How nice for you. I'm not sure how your point relates to anything in the comment you're replying to (or in the article itself).
As an aside, if you're spamming the comments list with peniswaving about how long my education took, don't pat yourself on the back too much. You know not of what you speak.
Having gone through (and survived) such a program during my many years of school, I have to say that this guy is right.
There are those that have said that this must have occurred because this guy lacked aptitude or passion, but having seen a large number of people with both who simply got caught up in an often fickle system where if you entered during the wrong semester, you got Professor X, who was interested in the reputation of his school (and thus wanted to make the course "hard") but was totally uninterested in whether or not his students learned anything (because he had research to do or books to write or whatever else). This is more avoidable as an undergraduate than as a graduate student, and the fact of the matter is, there were courses where the folks that excelled were the people who'd taken the course before. Or (more often) the large groups of people who were cheating.
Science and math are hard, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something. The thinking isn't "better" than in the liberal arts, but the learning curve is steeper, and it's frankly a lot more work. I've done both, and it is a lot more work. But there are plenty of talented individuals who really want to work in engineering fields who simply get to the point where they say "screw this" because they realize that research universities are, in general, a lot more interested in funding and their reputations (often apparently judged by how many people they cut from the program in the first semester) than actually teaching anyone anything.
People, as they grow up, learn to cut their losses. We need to start worrying about the quality of education and not necessarily only admitting those to the discipline who will say "Yes, sir, can I have another" after every boot to the head.
You know, what I don't get is this - there is a reason that juvenile offenders are supposed to be treated as juveniles by the law. Their brains aren't done developing. They sometimes do juvenile things because they're, well, juvenile. It's not like they murdered someone.
And if the school IT guys are idiots, as they often are (I remember explaining a floppy disk to my totally incompetent 8th grade computers teacher back in the dark ages), I don't see that we should be trying to charge kids with felonies. Especially when it's not as if they hacked into some national defense computer.
The only lesson it teaches anyone is that we have overzealous prosecutors.
Give a kid something he's not supposed to get into, and he'll try to get into it. Period. Be stupid about it, and he will get into it.
You know, I lived in New Orleans for 4 years. And the whole time I lived there, all I could think of was the above. It's not like you can ever forget that you live under sea level - everything stinks of swamp, and more often than not rain leaves standing water everywhere.
I'm not going to blame the victims. Their lives suck right now. But I don't think any of them have the right to be surprised.
If I lie down on the train tracks, I shouldn't be shocked if I get hit by a train...
I actually thought about downloading the software and trying it out, but after perusing the available books, it seemed like a majority were just cheesy self-help books and "how to invest your money like a pro" sorts of things.
Looking at it again, I apparently missed the more interesting offerings that now appear to be there, like Terry Brooks; however, I suspect that in the short run, the way they'll continue to collect fines is by not offering an enormous selection. I somehow doubt reading physical books is ever going to go completely by the wayside... some of us like the quaint pleasure of spending an afternoon with a dead tree:)
Using Microsoft's exciting new BorgLite technology, employees will begin automatically downloading the new anti-virus Service Pack 3 to their wetware immediately (note: patchsize may break older models)!
Who needs vaccines when you have Automatic Updates?;)
The first pass isn't necessarily the hardest, though - it is nice to be able to eliminate the A's and the F's quickly, as they are the easiest to grade (the A's don't need your help, and the F's are usually beyond it). It's those guys in the middle that suck down your time - those mildly redeemable characters that you can't just outright praise or flunk are the worst. Once you get past the bad grammar and the rotten spelling, that's where the real work begins.
As for really being able to analyze those papers for content and so on? Give me a break. Real NLP may claim to "theoretically" be able to do honest-to-God worthwhile semantic and rhetorical analysis, but anyone who tries to convince you they have a working system that really does worthwhile analysis of actual texts has some swampland in Florida to sell you too.
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How nice for you. I'm not sure how your point relates to anything in the comment you're replying to (or in the article itself). As an aside, if you're spamming the comments list with peniswaving about how long my education took, don't pat yourself on the back too much. You know not of what you speak.
There are those that have said that this must have occurred because this guy lacked aptitude or passion, but having seen a large number of people with both who simply got caught up in an often fickle system where if you entered during the wrong semester, you got Professor X, who was interested in the reputation of his school (and thus wanted to make the course "hard") but was totally uninterested in whether or not his students learned anything (because he had research to do or books to write or whatever else). This is more avoidable as an undergraduate than as a graduate student, and the fact of the matter is, there were courses where the folks that excelled were the people who'd taken the course before. Or (more often) the large groups of people who were cheating.
Science and math are hard, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something. The thinking isn't "better" than in the liberal arts, but the learning curve is steeper, and it's frankly a lot more work. I've done both, and it is a lot more work. But there are plenty of talented individuals who really want to work in engineering fields who simply get to the point where they say "screw this" because they realize that research universities are, in general, a lot more interested in funding and their reputations (often apparently judged by how many people they cut from the program in the first semester) than actually teaching anyone anything.
People, as they grow up, learn to cut their losses. We need to start worrying about the quality of education and not necessarily only admitting those to the discipline who will say "Yes, sir, can I have another" after every boot to the head.
Wow... are they advertising a mouse, or a marital aid??
Otherwise, I mean, Christ... I can barely juggle three buttons as it is!
Give a kid something he's not supposed to get into, and he'll try to get into it. Period. Be stupid about it, and he will get into it.
I'm not going to blame the victims. Their lives suck right now. But I don't think any of them have the right to be surprised.
If I lie down on the train tracks, I shouldn't be shocked if I get hit by a train...
I actually thought about downloading the software and trying it out, but after perusing the available books, it seemed like a majority were just cheesy self-help books and "how to invest your money like a pro" sorts of things. Looking at it again, I apparently missed the more interesting offerings that now appear to be there, like Terry Brooks; however, I suspect that in the short run, the way they'll continue to collect fines is by not offering an enormous selection. I somehow doubt reading physical books is ever going to go completely by the wayside... some of us like the quaint pleasure of spending an afternoon with a dead tree :)
Using Microsoft's exciting new BorgLite technology, employees will begin automatically downloading the new anti-virus Service Pack 3 to their wetware immediately (note: patchsize may break older models)! Who needs vaccines when you have Automatic Updates? ;)
The first pass isn't necessarily the hardest, though - it is nice to be able to eliminate the A's and the F's quickly, as they are the easiest to grade (the A's don't need your help, and the F's are usually beyond it). It's those guys in the middle that suck down your time - those mildly redeemable characters that you can't just outright praise or flunk are the worst. Once you get past the bad grammar and the rotten spelling, that's where the real work begins. As for really being able to analyze those papers for content and so on? Give me a break. Real NLP may claim to "theoretically" be able to do honest-to-God worthwhile semantic and rhetorical analysis, but anyone who tries to convince you they have a working system that really does worthwhile analysis of actual texts has some swampland in Florida to sell you too.