I was a computer science major in my 4th year...so I was in a lot of classes with graduate students. They had a few extra things on exams and projects they had to do for their graduate portion of the class. What was hilarious is that most of them were Indian and most of them came in to class with what looked like a xerox copy of each others work with their name signed to it, and this went on all quarter. On the last exam one of them sat next to me and was obviously trying to cheat off my exam, so I spent awhile writing down false answers and making them very easy to read because this whole Indian group of students seemed to ride on each others work and no one called them on it. While I saw undergraduate US citizens being busted for the same thing (I can only assume this was motivated by money and enrollment/scores).

So after I knew I wouldn't have enough time to keep up the false answers, I hurried up and changed all my work hunched over my test so he couldn't read it anymore and finished. Turned it in and told the professor that he was copying off me and the two Indians in front of us were sharing answers with him. I mean you'd have to be blind to not see the guys turn around during the test multiple times.


And on my exit interview for the school I ranked it down and told them that I was pissed that those Indian students were never punished, since them cheating off undergrads makes it appear that undergrads are the ones cheating if you just look at the data and assume graduate students should know the answers. Plus I marked off some things for other stuff. And the dean of my school changed my numbers scores to higher scores because he would question me on something and I'd say "Maybe, but I feel my personal experience warrants that score." He would say something like "But isn't that too harsh, so maybe we should......" and I'd disagree, but he'd still change the score.

It's kind of a shame when you like the subject you study but the people teaching it to you make a mockery of the university by having double standards for the various grads/undergrads and ethnic groups. They still call me up and want alumni donations, and I tell the people calling my story and why I won't ever donate to that university...and why they should transfer out ASAP. Assuming they don't have a heavy Indian accent....

>> ^Croccydile:

>> ^LarsaruS:
Ahhh, the Amiga... Some of the best games ever made were on that system. When the Amiga died computer science and capability lost ~10 years. True multitasking, AGA graphics, sound which didn't only go blip and a lot of other awesome features which the PC took ages to get. Heck Windows, afaik, still only fakes multitasking.

Wait... what? There is no doubt that the machine had great capabilities when it was first released, but this statement is a tad off.
When the Amiga died, everything else had superseded it. I seriously doubt the industry lost 10 years. At its release the machine (1985) was in a league of its own, the problem was they didn't really advance the design along as the rest of the industry caught up. When you talk about "fake" multitasking you are describing Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc... task switching is now trivial on modern processors even in software. Hell we have hardware virtualization on modern CPUs now! Switching resolutions on the Amiga between scanlines was pretty cool in 1985 but by the time it died this was no longer necessary as well as video architecture in general rendered this obsolete. Amiga was stuck on the legacy implications of the OCS and its greatest strength became its greatest weakness to advancing by the early 90s. Even AGA was actually a step backwards compared to emerging 16-bit and 24-bit colour PC video cards. Hold and Modify (for HiColor on the Amiga) required use of the CPU for displaying static images when Hi/True Colour PC cards did this simple task in hardware. Ugh!
It didn't matter in the end anyways. Gross mismanagement along with a seemingly trivial patent case on the CD32 put the company under for good. Really a good example at why software patents can be insanity at times. http://xcssa.org/pipermail/xcssa/2005-February/002587.html
Don't get me wrong as I don't mean to pick on you in particular. I just wanted to point out at the end of its life the Amiga was not all roses and unicorns. I would still personally like to have an Amiga 1000 to play with at home sometime


I guess you really do learn something new every day. I hadn't heard of the XOR patent issue. Also, no hard feelings on my side. I tend to get nostalgic when it comes to old systems.

>> ^LarsaruS:

Ahhh, the Amiga... Some of the best games ever made were on that system. When the Amiga died computer science and capability lost ~10 years. True multitasking, AGA graphics, sound which didn't only go blip and a lot of other awesome features which the PC took ages to get. Heck Windows, afaik, still only fakes multitasking.


Wait... what? There is no doubt that the machine had great capabilities when it was first released, but this statement is a tad off.

When the Amiga died, everything else had superseded it. I seriously doubt the industry lost 10 years. At its release the machine (1985) was in a league of its own, the problem was they didn't really advance the design along as the rest of the industry caught up. When you talk about "fake" multitasking you are describing Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc... task switching is now trivial on modern processors even in software. Hell we have hardware virtualization on modern CPUs now! Switching resolutions on the Amiga between scanlines was pretty cool in 1985 but by the time it died this was no longer necessary as well as video architecture in general rendered this obsolete. Amiga was stuck on the legacy implications of the OCS and its greatest strength became its greatest weakness to advancing by the early 90s. Even AGA was actually a step backwards compared to emerging 16-bit and 24-bit colour PC video cards. Hold and Modify (for HiColor on the Amiga) required use of the CPU for displaying static images when Hi/True Colour PC cards did this simple task in hardware. Ugh!

It didn't matter in the end anyways. Gross mismanagement along with a seemingly trivial patent case on the CD32 put the company under for good. Really a good example at why software patents can be insanity at times. http://xcssa.org/pipermail/xcssa/2005-February/002587.html

Don't get me wrong as I don't mean to pick on you in particular. I just wanted to point out at the end of its life the Amiga was not all roses and unicorns. I would still personally like to have an Amiga 1000 to play with at home sometime

Ahhh, the Amiga... Some of the best games ever made were on that system. When the Amiga died computer science and capability lost ~10 years. True multitasking, AGA graphics, sound which didn't only go blip and a lot of other awesome features which the PC took ages to get. Heck Windows, afaik, still only fakes multitasking.

OK, I originally wrote this as a reply to your comment on "What motivates us", but I go off on a bit of a tangent that probably wouldn't interest the average viewer of the comments section there so I thought I should move it here to your profile.

It is entirely possible that my rambling below won't interest *you* very much either; in that case please accept my thanks for your aforementioned post which piqued my interest, and feel free to ignore me...

Quite a lot of your comment rang true for me. I've been living in Thailand for 3 years, working as a teacher in an ESL program. In Thailand, there is a pretty high demand for native English speakers to work as teachers, but there isn't a great supply, particularly of high-quality people that are actually interested in teaching as a career.

An extremely low percentage of native-speaking English teachers actually have degrees in teaching or English (I myself have a Computer Science degree). The majority are tourists that come here to visit and like the country, so they decide to look for options that would allow them to stay and end up teaching.

A lot of people tend to think that is a recipe for disaster, in terms of quality of teaching, straight out of the box. I basically disagree; I have seen a lot of converted tourist teachers that get personally interested in the work and motivated to do a good job. However, I think that in general the educational system and institutions here do a poor job of recognizing the realities of the talent pool that they have access to and how to manage their teachers to KEEP the people that show that they have teaching skills and motivation.

Autonomy is usually easy to come by. In most educational programs here teachers (many of whom have never actually taught before) are thrown into classrooms without any syllabus, lesson plans, course outcome goals, or even any verbal instructions or ideas. So at least in terms of the course content, I think there is generally too much autonomy.

Work conditions, on the other hand, are extremely variable. As someone from the midwestern US, Thailand is frequently HOT. Sometimes classrooms have air conditioning, but many do not. Some classrooms are good at having ready access to very basic supplies (chalk / board markers / copy machine for worksheets) or other stuff (flashcards / books), and some seem to think that a room containing broken chairs and desks, with no chalkboard or other writing surface should be fine. Administration officials seem genuinely surprised and puzzled when a lack of basic supplies creates motivation issues.

Another major contributor to classroom conditions is the presence, absence, and/or quality of teaching assistance. Schools say that there will be a Thai speaking co-teacher or teaching assistant in the classroom at all times to help maintain order and translate words or concepts as needed. In practice that is often not the case, which can be disastrous for people that are just thrown in without any experience or techniques to maintain discipline. If you lose control of discipline in a hot classroom full of 40+ gradeschool kids that don't speak English, and don't have anyone there to back you up or bail you out, motivation is going to plummet. Rapidly.

Anyway, sorry for the really LONG ranting response, but I'm interested in how that would compare to your findings in your thesis. Particularly if there is some country or system that tends to "get it right" more often than others.

And just as a final note, I too thought of Google when watching the clip. When the narrator said he was going to provide an example of a company that gave employees time to work on self-directed projects, I was almost sure he was going to say Google.

Thanks for the interesting comment!
>> ^SDGundamX:

For my Master's final project, I presented on teacher motivation for teachers of English as a Second or Other Language. In my research, one of the things I looked at was salary. Studies that had been done on teacher motivation and salary found the same thing this study found--that you need a minimum salary in order to get people to stay at the job, but better than average salary didn't correlate to better motivation. There were a host of other factors that did correlate, however, including the big one mentioned here--autonomy.
But autonomy wasn't the only factor. As poolcleaner pointed out work conditions are also a significant factor in motivation. If you're forced to teach your classes in the janitor's closet with no air circulation and only a dim lightbulb for illumination no amount of autonomy or salary is going to make you a motivated teacher. Likewise, if your boss doesn't listen to anything you say or you have no input in the curriculum at all, you see a big drop-off in motivation as well.
Still, autonomy is a pretty key component to motivating people. I think autonomy in the workplace works if it is coupled with accountability. If you look at companies like Google, which give their employees a couple hours a day to work on whatever they want, you quickly see that the model works because Google also monitors what the people are working on and gets to keep (and ultimately sell) whatever the final product is. I think it is safe to say that this model is working well for them.
Also, having been to the Google Mountain View campus lots of times, I can tell you that they've definitely got the work environment thing covered: free lunches at dozens of restaurant-style cafeterias; on-site massages and doctor; laundry services; a gym; free shuttle from the major mass transit stops in the area.... It's unbelievable. You can read more about the benefits here.

Hiring a creationist to be a Biology teacher is like hiring a typing instructor to be a computer science professor...

It's certainly not computer science, but I guess I use the term "hack" interchangeably with "kludge".

A quick, clever, but often inelegant fix to a problem.

In the real world, my hacks typically involve duct tape.

>> ^Xax:

I don't have a problem with reviewing a game based on the first 5 hours. If the first 5 hours are that bad, shame on the developers; they get what they deserve. Seriously, 5 hours is generous... a game is lucky if I give it 5 minutes to pull me in before I decide to never play it again ( cough Metro 2033 cough ).
Game looks gorgeous from what I've seen, but holy fuck does that interface look absolutely, insanely terrible. How the hell did they reach the conclusion that it was great the way it is? All that money and time and marketing go into the game, but they completely cock up the interface and menus and make it look like you need a computer science degree to navigate... bloody awful.


I agree with you on your appreciation for Deus Ex & SS2 and I agree with you on this. I have to say this was his best review yet.

I don't have a problem with reviewing a game based on the first 5 hours. If the first 5 hours are that bad, shame on the developers; they get what they deserve. Seriously, 5 hours is generous... a game is lucky if I give it 5 minutes to pull me in before I decide to never play it again (*cough* Metro 2033 *cough*).

Game looks gorgeous from what I've seen, but holy fuck does that interface look absolutely, insanely terrible. How the hell did they reach the conclusion that it was great the way it is? All that money and time and marketing go into the game, but they completely cock up the interface and menus and make it look like you need a computer science degree to navigate... bloody awful.

A decade ago I was wondering if Y2K was really going to bring down the world's computer infrastructure. I was several months into a serious relationship wondering how it would turn out. I was in community college as an uninterested business administration major wondering if I'd actually see it through. I was working in a great little company with a decent little job.

As of the end of this decade, Y2K is a joke, I'm married to that wonderful girl who turned out to be my soul mate, I changed majors to earn a BS in computer science, and I'm still at that little company enjoying every day I have the privilege to come to work.

Among the best things to happen for me this decade was being asked to come aboard this great little site I discovered called VideoSift.

I raise my glass to you @dag, James Roe (wherever you are), @siftbot, and the entire Sifter community. Auld lang syne and all that... Cheers!

I grew up.

My grandparents died, my uncle died, I found love, I've found my profession, I woke up and smelled the coffee.

I went through high school and on to the university. I've dropped out of uni (computer science) once in 2005 and started on a new path in 2006 (information studies, game development). I almost have that finished now. I've been a slacker in school since forever, but now I'm better at it, so I keep up while slacking too.

I've had all the jobs I've ever had in the last decade, as a delivery guy for a lumber yard, selling fish to tourists, working with web development 2 separate times, have just gotten 2x internships as a game developer.

I've been depressed and overjoyed, luckily the last is lately. I've made a few enemies and a whole lot of friends. I've been disappointed by people and pleasantly surprised by others.

Wow, the whole thing was brilliant, but the final question was perhaps the best for me. I've had an interest in science, math, and other topics thought of as thoroughly "academic" for pretty much my entire life. However, during my own time at university getting merely a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, I got thoroughly disgusted with academics taking ideas that really aren't particularly complex and making long, jargon-filled papers or lectures about them that seem to only serve to hide and obfuscate the natural simplicity and beauty of the basic idea.

Tyson does a fantastic job of achieving the opposite: making more complex ideas seem simple and presenting them in a way that is easily accessible yet open to exploration for more depth.

Thanks for the sift, was well worth watching the entire hour and a half!

>> ^demon_ix:

A university asks several departments to come up with a way to prove all odd numbers are prime.
The Math department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, the rest is proven through Induction."
The Physics department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime and so on..."
The Computer Science department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime...."

I'm not trying to be a dick, but 1 is rarely ever prime...2 is though.

An English student is writing a dissertation on the book "Life of Pi" (which is great and you should all read) and wants to write about the mathematical symbolism in the book. However, he does not know much about pi, so he decides to ask his friend in the math department what pi is. The mathematician replies, "Pi is an irrational number exactly equal to the circumference of any circle divided by its diameter. It equals 3.141593 to 6 decimal places." This is too complicated for the English major, so he goes to a physicist. The physicist tells him, "Pi is this number that is 3.14 to two decimal places and is about 22/7. It is useful for calculating volumes of spheres, areas of circles and so on." This is still a bit much, so looking for one final opinion, the English student goes to see an engineer. "What's pi?" he asks. "Oh," replies the engineer, "it's about 3. We call it 10 to be safe."

This is *geek comedy at it's finest!

---------------

A chicken farmer finds his chickens keep dying mysteriously. He goes and hires a Veterinarian. After a week, the vet comes back and says "I can't really help you, but you should contact my friend the Biologist, he might be able to help."
So the farmer calls the Biologist and after another week, he comes back saying "I'm sorry, I don't have a solution, but if you call my friend the Physicist, he could probably help you out."
So the farmer calls the Physicist, waits a week, then another and another, and finally the Physicist calls him back and says "Good news! I have a solution for you, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."

---------------

A university asks several departments to come up with a way to prove all odd numbers are prime.
The Math department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, the rest is proven through Induction."
The Physics department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime and so on..."
The Computer Science department said: "1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime...."

---------------

I could go on, but the amount of funny per joke decreases exponentially over time...

Good man. He never ceases to impress me.

I only wish I had such a mentor in my early days, otherwise I'd have been in the field. Living in a near vacuum as far as far as family and my school was concerned, and zero guidance along the way. Eventually I did follow a path along computer science (which is nice), though I occasionally do wish I chose that path. Though I do make up for it by having my own private observatory. So I do get to dabble. Who knows, there is potential to leap into that field to a degree with the background I have. Though, I'll certainly be the mentor to my child that I did not have when I was young.