The scariest thing I've ever seen was a in a second-semester calculus course. The professor used a "wicked" scale (I'm curious as to the exact technical term). He had 50 students between two sections. He combined the two section for grading purposes.
Under his scheme, 10 percent of the students would receive A's. 50 students works out to 5 A's. ! student would get an A+, 3 A's, 1 A-. The scores were sorted, and at the end of the semester he assigned the first student an A+, and so on down the line. This really frightened me at the time, I've gotten far more cynical than I was in my callow youth. The thought the exactly half of the students in the room would fail the course was appalling. My thought was that we could all flip a coin, the half remaining would get at least a D. This is unrealistic, of course, but it accurately portrays my reaction.
This fellow had a very low appreciation for his undergrads. He also seemed to enjoy the cutthroat competition: why help a fellow student improve their score ? They might do better than you and get the last 'B'. I failed his section, haiting it the whole time. I repeated the course with a different instructor and got a 'B', and enjoyed it. Go figure.
A more serious problem was that he was grading on subjective criteria, not absolute. His system allowed the same proportion of passing and failing grades for a class with no really bright people, as he would for a class of geniuses. He'll give A's to his best 5 students, where another instructor might not have thought they were all doing A work.
The sad thing is, based on my experience with other classes, his statistics aren't far off. He gets about the right proportion of grades for the right people most of the time. There's no allowance for a uncommon sample of students.
I think one of FutureCase's penguin cases would look nice sitting next to my Blue & White G3. I already have a beige PMac running Linuxppc, but I freely admit that an x86 box would be cheaper as a Linux server.
Who's shipping systems with an El-Torito compatible BIOS ?I haven't seen a Wintel box that could actually do this yet. I haven't looked very hard, but none of the half-dozen production environments I've worked in have had one.
This sin't a flame folks, I am sincerely interested in which manufacturers are shipping boot-cd compatible BIOS chips (salsa optional). My web research turned up more info on *nix boot CDs than Dos/Win boot CDs (no Mac info, but we've had that capability for years, and on shipping systems to boot:-). http://www.nikko.simplenet.com/goldentime/bootcd1b .htm is nicely technical. There must be more out there somewhere
I got a full install of LinuxPPC working before I got LinuxPPC Live working. If it's anything like BootX/Linux PPC combo, then it'' do a full reboot and unload all of the Mac OS. A quick check at http://www.linuxppc.com/ doesn't tell me much more.
Oh, I don't know about that. I've got a lot of shiny plastic coasters, but none of them are from MacWorld:-) Linux has been getting a lot of press in the Mac community lately, I suspect that a fair number of people will try it.
2.) Security - typical M$ smoke and mirrors here. The only version of NT to ever earn C2 certification was a special version of 3.51, and it only earned the certification when the machine had no floppy drive, and one other criteria (forgot which...) You always see M$ bigots saying NT is C2, but notice how they skirt right over which version they're talking about?
The "other criteria" is that it can't be attached to a network... I'm not fully conversant with C2 specs, but IIRC that means not having a NIC installed, not just not being plugged in. There's a secure server OS !
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Under his scheme, 10 percent of the students would receive A's. 50 students works out to 5 A's. ! student would get an A+, 3 A's, 1 A-. The scores were sorted, and at the end of the semester he assigned the first student an A+, and so on down the line. This really frightened me at the time, I've gotten far more cynical than I was in my callow youth. The thought the exactly half of the students in the room would fail the course was appalling. My thought was that we could all flip a coin, the half remaining would get at least a D. This is unrealistic, of course, but it accurately portrays my reaction.
This fellow had a very low appreciation for his undergrads. He also seemed to enjoy the cutthroat competition: why help a fellow student improve their score ? They might do better than you and get the last 'B'. I failed his section, haiting it the whole time. I repeated the course with a different instructor and got a 'B', and enjoyed it. Go figure.
A more serious problem was that he was grading on subjective criteria, not absolute. His system allowed the same proportion of passing and failing grades for a class with no really bright people, as he would for a class of geniuses. He'll give A's to his best 5 students, where another instructor might not have thought they were all doing A work.
The sad thing is, based on my experience with other classes, his statistics aren't far off. He gets about the right proportion of grades for the right people most of the time. There's no allowance for a uncommon sample of students.
I think one of FutureCase's penguin cases would look nice sitting next to my Blue & White G3. I already have a beige PMac running Linuxppc, but I freely admit that an x86 box would be cheaper as a Linux server.
Who's shipping systems with an El-Torito compatible BIOS ?I haven't seen a Wintel box that could actually do this yet. I haven't looked very hard, but none of the half-dozen production environments I've worked in have had one.
:-). http://www.nikko.simplenet.com/goldentime/bootcd1b .htm is nicely technical. There must be more out there somewhere
This sin't a flame folks, I am sincerely interested in which manufacturers are shipping boot-cd compatible BIOS chips (salsa optional). My web research turned up more info on *nix boot CDs than Dos/Win boot CDs (no Mac info, but we've had that capability for years, and on shipping systems to boot
I got a full install of LinuxPPC working before I got LinuxPPC Live working. If it's anything like BootX/Linux PPC combo, then it'' do a full reboot and unload all of the Mac OS. A quick check at http://www.linuxppc.com/ doesn't tell me much more.
Anybody actually used the thing ?
Oh, I don't know about that. I've got a lot of shiny plastic coasters, but none of them are from MacWorld :-) Linux has been getting a lot of press in the Mac community lately, I suspect that a fair number of people will try it.
2.) Security - typical M$ smoke and mirrors here. The only version of NT to ever earn C2 certification was a special version of 3.51, and it only earned the certification when the machine had no floppy drive, and one other criteria (forgot which...) You always see M$ bigots saying NT is C2, but notice how they skirt right over which version they're talking about?
The "other criteria" is that it can't be attached to a network... I'm not fully conversant with C2 specs, but IIRC that means not having a NIC installed, not just not being plugged in. There's a secure server OS !
Can someone put a soundfile of the "their operating systems suck" quote ?
Linuxppc installs great over ADSL. Finally something to thank PacBell for...