I believe Americans ought to get over the terrorism propaganda your media is feeding you on a daily basis. There was WTC, yes. But time moves on, it doesn't wait.
From what I see on e.g. FOX news or CNN, the media industry (it's an industry - face it) treat the WAR-ON-TERRORISM cause like a holy crusade. (One which generates lots and lots of money.)
I wasn't going to rant much about this, but here's the key statement: get over it and get back in the game. Take control of your government before they own you even more.
Apparently the patenting system completely blows, so why not organize a campaign for a reform of it, too. A patent costs a helluva lot afaik - not exactly a thing for the small business.
I believe it's "taking time" because they decided early to keep ordinary people in the light. Why? Because they would like feedback, or let users catch on the new syntax so the transition gets more smooth. Also to let people know so they can plan their future projects (many aren't really happy with Perl's OO model for example - I know I'm not).
Sorry but I don't buy that theory. It hurts more than it serves their agenda. Really.
People are stupid, but I believe they'd be able to draw the conclusion that openness is a good thing since bugs will be corrected by the community.
Oh well, thinking about it makes me a bit uncertain that people in general will actually "get it". You are technically right, but not practically (that's of course what I think) since, yeah, it'd be a too costly action, both image-wise and money-wise.
It feels mostly like a conspiracy theory because the slashdot crows needs one.
I think I might not have understood your question or objection, but, looking for the clumps is a mathematical approach tightly connected to SVD (Singlular Value Decomposition) of the data warehouse (matrix).
The reason to do so in the first place is because the data's pattern or structure is way too complex for us to see (since it's only visible in high-dimensionality). Rather, we can calculate groups with linear algebra and then extract those groups and make a visualization out of them.
This is roughly hos Google operates; using LSI or LSA (in conjunction with ranking system and lots of other neat stuff).
The following is a great page explaining much of modern search engines and LSI and LSA -- finding patterns in highly complex data (including building a matrix for indexing of text):
http://javelina.cet.middlebury.edu/lsa/out/cover_p age.htm
Shouldn't be too hard to smack together some bytes to generate haikus, should it? They're not very logical pieces of text, right? Just a few simple rules.
If they could drive out of the crater they are now possitioned in and into another crater.. why would it be news to land in a crater if they could just as easily land on the flat surface and drive down a crater:-)
Same goes for Sweden, we've had this tax for a long time (not sure how long though) but it covers pretty much any media that can carry copied copyrighted material. E.g. CD's have higher tax of course since they're the "most common" media.
Originally, though, this was a tax that enabled you to e.g. record transmissions from radio or television. In a way, this has been reevaluated to cover "piracy" as well.
I have no source to this, but I remember a study that showed this some 2-3 years ago. The study also showed that after a while the body/brain had reached its peak in "performance" (better reaction times and better memory) and began to decline.
The study focused on one man who had used an old version of mobile system (the kind that's not very mobile at all) which gave out heavy radiation - much worse than today's mobile cellulars. He had serious problems remembering simple facts and his reactions to outer stimuli was very poor. Otoh he had used this cellular some 3 years.
As I said; I have no reference to this study, you'd have to take my word for it. My word counts by the way.
So don't happily go call all your friends thinking you'll one day be able to beat Neo.
PHP's syntax is exactly what makes me hesitant to use it. The documentation is a joke compared to e.g. Perldoc or Javadoc. Just the fact that PHP actually has synonyms for built-in functions is staggering. Whatever floats your boat, but PHP's syntax is *dirty* IMHO.
I think the bias is there because they know that for each word they speak they know some thousand songs have been "illegally" downloaded, and they can't do jack about it.
Without some sort of tracking mechanism, you'll never know 1) how many problems you're solving or 2) which methods are more effective at solving what problems.
1a) Why can't you use the fingers on your hand to count them? Or did you mean the percentage? in which case 1b) as another/. poster said; count them as you count people with homes [however that's done] 2) How would tracking devices counter this problem...?
Oh, so every new homeless person automatically gives birth to a tracker aswell? How incredibly naive and short sighted.
I just can't think of a reason you need to track them. I cannot. How about helping them instead? Whatever their problems are, try and solve them.
What's the great master plan? Track them and "visit" them on a monthly basis to take blood tests or what? Why the tracking bullshit? Either see to it that they have a place to go for help or if they're unable to do so by free will help them actively (sounds like one of those horror movies, but I think the alternative is worse).
IMHO a tracking system (hear this? See this? A freaking tracking system for homeless people!) is just too stupid to actually having been proposed by anyone older than 10 years.
Wake up, everything can't be fixed by tracking and controlling terr^W^W^W^Wpeople.
You seem like a sensible and experienced guy and I thank you for your input (did I sound like a manager now?..). It was interesting to hear another engineer's mind on these issues. Especially someone in the busyness.
I'm sure it'll all work out as we go. But still it's very interesting to debate or discuss.
Because I haven't participated in a large scale programming project, I can't say whether I'm good or bad in a large group, really. Last time I was in a project we were 8 people. That project went to hell, as I saw it, because of lack of leadership. No one would take the role. Naturally this was a very boring project and didn't really give me anything new.
I do however appreciate a smaller group, in the sense that you know what people are doing and can communicate problems and solutions and requests directly, without going via someone else. You know the people you're working with.
Of course, with a good management/leader you can probably achieve your goals in a smooth way. Coordination of the engineers is key. But the large scale development with many people, I imagine, is a little like working on a black box. You have specifications on what your box is supposed to do, and you just implement it. No other information is really needed, but this doesn't really give any creativity to the programming it self. You need the higher perspective to be able to work out what's going on and how it's going to work. I think it's important to be a part of that process, but when lots of developers work together this participation becomes less tangible. Details are missed. Better solutions are perhaps overlooked since the design is mainly decided by someone else.
You have an interesting point about outsourcing to an area where labor is cheap. The creativity isn't what it's supposed to be. I don't know this for a fact, but it does sound likely. CS becomes more of a factory kind of job. You produce to get your paycheck at the end of the week. And that's that. (Simply because they're not paying you enough to be creative - especially not when they of course know that they're cheap but doesn't really have much of a choice.)
I really hope there's still some good in the minds of the people who are engaged in the university world. That they can sit down and think this through and try and solve it. Remove the hype of CS. Try to emphasize the professionalism of Computer Engineering instead; what they should be able to do, what their (real) busyness is today and perhaps a few real world examples - just to filter out the people who are just in it for the money.
Not so long ago I read a course in Computer Security, which mainly was a joke. It brought up a varieties of things such as "laws" by e.g. Stallman (which was interesting) but a lot was about the details in crypto algorithms. How many rounds, how many bits, what functional boxes, chain block code, yada yada. Sure, fun facts and you get to see how they work. But when it came to the exam our teacher expected us to in detail explain e.g. RSA, SHA or Blowfish. Completely useless. Who cares about how many bits and how many rounds - those things are easy to look up and if you work with them often you tend to remember better and better. A joke. I realized it was a course that looked great on paper. "Computer Security" (if that was the real name, I don't recall right now), it was supposed to bring up a lot of interesting things. But the interesting things was brought up surprisingly little in favor of fact memorizing of algorithms. Oooh, they made some bucks on that one.
Of course there's been plenty good and interesting courses too but some things are just "left out" such as e.g. CVS (which of course is extremely important). OOP (with Java) that brings up design patterns and other useful concepts wasn't even a mandatory course. I find that strange. We read Java, but that only touches syntax and how to solve basic problems.
When it comes to the market situation we've got here in Sweden it's really rough. Firstly the economy isn't very good right now and hence the market is pretty passive. It's the large corporations that gets by (with a struggle).
To touch on the subject on the trustworthyness of CS grads me and two of my friends developed a system to detect plagiarism among text documents, to be used by schools. Hr hr, our
I completely agree with you. What I see in my class (I read a branch of CS by the way) is precisely what you speak of: memorization with no real interest in the subject. Exams are pulled off by memorizing template problems from earlier (public) exams. It's very much a technique frequently used.
The fact that the memorized knowledge will fade away within a week or two makes me worried. I admit that I too forget certain mathematical rules and is forced to look them up when I need them. But I at least put an effort in knowing how the stuff works.
In particular, programming is a subject that many has a hard time grasping. Because they have no personal interest in it they study it to barely make the exam ("the least grade is enough" principle) and hence, forget what they've "learned". I often helped my fellow students with their programming problems and I've seen the techniques they use to be able to make the exam. Surprisingly enough pattern recognition is a very common way to get by. Allow me to generalize; they simply try to budge a detail, see what happens, if e.g. the syntax is correct, they memorize that and move on to budge the next thing. What they memorize is later on re-used on arbitrary (to the code incompatible) problems. Also, very often when they receive help, they are satisfied that their program works as expected and pay no attention on what the problem was and how it was solved. This has of course made me ignore these people. A week goes by and they have still not solved the problem - to me, that shows a lack of interest.
So, what about this lack of interest? Clearly many people have chosen the wrong education. I have no solution for this. Perhaps it's just the time and energy spent on the education that keeps them hanging around. As computer engineers they are often, excuse me, useless since they have no genuine interest.
I said I was worried; I look at some people in my class and imagine them working with CS. For some it's easy, for others it's impossible. This fact that many are "fakes" somewhat makes the whole bunch look incompetent and hence decreases the trustworthyness for CS graduates.
I smiled when I read that you've been thrown out of class because of a remark on the cheerleaders. The exact same thing happened to me, only it wasn't cheerleaders but a guy (who always used to misinterpret the teacher [physics, yes indeed])! I knew I was not alone to think this guy was "too" slow to be there (however cruel that might sound).
Well, I'm ranting, but this whole issue seems to be a bit off the record. No one really talkes about it seriously. It's an accepted "fact" that you study to prove that you can study. You then graduate as an empty paper, going off to a company to learn again. Really, many see it that way here.
As for the market being "a bit" depressed and the future being a bit worrying I agree with you. The illusion that you go to a university, graduate and then earn a load of money, buy yourself a house, nice car, etc. isn't holding up. Slowly people are getting this. Perhaps the majority some day will understand that you're supposed to know what you're doing - it's the only way you'll be interesting in the eyes of employers.
Countries like India is growing more interesting when it comes to competence and cheap(?) labor.
Students need to wake up and realize that in order to fit into the future you need an interest or you'll only suffer. Of course the universities needs to see more to quality of education than quantity as well. I've gone to a couple of courses that was pretty badly planned. Just a couple of months ago the universities here in Sweden dropped the mandatory 4 week work at an IT-company for getting the graduation. If you speculate a little, you see that the universities will get more graduates (now) and hence more money.
But what's this: highschool is not just a "facts" learning enviroment and college is intended to be that
Excuse me for saying so, but that was the sillyest and strangest comment I've heard/seen in a long time. While in high school you're supposed to think, while in university you memorize (and put no real thought into it)?
I in fact think it's the other way around - or else at least the university you know of seems like a pretty bad place.
While in highschool I experienced this knowledge-hysteria you talk about. In subjects such as History I nearly failed - but I kept my motivation just above the limits to get by with minimal work. Thing is, the more home assignments or presentations I had to do, the more I hated this subject and the teacher (who was a god forsaken fool by the way).
In a way I can see that youth need to be a little pushed. But some knowledge can't be forced onto a student. I'm not talking about mathematics though, which is fairly important.
I'd like to see a student that on its own or with a little help picks subjects it does not want to read ("now"). The student could rather read subjects it needs to get into university (think of the time saved).
If the student gets interested in e.g. History lateron, it can via personal interest pick it up. Go to the library, or whatever.
Talking about history, my Experience is that I've long forgotten about our Swedish heritage; the different kings, what they did, when they lived, etc. Because it was just crap to me back then.
I am now getting more interested (and I have no push) and so I read of this very thing, because I'm interested, and not because I bloody have to (which by the way is virtually never motivated by the teacher).
That system seems utterly broken. Makes one wonder what insane soul invented such a rediculous system that automatically downgrades a student because it doesn't follow the "correct" path.
When I started studying here at the university, one of the first things I noticed was the amazing freedom I had. No one watching over my shoulder or giving out home assignments every week. Beautiful.
Why couldn't this work for high school? Let the student be his own master - give it responsibility. After all, for all I know, responsibility is what makes us evolve as people. If the student has a problem it can call/visit the teacher and voila, problem solved.
Why this "you shall read 45 pages till next week and write me a summary" bondage? What you are not interested in and are forced to do, you will without a doubt forget.
Slashdot Mirror
You are (were?) modded 4+ insightful?
Read this again:
Sadly the latency is a bit too high for quake.
Which basically means that that the delay is too long for playing Quake.
And how your second sentence is relevant is beyond me - latency is a common term.
Amen, brother.
I believe Americans ought to get over the terrorism propaganda your media is feeding you on a daily basis. There was WTC, yes. But time moves on, it doesn't wait.
From what I see on e.g. FOX news or CNN, the media industry (it's an industry - face it) treat the WAR-ON-TERRORISM cause like a holy crusade. (One which generates lots and lots of money.)
I wasn't going to rant much about this, but here's the key statement: get over it and get back in the game. Take control of your government before they own you even more.
Apparently the patenting system completely blows, so why not organize a campaign for a reform of it, too. A patent costs a helluva lot afaik - not exactly a thing for the small business.
Yes, shaving is all about moral ;-)
I believe it's "taking time" because they decided early to keep ordinary people in the light. Why? Because they would like feedback, or let users catch on the new syntax so the transition gets more smooth. Also to let people know so they can plan their future projects (many aren't really happy with Perl's OO model for example - I know I'm not).
It's not a small task, you know.
Sorry but I don't buy that theory. It hurts more than it serves their agenda. Really.
People are stupid, but I believe they'd be able to draw the conclusion that openness is a good thing since bugs will be corrected by the community.
Oh well, thinking about it makes me a bit uncertain that people in general will actually "get it". You are technically right, but not practically (that's of course what I think) since, yeah, it'd be a too costly action, both image-wise and money-wise.
It feels mostly like a conspiracy theory because the slashdot crows needs one.
You forget to consider the businesses going DOWN because of exploits like these. How does that fit into your conspiracy theory?
I think I might not have understood your question or objection, but, looking for the clumps is a mathematical approach tightly connected to SVD (Singlular Value Decomposition) of the data warehouse (matrix).
p age.htm
The reason to do so in the first place is because the data's pattern or structure is way too complex for us to see (since it's only visible in high-dimensionality). Rather, we can calculate groups with linear algebra and then extract those groups and make a visualization out of them.
This is roughly hos Google operates; using LSI or LSA (in conjunction with ranking system and lots of other neat stuff).
The following is a great page explaining much of modern search engines and LSI and LSA -- finding patterns in highly complex data (including building a matrix for indexing of text):
http://javelina.cet.middlebury.edu/lsa/out/cover_
Shouldn't be too hard to smack together some bytes to generate haikus, should it? They're not very logical pieces of text, right? Just a few simple rules.
:-)
I in fact wonder how many did just that
Uh, maybe you should find a new friend, since that one obviously screwed you by selling your stuff on the street.
Your story just doesn't seem right.
If they could drive out of the crater they are now possitioned in and into another crater.. why would it be news to land in a crater if they could just as easily land on the flat surface and drive down a crater :-)
From what I've heard they have in fact shown interest.
Same goes for Sweden, we've had this tax for a long time (not sure how long though) but it covers pretty much any media that can carry copied copyrighted material. E.g. CD's have higher tax of course since they're the "most common" media.
Originally, though, this was a tax that enabled you to e.g. record transmissions from radio or television. In a way, this has been reevaluated to cover "piracy" as well.
I have no source to this, but I remember a study that showed this some 2-3 years ago. The study also showed that after a while the body/brain had reached its peak in "performance" (better reaction times and better memory) and began to decline.
The study focused on one man who had used an old version of mobile system (the kind that's not very mobile at all) which gave out heavy radiation - much worse than today's mobile cellulars. He had serious problems remembering simple facts and his reactions to outer stimuli was very poor. Otoh he had used this cellular some 3 years.
As I said; I have no reference to this study, you'd have to take my word for it. My word counts by the way.
So don't happily go call all your friends thinking you'll one day be able to beat Neo.
PHP's syntax is exactly what makes me hesitant to use it. The documentation is a joke compared to e.g. Perldoc or Javadoc. Just the fact that PHP actually has synonyms for built-in functions is staggering. Whatever floats your boat, but PHP's syntax is *dirty* IMHO.
I think the bias is there because they know that for each word they speak they know some thousand songs have been "illegally" downloaded, and they can't do jack about it.
Without some sort of tracking mechanism, you'll never know 1) how many problems you're solving or 2) which methods are more effective at solving what problems.
/. poster said; count them as you count people with homes [however that's done] 2) How would tracking devices counter this problem...?
1a) Why can't you use the fingers on your hand to count them? Or did you mean the percentage? in which case 1b) as another
By chaining you to a pole today,
I'll make sure you'll never get carried away!
Oh, so every new homeless person automatically gives birth to a tracker aswell? How incredibly naive and short sighted.
I just can't think of a reason you need to track them. I cannot. How about helping them instead? Whatever their problems are, try and solve them.
What's the great master plan? Track them and "visit" them on a monthly basis to take blood tests or what? Why the tracking bullshit? Either see to it that they have a place to go for help or if they're unable to do so by free will help them actively (sounds like one of those horror movies, but I think the alternative is worse).
IMHO a tracking system (hear this? See this? A freaking tracking system for homeless people!) is just too stupid to actually having been proposed by anyone older than 10 years.
Wake up, everything can't be fixed by tracking and controlling terr^W^W^W^Wpeople.
You seem like a sensible and experienced guy and I thank you for your input (did I sound like a manager now?..). It was interesting to hear another engineer's mind on these issues. Especially someone in the busyness.
I'm sure it'll all work out as we go. But still it's very interesting to debate or discuss.
Once again; thanks for the discussion!
Over and out -- castrox
Because I haven't participated in a large scale programming project, I can't say whether I'm good or bad in a large group, really. Last time I was in a project we were 8 people. That project went to hell, as I saw it, because of lack of leadership. No one would take the role. Naturally this was a very boring project and didn't really give me anything new.
I do however appreciate a smaller group, in the sense that you know what people are doing and can communicate problems and solutions and requests directly, without going via someone else. You know the people you're working with.
Of course, with a good management/leader you can probably achieve your goals in a smooth way. Coordination of the engineers is key. But the large scale development with many people, I imagine, is a little like working on a black box. You have specifications on what your box is supposed to do, and you just implement it. No other information is really needed, but this doesn't really give any creativity to the programming it self. You need the higher perspective to be able to work out what's going on and how it's going to work. I think it's important to be a part of that process, but when lots of developers work together this participation becomes less tangible. Details are missed. Better solutions are perhaps overlooked since the design is mainly decided by someone else.
You have an interesting point about outsourcing to an area where labor is cheap. The creativity isn't what it's supposed to be. I don't know this for a fact, but it does sound likely. CS becomes more of a factory kind of job. You produce to get your paycheck at the end of the week. And that's that. (Simply because they're not paying you enough to be creative - especially not when they of course know that they're cheap but doesn't really have much of a choice.)
I really hope there's still some good in the minds of the people who are engaged in the university world. That they can sit down and think this through and try and solve it. Remove the hype of CS. Try to emphasize the professionalism of Computer Engineering instead; what they should be able to do, what their (real) busyness is today and perhaps a few real world examples - just to filter out the people who are just in it for the money.
Not so long ago I read a course in Computer Security, which mainly was a joke. It brought up a varieties of things such as "laws" by e.g. Stallman (which was interesting) but a lot was about the details in crypto algorithms. How many rounds, how many bits, what functional boxes, chain block code, yada yada. Sure, fun facts and you get to see how they work. But when it came to the exam our teacher expected us to in detail explain e.g. RSA, SHA or Blowfish. Completely useless. Who cares about how many bits and how many rounds - those things are easy to look up and if you work with them often you tend to remember better and better. A joke. I realized it was a course that looked great on paper. "Computer Security" (if that was the real name, I don't recall right now), it was supposed to bring up a lot of interesting things. But the interesting things was brought up surprisingly little in favor of fact memorizing of algorithms. Oooh, they made some bucks on that one.
Of course there's been plenty good and interesting courses too but some things are just "left out" such as e.g. CVS (which of course is extremely important). OOP (with Java) that brings up design patterns and other useful concepts wasn't even a mandatory course. I find that strange. We read Java, but that only touches syntax and how to solve basic problems.
When it comes to the market situation we've got here in Sweden it's really rough. Firstly the economy isn't very good right now and hence the market is pretty passive. It's the large corporations that gets by (with a struggle).
To touch on the subject on the trustworthyness of CS grads me and two of my friends developed a system to detect plagiarism among text documents, to be used by schools. Hr hr, our
Thanks for the response.
I completely agree with you. What I see in my class (I read a branch of CS by the way) is precisely what you speak of: memorization with no real interest in the subject. Exams are pulled off by memorizing template problems from earlier (public) exams. It's very much a technique frequently used.
The fact that the memorized knowledge will fade away within a week or two makes me worried. I admit that I too forget certain mathematical rules and is forced to look them up when I need them. But I at least put an effort in knowing how the stuff works.
In particular, programming is a subject that many has a hard time grasping. Because they have no personal interest in it they study it to barely make the exam ("the least grade is enough" principle) and hence, forget what they've "learned". I often helped my fellow students with their programming problems and I've seen the techniques they use to be able to make the exam. Surprisingly enough pattern recognition is a very common way to get by. Allow me to generalize; they simply try to budge a detail, see what happens, if e.g. the syntax is correct, they memorize that and move on to budge the next thing. What they memorize is later on re-used on arbitrary (to the code incompatible) problems.
Also, very often when they receive help, they are satisfied that their program works as expected and pay no attention on what the problem was and how it was solved. This has of course made me ignore these people. A week goes by and they have still not solved the problem - to me, that shows a lack of interest.
So, what about this lack of interest? Clearly many people have chosen the wrong education. I have no solution for this. Perhaps it's just the time and energy spent on the education that keeps them hanging around. As computer engineers they are often, excuse me, useless since they have no genuine interest.
I said I was worried; I look at some people in my class and imagine them working with CS. For some it's easy, for others it's impossible. This fact that many are "fakes" somewhat makes the whole bunch look incompetent and hence decreases the trustworthyness for CS graduates.
I smiled when I read that you've been thrown out of class because of a remark on the cheerleaders. The exact same thing happened to me, only it wasn't cheerleaders but a guy (who always used to misinterpret the teacher [physics, yes indeed])! I knew I was not alone to think this guy was "too" slow to be there (however cruel that might sound).
Well, I'm ranting, but this whole issue seems to be a bit off the record. No one really talkes about it seriously. It's an accepted "fact" that you study to prove that you can study. You then graduate as an empty paper, going off to a company to learn again. Really, many see it that way here.
As for the market being "a bit" depressed and the future being a bit worrying I agree with you. The illusion that you go to a university, graduate and then earn a load of money, buy yourself a house, nice car, etc. isn't holding up. Slowly people are getting this. Perhaps the majority some day will understand that you're supposed to know what you're doing - it's the only way you'll be interesting in the eyes of employers.
Countries like India is growing more interesting when it comes to competence and cheap(?) labor.
Students need to wake up and realize that in order to fit into the future you need an interest or you'll only suffer. Of course the universities needs to see more to quality of education than quantity as well. I've gone to a couple of courses that was pretty badly planned. Just a couple of months ago the universities here in Sweden dropped the mandatory 4 week work at an IT-company for getting the graduation. If you speculate a little, you see that the universities will get more graduates (now) and hence more money.
Money rules the world - what's new.
Cheers!
Mm perhaps kids are that irresponsible.
But what's this:
highschool is not just a "facts" learning enviroment and college is intended to be that
Excuse me for saying so, but that was the sillyest and strangest comment I've heard/seen in a long time. While in high school you're supposed to think, while in university you memorize (and put no real thought into it)?
I in fact think it's the other way around - or else at least the university you know of seems like a pretty bad place.
While in highschool I experienced this knowledge-hysteria you talk about. In subjects such as History I nearly failed - but I kept my motivation just above the limits to get by with minimal work. Thing is, the more home assignments or presentations I had to do, the more I hated this subject and the teacher (who was a god forsaken fool by the way).
In a way I can see that youth need to be a little pushed. But some knowledge can't be forced onto a student. I'm not talking about mathematics though, which is fairly important.
I'd like to see a student that on its own or with a little help picks subjects it does not want to read ("now"). The student could rather read subjects it needs to get into university (think of the time saved).
If the student gets interested in e.g. History lateron, it can via personal interest pick it up. Go to the library, or whatever.
Talking about history, my Experience is that I've long forgotten about our Swedish heritage; the different kings, what they did, when they lived, etc. Because it was just crap to me back then.
I am now getting more interested (and I have no push) and so I read of this very thing, because I'm interested, and not because I bloody have to (which by the way is virtually never motivated by the teacher).
That system seems utterly broken. Makes one wonder what insane soul invented such a rediculous system that automatically downgrades a student because it doesn't follow the "correct" path.
When I started studying here at the university, one of the first things I noticed was the amazing freedom I had. No one watching over my shoulder or giving out home assignments every week. Beautiful.
Why couldn't this work for high school? Let the student be his own master - give it responsibility. After all, for all I know, responsibility is what makes us evolve as people. If the student has a problem it can call/visit the teacher and voila, problem solved.
Why this "you shall read 45 pages till next week and write me a summary" bondage? What you are not interested in and are forced to do, you will without a doubt forget.
This just in: do they run Windows?