I’m done with high school
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-29 | Filed under: Other | one response
Some schools have “minimum grade” at 50
In most math problems, zero would never be confused with 50, but a handful of schools nationwide have set off an emotional academic debate by giving minimum scores of 50 for students who fail.
(…)
Their argument: Other letter grades — A, B, C and D — are broken down in increments of 10 from 60 to 100, but there is a 59-point spread between D and F, a gap that can often make it mathematically impossible for some failing students to ever catch up.
(…)
“It’s a classic mathematical dilemma: that the students have a six times greater chance of getting an F,” says Douglas Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center, a Colorado-based educational think tank who has written on the topic
Basically, this continues with the increasingly common practice of artificially inflating the grades of students so that everything looks better on paper. There isn’t much of this at my school (at least, not as far as I know), but I’ve heard of it. My AP English teacher tells us of other schools where they just make every senior English class an AP class, without adding the additional depth and rigor that is supposed to go along with it, simply because it makes their school look better than it really is.
I can imagine this is motivated largely by complaints from parents. They’re all so upset that their little genius can’t pass English 12 because he or she blew off all the work in the first semester of the class. Well, if they have below a 20% they’re fucked, since even a perfect score on everything from then on isn’t going to get them above a 60% average. But, if it were set at 50% instead, a 70% the second semester would average out to a passing grade. By avoiding the immediate problem of the annoying parents, these schools are lowering standards and giving kids a sub-par education.
Also, note the “six times greater chance of getting an F” part — this statement is based on the obviously flawed assumption that students’ grades are evenly spread between 0 and 100. The grading system isn’t designed like that. Strange that someone from an education think tank would make such an obvious error.
But opponents say the larger gap between D and F exists because passing requires a minimum competency of understanding at least 60% of the material. Handing out more credit than a student has earned is grade inflation, says Ed Fields, founder of HotChalk.com, a site for teachers and parents: “I certainly don’t want to teach my children that no effort is going to get them half the way there.”
As far as I’m concerned, if you refuse to do any homework, sleep during class, and spend test time trying to spell words on the scantron sheet, you don’t deserve a 50. A 50 may still be a failing grade, but you shouldn’t get a 50 for doing nothing. There is a difference between a high and a low F, and the article discusses it: a high F on a test means the chance of passing the class as a whole is higher.
It’s absurd to say that because it a student may be in a situation where it is difficult to raise his or her grade, that student’s grade should be arbitrarily raised to increase the chance of passing. We shouldn’t be trying to help kids pass classes by manipulating what their grade is on paper. It doesn’t get anyone anywhere. The focus of our education system should be to give out knowledge, not to give out diplomas and letter grades.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-23 | Filed under: Opinion | 2 responses
How to make Windows XP look and act like Fluxbox
Fluxbox is a minimalistic window manager for *nix systems, based on Blackbox. You can replicate its look and feel somewhat well with complex shell replacements like Litestep, but there’s no reason to settle for that. Blackbox itself was actually ported to Windows, and there are several projects now in development based on that code. The main one you should be concerned with is bblean.
It can be a bit difficult to get everything working, and has gone a while without being updated. So, if you’re like me and you want the latest and greatest, look no further than utbox. It’s a modified version of bblean with new features and easier setup. Here’s the description from the official website:
usetools blackbox (utbox) is powerful replacement of wellknown default windows gui shell (i.e. explorer). it covers all basic explorer’s functions (and components like taskbar, system tray, start menu, right click, etc.)
and adds its own functionality , fast and smart interface and great stability of working.
by disabling explorer shell windows os (tested on win xp sp2 and 2k3 sp1) begins new life with sharp and fast features reflecting not only on gui shell enviroment but the whole os working. we call it “windows without windows”.
the main utbox idea is to provide extremly fast, tiny and stable shell for windows with the same (or more?) usabilty as common standard explorer shell has.
The program replaces explorer.exe, and in doing so speeds things up quite a bit. It generally takes up between one and two MB of RAM (!) and is highly configurable and useable, especially to those used to fluxbox.
Another very nice tool that can be combined with utbox is the ut re-source pack, which comes with a bunch of window decoration styles (among other things). When used in combination with utbox, the window decorations will match the style set by utbox.
Here are a few screenshots of utbox in action:
Here you can find a bunch of Blackbox screenshots (using themes that work with bblean, utbox, and bb4win).
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-19 | Filed under: Other | 4 responses
The good and bad of CAPTCHAs
I run several websites, a few of which have user-generated content and have to deal with spam. Because of this, I’ve occasionally had to use CAPTCHAs. If you don’t know what they are, they’re the little images with letters/numbers in them that you need to reproduce to prove you aren’t a bot. They’re generally thought to be effective, but can be annoying to end users. The acronym stands for: Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (awesome name, especially the reference to the Turing test).
CAPTCHAs are effective. There are rumors out that they’re now easily broken by spammers, but this isn’t really true. While very dedicated spammers can break simple CAPTCHAs, anything where letters connect or are connected with a shape/line should be plenty to foil 99% of spam/bot efforts. It isn’t the fact that CAPTCHAs are perfect (they aren’t), but that they are good enough to eliminate the vast majority of bots.
They can be very annoying, however. The most extreme example I can think of is Rapidshare’s new system, which I generally have to try at least twice before getting right. This seriously pisses me off, and I’m not the only one.
That’s an extreme example, of course, and it’s also overkill.
This sort of thing is all most sites need:
It’s simple and effective. It’s breakable, under extreme conditions, but it’s a good compromise between the blocking of spammers and the annoyance of users.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-18 | Filed under: Tech and games | no responses
First impression of “[true knowledge]“
I got my invitation to be a beta tester for [true knowledge], and I’ve been playing around with it. Basially, it’s a search engine that can handle natural language search queries, and find relevant information even if the specific terms used in the search query aren’t found. This is a fascinating technology that I wish I knew more about, but from what I understand, [true knowledge] makes use of existing databases of knowledge, like Wikipedia and the CIA Factbook, as well as searches of indexed web pages, and it searches through this data to find information that answers the user’s query. The engine attempts to manage this by interpreting or “understanding” the user’s search query.
So far, I’m very impressed. It handled the easy stuff well, and even if it fails, it does so gracefully (gives you relevant search results, sometimes takes a guess). Since it’s in private beta right now and you can’t go try it yourself, you’ll have to settle for this video:
Read more…
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-14 | Filed under: Tech and games | 2 responses
Aldous Huxley quotes
I’ve posted a few quote collections before and they’ve been quite popular, so thought I’d try it again. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is an amazing book, so go read it if you haven’t already. Both inside and out of his novels, Huxley is extremely eloquent and insightful.
- I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
- You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religions. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough.
- Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
- When truth is nothing but the truth, it’s unnatural, it’s an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world. In nature there are always so many other irrelevant things mixed up with the essential truth.
- (on soma) [It has] all the benefits of alcohol and Christianity, with none of the defects.
- We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-13 | Filed under: Other | 3 responses
Quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley
- If he is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him?
If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future?
If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers?
If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him?
If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses?
If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them?
If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him?
If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable?
If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees?
If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him?
If he has spoken, why is the universe not convinced?
If the knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and the clearest? - Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other’s hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton. - Fear not the future, weep not for the past.
Posted by probabilityZero on 2008-05-09 | Filed under: Atheism, Other | 24 responses