As I posted above, "knowing how to use ${PIECE_OF_SOFTWARE}" does not imply computer literacy, but computer literacy should imply "can probably work out how to use ${PIECE_OF_SOFTWARE}".

When we are teaching, especially in first year labs, Excel is a pretty handy way to tabulate and graph smaller amounts of data. However, when they have a short column (lets say 10 rows) of data and then the next column should be some function (eg: the square) of those values then a shocking number of those students will get out the calculator, square the number in the first row, write in the next column, repeat as required. At no point do they even think "hey, maybe there is a way to automate this task?". That is a problem, and it is a computer literacy problem. They see Excel (I continue to use this specific example but it is not specific to Excel, obviously) as being identical to a paper spreadsheet.

I don't use Excel for anything outside of teaching - but I know how to use it because it works in a sensible way. I write software (probably badly, see: various discussions on scientists writing code) in a small handful of languages to handle my data. Excel (or open/libre office equivilent since I'm running linux anyway) would be ridiculous to use.

Still, Excel is used by a lot of people in a lot of jobs... I very occassionally do some retail work on weekends (I'm a PhD student, extra money is pretty handy to have...). Last time I was there, my boss was working on the roster - which is done in Excel. She was manually updating each and every date and complaining about how long it takes. I sat down for maybe 10 minutes and set up the entire years roster (in terms of the formatting) with all the dates set up automatically. That spreadsheet can now be copy/pasted next year and so the formatting side of the roster for every year is now done. She was spending fucking ages doing this manually!

As another anecdote, a colleague of mine did some temp work in the administrative side of the university and, because he had a clue what he was doing, replaced like 3 people with an Excel spreadsheet. As is stated below, somewhere, being able to use Excel does not imply computer literacy, but computer literacy should imply being able to use Excel.

And by "them" I mean "17-20 year old students".

I teach at a university. I've noticed this attitude from a lot of senior academics.

The assumption is that because almost everyone one of them owns an iphone and a laptop, that they are computer experts. However whenever we expect them to do anything work related on a computer (I am talking the most basic of Excel function) they collapse in a heap.

There is a very serious difference between being able to update your facebook status and being able to do something useful.

No benfit? What about all the terrorists that this thing is definitely going to stop?!?

While I don't pretend to know much about the American system, I doubt that it is ALL students doing that. Further, I suspect that you will find that the problem starts with high school not sufficiently preparing students for university. However, since universities need students in order to exist, if the students applying are of lower standard, then the university is eventually going to lower its standards in order to keep its student numbers up.

There is some truth to this. I teach at an Australian university, and there are a number of people from specific cultural backgrounds who try this every year, because they come from somewhere that, what we regard as, plagiarism is acceptable.

I completely disagree with the "don't give them any chances, just send them packing". This is ludicrous. We catch a lot of these guys out (a lot of them are REALLY stupid and I actually feel embarrassed for them when we do catch them out) and, most of the time, pulling them up on it and explaining the rules to them sorts out the problem. You will always get a small minority who will try to work the system no matter what, but it is exactly that: a small minority.

It's easy to get indignant about it, but if they come from a culture which has different views on what plagiarism is at what point are they supposed to have this explained to them? It seems pretty unfair to let these students come into the university, pay their fees, and then throw them out when they break the rules that they were not aware of. Yes, you can find the university policy on academic misconduct etc if you dig through the website enough, but having the rules buried in some difficult-to-find legal document is hardly sufficient*

*Yes, I am aware that this is exactly how the "real world" works

If this were true, Apple wouldn't be suing Samsung over who owns the rectangle.

Vterminal

Removing the top 500 "easiest" or "most common" passwords just means that you will then be creating a new list of most common passwords...

Lockouts bother me because I know that at least once I've forgotten which password I use for that particular account, and ended up cycling through passwords to find it (I seem to recall that whatever account it was I had no reasonable way [at the time] to "reset" the password. I think it was a matter of "I would need to actually contact the foreign company")

I've seen ads to this effect. I can't say that they haven't been banned, but I doubt that they have.

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This is such nonsense. If he has violated it, tell him where. Giving a non-specific reason and telling him to try and work it out for himself is ridiculous.

(Yes, obviously this is a "we are banning you but not explicitly saying why, mwahaha!" but it is still bullshit)

Mod parent up

Note: I've not read the pdf as it isn't loading for me.

I hate when studies like this consider accidents due to "cell phone use". That is far too general. You need to split it up into talking and texting. As much as I'm sure that talking on a phone does increase your risk of having an accident, that effect would be trivial when compared to the risk increase due to texting. However, people text with their phones in their lap, so it can't be seen from a passing police car so they have a blanket ban on phone use and fine people for talking on their phones when that isn't really the problem.

It kind of bothers me that the same rules apply to the same people (read: civilians) regardless of driver training.