I agree whole heartedly. When I went to college and to a post secondary institute, you needed 90%+ to get an A, 80-89% got you a B. Now in the institute, I work at,
an 80% will get you an A-, then 85% gets you an A and 90%+ gets you an A+. This marking scheme makes it almost impossible to get a poor grade.

What were the instructions to the students taking the exam? What restrictions or instructions?

I'm a teacher in a post secondary institute and all of my quizzes are take-home 'do it at your own time" within a specificed time frame using whatever resources you can find. It allows me to create exams that test more than just rote memorization and I can ask higher level questions that require an understanding of the problem. If you can't understand the question then you won't even know what to google for. I also expect that there will be collaboration between students. This is real life testing, in the real world (job/career), you are asked to solve problems with whatever resources are available to you: google, library, references, friends, colleagues, etc..

There is an added bonus, in that if you don't know the answer, you have the opportunity to research and learn about it. In my assessments, you are assessed on your ability to come up with solution and you have the opportunity to learn while you are doing it.

The final exam is open book, open computer, randomized questions, randomized answers, online with a limit of 3 questions per page in a monitored environment - no friends or colleagues to help you. The exams typically span about 20 pages which makes collaboration very difficult in the limited time frame. The final exam mark is the real indication of your abilities.

Open book exams are always harder than closed book. I've found that the struggling students will do just as poorly in an open book exam as a closed book exam. They figure that all they have to do is look it up in their notes or text. Unfortunately, it is usually the first time they crack open the text and the first time they realize that they were too busy checking facebook, playing world of warcraft, instagramming, etc. to take good notes.

On the lab side, you receive 0% for doing the actual lab work. It triggers an online quiz that tests your understanding of the lab and the lab results. The lab quiz is worth 100% of the lab work. I've found that giving marks for the actual lab work artificially raises the student's grade, it becomes a mark for attendance. I feel that it separates the learning (lab work) from the assessment. I also feel that it is not fair to evaluate someone's ability on the first time that they attempt a procedure or lab. Do the lab, do it right then get graded on how well you understand what happened.

They are spending more than twice now if we compare wages. Their $200 billion gets a lot more R&D then the States $400 billion. There is such an inequality in wages in the order of 10 to 1, that I would guess that they are actually getting the equivalent of $2 Trillion in State's R&D.

I agree, I figure it's worth about $2 Trillion in comparison.

Screwed up my math, in comparison they are spending $2 TRILLION not $2 billion.

I remember in the 70s, that attitude was the same for "made in Japan" then Japan became one of the technological leaders in the world. China is doing things that the States can't even dream of considering its economic situation. They are making most every thing that you buy now under as name brands as most manufacturers out-source the actual assembly to China. We can start with the iPhone, pretty much every apple device, computer, stereo, television, network equipment, etc.. Keep your blinders on because you don't want to see the reality of the world where the States aren't the techno king anymore.

China's labor is 1/10 the cost of the USA so in comparison, China is spending 5x times as much on R&D as the US or $2 billion if we compare actual wages. China and the US are in an economic war and the US is losing. Free trade with no tariffs is causing the economic collapse and closure of manufacturing due to the unfair wage difference between China and the Western world.

The Linksys SPA line of VoIP products were a real threat to Cisco SOHO market which was serviced by the Call Manager Express ISR. The inexpensive SPA9000 is a great little SOHO PBX that boasts a lot of features. The first thing Cisco did was to kill the SPA line and also any competition that it could do to its "money maker" CME line. Either they are really smart and bought out Linksys to kill it or so stupid that they killed it through incompetence. It seems to be the latter.

Most newspapers are losing money and subscribers, why would anyone buy them up? There's been a lot of scandals with newspapers inflating the number of subscribers. Wasn't it the New York Times that was throwing out 50,000 papers a day a couple of years back? The papers were just to inflate their subscriber base for advertisers. I hardly read a newspaper at all anymore. Maybe once a week or two. Nothing that I haven't heard 2 or 3 days earlier on Slashdot or Fark

The design of these spacecrafts is simply amazing. No wonder the US was the technological marvel of the world at the time. Considering the tools that were available then and the thought that was put into the effects of space on the motion, is mind boggling. Not to mention a power source that will last 88 years and the fact that they are still going and communicating while using a 1 bit camera to create fantastic pictures. I am humbled. The technology that was created and developed as a side effect of this monumental tasks is what made the US a technology giant. We need more of this positive vision and less of the negative sabre rattling.

IN the 60s and 70s, America was leading the world in space, the aero industries, cars, electronics, telecommunications and manufacturing. Now it is leading the world in its war effort and the false economy based on supplying wars to boost the economy. The biggests mistake that America made was "free-trade" and dropping their tarifs and duties. Countries like China keep their currency artificially low so that they can undercut American businesses with prices that cannot be beat. It has forced many industries to die a slow death. How can you compete with goods that are selling for 1/4 of the cost that it requires just for an American business to make it? You want to pump up the economy, bring back the duties and tarifs that protected America. America is in an economic war with China and is losing the battle. China is slowly driving America bankrupt. Who needs the biggest army when you can drain the economy.

Most people, like yourself, slap together a resume and send it out. They typically under value themselves. A buddy of mine in his 50s, was recently let go and he came by to get my opinion on his resume. The first thing that I read was that he knew MS Office for software and the first line on his hardware experience was PCs and laptops. The first impression was that he was looking for a junior position. In realilty, he was an expert in Unix, SANs, NAS, security, system forsenics, etc.. After sitting down and reviewing his experience and putting it in the order that he wanted prospective employers to see, he ended up with an excellent resume that reflected his skills and years of experience. The next week, he had 4 interviews, 3 head-hunters wanting him and 2 clients. I recommend that you run your resume by someone who knows you, your work experience and knowledge. I've put a simple 2 page web site together for us nerds that details the job process. I'm a teacher in a post secondary institute specializing in VoIP so it's not some free plug for a business or anything.

Extremely funny. I loved when he said look at your keyboard and you said you saw a flashing cursor. He just about lost it!

Couldn't get the full quote in the title so I shortened it. Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters and catastrophies regularly demonstrate the lack of prepareness that the IT community has. For example, during hurricane Katrina, the phone system's equipment actually worked, cell sites worked but what failed is the battery backup system which was placed in the basement. The basement was the first to flood.

One company performed an offsite backup and stored it in a bank safety deposit box as per standard disaster recovery practice. During hurrican Katrina, the company facilities flooded and the bank flooded too! It took 3 months before the water receded enough to retrieve the backups from the bank's safety deposit boxes!

When the World Trade Center came down, it took out a major telco exchange. Replacing the equipment was trivial compared to replacing the cabling infrastructure. Read this article on the magnitude of repairing the infrastructure.

As a post-secondary instructor for the past 18 years and one of the first proponents of Using the Internet for Education, I can say without doubt that I have no more qualifications than anyone else to speak about this. Having said that, I think that videos like this are good for introduction or review but fail in interactivity between the learner and content. Face to face, hands-on learning is the best way to learn - period. There is an old axiom that states: sit in a large University hall lecture - remember 15% in 3 days, sit in a small class room and interact with the instructor - remember 30% in 3 days, perform a hands-on lab - remember 80% in 3 days.

The most successful courses that I've teach have a very high ratio of lab time (2/3) to theory time (1/3). One of the most enjoyable courses was a basic electricity course that I struggled with designing because of the time limit imposed - it was impossible to divide it into a traditional theory/lab split without losing significant content. The solution was to make it a 100% lab course and teach the theory on a need to know basis - Just In Time delivery of content!

Based on my experience, it always makes me wonder why we have theory classes at all. Most theory content can be easily researched by the student when directed so. I know that the real reason is an economical one and not an educational one. It is inexpensive to fill up a large lecture hall and pay for just one instructor to mindlessly lecture for a hour or more. It is expensive to pay many instructors or instructional assistants required to tutor small lab classes for hands-on learning.