I am mystified by CAD's popularity.

Wow, LOOK AT THAT EXCHANGE RATE! 66.35 CAD vs USD. How long ago was this? Hilarious exchange rate. And the news clip was amusing too. (To those of you outside Canada, the Canadian dollar is now roughly at PAR with the US Dollar...)

I remember crashing out with all the dogs lying around the room... cad, penny, ophie, jed and they would at times all four snore. My wife and I still remember one "super snore" where their timing was right and they all sequentially snored really a lonnnnng time.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'zero punctuation, review, yahtzee, geek, webcomic, balls in mouth, slurp, yum, cad' to 'zero punctuation, review, yahtzee, geek, webcomic, balls in mouth, slurp, fuckley, cad' - edited by Fjnbk

Tags for this video have been changed from 'zero punctuation, review, yahtzee, geek, webcomic, balls in mouth, slurp, yum' to 'zero punctuation, review, yahtzee, geek, webcomic, balls in mouth, slurp, yum, cad' - edited by Fjnbk

Yay for good webcomics, unlike CAD.

man, those first two articles are long...more like first drafts of books...

edit: hey, whaddaya know.

I said it was usless only because this technology already exists, and they are trying to reinvent it, to make it more cost effective for the average consumer. They say that hope for the consumer to be able to download plans for a cell phone and "print" one" Think about it. Imagine all the different polymers and gels and oozes and creams and whatnot it would take to make a cell phone. convectional methods have been established and proven. To be able to Print a cell phone at home, well thats just absurd. The cost and time of the unit and the printing process far outweigh the ease of which you can just buy a cell phone. Besides, not all of us have CAD training.

Shit. I just lost $20 to my gf. Canadian dollars, too.

($20 CAD = $21 USD)

I'm working my way through all of Robert Crais' Elvis Cole / Joe Pike novels. Mystery, P.I. Noir. I'm hooked bad!

I wonder what he does for a living.... I'm sure he has a good bit of experience in CAD and such. Still, great idea.

the cross-sectioned cyber-vagina kinda weirded me out.

wouldn't it be funny to make total BS, parody videos exactly like this one, but with totally ridiculous things?

(narrator)"High-pitch vocalization close to the clitoris can also have the same effect as a g-spot stimulated orgasm, as illustrated here (enter creepy auto-cad face, unrealistically-smoothly moving towards vagina; movement halts, mouth opens while eyes close, face begins screaming at vagina). Oscillating this tonal stimulation with a carrier frequency between 5 and 10Hz will typically induce orgasm within a window of 5 to 45 minutes. Good luck and let us know how it goes."

So this is what I thought of when I first watched this - Does it count as theft if you find something on the internet, say a plastic gnome, and print it out on your 3D printer? Sure, they only have 2D images on most things for now, but in the near future, that could change. What are companies to do when their products are being made instead of bought for a fraction of the cost?

And yes, I realize these things are created in a CAD program, but one day they might not be. One day you might be able to take any 3D image and print it out.

It's very interesting to see the hyperbole -- perhaps it's an indication of the supposed failure of your (American, that is) education system. The central theses that school choice works; independent schools are LESS EXPENSIVE than public schools; and, unions/teachers are the problem just don't fly when you compare apples to apples.

There certainly are problems with your (American) educational outcomes but that might be more of a reflection on the socio-economic disparities that exists in your society than of any particular successes or failures of the education systems. The video focussed on two states that are not exactly known for being either socially progressive states or wealthy states. Why do I get the feeling this piece belongs on Fox? (although, there they'd have public schools being run by the devil himself ;-).

In Ontario (and, I'm sure the same applies in many other jurisdictions) independent schools tend to have better outcomes than public schools... because... those who send their kids to independent schools have a higher socio-economic status (SES), and SES is highly correlated with educational success.

Most of the best performing countries have monopolies on public education (which this video conveniently neglected to mention... Belgium is not exactly well known in international circles). My own experiences are in Ontario and Britain. Ontario has a public school monopoly. Our students score well on the standardized international tests, and, when adjusted for socio-economic status, OUTPERFORM the few independent schools that charge $20K-$25K CAD/year in tuition. Britain has charter schools alongside their public schools -- their educational outcomes are much weaker than Ontario's (they are actively copying Ontario's model). Ontario has a strong union with similar restrictions to those discussed in this video. By-and-large we have a reasonable set of teachers with reasonable outcomes and teachers have had fairly good success at advocating for effective investment in education -- in Britain, there are three unions and the teaching staff is thoroughly demoralised (they're having to recruit from abroad because locals don't want to teach in their schools).

And, finally, Ontario spend approximately $5000-6000 CAD (~$4500-5500 USD in 2007 dollars) per student, A FRACTION (1/4) of what tuition is at a comparable (or even sub-par) independent school (they're private, but not-for-profit... the for-profits are utterly atrocious in Ontario).

A few final random thoughts...
* it would help if they used more than a sample size of n=1 for their testing comparison
* comparisons of educational outcome should be adjusted for socio-economic status. If you're comparing Kansas or South Carolina, you need to find some developing nations against which to compare results to make it a "fair test" (some of your science students may be able to explain the notion of a "fair test" to you ;-). Likewise, if you're doing within- or between-state standardised testing, you need to make sure you're not comparing wealthy neighbourhoods with disenfranchised/poor ones. That's always a good subterfuge for the "reformers" since they make these grandiose claims of inadequate schools while bolstering their argument(s) with deception.

Don't get me wrong. I'm no great fan of teacher unions or of failures in school leadership or teaching, but I'm equally no fan of sensationalist and downright disingenuous reporting [1].

[1] In this case I suspect they knew that they were conveniently hiding or even consciously misrepresenting reality and comparing apples to cumquats (or, they could simply have been incompetent which wouldn't be surprising either).

Holy cad toast Batman, Make mine a falafel Virgin Mary!!!