I am currently in a technical writing class at a university. I don't, and never will, claim to have a complete grasp of the English language. With that said, there are quite a few of my fellow students that have grasped the concepts of the English language equivalent to that of a greased pig. They lack even the most common proofreading skills. Before each assignment is handed in, it must be proofread by three classmates. I have included purposeful elementary errors to see if they actually read my articles. They haven't caught a single valid error all semester. I even got one back with two words on the first page, "looks pretty." Since then I have simply ignored any correction that most of my classmates stumble upon.
The basic reason that a more advanced grammar check is needed is because students do not realize that correct grammar is vital no matter the language.
In the auto industry you can usually tell from the outside when a car is severly underpowered, but that is not the case with computers. You will be hard pressed to find anyone that would take a cool looking Cavalier with a body kit over a Porsche, but you will find people at "insert local retail shop" that buy something completely underpowered at an overpowered price.
I personally believe that a lot of the blame rests on the retail shops that promise everything except a back massage from their bargain bin computers. If you take a computer that is barely over the minimum requirements to boot the operating system without creating a massive swap file, then add a bunch of bundled programs that load on startup, then spice things up with a piece of adware/spyware/trojan, what else can you expect besides angry users.
If you want to check on a local business, you can check the local BBB. You know that a doctor with a degree from somewhere besides University of Phoenix has a reasonably good chance of being competent, but there is no way to prove to the average consumer that you are not an amateurish hack. I've been working with computers for the past 15 years (competent for last 10) and normally know what's going on, or when I don't know what's going on, where to turn to so that I don't crap up the situation even more.
A few years back I took the A+ Certification test to prove myself. The only thing that I proved was that the A+ Certification was a joke. I passed the test with flying colors without studying, or opening one single "10 easy steps to A+ Certification Glory". Not only did I not have to study, but I found a few questions that had no/incorrect solutions. One question had a picture of the connection riser of a legacy motherboard, and it asked to identify the USB port, except there was no USB port in the picture.
I find traveling or visiting friends to be a hassle because I seem to be the roaming tech support man. In the past 10 years of working on other's computers, I have only had to work on three Macs, and I don't have enough fingers/toes/hairs to count the number of Windows machines from which I've removed spyware and general crap, or changed settings that the user had no idea about.
Whenever I encounter a Windows machine connected directly to the internet, I refuse to work on it unless they make the small investment of a hardware router. I know that a router is not the end-all solution, and doesn't block things from phoning home, but it shows them that there are associated costs with computer security. Also, a few minutes explaining a few specific security functions can go a long way.
...I was going to win that game, but my video card pulled a muscle. Come on, you saw it coming. Or, could I borrow your computer, mine seems to be down with a viral infection. Actually seems like pretty cool technology, but it just come with built-in smart-a comments.
The fact that it's only 15 lines long, doesn't really say anything. How efficient is it? I've fallen into that trap before. Given the same language, a program isn't necessarily more efficient because it has fewer lines. Did you use a vector when a simple array would have worked? Even better, screw using multiple files, because then you don't have to include any inheritance or extra lines for accessing variables in another file. Just create programs with one file. I'm not trying to insinuate that I'm the programming god, but there is sometimes a difference between a well crafted program and a program with a small codebase.
There is no way that I would be using Linux at all without OSS ports to windows. I still use Windows for my desktop, but I use *nix exclusively for my servers. If you can show that there are really cool apps to the windows users, and keep upgrading the quality development of the open source OS (not going to start a distro war), maybe they will switch. It will take time. Personally, my switching point may be the next MS upgrade cycle.
Although grass roots is the starting point, the main gains are going to come from changes at the university and corporate level. Home users mainly use what they use at work/school.
Slashdot Mirror
I am currently in a technical writing class at a university. I don't, and never will, claim to have a complete grasp of the English language. With that said, there are quite a few of my fellow students that have grasped the concepts of the English language equivalent to that of a greased pig. They lack even the most common proofreading skills. Before each assignment is handed in, it must be proofread by three classmates. I have included purposeful elementary errors to see if they actually read my articles. They haven't caught a single valid error all semester. I even got one back with two words on the first page, "looks pretty." Since then I have simply ignored any correction that most of my classmates stumble upon.
The basic reason that a more advanced grammar check is needed is because students do not realize that correct grammar is vital no matter the language.
In the auto industry you can usually tell from the outside when a car is severly underpowered, but that is not the case with computers. You will be hard pressed to find anyone that would take a cool looking Cavalier with a body kit over a Porsche, but you will find people at "insert local retail shop" that buy something completely underpowered at an overpowered price.
I personally believe that a lot of the blame rests on the retail shops that promise everything except a back massage from their bargain bin computers. If you take a computer that is barely over the minimum requirements to boot the operating system without creating a massive swap file, then add a bunch of bundled programs that load on startup, then spice things up with a piece of adware/spyware/trojan, what else can you expect besides angry users.
If you want to check on a local business, you can check the local BBB. You know that a doctor with a degree from somewhere besides University of Phoenix has a reasonably good chance of being competent, but there is no way to prove to the average consumer that you are not an amateurish hack. I've been working with computers for the past 15 years (competent for last 10) and normally know what's going on, or when I don't know what's going on, where to turn to so that I don't crap up the situation even more.
A few years back I took the A+ Certification test to prove myself. The only thing that I proved was that the A+ Certification was a joke. I passed the test with flying colors without studying, or opening one single "10 easy steps to A+ Certification Glory". Not only did I not have to study, but I found a few questions that had no/incorrect solutions. One question had a picture of the connection riser of a legacy motherboard, and it asked to identify the USB port, except there was no USB port in the picture.
I find traveling or visiting friends to be a hassle because I seem to be the roaming tech support man. In the past 10 years of working on other's computers, I have only had to work on three Macs, and I don't have enough fingers/toes/hairs to count the number of Windows machines from which I've removed spyware and general crap, or changed settings that the user had no idea about.
Whenever I encounter a Windows machine connected directly to the internet, I refuse to work on it unless they make the small investment of a hardware router. I know that a router is not the end-all solution, and doesn't block things from phoning home, but it shows them that there are associated costs with computer security. Also, a few minutes explaining a few specific security functions can go a long way.
...I was going to win that game, but my video card pulled a muscle. Come on, you saw it coming. Or, could I borrow your computer, mine seems to be down with a viral infection. Actually seems like pretty cool technology, but it just come with built-in smart-a comments.
The fact that it's only 15 lines long, doesn't really say anything. How efficient is it? I've fallen into that trap before. Given the same language, a program isn't necessarily more efficient because it has fewer lines. Did you use a vector when a simple array would have worked? Even better, screw using multiple files, because then you don't have to include any inheritance or extra lines for accessing variables in another file. Just create programs with one file. I'm not trying to insinuate that I'm the programming god, but there is sometimes a difference between a well crafted program and a program with a small codebase.
There is no way that I would be using Linux at all without OSS ports to windows. I still use Windows for my desktop, but I use *nix exclusively for my servers. If you can show that there are really cool apps to the windows users, and keep upgrading the quality development of the open source OS (not going to start a distro war), maybe they will switch. It will take time. Personally, my switching point may be the next MS upgrade cycle. Although grass roots is the starting point, the main gains are going to come from changes at the university and corporate level. Home users mainly use what they use at work/school.