Though I can't speak for any school but my own, one important lesson I learned is that the right advisor can totally alter your academic career. My junior year there was a freshman who sat near me in my systems software class. Since you can't cover all the pre-reqs of this class with AP credit, I wondered how someone could be in the class his first semester. Turns out he convinced his advisor he was a wiz programmer so his advisor just signed off on those classes. It's really too bad too because while the guy may have been great at programming (or might have just been lying, who knows) coding hobby apps on the side probably doesn't teach you everything you would learn in real OOD, Data Structures, and Software Engineering courses. Another example is a friend of mine who convinced his advisor that the econ courses he took relied on math enough that he should be able to count them toward a minor in math. Doing this, he was able to get a math minor without taking any additional math classes (beyond what he needed for his engineering major).
If his school is anything like mine then advisors have free reign to do as they please so it's quite possible he was able to get his advisor to let him sign up beyond the usual credit load (which is 23 hours max at my school, over 19 with special permission).
I was just about to make a very similar post.
While I find this discovery to be quite cool, it does nothing like putting a nail in ID's coffin. It was never a central tenet of ID that science could not explain how bees fly. It was merely a crappy argument made by people who can't debate the real issue.
The best part is, that rather than ignoring these crappy arguments or responding with intelligent and logical remarks, the scientists are just sinking to the same level.
I spend a great deal of time reading scientific journals/websites/magazines/etc. and quite frankly I'm getting tired of all the mention of evolution and ID in places where it does not belong. When you do a study on how the mechanism of bee flight evolved then please, by all means, mention evolution and ID. Otherwise, stick to the point.
Luckily for me, the sys admins here at my school seem to be far less intelligent. One morning we all woke up to find that many games (including everquest) no longer worked, file transfers over AIM had been slowed to a crawl and most of the popular P2P applications had likewise been "load balanced" to the point of being useless. It seems however, that they capped on a port-by-port basis, so all my torrents continued to run at full speed. Since then the everquest addicts have hooked up through proxies and everybody else just uses bittorrent with a random port.
We also noticed that the terms of service for using the campus network had been greatly broadened. It seems that this mindset of "college is for learning" is growing and let me tell you, if you respond with "what did your checking your personal email and espn.com this morning have to do with learning?" they will probably become at least slightly upset. Sadly all this plan by Dell/Napster is going to do is drive people further underground unless it has respectable prices and some incentive to pay rather than steal. I for one listen to very little music (as there is little good music to listen to) so I couldn't care less either way.
Wheeling, eh? I went to HS about 40 minutes south of Wheeling in New Martinsville, WV. I guess I wouldn't consider my high school to be "great" probably not even "very good" but after attending a prestigious and expensive engineering university I've found that it wasn't much different from my HS. The key is that if you want to learn the material and get the high grades, it's up to YOU to do that. The teachers will lecture on the important information, but if you truly want to master it, you have to read and think about the material on your own time. No matter how "good" the teachers/profs are, they cannot make you understand something inside and out. They are there to lecture and to answer any questions you might have, I'm interested to know how the schools in your native country were different.
Ever since I learned this lesson I've found school to be quite easy. I was the top in my class in both HS and college and it wasn't because I went to a "good" school or had "good" teachers. It's because I realized that my future was up to me and I grabbed life by the balls.
As for the tests being too easy and thus not motivating students, I guess we must have quite different views on the subject. Personally I find tests to be an overused tool. I've had classes where we had bi-weekly exams and I found them to be worthless. Instead of attempting to understand the subject matter, everyone just memorized the little morsel that would be on the next test, spit it back out on the exam and moved on. The best classes I've had were the ones that relied less on tests and more on things like projects or reports to let you demonstrate your mastery of the information. My circuits class, for example, had only one exam, the final yet I feel it was one of the classes where I learned the most. Maybe the tests you took before coming to the US were structured quite differently, but it's my belief that the more time you spend taking tests, the less time you are actually learning useful things. I'd rather have a class with no tests that was designed to give me a deep understanding.
I see two distinct possibilities here: A) you're Yet Another Intelligent Design Guy parroting faulty arguments you pulled off of sites like this or B) you're a pure physics/math/engineering snob who regards the relatively messy field of biology with unwarranted disdain. Please enlighten me in this regard.
You seem to have it narrowed down to two pretty good choices and while I'm lightyears from the first I suppose my post made it seem that I am not so far from the second.
My point was not to attempt to downplay the importance of biology, evolution or Darwin's role in developing the field. Nor was I attempting to promote the scientific theory of ID. My only point (and I had not intended it to create such a stir) was that while Darwin played a key role in beginning the field, I just don't see Darwin's science as more venerable than Einstein or Heisenberg's.
You are right that both Einstein and Heisenberg might be dead wrong, and at least one of them has to be. However, we still use both of their equations to great success everyday. On the other hand, most of Darwin's ideas on evolution have been swept away to make way for those better supported by evidence. You are the biologist and I feel no need to seem pompous by trying to lecture you on the matter as I'm sure you are very well versed, and I can only fall back on what I have learned on my own (I never found the covering of evolution throughout my education to be satisfying). However, having read Origin of Species I would simply not have chosen to describe Darwin's science as more venerable than Einstein/Heisenberg's and would rather see those scientists who have made significant contributions to our understanding of evolution as it is today lifted up and put in high regard.
I apologize if my earlier posts were not stated clearly, I am quite busy preparing for the impending flooding that all this wonderful rain has brought us. Good day.
Though you referred to me as idiotic, I will go ahead and kindly correct you.
While the idea that adaptations of the parent are passed on to the offspring IS included in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, the idea itself is in fact called pangenesis and WAS proposed by Charles Darwin himself.
Thank you for keeping the debate at a high level of respect and intelligence. Good day.
Much of the world doesn't know the venerable physics of Einstein and Heisenberg very well; and even more sadly, many deny the even more venerable biology of Darwin
Both Einstein and Heisenberg are rolling over in their graves this very moment. First, because strictly according to Darwin's biology if I go out and run several miles every day and then have a child, my child will be born with the uncanny ability to run well. Now I'm going to assume that your reference to the "venerable biology of Darwin" simply meant the idea that things evolve over time into new things. Even still, I don't know of any PhD's who refuse to believe the Uncertainty Principle, whereas I know at least a few who feel that the body of evidence supporting Evolution is less than satisfying and that Evolution as a theory has much further to go.
Sorry for the semi-OT post, I just constantly see these "inspirational" posters around where they list two or three of the "greatest thinkers" of all time. Sadly they always seem to list Darwin alongside Einstein.
In my opinion Einsten & Heisenberg >> Darwin as "great thinkers."
yes, medium screen brightness because the max setting "hurts your eyes" and with the sound off because the sound in the game "hurts your ears" and with no wireless because it "causes brain cancer":-)
While six hours does seem much better than is expected, I'm still holding my opinion on both systems until I've tried them out myself. Too many fanboys willing to lie to save their product
Hmm, a very interesting article. However, I've come away with two questions:
1) Where is all the money for this coming from? Socialist or not you can't just go from 3rd world to hightech overnight.
2) How wide spread are most of these technologies? There weren't any details given as to what % of the chinese population ever actually gets to see these technologies. No matter how fast China is growing there is no way that anyone can honestly believe that these technologies are widespread throughout the country. If these techs are available to as few people as some of you say then unfortunately the article is somewhat less impressive. Yes they've come up with some great ways to use tech (I'd love to have some of those traffic lights that count down, etc.) but it doesn't really indicate how China as a whole is evolving.
For example, if someone were to come to America and to my university they may think that every University in America has fiber Gb to every computer on campus, 802.11g covers the whole campus and part of the city, online registration, people riding Segways, etc. When in reality we've just blown all our cash on such things rather than good professors:-)
No response??
According to the blu ray website, "all Blu-ray players and recorders will have to support playback of these video codecs, it will still be up to the movie studios to decide which video codec(s) they use for their releases."
Which still confuses me. You've been able to buy Blu Ray recorders/players in Japan for almost a year and a half. how can we now go back and say "oh yeah, all players and recorders must be able to read these codecs"
Going to put out a firmware update for all the older devices?
You are quite right, that is my mistake. I had not heard the news of the additional codecs. But one thing bothers me. There are already Blu-Ray devices on the market......how is it that they can just change the standard for codecs now? It was my understanding that this was why they were stuck with only MPEG-2.
As some have stated, Blu-Ray discs will indeed have greater storage capacities in terms of raw bytes. However, they have chosen to only support MPEG-2 compression whereas HD-DVD will support several MPEG-4 variations (including H.264). What this means is that even though HD-DVD's have a significantly smaller storage space they will in fact be capable of storing more video at equal quality.
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Though I can't speak for any school but my own, one important lesson I learned is that the right advisor can totally alter your academic career. My junior year there was a freshman who sat near me in my systems software class. Since you can't cover all the pre-reqs of this class with AP credit, I wondered how someone could be in the class his first semester. Turns out he convinced his advisor he was a wiz programmer so his advisor just signed off on those classes. It's really too bad too because while the guy may have been great at programming (or might have just been lying, who knows) coding hobby apps on the side probably doesn't teach you everything you would learn in real OOD, Data Structures, and Software Engineering courses. Another example is a friend of mine who convinced his advisor that the econ courses he took relied on math enough that he should be able to count them toward a minor in math. Doing this, he was able to get a math minor without taking any additional math classes (beyond what he needed for his engineering major). If his school is anything like mine then advisors have free reign to do as they please so it's quite possible he was able to get his advisor to let him sign up beyond the usual credit load (which is 23 hours max at my school, over 19 with special permission).
I was just about to make a very similar post. While I find this discovery to be quite cool, it does nothing like putting a nail in ID's coffin. It was never a central tenet of ID that science could not explain how bees fly. It was merely a crappy argument made by people who can't debate the real issue. The best part is, that rather than ignoring these crappy arguments or responding with intelligent and logical remarks, the scientists are just sinking to the same level. I spend a great deal of time reading scientific journals/websites/magazines/etc. and quite frankly I'm getting tired of all the mention of evolution and ID in places where it does not belong. When you do a study on how the mechanism of bee flight evolved then please, by all means, mention evolution and ID. Otherwise, stick to the point.
Luckily for me, the sys admins here at my school seem to be far less intelligent. One morning we all woke up to find that many games (including everquest) no longer worked, file transfers over AIM had been slowed to a crawl and most of the popular P2P applications had likewise been "load balanced" to the point of being useless. It seems however, that they capped on a port-by-port basis, so all my torrents continued to run at full speed. Since then the everquest addicts have hooked up through proxies and everybody else just uses bittorrent with a random port. We also noticed that the terms of service for using the campus network had been greatly broadened. It seems that this mindset of "college is for learning" is growing and let me tell you, if you respond with "what did your checking your personal email and espn.com this morning have to do with learning?" they will probably become at least slightly upset. Sadly all this plan by Dell/Napster is going to do is drive people further underground unless it has respectable prices and some incentive to pay rather than steal. I for one listen to very little music (as there is little good music to listen to) so I couldn't care less either way.
Wheeling, eh? I went to HS about 40 minutes south of Wheeling in New Martinsville, WV. I guess I wouldn't consider my high school to be "great" probably not even "very good" but after attending a prestigious and expensive engineering university I've found that it wasn't much different from my HS. The key is that if you want to learn the material and get the high grades, it's up to YOU to do that. The teachers will lecture on the important information, but if you truly want to master it, you have to read and think about the material on your own time. No matter how "good" the teachers/profs are, they cannot make you understand something inside and out. They are there to lecture and to answer any questions you might have, I'm interested to know how the schools in your native country were different.
Ever since I learned this lesson I've found school to be quite easy. I was the top in my class in both HS and college and it wasn't because I went to a "good" school or had "good" teachers. It's because I realized that my future was up to me and I grabbed life by the balls.
As for the tests being too easy and thus not motivating students, I guess we must have quite different views on the subject. Personally I find tests to be an overused tool. I've had classes where we had bi-weekly exams and I found them to be worthless. Instead of attempting to understand the subject matter, everyone just memorized the little morsel that would be on the next test, spit it back out on the exam and moved on. The best classes I've had were the ones that relied less on tests and more on things like projects or reports to let you demonstrate your mastery of the information. My circuits class, for example, had only one exam, the final yet I feel it was one of the classes where I learned the most. Maybe the tests you took before coming to the US were structured quite differently, but it's my belief that the more time you spend taking tests, the less time you are actually learning useful things. I'd rather have a class with no tests that was designed to give me a deep understanding.
I seem to have managed to botch my HTML tags. My sarcasm disclaimer around the words "scientific theory" are not showing up properly.
I see two distinct possibilities here: A) you're Yet Another Intelligent Design Guy parroting faulty arguments you pulled off of sites like this or B) you're a pure physics/math/engineering snob who regards the relatively messy field of biology with unwarranted disdain. Please enlighten me in this regard.
You seem to have it narrowed down to two pretty good choices and while I'm lightyears from the first I suppose my post made it seem that I am not so far from the second.
My point was not to attempt to downplay the importance of biology, evolution or Darwin's role in developing the field. Nor was I attempting to promote the scientific theory of ID. My only point (and I had not intended it to create such a stir) was that while Darwin played a key role in beginning the field, I just don't see Darwin's science as more venerable than Einstein or Heisenberg's.
You are right that both Einstein and Heisenberg might be dead wrong, and at least one of them has to be. However, we still use both of their equations to great success everyday. On the other hand, most of Darwin's ideas on evolution have been swept away to make way for those better supported by evidence. You are the biologist and I feel no need to seem pompous by trying to lecture you on the matter as I'm sure you are very well versed, and I can only fall back on what I have learned on my own (I never found the covering of evolution throughout my education to be satisfying). However, having read Origin of Species I would simply not have chosen to describe Darwin's science as more venerable than Einstein/Heisenberg's and would rather see those scientists who have made significant contributions to our understanding of evolution as it is today lifted up and put in high regard.
I apologize if my earlier posts were not stated clearly, I am quite busy preparing for the impending flooding that all this wonderful rain has brought us. Good day.
Though you referred to me as idiotic, I will go ahead and kindly correct you. While the idea that adaptations of the parent are passed on to the offspring IS included in the Lamarckian theory of evolution, the idea itself is in fact called pangenesis and WAS proposed by Charles Darwin himself. Thank you for keeping the debate at a high level of respect and intelligence. Good day.
Much of the world doesn't know the venerable physics of Einstein and Heisenberg very well; and even more sadly, many deny the even more venerable biology of Darwin Both Einstein and Heisenberg are rolling over in their graves this very moment. First, because strictly according to Darwin's biology if I go out and run several miles every day and then have a child, my child will be born with the uncanny ability to run well. Now I'm going to assume that your reference to the "venerable biology of Darwin" simply meant the idea that things evolve over time into new things. Even still, I don't know of any PhD's who refuse to believe the Uncertainty Principle, whereas I know at least a few who feel that the body of evidence supporting Evolution is less than satisfying and that Evolution as a theory has much further to go. Sorry for the semi-OT post, I just constantly see these "inspirational" posters around where they list two or three of the "greatest thinkers" of all time. Sadly they always seem to list Darwin alongside Einstein. In my opinion Einsten & Heisenberg >> Darwin as "great thinkers."
yes, medium screen brightness because the max setting "hurts your eyes" and with the sound off because the sound in the game "hurts your ears" and with no wireless because it "causes brain cancer" :-)
While six hours does seem much better than is expected, I'm still holding my opinion on both systems until I've tried them out myself. Too many fanboys willing to lie to save their product
Hmm, a very interesting article. However, I've come away with two questions: 1) Where is all the money for this coming from? Socialist or not you can't just go from 3rd world to hightech overnight. 2) How wide spread are most of these technologies? There weren't any details given as to what % of the chinese population ever actually gets to see these technologies. No matter how fast China is growing there is no way that anyone can honestly believe that these technologies are widespread throughout the country. If these techs are available to as few people as some of you say then unfortunately the article is somewhat less impressive. Yes they've come up with some great ways to use tech (I'd love to have some of those traffic lights that count down, etc.) but it doesn't really indicate how China as a whole is evolving. For example, if someone were to come to America and to my university they may think that every University in America has fiber Gb to every computer on campus, 802.11g covers the whole campus and part of the city, online registration, people riding Segways, etc. When in reality we've just blown all our cash on such things rather than good professors :-)
No response?? According to the blu ray website, "all Blu-ray players and recorders will have to support playback of these video codecs, it will still be up to the movie studios to decide which video codec(s) they use for their releases." Which still confuses me. You've been able to buy Blu Ray recorders/players in Japan for almost a year and a half. how can we now go back and say "oh yeah, all players and recorders must be able to read these codecs" Going to put out a firmware update for all the older devices?
You are quite right, that is my mistake. I had not heard the news of the additional codecs. But one thing bothers me. There are already Blu-Ray devices on the market......how is it that they can just change the standard for codecs now? It was my understanding that this was why they were stuck with only MPEG-2.
As some have stated, Blu-Ray discs will indeed have greater storage capacities in terms of raw bytes. However, they have chosen to only support MPEG-2 compression whereas HD-DVD will support several MPEG-4 variations (including H.264). What this means is that even though HD-DVD's have a significantly smaller storage space they will in fact be capable of storing more video at equal quality.
FACTS:
HD-DVD
Dual Layer Storage: 30 GB
Max HiDef Video: 4.5 hours
Blu-Ray
Dual Layer Storage: 50GB
Max HiDef Video: 4 hours