I think that taking digital notes can be an excellent aid to a student's studies, IF they write them down afterwards for retention. It helped me get through every math-oriented course I needed to take.
I also think that students who are more inclined to slack off will do so regardless on whether the notes are transcribed digitally or on paper. It's not like students didn't find any other interesting ways to distract themselves before laptops got cheap...Plus, if the student sits towards the front, it's very difficult for them to get away with the slacker behavior anyway
Finally, I think holding notes digitally is a significantly better alternative than writing them up and scanning them later. With the latter option, you have to actually remember to scan those notes or risk losing them. Some people are excellent about keeping their notes archived, but I lose paper notes left and right. If I don't need them, it'll probably disappear within thirty days. On the other hand, all of my typed up notes since freshman year (I'm a fifth-year senior now) have survived. Again, had I actually written those notes up afterwards, I probably would've done better on the exams, but I was a stupid Freshman...spare me.:)
TeXmacs was excellent for making pretty LaTeX-like notes really, really quickly. A few math teachers were surprised that I knew "LaTeX" (though I eventually did learn straight LaTeX, but never used it because it was much slower.
Well, I think this perception is wholly dependent on how you categorize "nerds" and "jocks." In my high school, it was well understood that the jocks were the sports stars that were terrible academically, but were very physically attractive and socially savvy. Many of these folks are catching up now, though some have done exceptionally well for themselves.
Then you had the "nerds," who usually had their own clique going. They were all very intelligent, though you'd never know it amongst all of the self-deprivation they imposed on themselves. Almost all of them went on to well-recognized universities and are doing well today.
I've noticed over the years that this dichotomy is much more prevalent in public schools were there are rash differences in academic abilities amongst their students. It's kind of like an ego complex: if the academically poor students can't compete on smarts with the "geeks," they instead turn to physical prowess and social influence to shut them out. In private schools or schools with a more even distribution of academic ability, I see that the "jocks" of the school are actually pretty geeky, but seem to do well overall.
The "geeks" and "nerds" have been prevailing over the jocks in high school ever since the terms have been institutionalized. Sure, there are some kids that were born and raised to be alpha, so they get alpha roles in life (executive, CEO, etc.), but in most cases, it's been that the nerds get the money and respect, while the jocks are in perpetual catch-up mode.
IT is my passion, and I love get my hands wet into new fields related to it. I've done the technician-level roles for a very long time running, and it gets boring really, really quickly. At least for practical purposes, imagination and creativity is mostly absent as a technician, unless your the manager of a delivery team and are responsible for bigger roles. Another thing that I hate about most IT-related jobs is the lack of physical mobility many of them have, so I do consulting on my spare time to get some of that flexibility and become familiar with different fields.
However, what I really want to do when I'm more established (hopefully) is work for the MTA (NYC) as a conductor. I really, really like the idea of conducting, though I can see how it can become tedious very quickly. Trains and subways are a big passion of mine, and it would be awesome to at least try this position once.
If not that, I would love working at or opening up a bike shop. Cycling is another big passion of mine, and I always thought of opening up a small bike shop and getting more intimate with the bicycling industry (which is actually fairly big and very interesting to learn about).
Doesn't bother me, so long as they don't include them in their "auto-networking" functions. For example, one of my friends who died two years ago came up recently on the list of "people I should reconnect with."
Here's the difference, though: nowadays, EVERYTHING is designed with the Internet in mind. Almost all financial instituions rely on it for day-to-day transactions, those that practice medicine use it for clerical and practical work, and IT as an industry relies on it for its survival (at least nowadays, anyway). That's not even considering the military (though if there's any group that would be prepared for an internet metldown, it should be them...)
If the Internet were shut off, LOTS and LOTS of people would be jobless and the economy would probably flounder overnight. It would be a significantly longer transition period, with a LOT more hardship.
Well, one of my ex-girlfriends strongly OPPOSED getting a Facebook account in favor of keeping her MySpace one. I had one that I used, very shamefully, to find women in my area way before I met her. (Yes, I'm aware of how stupid that was.) Thus, I kept it to be linked up to her.
I closed it just a week or two ago. Served no purpose.
The real problems I've found with MySpace every time I tried going back to it are:
It's mostly beridden with emo teenagers with nothing to offer and sexually frustrated adult stalkers looking for them.
The "spaces" of said teenagers are akin to their messy, horribly disorganized rooms; full of useless CRAP. Videos, songs, pictures, pictures, pictures, GAMES and, ironically, very, very little text.
If you thought Facebook had serious downtime, wait until you get a MySpace account. You'll understand what "downtime" really means...
Their search engine sucks incredibly.
Holy shit, THEIR ADS!!
Facebook resolved these issues by offering completely clean interfaces and a very simple, non-intrusive experience for its users. Personally, I didn't mind them opening the experience to high school students; there were no easy ways for them to trash their page, and they wouldn't learn how to anyway. I minded more when they switched to an AJAX-y layout, since it kind of broke the simplicity they always carried.
You know its bad when the founder of MySpace (I think?) is proclaiming to add MORE of what they already have. MySpace Games and Music are well established. They're done for.
Seriously, I wish that more people would come up-front and deliver their *real* reason for pirating: We are cheap as hell, and don't feel like paying for something that we want to enjoy. We'd rather go to great lengths and *steal* for our pleasure than pay rightfully for the software.
It's only a download. Nobody *really* gets hurt, right?
For the record: I pirate stuff quite often myself.
I figured that most people would treat videos on computer security like the videos that teachers would show at school. Their reaction?
"NO WORK!!!"
I think that what's most effective is just enforcing your security policies using Group Policy or other management tools on the network. That way, you KNOW that most people won't violate any policies set forth, and those that do are the ones that didn't need the training in the first place.
If you're really adamant about educating your employees with videos and such, find REALLY GOOD videos that will hold their attention for their entire run. Remember, at the end of the day, those computers don't belong to them and most of them simply wish to get work done. Any teaching method which can exploit these two truths for educational value is probably worth watching.
I can see this being immediately useful for news searching, as tweets tend to be an extremely fast source for breaking news in all fields. Twitter has also been useful for finding interesting articles on topics relevant to my interests (security, IT and a bit of politics), so tapping this could open up a lot of information previously hidden behind Twitter's walls.
FYI, the DSP used on iPods were only problematic before the 5G. Many articles now proclaim that they are, technically, just as good as the other players (iRiver, Creative, Cowon, etc.).
I know that I couldn't really tell the audio difference between a Creative Zen MicroPhoto and an iPod 5G. Even though I used Sony EX71 headphones on both players, these are good enough to reveal differences in quiet environments.
Unless you have a dynamic IP address, where you're still confined to somebody else's mail server for sending email out...
Setting up a mail server is pretty easy, whether it's a simple IMAP+SMTP server or a much bigger suite, like Zimbra or Exchange. As an added bonus, you gain some skills which are REALLY handy in a business...if that's an end-goal. Finally, because it's most likely a single user system, it's REALLY REALLY fast.
(After turning off my Exchange server in favor of Google Mail, I realized exactly how much speed I lost. Getting my mail from any client takes ages, and sending mail is much, much slower.)
I can understand the rationale behind your decision criteria, but do you think that judging a student by the number of languages he/she knows is a bit shallow? I know folks that are excellent developers that know only one or two languages WELL, and at the ACM Northeast Programming Competition I was at yesterday, there were students who did respectably and didn't really know C or C++. (Ironically enough, it was at that competition that I proved to myself that I know C well enough to get by, even though I didn't think I did...)
On the other hand, I know plenty of students who list a handful of languages on their resume, but have very little, if any, knowledge on how to use them. You know it's bad when a candidate lists that they know C++ and Java, but know the bare minimum (or less) about object-oriented programming.
I do agree with your second criterion, however. It makes sense, since most of us learned what we know through the projects we undertook and internships/co-ops that we've experienced.
Unless you're using amixer to set your volume levels, they really aren't that bad. there is a GUI equivalent for alsamixer, and it works well and looks good, last time I used it (a few days ago; still use alsamixer on the command line, since it works better with flux)
I agree that one page isn't enough for people with lots of experience, but his solution is not the best to address this either. --WAY-- too much to read.
Note. I actually see the reason for keeping resumes under one page; most people that think they need two usually don't. I think it's only appropriate if the position is really important, since the pool for those positions are smaller and, thus, those who make the hiring decisions can (and will) spend more time on the person's merits and personality.
The methodology my school uses for resume writing is that people should list three key responsibilites for each job listing, in list format. This can make keeping a resume within to a single page even more difficult because many people have had numerous interesting experiences at their previous workplaces that may or may not be able to get listed on there. Then again, if that person does claim to have many of those experiences, they should be able to list a few which will grab an employer's attention fairly quickly.
After hearing of several interviews in my co-ops and speaking to a few managers about this, the logic behind this makes a lot of sense. Even though HR uses a bland filter to separate the "wheat" from the "chaff" (or, more appropriately, the ones who know the system and the ones who don't), those resumes still need to be passed down to management, as the decision is ultimately up to them. What this means is that they look at TONS of resumes, sometimes on a daily basis. Most of those resumes are ill-formatted, poorly written and are eyesores to look at. Additionally, they usually want to spend less than a minute looking at one before deciding whether to yay or nay a second interview (the nays don't get saved; they get binned).
It's for this reason that having a resume in list format helps so much; hiring managers or others with decision power don't have to think as much when looking at one. They can sift through the list and see if they make the cut (for an interview, that is).
Slashdot Mirror
This is called doin it wrong! :)
It's not like Apple uses every update to disable Hackintosh functionality, and the osx86 crack team finds the hole and fixes it.
This will only surprise those that upgraded without doing any research or those that upgrade without reading this first.
I think that taking digital notes can be an excellent aid to a student's studies, IF they write them down afterwards for retention. It helped me get through every math-oriented course I needed to take.
I also think that students who are more inclined to slack off will do so regardless on whether the notes are transcribed digitally or on paper. It's not like students didn't find any other interesting ways to distract themselves before laptops got cheap...Plus, if the student sits towards the front, it's very difficult for them to get away with the slacker behavior anyway
Finally, I think holding notes digitally is a significantly better alternative than writing them up and scanning them later. With the latter option, you have to actually remember to scan those notes or risk losing them. Some people are excellent about keeping their notes archived, but I lose paper notes left and right. If I don't need them, it'll probably disappear within thirty days. On the other hand, all of my typed up notes since freshman year (I'm a fifth-year senior now) have survived. Again, had I actually written those notes up afterwards, I probably would've done better on the exams, but I was a stupid Freshman...spare me. :)
TeXmacs was excellent for making pretty LaTeX-like notes really, really quickly. A few math teachers were surprised that I knew "LaTeX" (though I eventually did learn straight LaTeX, but never used it because it was much slower.
Because when you fall behind, which is, in most cases, inevitable for those that live on debt, they'll be right back where they started.
But I suppose the problem is that long-term thinking isn't really applied.
Well, I think this perception is wholly dependent on how you categorize "nerds" and "jocks." In my high school, it was well understood that the jocks were the sports stars that were terrible academically, but were very physically attractive and socially savvy. Many of these folks are catching up now, though some have done exceptionally well for themselves.
Then you had the "nerds," who usually had their own clique going. They were all very intelligent, though you'd never know it amongst all of the self-deprivation they imposed on themselves. Almost all of them went on to well-recognized universities and are doing well today.
I've noticed over the years that this dichotomy is much more prevalent in public schools were there are rash differences in academic abilities amongst their students. It's kind of like an ego complex: if the academically poor students can't compete on smarts with the "geeks," they instead turn to physical prowess and social influence to shut them out. In private schools or schools with a more even distribution of academic ability, I see that the "jocks" of the school are actually pretty geeky, but seem to do well overall.
The "geeks" and "nerds" have been prevailing over the jocks in high school ever since the terms have been institutionalized. Sure, there are some kids that were born and raised to be alpha, so they get alpha roles in life (executive, CEO, etc.), but in most cases, it's been that the nerds get the money and respect, while the jocks are in perpetual catch-up mode.
IT is my passion, and I love get my hands wet into new fields related to it. I've done the technician-level roles for a very long time running, and it gets boring really, really quickly. At least for practical purposes, imagination and creativity is mostly absent as a technician, unless your the manager of a delivery team and are responsible for bigger roles. Another thing that I hate about most IT-related jobs is the lack of physical mobility many of them have, so I do consulting on my spare time to get some of that flexibility and become familiar with different fields.
However, what I really want to do when I'm more established (hopefully) is work for the MTA (NYC) as a conductor. I really, really like the idea of conducting, though I can see how it can become tedious very quickly. Trains and subways are a big passion of mine, and it would be awesome to at least try this position once.
If not that, I would love working at or opening up a bike shop. Cycling is another big passion of mine, and I always thought of opening up a small bike shop and getting more intimate with the bicycling industry (which is actually fairly big and very interesting to learn about).
Doesn't bother me, so long as they don't include them in their "auto-networking" functions. For example, one of my friends who died two years ago came up recently on the list of "people I should reconnect with."
It's sad that something fun like party has come to mean drug use.
Technically, it's always implied that, since alcohol plays a significant role in how successful or "fun" most parties will be.
Here's the difference, though: nowadays, EVERYTHING is designed with the Internet in mind. Almost all financial instituions rely on it for day-to-day transactions, those that practice medicine use it for clerical and practical work, and IT as an industry relies on it for its survival (at least nowadays, anyway). That's not even considering the military (though if there's any group that would be prepared for an internet metldown, it should be them...)
If the Internet were shut off, LOTS and LOTS of people would be jobless and the economy would probably flounder overnight. It would be a significantly longer transition period, with a LOT more hardship.
Well, one of my ex-girlfriends strongly OPPOSED getting a Facebook account in favor of keeping her MySpace one. I had one that I used, very shamefully, to find women in my area way before I met her. (Yes, I'm aware of how stupid that was.) Thus, I kept it to be linked up to her.
I closed it just a week or two ago. Served no purpose.
MrCrassic likes this.
The real problems I've found with MySpace every time I tried going back to it are:
Facebook resolved these issues by offering completely clean interfaces and a very simple, non-intrusive experience for its users. Personally, I didn't mind them opening the experience to high school students; there were no easy ways for them to trash their page, and they wouldn't learn how to anyway. I minded more when they switched to an AJAX-y layout, since it kind of broke the simplicity they always carried.
You know its bad when the founder of MySpace (I think?) is proclaiming to add MORE of what they already have. MySpace Games and Music are well established. They're done for.
Seriously, I wish that more people would come up-front and deliver their *real* reason for pirating: We are cheap as hell, and don't feel like paying for something that we want to enjoy. We'd rather go to great lengths and *steal* for our pleasure than pay rightfully for the software.
It's only a download. Nobody *really* gets hurt, right?
For the record: I pirate stuff quite often myself.
I figured that most people would treat videos on computer security like the videos that teachers would show at school. Their reaction?
"NO WORK!!!"
I think that what's most effective is just enforcing your security policies using Group Policy or other management tools on the network. That way, you KNOW that most people won't violate any policies set forth, and those that do are the ones that didn't need the training in the first place.
If you're really adamant about educating your employees with videos and such, find REALLY GOOD videos that will hold their attention for their entire run. Remember, at the end of the day, those computers don't belong to them and most of them simply wish to get work done. Any teaching method which can exploit these two truths for educational value is probably worth watching.
I can see this being immediately useful for news searching, as tweets tend to be an extremely fast source for breaking news in all fields. Twitter has also been useful for finding interesting articles on topics relevant to my interests (security, IT and a bit of politics), so tapping this could open up a lot of information previously hidden behind Twitter's walls.
No, which is precisely why I made that statement...
FYI, the DSP used on iPods were only problematic before the 5G. Many articles now proclaim that they are, technically, just as good as the other players (iRiver, Creative, Cowon, etc.).
I know that I couldn't really tell the audio difference between a Creative Zen MicroPhoto and an iPod 5G. Even though I used Sony EX71 headphones on both players, these are good enough to reveal differences in quiet environments.
Unless you have a dynamic IP address, where you're still confined to somebody else's mail server for sending email out...
Setting up a mail server is pretty easy, whether it's a simple IMAP+SMTP server or a much bigger suite, like Zimbra or Exchange. As an added bonus, you gain some skills which are REALLY handy in a business...if that's an end-goal. Finally, because it's most likely a single user system, it's REALLY REALLY fast.
(After turning off my Exchange server in favor of Google Mail, I realized exactly how much speed I lost. Getting my mail from any client takes ages, and sending mail is much, much slower.)
Okay, I see where you're come from. That makes sense.
I can understand the rationale behind your decision criteria, but do you think that judging a student by the number of languages he/she knows is a bit shallow? I know folks that are excellent developers that know only one or two languages WELL, and at the ACM Northeast Programming Competition I was at yesterday, there were students who did respectably and didn't really know C or C++. (Ironically enough, it was at that competition that I proved to myself that I know C well enough to get by, even though I didn't think I did...)
On the other hand, I know plenty of students who list a handful of languages on their resume, but have very little, if any, knowledge on how to use them. You know it's bad when a candidate lists that they know C++ and Java, but know the bare minimum (or less) about object-oriented programming.
I do agree with your second criterion, however. It makes sense, since most of us learned what we know through the projects we undertook and internships/co-ops that we've experienced.
Unless you're using amixer to set your volume levels, they really aren't that bad. there is a GUI equivalent for alsamixer, and it works well and looks good, last time I used it (a few days ago; still use alsamixer on the command line, since it works better with flux)
Never mind the fact that USB audio devices are still hit or miss. I wish USB audio support would be a bit more extensive across the board.
It's a shame that I can't use my Creative USB audio card on practically any Linux distro or OS X b/c of the lack of driver support.
I agree that one page isn't enough for people with lots of experience, but his solution is not the best to address this either. --WAY-- too much to read.
Note. I actually see the reason for keeping resumes under one page; most people that think they need two usually don't. I think it's only appropriate if the position is really important, since the pool for those positions are smaller and, thus, those who make the hiring decisions can (and will) spend more time on the person's merits and personality.
The methodology my school uses for resume writing is that people should list three key responsibilites for each job listing, in list format. This can make keeping a resume within to a single page even more difficult because many people have had numerous interesting experiences at their previous workplaces that may or may not be able to get listed on there. Then again, if that person does claim to have many of those experiences, they should be able to list a few which will grab an employer's attention fairly quickly.
After hearing of several interviews in my co-ops and speaking to a few managers about this, the logic behind this makes a lot of sense. Even though HR uses a bland filter to separate the "wheat" from the "chaff" (or, more appropriately, the ones who know the system and the ones who don't), those resumes still need to be passed down to management, as the decision is ultimately up to them. What this means is that they look at TONS of resumes, sometimes on a daily basis. Most of those resumes are ill-formatted, poorly written and are eyesores to look at. Additionally, they usually want to spend less than a minute looking at one before deciding whether to yay or nay a second interview (the nays don't get saved; they get binned).
It's for this reason that having a resume in list format helps so much; hiring managers or others with decision power don't have to think as much when looking at one. They can sift through the list and see if they make the cut (for an interview, that is).