Comment Re:Riding off into the sunset (Score 1) 137
I agree completly. The point is that they are doing it and that is cool. Will have to try it one day.
Comment Re:Finally! (Score 1) 102
I no longer have to worry about my crappy call-dropping 2G coverage since it has since been replaced by my crappy call-dropping 3G coverage which is now being replaced by my crappy call-dropping 4G coverage.
Not only that but with a larger phone and less battery life. Progress is awesome.
Comment Re:Why not? (Score 2) 187
Not that this is really news worthy but who cares if they are watching porn? This is a legitimate job that has to be staffed 24/7 and probably requires about 20min worth of total combined labor in a typical year. Being the military that is increased to maybe a few days labor worth of redundant checklists over the course of the year.
Having done jobs where your sole purpose most of the time is just to be there waiting I understand the lack of things to do. Still Gotta love the fact that beyond the normal workplace squimishness their main concern was viruses and malware, which porn sites have actually gotten a lot better about policing these days.
Comment Re:Microsoft marketing (Score 1) 356
"Windows 8 Style UI" doesn't quite have the catchiness that Metro and Cocoa do, not to mention how old applications using this will sound in Windows 9...
Yes But then what will exist to remind people that they are running legacy apps. XP Mode, Classic Desktop?
Submission + - Too little critical thinking in college (chicagotribune.com)
Joe_Dragon writes: Has college become too easy?
March 25, 2012|Clarence Page
64
You can lead a student to knowledge, according to an old academic saying, but you can't make him or her think.
I recently wrote about the possibility of testing and certification for what I called a "college-level GED." Like the current GED test for high school equivalency, it would award certification to bright, hardworking job applicants who want to show potential employers how much they know, even though they never graduated from college.
I heard from a number of readers who supported the idea. Some were eager to take the test now, if they could. But the most thoughtful question I received went like this: What about the "critical thinking" skills that we traditionally expect campus academic life to teach and encourage?
I agree. Critical thinking is the brain's investigative reporter. It questions assumptions and requires more than the memory to pass most standardized tests.
But we do have tests for that. For example, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, launched in 2000, gives a 90-minute essay test to freshmen and seniors that aims to measure gains in critical thinking and communication skills.
However, recent studies of CLA results reveal another major problem, not so much in the testing of critical thinking as in how little critical thinking is being taught.
One new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, questions whether a large chunk of today's college students are learning much on campus that they didn't already know.
Following CLA results and other data for 2,300 students at 24 public and private colleges, Arum, of New York University, and Roksa, of the University of Virginia, startled the academic world with their finding that 36 percent of students made no significant learning gains in critical thinking and communication skills from their freshman to senior years.
That tends to confirm what reader Jerre Levy, a retired University of Chicago professor of psychology, wrote: "I wish with all my heart that a college degree implied that the person holding that degree was capable of critical thinking. However, this is, sadly, not true."
Among the jaw-dropping examples Levy related in her email to me and a later phone call was a senior who reacted with memorable resentment to a two-week take-home assignment to critically evaluate a scientific journal article.
The professor specifically requested a hard-eyed assessment of strengths and weaknesses in the article's sources, methods and conclusions. She did not, repeat, not want students simply to summarize the contents. She stipulated that last part in capital letters.
Yet when the students returned their papers, she recalled, one offered nothing but what Levy said she didn't want: "a content summary, without a single evaluative statement." When the student complained about her zero grade, Levy explained the goose egg. The student argued back indignantly, "But that would have required THINKING!"
It was the winter quarter of her senior year, the young woman explained, and she could memorize as much as any professor gave her and earn As and Bs but, until this course, she had "never been required to think!"
"If students can get a degree from the University of Chicago without having either the will or capacity to think," Levy said, "then it is certainly true of less selective universities and colleges."
Ohio University's Richard Vedder, my former economics professor who gave me the collegiate GED test idea, is even more blunt in his assessment of today's academia: "Universities are becoming more like country clubs," he said, with climbing walls, indoor tracks and other luxuries that give students "something else to do with their free time besides drink and have sex."
Vedder, who divides his time between teaching, researching as an adjunct scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and directing the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, blames grade inflation and other perverse incentives, like too much free time.
That would be just another reason for us Americans to develop more innovative alternatives to college, like alternative GED-style certifications of what individuals actually know and how eagerly they will learn, not just how many classes they have taken.
It's worth thinking about.
Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune's editorial board, blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage.
cpage@tribune.com
Twitter @cptime
March 25, 2012|Clarence Page
64
You can lead a student to knowledge, according to an old academic saying, but you can't make him or her think.
I recently wrote about the possibility of testing and certification for what I called a "college-level GED." Like the current GED test for high school equivalency, it would award certification to bright, hardworking job applicants who want to show potential employers how much they know, even though they never graduated from college.
I heard from a number of readers who supported the idea. Some were eager to take the test now, if they could. But the most thoughtful question I received went like this: What about the "critical thinking" skills that we traditionally expect campus academic life to teach and encourage?
I agree. Critical thinking is the brain's investigative reporter. It questions assumptions and requires more than the memory to pass most standardized tests.
But we do have tests for that. For example, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, launched in 2000, gives a 90-minute essay test to freshmen and seniors that aims to measure gains in critical thinking and communication skills.
However, recent studies of CLA results reveal another major problem, not so much in the testing of critical thinking as in how little critical thinking is being taught.
One new book, "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses," by sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, questions whether a large chunk of today's college students are learning much on campus that they didn't already know.
Following CLA results and other data for 2,300 students at 24 public and private colleges, Arum, of New York University, and Roksa, of the University of Virginia, startled the academic world with their finding that 36 percent of students made no significant learning gains in critical thinking and communication skills from their freshman to senior years.
That tends to confirm what reader Jerre Levy, a retired University of Chicago professor of psychology, wrote: "I wish with all my heart that a college degree implied that the person holding that degree was capable of critical thinking. However, this is, sadly, not true."
Among the jaw-dropping examples Levy related in her email to me and a later phone call was a senior who reacted with memorable resentment to a two-week take-home assignment to critically evaluate a scientific journal article.
The professor specifically requested a hard-eyed assessment of strengths and weaknesses in the article's sources, methods and conclusions. She did not, repeat, not want students simply to summarize the contents. She stipulated that last part in capital letters.
Yet when the students returned their papers, she recalled, one offered nothing but what Levy said she didn't want: "a content summary, without a single evaluative statement." When the student complained about her zero grade, Levy explained the goose egg. The student argued back indignantly, "But that would have required THINKING!"
It was the winter quarter of her senior year, the young woman explained, and she could memorize as much as any professor gave her and earn As and Bs but, until this course, she had "never been required to think!"
"If students can get a degree from the University of Chicago without having either the will or capacity to think," Levy said, "then it is certainly true of less selective universities and colleges."
Ohio University's Richard Vedder, my former economics professor who gave me the collegiate GED test idea, is even more blunt in his assessment of today's academia: "Universities are becoming more like country clubs," he said, with climbing walls, indoor tracks and other luxuries that give students "something else to do with their free time besides drink and have sex."
Vedder, who divides his time between teaching, researching as an adjunct scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and directing the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, blames grade inflation and other perverse incentives, like too much free time.
That would be just another reason for us Americans to develop more innovative alternatives to college, like alternative GED-style certifications of what individuals actually know and how eagerly they will learn, not just how many classes they have taken.
It's worth thinking about.
Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune's editorial board, blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage.
cpage@tribune.com
Twitter @cptime
Submission + - Cybersecurity Bill Fails Today in US Senate (securityweek.com)
wiredmikey writes: A development following the recently posted story Senate Cybersecurity Bill Stalled By Ridiculous Amendments — The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 failed to advance in the US Senate on Thursday. The measure was blocked amid opposition from an unusual coalition of civil libertarians — who feared it could allow too much government snooping — and conservatives who said it would create a new bureaucracy.
The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance under rules in the chamber, but got only 52. The failure came despite pleas from Obama and top US defense officials. The US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill "could actually impede US cybersecurity by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates."
The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance under rules in the chamber, but got only 52. The failure came despite pleas from Obama and top US defense officials. The US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill "could actually impede US cybersecurity by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates."
Comment Re:Hopefully Samsung's gig is up (Score 3, Interesting) 404
As far as phones and tablets go the technology changed. Apple just wasn't going to do anything until It could make it the way it wanted to. Samsung was already making phones and tablets with the technology that was available at the time. It didn't allow for the designs that apple wanted hence they waited. Samsung did not copy they were infact just changing their designs to utilize the best materials and desgn that new research, parts etc, made possible. As they are showing they were already headed that way long before the iphone.
Submission + - 83 Million Fake User On Facebook (infotakes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has 83 Million Fake Accounts. 46 Millions accounts are duplicate, while the number of user who are not classified are 23 Million While Undesirable Accounts are 14 million. The total of all this figures comes to 83 Million. This are not the number of any survey conducted by any organization or college but this information is of Facebook itself.
Comment Re:Bite my shiny metal ass! (Score 1) 210
I hope not. Then people might learn he can't run being a Mexican citizen.
Comment Re:I'm Scruffy, the janitor (Score 1) 210
Go scruffy. Scruffy Believes in this school board.
Comment Re:Good Idea (Score 1) 951
Doesn't that go with everything? As soon you get used to it, then you will work faster. Ribbons aren't a solution. As it was before ribbons, I was already doing quite fine. Ribbons have not done my work any faster and I doubt it ever will to most users.
Not really. Getting used to it is the portion that will always be slower because you don't know where buttons are. As for me I tend to use the same tab a lot especially in word. The current tab stays up which allows faster access to the functions versus a menu which will close each time you click on an action thus making you open it again. Hence why it's slower before you get used to it.
Comment Good Idea (Score 4, Interesting) 951
I know a lot of people hate it, I did the first time I used it, but I now think the ribbon is actually a better interface. Once you know where things are it does make you work faster. Especially when you are using items that are in the same tab of the ribbon, or same menu of the old style. While there may not be as many benefits to the ribbon in explorer as there were in Office, I'm all for them putting it everywhere they can.
Comment Re:Taco leaves and the place goes to Hell. (Score 2, Insightful) 543
Taco leaves and the place goes to Hell.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Comment Thanks (Score 0) 1521
Thanks and good luck. It was time well wasted. Pants or no.
Comment Re:Reality check (Score 0) 369
They shot and killed an innocent man. They caused the riots, not the people complaining about it. This asshole needs to be beaten with a clue-stick.
No there were regular protests then other people decided to come in and use it as an excuse to loot. Thus inciting.
