten just as well by reading the stupid textbook.
It's different with a discussion class, where you have to participate and that participation is useful in refining ideas and exploring the material.
But the giant lecture format is a 1-way flow of information in an inefficient medium (voice), which is seldom delivered by an engaging or articulate individual.
Yes and no. If you're looking for a lot of individual time and supervision, no, a big school is not the place to go.
But if you're looking for great resources and opportunities, then a big school is far superiour. I jumped into a graduate research lab my junior year for credit, experience, and references that were a huge benefit to me, and that sort of opportunity was impossible for me at the smaller school where I'd spent my first two years.
The gotcha is that you have to go looking for those opportunities. No one is going to try and force you to take them.
Massive lecture halls were completely pointless in my experience. The only correlation between attendance and my grade was actually a negative correlation: the less I went, the better my grades got.
I had one class, a planetary geology course, where I was told in the first class that there was no way I could pass without attending class (to watch his boring-ass slideshows, which were going to be on the exam). That was the last class I went to, and I aced the class and the final.
Likewise physics, and all the gut CS classes (everything up to the 300 level). If you have a question, you're fucked anyway, because with 200+ students, you'll never be able to ask it...Half the time they put you off to the end of the lecture anyway, and then they tell you to ask the TA during the practicum or the lab.
After I graduated I heard that they'd put in this system where you had to "rent" this fricking remote control, register it (unique serial number, so they could track you attendance) and use it to input multiple choice answers to questions the prof put on the board. I can only imagine the benefits felt by the students [/sarcasm]
Save your time for the practicum, keep on top of the syllabus, and let the prof drone on at 8:00am while you get an extra hour of shuteye.
Well, on the one hand, (working in a high stress field here) you can eventually work through the PTSD and become functional as a high strung person in a high stress environment, but on the other hand, that road is long and evil and you'll probably live a better life if you don't walk down it.
There is always a lower stress way to apply your knowledge. Even if your specialty is something psycho like bomb-dismantling, you can teach it rather than doing it.
Learn your strengths, accept your weaknesses, and try to find a spot where the strengths matter and the weaknesses don't.
Wow. I love TF2; Steam aside, the game play is good, the weapons are good, the level design is good, the aesthetic is a little cartoonish, but I don't see a problem with that.
The only thing I have complaints about is that every few months, when they release a class update, you have to suffer through a month of everyone playing the same class, trying to get the achievements...Though there is occasional humor in that: when the first update came out you could attract a swarm of doctors by playing a scout. When the Heavy update came out, you'd see dozens of big guys drop their guns and try to beat you down with their bare hands.
Otherwise a very solid game. Not big on realism, but if I wanted realism I'd go play paintball.
Doesn't usually work that way.
The line response is usually a level of insane fury toward the other side which results in massive cases of prisoner abuse, and the strategic response is to develop terror weapons of their own.
Atrocities tend not to break the will of the people they're perpetrated against, terrorist ideology to the contrary.
I'll preface this by saying that I program primarily in brace-based languages.
Braces suck in the worst possible way as a method of delineation. Let me give an example:
That's clearly the suck, so we break it out like:
...at which point we realize that the braces are basically useless, since the code is unreadable without the whitespace. Python just forces you to use a readable formatting, and it's not all that hard to get used to.
Spending money on infrastructure is rarely a waste. This is infinitely better than depression-era "Dig this ditch, now fill it in" make work; a standardized digital system will save lives and cut costs, and the way the healthcare industry is going right now, both of those goals are extremely worthwhile.
Work for any big company, and suggest an idea that will save X money over the next 10 years, but that will cost X/5 money today, and you'll get shot down. It's extremely difficult to get stuff approved that doesn't have immediate benefits.
A lot of it has to do with the traditional budget process. Expenses dealing with a traditional filing system are already in the budget, so you don't have to fight to get them continued from year to year, whereas a big new expense will encounter massive resistance, especially in cases like this where the proof of savings is theoretical.
Anyone who has ever worked on a giant data digitization project can confirm that the gains in efficiency are dramatic, and the costs of storage, duplication, and extra personnel are far lower with a digital system.
But the way people seem to work these days, the long view is completely absent. They want big gains now, and not big gains 10 years from now. Future gains can't be put on a resume.
Well, you know it's so hard to get.
I mean you can't just get Aluminum Powder on eBay...Of course you can't get any high grade iron oxide there either. And as for buying thermite itself, that's bound to cost a fortune!
Thermite isn't controlled, and frankly, it couldn't be because the parts are easy to obtain. 3 parts aluminum powder, to 8 parts iron oxide (by weight), and you're good to go. You'll need to throw in a little magnesium to get it started.
Make some, set fire to something on your lawn, have fun. People are too scared of chemicals these days.
It depends on what was on it before. If I was wiping my gaming PC, I'd say it was fine. But I'd never do that for a work computer. The cost of it not working is vastly higher than the cost of a new drive.
My local range is actually indoor, and they frown on people bringing in things to blow up.
I guess I could hike 'em out to the quasi-private area where the local rednecks go to shoot cans (and out of season deer), but it's inevitable that that one time would be the time I ran into their damn worthless security guys.
Closet redneck that I am, I usually just make a big pile of wood, drives, old backup tapes, and add gasoline. You can pass the melting point of lead in a wood fire, easy.
The waste is an issue though. I wouldn't want to eat out of the oven either, and I'm not too keen on breathing/cleaning up drive slag either.
Paranoid jackass that I am, I tend to do both BFT and then (once the platters are lying exposed) I set the whole mess on fire. Trying to burn the whole drive is a huge pain in the ass for the same reason you mentioned above: the outer case is so damn tough.
If all you've got is a clawhammer though, you might as well use a screwdriver. You need a big ass sledgehammer to crack a drive quickly. Wear eye protection, because crap will start flying off at hyper velocity. I had a piece of board shrapnel actually penetrate a 2x4 in a garage where I was pummeling drives...It didn't go in very far, but I've worn protective gear ever since.
I tend to only do the full "orgy of destruction" thing for work related drives. The problems with work-related retirements are legion, and the liability is so high that you need to be sure. You can't run a secure wipe on a dead drive, but the platters are fine, so you can't just toss it.
Likewise, you can't run a secure wipe on the box of assorted drives that's been filling up in the server room for 2 years without essentially building a computer to put them in, and inevitably some will be dead anyway, so you'll have to figure out which ones...Huge pain in the ass.
A software wipe (in my opinion) is an option when you're passing the computer, fully functional, to someone you know for minimal lucre in exchange. If you're even going eBay, I'd be leery of selling the drive.
Kills the framerate on your porn collection.
Remember kids, if it's 100% encrypted, you stop taking it seriously. Use encryption on data that's important, so there is a sharp divider in your mind between secure, and vulnerable.