Poll: Stupidest thing a Computer Science teacher has said in class. [Archive] - Page 3

eyceguy

06-06-2004, 10:08 PM

okay in my sophmore level class we had to take a programming lab, now the instructor wasnt CS but she was CEngr so she really had no say in this

in our lab manual it told us to do this:
echo "First Line" >testinput
echo "SEcond Line" >>testinput

and then run a line counting program
lines <testinput

then it told us to
echo "First Line" >testinput
echo -n "Second Line" >testinput
and run program again

now the program counts lines by counting the number of newline characters in a file

so playing around i did this
echo "First Line" >testinput
echo -n "Second Line" >>testinput
echo "Third Line" >>testinput

so my file says
First Line
Second LineThird Line

and when i run it it says there are two lines, but the teacher said there was an error in my program because it didn't cout the second line as two separate line. In other words this program was to assume there was a \n between the Second Line and Third Line where there wasnt even a space or anything else.

i argued with her for about 5 minutes until she said that she had to "think about it" so i just sat at the computer starting at the screen until she came back and gave me the credit

MycroftMkIV

06-07-2004, 06:33 PM

Originally posted by The Coder
My Professor last semester said:

"Nobody interacts directly with old systems like Unix anymore"

AND

"Nobody uses EMACS anymore"
:D

So I guess CitiFinancial/CitiBank is nobody, eh? All their hundreds of servers use SCO Unix. (Yeah, I know - no taste).

Mike

Superztnt

06-07-2004, 08:57 PM

I had an instructor tell me that it doesnt matter if your passwords are upper or lower case. And we were talking about passwords in general. Then he ends up being my Unix instructor. The first day of Unix he he tells us to make sure that when we create our passwords that we pay attention to the case we use. Some people always want to be right.

Gargol

06-08-2004, 01:53 AM

The worst i heard was "Basic and C are equal in performance and usebility."

nko

06-08-2004, 11:15 AM

I guess you could say basic and C do have equal performance... if you're talking about a basic *interpreter* that's written in C and comparing it to C, since a program written in C has the performance of C.

See?

My explaination might not be basic, but you can see what I basically mean.

XiaoKJ

06-19-2004, 04:08 AM

WoW! This thread died again! this is rediculous -- such a lovable thread should stay alive forever!

BTW, I had this new anecdote. I was working in my school for my poor tech admin when MOE dispatched a admin to our school to maintain.

One of our teachers immediately grabbed this opportunity to tell him about our problem.

During normal, non-holiday days, our server/switch would keep going down. on holidays, it will be fine.

the admin called the HQ, and they deduce that it was probably because of some virus attack and it was generating too much traffic.

but the issue should be very obvious -- it should not be a virus attack because viruses attack during the holidays too. A competent admin should notice that blaming on virii is stupid.

And it isn't that there aren't other reasons to choose from. the problem could be that:
1) RAM in core switch not enough, and is unable to store the ARP table.
2) faulty firmware(it isn't cisco...)
3) not enough ip addrs to go around.
4) server overload due to too many attached computers <-- not quite possible, but may cause other problems
5) use of too many hubs and switches <-- not really too...
6) the servers are running M$ WIN NT :D and is damn unstable, with RAM problems <-- can't be helped, and is very minimal...

In all, blaming on virii is moronic :D
Moreover, the teachers' computers have so much junk -- even the tech admin's search engine points to munky.com :D that things are creating junk everywhere. Parasites aren't virii and should be addressed differently.

And I think MOE is a big moron mesh -- it keeps saying that the fresh windows xp computer I have administered on had a virus, and after hours of scanning and parasite cleaning we couldn't find any. faulty systems are very problematic.

And yar, like I've said, MOE went down again that day :D

perry_a

06-19-2004, 09:00 AM

Originally posted by element-x
ok...this happened today

my instructor/professor was talking about Computer Ethics, branched off to pirated software, then to Linux and how it had NO licencing agreements, and how you could DOWNLOAD "C", then turns to me and says "You can download C, right." (not in an answer, but more of a statement.) My reply was "sure, whatever you say" and I went back to happily finishing my crossword.

I don't know, but I can't for the life of me, see why in hell I'm paying the amount of money that I am, to get taught by less than stellar professors/instructors. For gods sake, you'd think there would be some sort of requirements before they can actually teach a course!

[ 17 September 2001: Message edited by: JAdrock ]

back in '87 i asked myself the same question, professors at that time were pretty damned stupid too. there's an expression "those that can, do - but those that can't, teach".... it's a sad state of affairs that hasn't changed much... then again, if you had the chance to make a six figure sallary or go to school and put up with these idiots for 4 or 5 years, what would you do....?

however....

there is something to be learned here:

1) if the professor teaching you computer science is a total dweeb, then what about the math professor? or the physics professor? or the biology professor ?

2) a degree is still of great value because these idiots manage to have a job because of it...

sad, but true....

but this also means that you need to shake you head and realize that you need to teach yourself, university is not an extension of high school...

but kid yourself not, you need your degree.

i'm 37, i have 20+ of high tech experience (i'll even attach page 1 of my 3 page resume, which is shortened from a 16 page resume) and i cannot get a job. i've given up looking for something up here in rural eastern canada, they all think i'm "overqualified" or worse, "simply not from here".

sad, but true....

given that my mandate in returning to canada is to get my degree. even if george "dubya" had not fixed the election and ruined the economy (come on john kerry) my career in the states was suffering because there are some skills that you learn in university that make a big difference in the corporate environment... which is something you are going to have to suffer thru until you manage to put enough money away (and invest wisely) that you won't have to put up with the rat race forever....

make no mistake, the professors are only where they are because they have a degree.... despite your promising technical skills, you need your degree. there's more to life than computers. and remember what i said about comparing your comp sci teacher to your math and physics teachers.....

cheers and the very best of luck on your careers

- perry

perry_a

06-19-2004, 09:07 AM

for the curious, page 2

perry_a

06-19-2004, 09:11 AM

this is page 3 and it should show you why you are in university....

kid yourself not, once you have your comp sci or even better (job market wise) an engineering degree your world will change from rags to riches, you'll never have to really worry about a job again, and if you are from canada, you have an added bonus... canadian engineers are regarded as 2nd to none in the job market.... worldwide and especially in the united states...

myself, i got my sights set on a joint mathamatics+engineering degree... i'm toying with the idea of an addition comp sci degree to go with it as i already know the stuff inside and out...

cheers and best of luck again

- perry

XiaoKJ

06-20-2004, 06:01 AM

Originally posted by perry_a
i'm 37, i have 20+ of high tech experience (i'll even attach page 1 of my 3 page resume, which is shortened from a 16 page resume) and i cannot get a job. i've given up looking for something up here in rural eastern canada, they all think i'm "overqualified" or worse, "simply not from here".

Thats really sad...

But putting up with damn professors bestow upon yourself the power of patience. For one, you will face many of such people at your work place...:D

BTW, if we have a choice, all geeks would like to be rich and not go work, but stay at home and be a hobbyist and work on linux :D

dchidelf

06-20-2004, 04:05 PM

Originally posted by perry_a

i'm 37, i have 20+ of high tech experience (i'll even attach page 1 of my 3 page resume, which is shortened from a 16 page resume) and i cannot get a job. i've given up looking for something up here in rural eastern canada, they all think i'm "overqualified" or worse, "simply not from here".

Please takes this with a grain of salt

A 3 page resume is probably a bit lengthy unless it is packed full of achievments that pertain directly to the job for which you are applying.
Employers would probably be less likely to put you on the interview pile when you have a list of accomplishments a mile long that they need to wade through to determine if you have the desired skills.
Often this means rewritting your resume for each job to get it down to 1-2 pages of relevant information.

perry_a

06-21-2004, 06:28 AM

Originally posted by XiaoKJ
Thats really sad...

But putting up with damn professors bestow upon yourself the power of patience. For one, you will face many of such people at your work place...:D

BTW, if we have a choice, all geeks would like to be rich and not go work, but stay at home and be a hobbyist and work on linux :D

what you've said is sooo true... and for the record, i came sooo close to being very wealthy, not once but several times.... and i cannot help but feel that i literally shyied away from the idea...

weird but true, i attribute this to not having my degree...

and yes, i just love fooling around with linux all day...

- perry

lagdawg

06-21-2004, 09:08 AM

But putting up with damn professors bestow upon yourself the power of patience. For one, you will face many of such people at your work place...

How true, I am currently going to school for a CS degree. However, I am also an "IT Trainee" or intern for a company. I am mostly responsible for a few excel spreadsheets and a few Access databases, which has nothing to do with IT or CS, but sometimes I do make some mundane task more bearable by programming my own macro or something like that.

My other responsiblity is to help my co-workers whenever they may need it. There is one gentleman who is constantly asking for help. Several times he has asked me to help him because he could not get to the other sheets in the workbook, because the bottom of the work book was off the bottom of the screen. Or just lately I had to help him because he couldn't keep track of which file he was copying to and which file he was copying from.

You definately need to have patience in the work place or you just might go crazy.

roamingnomad

06-21-2004, 01:02 PM

This wasn't a computer science teacher, but once while at the office of our school I saw that a few of the secratary/office people had telnet sessions to a Unix system at the district office. Upon seeing them, I said Unix was awesome and that I was proud of my school. The secretary then exclaimed, "That has got to be the most archaic system I've ever seen!"

"Yoda was the most archaic living being Luke had ever seen." was my prompt reply, and then I left the room and went on my way. Thus the true geekiness of me was seen. :p

fatTrav

06-23-2004, 02:00 AM

Originally posted by perry_a
kid yourself not, once you have your comp sci or even better (job market wise) an engineering degree your world will change from rags to riches, you'll never have to really worry about a job again- perry

not totally true. i have a computer science degree and can't find a job to save my life. i know of about twenty other cs graduates who are all unemployed or working crappy tech support jobs for like $12 an hour. i also know a few EE guys who are unemployed as well. all of these people, including myself, are competent and really know their material. but most jobs demand about three years experience in the "real world" (think non academic but professional). [a side note: open source projects are good resume builders b/c they are some the experience employers so desperately seek, so donate your time 'cuz it will pay off]

it all depends on your area. maybe things are better in canada but where i am from, i can't find a cs job that will pay better than $35k, on the RARE occasion it's a full time job and not some six month contract job. i can do better than that workin construction (union), which makes going to school worthless.

cybertron

06-23-2004, 07:58 AM

Originally posted by roamingnomad
This wasn't a computer science teacher, but once while at the office of our school I saw that a few of the secratary/office people had telnet sessions to a Unix system at the district office. Upon seeing them, I said Unix was awesome and that I was proud of my school. The secretary then exclaimed, "That has got to be the most archaic system I've ever seen!"

"Yoda was the most archaic living being Luke had ever seen." was my prompt reply, and then I left the room and went on my way. Thus the true geekiness of me was seen. :p

Good answer, the meaning of which was probably completely lost on them:)

madcompnerd

06-23-2004, 02:53 PM

Originally posted by roamingnomad
This wasn't a computer science teacher, but once while at the office of our school I saw that a few of the secratary/office people had telnet sessions to a Unix system at the district office. Upon seeing them, I said Unix was awesome and that I was proud of my school. The secretary then exclaimed, "That has got to be the most archaic system I've ever seen!"

"Yoda was the most archaic living being Luke had ever seen." was my prompt reply, and then I left the room and went on my way. Thus the true geekiness of me was seen. :p
Without realizing it she proved that the command line isn't hard to use for the non-technical user. If someone can use a shell (as advanced as sh or bash with a similar added toolset) without realizing the correlation to Unix they prove that non-techies can use CLI.

nko

06-23-2004, 03:51 PM

I would imagine she was using a curses interface, which isn't quite the same as CLI. Someone could easily go through curses as if it was an ugly version of that Windows computer they have at home (which, by virtue of superior graphics, is obviously more modern and powerful, and should be what everyone in the office moves to for everything, even though what non-techies don't know is that you run in to problems using an immature server platform based on a client architecture for server-based work), but using an actual CLI is a different beast altogether.

roamingnomad

06-23-2004, 07:59 PM

Actually, nko was right, it was a curses interface:( . But if it *was* a command-line, that would have been a good point, madcompnerd.

Oh, and my mac addict friend had seen the entire thing. You see, there was another lady in the office who liked to use her shiny new Mac with OS X, and so my Mac friend later commented, "If they only knew that their 'archaic system' was behind their Mac OS X!"

perry_a

06-24-2004, 09:59 AM

Originally posted by fatTrav
not totally true. i have a computer science degree and can't find a job to save my life. i know of about twenty other cs graduates who are all unemployed or working crappy tech support jobs for like $12 an hour. i also know a few EE guys who are unemployed as well. all of these people, including myself, are competent and really know their material. but most jobs demand about three years experience in the "real world" (think non academic but professional). [a side note: open source projects are good resume builders b/c they are some the experience employers so desperately seek, so donate your time 'cuz it will pay off]

it all depends on your area. maybe things are better in canada but where i am from, i can't find a cs job that will pay better than $35k, on the RARE occasion it's a full time job and not some six month contract job. i can do better than that workin construction (union), which makes going to school worthless.

i apologize if what i say might start a flame war, thats not what i want to do, but i blame our present state of affairs on bush. to watch computerjobs.com go from 80,000+ jobs, each $50 to $100 per hour each, go all the way to 6,000 jobs in less than 6 months after he took office and then remain there for the 3 years short of the last few months that have seen the number grow slightly to 8,000+ jobs, still.... begs the question, how can one man have such an impact on the economy....

i'll not get into the reasons and speculations, they are irrelevant, however if you wish you can review my observations on a posting i made to johnkerry.com recently.

http://forum.johnkerry.com/index.php?showtopic=22793&st=195
(look for anderson_perry)

now i'd like to apologize if i might say anything to offend anybody, my comments are meant as a review of my observations. and i pass this on to you in an effort to lift your spirits that perhaps after november 2, perhaps if john kerry is given a chance to pick up where bill clinton left off, perhaps by this time next year, we can all be gainfully employed in our choosen fields, but i leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions....

cheers

- perry

nko

06-24-2004, 10:54 AM

I wouldn't be certain that the entire economic downturn was the fault of the new administration, but I wouldn't be certain it wasn't. In any event, I know consumer confidence went down around then.

Back on topic, I'm not sure, but I don't think it's been discussed; how many here have taken an easier computer class (eg Keyboarding, Microsoft Word, Computer Basics), and within days of starting the class ended up being asked by the teacher to keep busy while the rest of the class played catch-up? I remember an MS Office class I took in High School, because it was a requirement to get in to VisualBasic programming (our most advanced computer course...), and within the first week, it was alright for me to play with MS Paint for more than half of the class time. At some points the teacher would get a little testy and ask me to prove I'd actually learned something, and of course, I could not only perform what the book taught, but could build on it in a way that made me a model student (who draws little 10x10 icons in MS Paint half the day).

StarTiger

06-24-2004, 12:00 PM

perry_a,
a few tips from my high school careers class a long time ago.

1. Keep you resume down to one page. when sorting though resumes, the people spend on adverage 10 seconds looking at a resume befor moving on to next one. Make a bang on the first page. limit the second page to referance and that sort of info.

2. I wouldn't be saying this if i hadn't gotten it for the mouths of VPS of Novel, TRW, microsoft, and a few others. C.S. degrees aren't worth that muchin todays job market. Why? Every one and their dog has a C.S. degree nowadays. Especially if your in the big tech area. (California, Seatle, Washington DC, New York. Sorry don'tr know too much about the Canadain job market. But i'd imaging it's about the same.)

Don't beleave me, just watch TV and see how many universities brag about CS programs. The job market is just flooded with people with that type of degree.

Because those degrees are SO previlent, employers want people wiith more advanced degrees (i.e. computer software engineering , both are 4 year programs.) inorder to narrow down the pool pf potential canidates for the limited number of jobs.

3. If you don't want to be flaimed or to offend anyone, don't say anything that would got you flaimed, or offend someone.

4. This is a site for Linux and computers. Please leave polatics off this site. If you must get into it, we have another forum for that.

/dev'random (http://justlinux.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=21)

5. Your CANADAIN. Why would you even CARE about what we do down here with our polotical system? I personally don't care too much who your Prime Minister is because that person doesn't have too much effect on me and my life.

Just my $.02

StarTiger

06-24-2004, 12:13 PM

Not about computers, but it was about school. and funny none the less.

This signed was posted next to a lecture hall on campus. it read:

"death and dieing cancled due to illness."

canon006

06-24-2004, 12:35 PM

This professor a friend of mine had relied on his laptop to get the class done. It was a school owned laptop and he wasn't allowed to change the OS or upgrade the hardware without special permission that he'd been trying to get. All during the class he would take pot-shots at Micrsoft. So One day he goes in to start class but Windows was acting up on his laptop, every time he'd boot it would crap out and reboot itself. So he decided to just cancel class. Since the whole class hadn't shown up yet he wrote on the board "Class Cancelled Due to Act of Microsoft". I always wanted to take a class with that guy.

XiaoKJ

06-24-2004, 02:43 PM

Originally posted by canon006
This professor a friend of mine had relied on his laptop to get the class done. It was a school owned laptop and he wasn't allowed to change the OS or upgrade the hardware without special permission that he'd been trying to get. All during the class he would take pot-shots at Micrsoft. So One day he goes in to start class but Windows was acting up on his laptop, every time he'd boot it would crap out and reboot itself. So he decided to just cancel class. Since the whole class hadn't shown up yet he wrote on the board "Class Cancelled Due to Act of Microsoft". I always wanted to take a class with that guy.

Oh, and if I haven't mentioned this I would like to say that geeks in my school plays remote shutdowns in any class that are held in the computer room -- with all the computers on XP.

every now and then a teacher comes in and complains that their teaching equipment went down in the middle of class.... :D

And today HP gave my school a new Group policy -- one that if the administrator was given even READ ability the group policy will act on the administrator and make him/her not be able to even use CMD or even look at C: with third party software.... :'(

Sepero

06-24-2004, 02:49 PM

Originally posted by perry_a
i apologize if what i say might start a flame war, thats not what i want to do, but i blame our present state of affairs on bush.
Yeah, and I still blame the Great Depression on Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge didn't create a bubble of artificial prosperity on purpose...

(and if you don't know the difference between Real econonimic growth and Artificial economic growth, you shouldn't be in politics.)

cybertron

06-24-2004, 03:18 PM

Originally posted by Sepero
Yeah, and I still blame the Great Depression on Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge didn't create a bubble of artificial prosperity on purpose...

(and if you don't know the difference between Real econonimic growth and Artificial economic growth, you shouldn't be in politics.)

I've heard that before. I don't know enough to know for sure whether it's true or not, but it's sounds logical to me. The guy who gets blamed is never the one who deserves the blame:)

madcompnerd

06-24-2004, 05:16 PM

I don't think it's right to blaim the President for the whole situation either. There were several reasons for the great depression, and most of them I think should be blamed on us the voters and consumers for using banks that put our money in risky investments and maxing out our credit limits.
Free trade only works with intelligent consumers just like a government for the people only works if the people are intelligent enough to watch it. Blaming it on the focal point of our national mind (arguably represented by the President) would be very shallow indeed.
It's time we take responsibility for our problems and quit jumping back and forth between Democrat and Republican.

nko

06-24-2004, 05:19 PM

For a Mad Comp Nerd, that sure was elloquent! It may be a little on the idealistic side, but I think it's the right attitude.

bwkaz

06-24-2004, 06:34 PM

All right guys, NO MORE POLITICS. StarTiger, thank you for trying to stop it once already, but apparently nobody listened to you (or they did, but only for a short time).

I really don't want to close this thread, but there are a bunch of other places you can discuss politics on the Internet. This site is NOT one of them. If the politics keeps being discussed in this thread, I WILL close it.

Thank you for understanding.

cybertron

06-24-2004, 10:23 PM

Originally posted by bwkaz
All right guys, NO MORE POLITICS. StarTiger, thank you for trying to stop it once already, but apparently nobody listened to you (or they did, but only for a short time).

I really don't want to close this thread, but there are a bunch of other places you can discuss politics on the Internet. This site is NOT one of them. If the politics keeps being discussed in this thread, I WILL close it.

Thank you for understanding.

Oops, how about the stupidest thing I've ever said: Posting about politics in this thread.:)

shortcircuit

06-24-2004, 10:47 PM

I don't have many words to say about this, but I think all these instructors are Certified by a **** of paper blah!

But see many companies look for that paper, and those fkng people get the job, a teaching job that you and I can teach 10 to 20 times better. this is a real stupidity of hiring managers...lets just hope that some day those people will wake up.

So anyway, fk them, fk them up!

perry_a

06-25-2004, 06:31 AM

Originally posted by fatTrav
[a side note: open source projects are good resume builders b/c they are some the experience employers so desperately seek, so donate your time 'cuz it will pay off]

thats a really smart move, my resume has several examples of where i was more than willing to literally "donate" my time only to find an opportunity to get into really cool cutting edge technology... and a high paying, full time job soon after....

i won't repeat here what i just said earlier out of respect for the people that run this thread but things will get better, preferrably sooner than later...

but as for getting a degree, in times of cut backs, it's good to invest your time back in school. have you got a masters? what's another year to go and get that....? yes, i know, i know, it means getting a student loan or perhaps even better, getting some work at a call center while you go to school, but be wise and invest your time. statistically, it will pay off to have more education.... alot better....

look at me, at 37, i've gone back to school to work on a joint-degree in math and engineering, with perhaps a cs degree on the side seeing how i know all that inside out from my years of experience....

i like getting up in the morning and i'm pretty convinced it's going to be a brighter day.... perhaps really really bright if my analysis is accurate....

remember, i'm a systems analyst and i know how to analyze black boxes.... find out what makes them tick... and find out what makes them work...

have a good day

- perry

XiaoKJ

06-25-2004, 06:56 AM

Originally posted by shortcircuit
I don't have many words to say about this, but I think all these instructors are Certified by a **** of paper blah!

But see many companies look for that paper, and those fkng people get the job, a teaching job that you and I can teach 10 to 20 times better. this is a real stupidity of hiring managers...lets just hope that some day those people will wake up.

So anyway, fk them, fk them up!

Thats not totally true.

For one, how can a paper teacher BREATHE?

If you want to look at it more objectively, you should see that most of these useless big-mouths are available everywhere, and you should blame it on their education.

there was a time where computer techs earn most, and the education model is faulty -- exams test on how good a person can memorise, not how flexible a person is. therefore if you cross fire with things from *their* textbooks you will lose hands down.

Hey, they aren't hapy to be in their place, and they accomplished nothing and has no significant impact on the world. poor things!

BTW, how can you expect a retarded person with PHD [Permanent Head Damage] from a long-proven destructive education to inspire problem-solving skills in students?

Its the education, its the education...

PS: the best form of education exists behind curiosity and passion, not in the shadow of money cos the economy cannot be predicted.

madcompnerd

07-01-2004, 10:46 PM

A little off topic but I found this interesting and related.
My university, like any, has serious problems with script kiddies (usually looking for easily compromised systems with high bandwidth). They like to run RPC exploits on machines and our school employs several people to try and keep compromised machines off the network.
Well I hardly believed it until a win2k machine at work was compromised. I judged from the dates of things, (installation of an ftp server and changing of several dll's including cygwins) that it was done by a script (several installations inside 2 minutes, either a script or something he's done several times).

Anyway, long story short. I had a long conversation with one of the guys and he is very angry with Microsoft. Now I'm usually a big moderate on this because I'm no expert and I know no system is perfect. But wow this guy blames a lot on Microsoft and is quite sure they should have to pay for the lost time. Well, I guess I read most of that into his speech on how it's M$' fault.

I also work with a bunch of guys who just utterly hate Windows (and it's not security). I think though they are over familiar with CLI.

Sorry it's not very funny. What is funny is that after my Win2k system has ServU ftp installed it started having BSOD of kernel issues on bootup. Then it randomly worked again.

carrja99

07-06-2004, 01:34 PM

Odd... after reading through this thread, I've found it hard to compare to my computer science professor in college.

Sure, he wasn't a genius, and readily admitted he didn't know Java at all (who can blame him anyhow? He doesn't teach Java, another professor does). He was a pretty smart guy who started up a linux course to help students become familiar with linux (The first assignment? View Revolution OS and write a 2 page summary). And even on stuff he didn't know, he was pretty open minded on suggestions.

Of course, people would take his self admission of not knowing Java as "he's such an idiot". :(

cybertron

07-06-2004, 10:26 PM

Originally posted by carrja99
Odd... after reading through this thread, I've found it hard to compare to my computer science professor in college.

Sure, he wasn't a genius, and readily admitted he didn't know Java at all (who can blame him anyhow? He doesn't teach Java, another professor does). He was a pretty smart guy who started up a linux course to help students become familiar with linux (The first assignment? View Revolution OS and write a 2 page summary). And even on stuff he didn't know, he was pretty open minded on suggestions.

Of course, people would take his self admission of not knowing Java as "he's such an idiot". :(

Actually, I had a hard time finding anything from my profs to post as well. Most of mine were about fellow students making asses of themselves while trying to look smarter than the prof. As a general rule, the profs here know what they know well, and the other stuff they leave to people who know that well. The head of the department repeatedly admitted that he wasn't up on the latest hardware like most of the students were, but that really didn't affect his teaching any.

finger51

07-06-2004, 11:38 PM

Pi is exactly THREE!

/clabin

Sepero

07-07-2004, 03:57 AM

Originally posted by finger51
Pi is exactly THREE!

/clabin THANK GOD! Someone finally figured it out! Now I can finally calculate the precise amount of area this pizza will take up while sitting next to my computer.

Stupid Boy

07-07-2004, 10:48 AM

I haven't started high school yet, so I don't have computer science courses, but I computers are used in my school.

Once, I asked one of the computer people (What's a better way of saying that?) if there was anything stopping me from formatting the hard drives on the Macs in the school with Linux. He asked me what may stop it, and I explained that the BIOS could be password protected, but it was a Mac, so I did not know how to access the BIOS, blah, blah. He thought for a bit, and he thought there was no protection. I asked about the server. He thought there was something, but he did not know what. I would get into deep trouble if I formatted a hard drive anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Also, in a class where I was studying metalurgy, I had to use Adobe Illustrator to make my keychain. I asked the teacher why the lines were triple-spaced. I had opened some text settings. (I had never used Illustrator before, and he had, I hope.) He came over to my PC, and he redid what the directions were, which I had followed. He then walked away. His actions did absolutely nothing. I reopened the text settings and fixed the problem.

By the way, my keychain looked like this:

(Apple) World's worst operating systems (Window)

XiaoKJ

07-07-2004, 11:57 AM

Originally posted by Stupid Boy
Once, I asked one of the computer people (What's a better way of saying that?) if there was anything stopping me from formatting the hard drives on the Macs in the school with Linux. He asked me what may stop it, and I explained that the BIOS could be password protected, but it was a Mac, so I did not know how to access the BIOS, blah, blah. He thought for a bit, and he thought there was no protection. I asked about the server. He thought there was something, but he did not know what. I would get into deep trouble if I formatted a hard drive anyway, so it doesn't matter.
Oh, I don't know about the BIOS (Macs...)

But you could have partitioned -- and use yaboot to boot it.

Oh, call those people techs, and the one you apporached is a dummy tech. He should feel like rubber if you pinch him. :D

However, try not linux on Macs -- on PCs linux is better :D

Stupid Boy

07-07-2004, 12:10 PM

Originally posted by XiaoKJ
Oh, I don't know about the BIOS (Macs...)

But you could have partitioned -- and use yaboot to boot it.

Oh, call those people techs, and the one you apporached is a dummy tech. He should feel like rubber if you pinch him. :D

However, try not linux on Macs -- on PCs linux is better :D

He is actually one of the two people at the school who know a lot...about Windoze and Mac. He doesn't know a thing about Linux, but he's really helpful with Mac. (How do you spell "Mac incorrectly"?)

My school is well-funded, so it wastes lots of money by getting Macs, and Mac OS X is worse than even Windoze ME! (I have used both at home.) So the students and teachers get Macs, and the administration get Dells with Windoze XP.

OOOH! Another thing! Not computer science, though

I had a science teacher whose floppy disk was locked. She went across the school to the computer center to get it unlocked.

XiaoKJ

07-08-2004, 10:23 AM

Originally posted by Stupid Boy
He is actually one of the two people at the school who know a lot...about Windoze and Mac. He doesn't know a thing about Linux, but he's really helpful with Mac. (How do you spell "Mac incorrectly"?)

My school is well-funded, so it wastes lots of money by getting Macs, and Mac OS X is worse than even Windoze ME! (I have used both at home.) So the students and teachers get Macs, and the administration get Dells with Windoze XP.

OOOH! Another thing! Not computer science, though

I had a science teacher whose floppy disk was locked. She went across the school to the computer center to get it unlocked.

May I know who spelt Macs wrongly?

Is it true Mac OS X is worse than Win ME? Its horrible! -- I mean, Macs are designed to be working without glitches and yet it is below the horrendous Win ME in your book? AHH!!! Get linux on EVERY MACHINE!

nko

07-08-2004, 10:58 AM

Re: Macs being along side WinMe: He did say he's in like 8th grade. Not to bash the young, but it sounds like a lot of subjectivity. I wont argue one way or the other, since this ain't the forum to do it in, but let me give an example; with VPC on a Mac, I'm running Slackware and FreeBSD, all on top of UNIX (Mac OS X) in virtual machines. It basically means I've got 3 networked computers for the price of 1 + some really handy software. Sure, maybe ya don't like Macs, but WinMe? Hehe, that's a bit far fetched :).

I guess this is tangentenially on topic; what were the WinMe engineers thinking when they released it? Were they thinking it'd be worthwhile? Good for some sort of usage? Worth spending money on? I think it's an example of "Stupidest thing a computer related entity ever did". Ya couldn't pay me to use WinMe. I've got too much invested in my data!

madcompnerd

07-08-2004, 12:25 PM

Originally posted by nko

I guess this is tangentenially on topic; what were the WinMe engineers thinking when they released it? Were they thinking it'd be worthwhile? Good for some sort of usage? Worth spending money on? I think it's an example of "Stupidest thing a computer related entity ever did". Ya couldn't pay me to use WinMe. I've got too much invested in my data! [/B]
Most likely they thought "management says ship it in a month, we'd better get to packaging this thing as is."

cybertron

07-08-2004, 12:43 PM

Originally posted by madcompnerd
Most likely they thought "management says ship it in a month, we'd better get to packaging this thing as is."

They figured they had to release something to get people to stop making fun of them for taking so long to get each version of Windows out:) Little did they know it would only bring more ridicule.:rolleyes:

roamingnomad

07-10-2004, 10:06 PM

Once I asked about the possibility of my connecting to the school's wireless network with my own hardware. The "tech" (if that's what you prefer) replied by saying that there was absolutely nothing they could do to defend their network from outsiders. Absolutely nothing.

(that's what prompted this question (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=130141))

Black Mage

07-11-2004, 01:45 AM

I have the ultimate show stopper. While going to high school in New York, my physics teacher (a complete idiot) said "I have taught in three countries: South America, the Bronx, and North America".

Also, someone was telling a story in class, when my health (Sex Ed.) teacher interrupts with "OH MY GOD! They did it in the BUTT?!" They were not talking about sex.

SpOoNFisH

07-11-2004, 04:35 AM

There have been so many times when cs teachers have said stupid things, but a recent one was when my teacher was talking about the insides of a computer and pointing to a dodgey diagram, and he said how all computers are put together by robots now.

We use the computers for D/T aswell and my teacher for that is really stupid, and i mean really stupid. Yes, she's blonde. So anyway i was complaining how the computers destroyed floppy discs and how ure half way through a word document and suddenly the whole file is corrupt and bits of text through the whole thing are missing or just random, cos they have a very retarted novell and windows 2000 system where everything is restricted, and everything runs over network. And she goes "yes its because the dust comes into the room from the woodwork room and gets stuck to the motherboard" not that she knows what a motherboard is, she must have heard it from the techy (who dont know much anyway).

My school is stupid, they fire the bad teachers, and employ the stupid or evil ones. The librarian spends all her time spying on what people are doing on the computers using some screen capture program and takes screenshots to give to the deputy principal and get people in trouble. She also does this with website history. There is a whole wall in the library covered in fileing cabinets that contain records of everyones internet browsing and ****, like a criminal record. And we have to pay for the printer to, to print out work, when she uses it for free for that. Evryone hates her, inluding the other teachers, but they can't do **** cos she has somehow got control of the principal and deputy, and she is now head of I.T. after she got the old head of I.T. fired, who was a good teacher. So now the other teachers are scared to do anything incase they loose there job.
She's a power hungry evil *****. We've all had our little pranks on her though hehehehehehehehe. MUHAHAHAHA!!!.

Sorry about this, i tend to ramble a bit, especially on this subject.

perry_a

07-11-2004, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by SpOoNFisH
There have been so many times when cs teachers have said stupid things, but a recent one was when my teacher was talking about the insides of a computer and pointing to a dodgey diagram, and he said how all computers are put together by robots now.

We use the computers for D/T aswell and my teacher for that is really stupid, and i mean really stupid. Yes, she's blonde. So anyway i was complaining how the computers destroyed floppy discs and how ure half way through a word document and suddenly the whole file is corrupt and bits of text through the whole thing are missing or just random, cos they have a very retarted novell and windows 2000 system where everything is restricted, and everything runs over network. And she goes "yes its because the dust comes into the room from the woodwork room and gets stuck to the motherboard" not that she knows what a motherboard is, she must have heard it from the techy (who dont know much anyway).

My school is stupid, they fire the bad teachers, and employ the stupid or evil ones. The librarian spends all her time spying on what people are doing on the computers using some screen capture program and takes screenshots to give to the deputy principal and get people in trouble. She also does this with website history. There is a whole wall in the library covered in fileing cabinets that contain records of everyones internet browsing and ****, like a criminal record. And we have to pay for the printer to, to print out work, when she uses it for free for that. Evryone hates her, inluding the other teachers, but they can't do **** cos she has somehow got control of the principal and deputy, and she is now head of I.T. after she got the old head of I.T. fired, who was a good teacher. So now the other teachers are scared to do anything incase they loose there job.
She's a power hungry evil *****. We've all had our little pranks on her though hehehehehehehehe. MUHAHAHAHA!!!.

Sorry about this, i tend to ramble a bit, especially on this subject.

i can understand having to put up with less than competent comp sci instructors, nevertheless that degree goes along way. look on the bright side, it's one course you don't really have to study hard for.

- perry

;)

acid45

07-11-2004, 10:26 AM

My professor made the wrong choice of words and was quickly corrected and awknowledged that he goofed up, then again english isn't his first language.

"We'll be doing ANSI C" ...we weren't.

For gods sake, you'd think there would be some sort of requirements before they can actually teach a course!

You'd be surprised at MOST schools(university college or otherwise)...that I've attended anyway.

cybertron

07-11-2004, 09:26 PM

Originally posted by SpOoNFisH
There have been so many times when cs teachers have said stupid things, but a recent one was when my teacher was talking about the insides of a computer and pointing to a dodgey diagram, and he said how all computers are put together by robots now.

We use the computers for D/T aswell and my teacher for that is really stupid, and i mean really stupid. Yes, she's blonde. So anyway i was complaining how the computers destroyed floppy discs and how ure half way through a word document and suddenly the whole file is corrupt and bits of text through the whole thing are missing or just random, cos they have a very retarted novell and windows 2000 system where everything is restricted, and everything runs over network. And she goes "yes its because the dust comes into the room from the woodwork room and gets stuck to the motherboard" not that she knows what a motherboard is, she must have heard it from the techy (who dont know much anyway).

My school is stupid, they fire the bad teachers, and employ the stupid or evil ones. The librarian spends all her time spying on what people are doing on the computers using some screen capture program and takes screenshots to give to the deputy principal and get people in trouble. She also does this with website history. There is a whole wall in the library covered in fileing cabinets that contain records of everyones internet browsing and ****, like a criminal record. And we have to pay for the printer to, to print out work, when she uses it for free for that. Evryone hates her, inluding the other teachers, but they can't do **** cos she has somehow got control of the principal and deputy, and she is now head of I.T. after she got the old head of I.T. fired, who was a good teacher. So now the other teachers are scared to do anything incase they loose there job.
She's a power hungry evil *****. We've all had our little pranks on her though hehehehehehehehe. MUHAHAHAHA!!!.

Sorry about this, i tend to ramble a bit, especially on this subject.

Wow, your first post to JL and it's in this thread! You must have strong feelings about this topic:) Sounds like it's understandable from your description though.

MethodicalJ

07-14-2004, 05:05 AM

I'm going back to Syracuse this fall, in CS, transferring from (guess what) Art. I can't get out of the foundation classes and "intro to computing": f-ing money well spent, but at least it should be a breeze.

In a 5 kid class I took last semester on the side, which was mostly ASM and whatnot, this girl asks "can we compile .asm files in VC++?"

The teacher, a huge jolly old guy, in full nerd form, responded "Visual C?? C++ trembles in the presence of assembly language."

I was the only kid that got a chuckle out of that.

By the way I dropped that class to do art student stuff, like smoking up and watching Family Guy.

nickptar

07-14-2004, 05:25 PM

I was taking a mandatory test two years ago (8th grade) on basic computer usage (with the incompatible pointless oxymorabomination called Microsoft Works). Since the computers were somewhat temperamental, the proctor told us not to touch them until instructed because we might cause a crash. A reasonable request, even if based on faulty thought processes. I was on a computer with an annoying monitor setup, so I decided to adjust it with the monitor buttons. Guess what happens next...

Yep, the proctor tells me not to touch it, that we don't want it to crash.

Silly little me, expecting a public middle school "keyboarding" teacher to know the difference between a computer and a monitor.

XiaoKJ

07-15-2004, 01:02 PM

I met a person who wanted to ask me about setting up an ADSL router, and in routine I asked what type of connections his modem had -- just in case he had spent the money to buy an ethernet ADSL modem.

I even showed him the different USB and ethernet ports. He had the idea to point at the ethernet connector and tell me he uses that -- that usb connector. I had to really ask and plug out my usb hub to get him clear that he did not have the ethernet connection on his modem and he had to invest in an ADSL router, not a regular one.

Oh, he thought that he *MUST* buy ethernet cables and plugs and fit them together manually. I mean, at Sin$1 a metre of cable, fitting manually may not be really practical.

javmarcan

07-17-2004, 02:22 PM

I have this profesor, who is in charge of the College of Engeenering. He had a Phd in CS.

We where attending his class "Aplication and Theory of Informathics". He said two things that where really stupid.

1- He was talking about ORACLE-DB. I asked him "dont you think that is really expensive to buy a comercial DB while you have open source ones like MySQL and PostgreSQL."

I told me that no one in a big business would use a OSS DB.
I know of 2 Banks in my country (Paraguay) that use Postres. I told him that and he was really mad.

2- He was talking about networks and he said that TCP/IP has 5 layers. I told him that the TCP/IP standard only has 4 layers
Aplication->transport->net->host2host

In fact I show him Tanenbaum`s "Computers Networks". When he saw that Tanenbaum says that the problem with tcp/ip is that it only has 4 layers. My teacher said

"This book is 8 years old, maybe the standard changed from that time to now"

I pay every month the equivalent to 800$ to hear this kind of crap.

sorry for my english. It really sucks

javier martinez

SpOoNFisH

07-18-2004, 06:26 AM

Cybertron: Wow, your first post to JL and it's in this thread! You must have strong feelings about this topic Sounds like it's understandable from your description though.

Yea, i found out what i needed at the time from the help files, and i saw this on the front page and had a look in it, and i thought to myself it was an odd first post but meh.

nickptar: Silly little me, expecting a public middle school "keyboarding" teacher to know the difference between a computer and a monitor.

yea, my teacher whent nuts at me for adjusting the monitor when it was all in the middle of the screen, meanwhile a few seats along there was a broken airconditioner splurting out water all over the monitor below and he just left it, nutcase.

and i just remembered something else from ages ago at my old school, they had these mac power pc's perched on tiny little desks so that the keyboard had to be to the left of the computer, so i had to move the keyboard onto my lap to actually be able to kindof type on it, and i was threataned to be banned from the computers if i did that again. anyway, i should start asking noob questions that are gonna help me instead of using this as a ramble center:)

cybertron

07-19-2004, 06:13 PM

Originally posted by SpOoNFisH
anyway, i should start asking noob questions that are gonna help me instead of using this as a ramble center:)

Rambling on about computers and Linux is what /dev/random is all about:D

The 27th Voice

07-20-2004, 08:21 AM

Originally posted by XiaoKJ
May I know who spelt Macs wrongly?

Is it true Mac OS X is worse than Win ME? Its horrible! -- I mean, Macs are designed to be working without glitches and yet it is below the horrendous Win ME in your book? AHH!!! Get linux on EVERY MACHINE! Not to start a war, but ever since I switched to PCs full-time (been using both since I was 7), I've missed Mac OS X and it's programs. Macs have some strong sides that both Windows and Linux need to copy. I'm still looking for the search feature of OmniWeb, the equal of Salling Clicker, sometihng resembeling LaunchBar and the ease-of-use of Mac OS X (drag-and-drop installing, anyone?). You're probably asking why I stopped using Macs if I love them so much. I got into trouble with Apple over a PowerBook (I wanted money back 'cause they failed to repair it 3 times (new flaws each time, could easily make me happy after first repair if they had tried it before shipping) they didn't want to give me the money, but rather replace the computer. Our laws say otherwise, but they lied about that...). I love Macs, but hate Apple.

Back on topic, I haven't had CS teachers, but some generally stupid teachers with computers.

One of them tried to help a girl in my class with a movie whe was working on. He ended up deleting the entire thing, she had to sit at school 'till 8 every evening the next 3 days to catch up.

Another was showing us how to make a hpotoshop file for printing. Her stupidity showed when she was to save the file. She was and is an avid Mac user, and as such she decided to call the file "dama på torget". I pointed out that she was asking for trouble with such a name, and that for safety of cross-platform ease we should name it sometihng like "dama.jpg". She bit my head off and yelled that Macs didn't need that...

Starting school about a year ago, our class was to learn to use the internet. We walk into a classroom with a lot of computers and take our seats. I sat far back next to a guy who had just finished his trainee time as a system admin at another school in the town.
This lady started out by telling use how the difference between a search and a database was that with searching you could search and databases could only be viewed by category.
Then she gave us a few easy search assignments to teach us to look for info on the web. Dusing her presentation she repeatedly pronounced Google "goggle".
After her presentation was complete she told us that if she missed anything we were to chime out, and the guy next to me told her it's google, not goggle. She then proceeds to hit him over the head with a few sheets and then drags him out into the hallway by his ear, all the while yelling how disrespectful he was acting.

XiaoKJ

07-20-2004, 10:00 AM

Dear 27th voice, I want to tell you that I've always put macs in my good book, and I was trying to tell another person that macs should be better than WinME in any factor.

However, you cannot install mac os on exery computer, unless you can make do with less performance. On the other hand, linux can be installed on quite a lot of computers and yet be reasonably nice to use. Moreover, linux ARE user-friendly enough for everyday use.

I also know people who call google goggle, and in your case the teacher needs to be left alone. 2 years down the road s/he will be put in homes for the aged cos "it" is already not following time, with terrible mistakes in general stuff. Look into the person's X-ray photo and you will find an empty space in the skull for you to put your PDA

STM

07-23-2004, 10:43 AM

Kind of off topic, but I thought this was kind of funny. I found it on a state web page.

"Click here to change your E-MAIL password. For security reasons, you MUST use Internet Explorer."

nko

07-23-2004, 11:04 AM

I think that either their site's been hijacked and the crackers are trying to get people's passwords the tricky way, or they forgot to add an the "in" at the beginning of the word "insecurity."

Or maybe they were serious :)

And hey, IE is plenty secure... as long as you don't have data of any value on your computer, you plan on reinstalling Windows regularly, you never do any shopping, banking, forum posting, or form filling, and you keep up with the patches. Mind you, the patches don't necessarily come fast enough.

XiaoKJ

07-24-2004, 12:39 PM

Anybody using SkyPE?

I know of dozens of people, each having a different pronunciation of the word.

Ok, I've been working on setting it up for many people lately, and its been quite ok. It even has a linux version that works. This SkyPE thingy is something like IP Telephony. That night, this guy called me up wanting to set it up on his computer.

It was quite a breeze, just that we couldn't hear him properly. As the symptom is quite common, I suggested he look into his sound properties, microphone and sound card. He was very upset with it and insisted that it was because of the "buffering". No matter what I say, he would insist that these things aren't real-time and they buffer. He said he got that notion when he called up to test that thing and he heard laggy sound.

I argued that these things cannot buffer cos they operate real-time, and they must operate real-time cos it may be a matter of life and death, and every second counts, especially if there's chaos or arguing over the net. The lag is just because it would travel over the net, and that means travelling over long distances of wire and routers...

He wasn't ok with it. He said that its becos of those "soft-switches" that cause the problem. (He's dragging it away...) I nearly blew it -- its completely a different matter! He went on to explain that these IP phones are sent to these "soft-switches" and they would then be transformed into normal 2-line RJ-11 telephone signals that resemble human speech.

I had my jaws drop to the floor. I've never heard of something as ridiculous as that. For one, "soft-switches" are some hardware that move packets and prevent collisions, and does it with software instead of pure hardware. I don't know how they can filter IP phone packets when there are so many different types of them all over the net.

I also can't see how they can convert binary to voice either, much less even have RJ-11 ports... Aren't they just stuff that send packets around? He even forgot to add routers to the equation!

Finally, after much ranting, I got his idea -- he meant something like CDMA/CS <-- pardon me, I'm not a network specialist yet and I don't know the correct spelling, but its somewhere there. He meant that the congested traffic caused those packets to be slowed to avoid collisions, and therefore the "buffer". I accepted that, but silly me said that those in developing countries will face more of that, cos they have congested traffic and they use cheap hubs, causing so much more collision and packets get lost, and they will lag like hell. Moreover, both of us are using broadband and we should not get the lag anyway. With the speed the effects of CDMA/CS and collisions will be smothered.

On that, he went mad again, and pulled the whole topic to developed countries, and gave quite some comments, wasting my time. When he got over with it, he started the "soft-switches can convert binary to voice and to RJ-11" fab. I nearly killed myself, cos I can't put him on hold...

I mean, aren't we both on the net? If that's it we should be only receiving our respective IPs from the SkyPE server (which will be quite small, and will not clog up that traffic) and our contacts. Then we should call each other directly, and being under the same ISP we may even be served by only 1 switch! There shouldn't be ANY lag for that! If we are calling to residential lines over the net, then we would use SkyPE's servers quite a lot and thus we should be charged.

All of a sudden he started with narrow-band, just like those in developing countries. After some argument, I finally got the idea that he used narrow-band for residential lines, and broadband for any internet. I had to spent some time to tell him that narrow-band means 56k and below while broadband is anything above that, and both are over the net.

Finally, he switched to his laptop and found out that his internet connection is down. I told him to call me later.

When he called me over the net from his laptop, all was fine, and I could hear him properly. Therefore, it must have been his sound-settings or sound card. He was using the exact same microphone so it must be ok. I told him so, and he went back to the "soft-switches" thingy, shifting all the blame there.

I mean, I don't think they can sniff packets and separate IP phone traffic from the others, and he doesn't mean that modems or some form of digital to analog conversion is there too. He meant that they would just magically convert binary to voice and call me from there. He wouldn't even get the idea that both of us are using the net, and we aren't on 56k, neither on voice's 64k, but 256k from ADSL. yeah, on copper wires with the RJ-11, but with the extra bandwith that humans can't hear and use, and not without the ADSL modem on both ends. And the voices are still in packet form and assembled on both ends.

He kept on praising the new tech "soft-switches" and not mentioning the routers and other stuff, taking for sure that switches had routing function, and vice versa and both ARE the same.

In the end, I couldn't convince him. My father (who used to work as colleagues with him, maybe managing him), told me he was in charge of a project that was to connect PCs together in the company, over the net for home use. Oh, they were in a telephone company too! My father said he never got the idea of how routers, switches and hubs work... I couldn't help laugh at that.... :D

nickptar

07-25-2004, 01:14 AM

Originally posted by XiaoKJ
He meant that they would just magically convert binary to voice and call me from there.

What an idiot, but what's so "magical" about converting binary to voice? It's done at some point in any VoIP system, and just takes a decoder and a DAC, unless you're talking about something I'm not.

XiaoKJ

07-25-2004, 03:05 AM

He's saying that a "soft-switch" can do it without a decoder or DAC of any form.

And his "soft-switch" is just a normal switch but controlled by software, and there isn't anything in his explanation of it that is doing the conversion. He meant that it will just convert binary to sound magically! At least it should have some sort of sound card in it for it to convert isn't it? He completely removed everything else except the "soft-switch" from the equation!

For all I know, to get normal voice from binary, I need something that works like a sound card, and in your case a decoder and DAC, and attach the output to a speaker. For VoIP to residential lines, that would be the case, and something more, like a modem that converts specific binary forms to tone-dialling -- to dial the correct number before the speaking normally like a phone. Maybe the SkyPE client can take care of it...

However, he meant that, without any accessory, a soft-switch can do it. No routers, no decoder, no DAC, no nothing else except the soft-switch, his computer, telephone lines and internet connection. I doubt they are so powerful as to do that now.

Sepero

07-25-2004, 12:33 PM

So there was this one time my CS teacher was at the front of the class, and he was all like "blah, blah, blah".
And I was like, this sucks.
And he was like, huh?
And I was like, wha?

And man, that was the stupidest thing a Computer Science teacher has Ever said in class!

(or was that just the stupidest post I Ever made!):D

P.S.
Congratulations to every who read this post, your I.Q. has just dropped 1 point.

Erikqwerty

08-20-2004, 08:29 PM

We will be learning lots of >new< things this year, such as word processing, using spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations! (powerpoint)

Im in 8th grade!

knute

08-20-2004, 08:53 PM

Originally posted by Erikqwerty
We will be learning lots of >new< things this year, such as word processing, using spreadsheets, and slideshow presentations! (powerpoint)

ROFLMAO

My 9 year old son who is starting 4th grade knows how to do those things! :D

hehehe.... He LIKES doing those types of things!

XiaoKJ

08-21-2004, 07:22 AM

Oh, and I know of ppl who are legally holding positions as sysadmins who still can't burn a vcd instead of a mpg-in-data-cd.

Yea! the screenshots thread is dead, and this is again on the top of the hottest threads! :D

perfectly_dark

08-25-2004, 02:30 PM

Ok, this isn't really computer science but computer engineering, close enough:

Teacher: Ok, this is a packet sniffer, you can see packets and their contents going accross the network...everybody start your packet sniffers. Now, im going to log into the school web server using telnet to give you an example of some real packets. When I login you'll be able to see the Telnet packets and their contents.

Hopefully, you see why that's funny...

XiaoKJ

08-26-2004, 07:05 AM

get his passwords!!!

and hack into his own system :D

marc read

08-28-2004, 11:24 AM

I am at a school were one of the other teaches stated that spybot was a virus. this teacher has her MCP and MCSE.

cybertron

08-28-2004, 01:32 PM

Yeah, I hate the names of Spybot and Adaware. We frequently recommend them to people, but they both sound like they could be spyware themselves, so it's very confusing. You have to enunciate well on Adaware especially or they get confused as to why you're suggesting adware to remove adware:)

korn4266

08-28-2004, 01:49 PM

Just going to state this....there was a virus called spybot that is why people were cautious about downloading it.

howserx

08-29-2004, 12:56 AM

It's been a few years so i can qouote anything, but the stupidest course I ever took should be good for a "I can't believe I paid for this course" laugh.

At my University of New Brunswick (canada) Mainframe Assembly language programming course we weren't allowed to use the mainframe at all. It did all the batch for the province so they didn't want us stupid students messing with thier revenue stream. So instead we got to use an emulator written by the prof for his 1972 PhD.

"It will teach you the basic concepts of mainfram assembly" he said. Screw that! Why would I want to learn something that will NEVER be seen out side of that class? If I wanted to learn imaginaty languages I'd go hang out with the drunks downtown.

That course made me drop out...

SeT

09-01-2004, 03:51 PM

"I've never used Linux before so I will be teaching from the book." My instructor at ITT for the Linux course shortly before a few people closed their books and went to complain to the school administration.

"You shouldn't put Linux and Windows XP on the same hard drive. This will cause all sorts of problems. Both OS's will run slower than usually and you will have to re-enter all of your preferences for both OS's anytime you reboot."

Lucas_Maximus

09-01-2004, 04:09 PM

hmm it will slow down the OS if it is installed on the same hardrive, hmm oh dear, that **** is really bad.

We had some computing lessons, in windows 3.11, they were a waste of time, 30 minutes on a computer learning how to use excel.

I was taught more from my 50 year old physics tutor when i had to write up science practicals.

oh the joys of school.

Cerf

09-01-2004, 06:49 PM

from a supply teacher in a physics class: "A neutron is a positivly charged atom"

Lucas_Maximus

09-01-2004, 07:01 PM

lmao

XiaoKJ

09-02-2004, 11:47 AM

mine better - she could point to a upwards arrow and say "the decrease..." and point to a downwards arrow and say "increase"

Of course, its only a one-time thing, so tis alright

joshwilson1

09-07-2004, 06:53 PM

I am not at the college where this lady teaches, but she was in all of my Information Systems classes and at the same school I had an internship. There was one day when she was getting all flustered because she could not set up a teacher's e-mail and also she had a hard time turning on another computers PC. I would just shake my head and think, "How is she going to get a job in this industry?"

A short time later she told us that she was going to teach at the school we just got finished at. I feel really bad because all she could do to teach them would be to read the text to them. What a waste of money to those kids. I would be pissed. I should go back and see how everything is going and do a follow up.

She even called me up, without knowing it was me, to ask for assistance on setting up an e-mail account in Outlook 2003. I did not let her know it was me, but in the back of my mind, I was think about how stupid she was.

XiaoKJ

09-11-2004, 06:13 AM

I got my system into a mix with ASUS motherboard, so I sent it for a checkup -- its a mess and I don't know if it really were a motherboard problem. The logical way is to have it checked by someone with the suitable apparatus.

Therefore to service it goes... and $30 :(

Ok, he thinks its the motherboard, so I have no choice but get it changed. He wants $160 for it.

Thinking that this is an old model (i850) and its hard to find a compatible motherboard, $160 seemed reasonable.(I don't want to waste my rdram, and my cpu if they are alright)

so he ordered 1, while I shopped in boredom. in no time I passed by a shop selling the same board for $45.

I got the system back and did it myself :mad:

PS: and 1 blur guy gave me a brochure for DIY systems with i865, i915 and i845 boards. when I asked for i850. board only

JoeyJoeJo

09-14-2004, 11:42 PM

I go to George Mason University in VA. My cs112 java teacher was telling us about the compiler we were using. It was a windows based class, and we used jGrasp along with java sdk 1.4.2. In reference to jGrasp, she said that it was an X window application. Also she couldn't find the desktop directory by starting in the c drive.

Given these two incidences, I'm guessing she is a unix or linux person.

Wolface

10-04-2004, 02:40 AM

I'm taking a "Intro to Unix and Linux" class that cannot be waived.

Here i'm taking a quiz to find this question(literal):

Which one of the following is TRUE about the Unix operating system?:

a) Is case sensitive.
b) Is not case sensitive
c) Is portable
d) Is not portable.

I'm killing my mind during the test thinking "a and c are true.. what the hell?". After a while I decided c because the question says 'unix operating system' so I guess he is refering to the kernel.

Comes out that the right answer is 'a'. I go and ask him why if both are true. He starts saying that 'c' is not true. After some discussion he says that is partially portable and ends up saying "because 'a' IS MORE TRUE that c" !!!

That's when I decided not to waste my mind on him.

This is a, ironically, Indian guy who shows 'vi' as the principal reason we should use Linux.

I swear I'll answer one of the next quizes by chosing two options and writing "true", "half true" just right to the answers.

knute

10-04-2004, 03:12 AM

Ummm... Aren't they all portable if they are installed on a laptop?

Also, if they aren't portable, what the fsck kind of medium is it being distributed on anyway????

mrBen

10-04-2004, 04:44 AM

Originally posted by knute
Ummm... Aren't they all portable if they are installed on a laptop?

Also, if they aren't portable, what the fsck kind of medium is it being distributed on anyway????

Please indicate that you are joking by inserting a smiley of some sort after a sentence like that......

drummerboy195

10-04-2004, 08:36 AM

Wow, am I the only person who seems to have compotent teachers? I mean, my Prog. for IT teacher submitted her first program here at the school, and it was on punch cards, and my Intro to MultiMedia teacher has been here every school year since 1983, first as a student, next as a professor. Incedentally, (sp?) for some reason the Unix section of IMM comes very very easily to me. Hmmm, i wonder why? :D

soulestream

10-06-2004, 03:38 PM

Wow, am I the only person who seems to have compotent teachers?

yeah reading these makes me feel great about my school, we have some teachers who should be janitors or something, but i've got alot who only teach a few months of the year and they either run consulting businesses or something on the side. they give real world examples and problems. My unix/linux teacher has been using *nix for 15 years, before teaching. my network teach is net+,mcse, ccna,ccne,ccnp, she knows her sh*t.

soule

PenguinParoxysm

10-06-2004, 05:31 PM

I'm A+, Net+, NHCT, MCP, Linux+, Security+.

The only reason I frequent this particular thread is to see if anybody is talking about me!! lol.. actually I have another perspective on this so I'm curious how some things seem to the student.

I teach linux and unix fundamentals and administration, I was a UNIX admin for a few years before teaching it.

nko

10-06-2004, 05:39 PM

There's definitely a difference between good and bad instructors. A lot of people have witnessed an instructor who was convinced that s/he knew everything there was to know about computers ever since they read that .NET press release, or one who doesn't think MacOS is networkable, or who introduced a class to Linux by SSH'ing in to what was actually an HP-UX server (using a Windows machine), said, "this is what Linux is all about. You have to be an expert like me to do anything. Watch..." then moved some files around, hoping to woo the chicks in the class, but making himself look like a total *** in front of the people with a clue (and turning off every eligible "chick" in the class). A lot of us have also, thankfully, had instructors who could *explain* why it's often taught not to use global namespaces for everything, or go through the fundamentals of dealing with pointers, and then tie it back in with strings, all without missing a beat, confusing any who were paying attention, or failing to accurately answer any question.

PenguinParoxysm

10-06-2004, 06:44 PM

Completely understand. I know my "stuff" so I'm not in the complete meatstick instructor category. I'm also marginally funny and quick to admit when I "don't know". I mean you can't possibly know everything about linux and unix... and there are plenty of options and even commands I've never used.

I always tell my students that rant before I spend the next few hours ranting about this or that and having them take down 3 pages of notes about stuff that's not even in their books. Still... I tell them the number 1 factor in being a good systems admin and a bad systems admin is your ability to use references and research problems.

I give this support forum out as a great guide to obtaining answers... googling errors.. etc.

cybertron

10-06-2004, 07:13 PM

Originally posted by nko
hoping to woo the chicks in the class, but making himself look like a total *** in front of the people with a clue (and turning off every eligible "chick" in the class).
There are chicks in your classes!? Must be nice (actually, there are females in my classes too, but it's more fun to be stereotypical:D).

nko

10-06-2004, 07:20 PM

(well, while we're being stereotypical...)

Sure there are chicks in my class! Well, at least there WERE. Then they figured out that girls aren't good at math and science, and that computers are only for people who want to widdle away their lives innanely in front of a glorified calculator hooked up to a TV that doesn't get any UHF channels.

Actually, it seems that all the ones who know what UHF is stayed ;-)

It's pretty cool to hear from an instructor on this thread!

PenguinParoxysm

10-06-2004, 07:32 PM

I've rarely seen a hottie in my classes. It's mostly guys or Windows Admins who want see what Linux/UNIX is about. I had 3 women in my class this week.. and not exactly eye candy at that.

It's a rare moment when a hot blonde walks in.. and I get to finger her user, fsck her drive, have her master the head command, explore tail, show her how skilled I am with grep'ing.

Yup... that's pretty bad.

cybertron

10-06-2004, 07:37 PM

Linux and Unix are such dirty operating systems. You'd never see this kind of thing on a nice clean Windows system;).

You'd probably see a lot worse:D

As I recall there was someone a ways back in the thread who said that their professor had mentioned this thread in class. It would be really cool if one of my profs did that (hint to any Luther College profs who might read this:)).

PenguinParoxysm

10-06-2004, 07:45 PM

lol.... I should edit my old post then.

I tell my students about this site. They just don't know my user name ;)

nko

10-06-2004, 07:51 PM

Though they probably figure you're from Boston, and can gather, based on your writing style, whether you might be their teacher (especially posting on one of the hottest threads on the site!)

roamingnomad

10-06-2004, 08:12 PM

Stupidest thing:

"Though it's a little... mind-boggling... when you see an equation that says 'z = z^2 + c'...." (we were talking about Mandelbrot)

And he says he PROGRAMS!

PenguinParoxysm

10-06-2004, 08:45 PM

This much is true. I doubt from my writing style... but you never know. I might have to come back up and edit that last post if that's the case.

:D

The Boston is most likely a dead give away.

soulestream

10-06-2004, 11:07 PM

glorified calculator hooked up to a TV that doesn't get any UHF channels.

my calculator gets UHF and cable....GO XAWTV

:D

soule

Sepero

10-07-2004, 07:41 AM

Originally posted by nko
... global namespaces for everything, or go through the fundamentals of dealing with pointers, and then tie it back in with strings, all without missing a beatProgram in C(++) much? :D

MethodicalJ

10-07-2004, 11:49 AM

So I just switched into computer science at Syracuse... and I'm taking Object Oriented programming, which is required. Easy A+. Anyways, in class the prof was showing people the basics of class programming, and we were writing a Rational (fraction) number class.

He wanted us to make the ">" operator work when comparing Rational numbers, so I said that the easiest way would just be to compare their floating-point values (numerator/denominator).

But he said that was wrong, and that the code would look like this (pseudocode):

comparing left and right rationals
{
if right.denominator < left.denominator
return true (right is greater than left)
}

brilliant. maybe i should teach this class... and elementary school math while I'm at it. but I didn't say anything, and it just stayed that way. no one noticed.

just to illustrate this, 10/10 is NOT greater than 100/100, 1/3 is NOT greater than 6/7.

miteycasey

10-11-2004, 12:06 PM

the setup:
I was in a Calc. 2 class of 20. Being in MIS I found it weird but hey. Of course I was in there with about 15 engineering students so the course was taught at that level.

The plot:
The teacher was pretty full of himself but it was clear he wasn't as good as he thought. The class had its cliques with one around a guy that knew everything(he was that good) and his girlfriend. During class instead of asking the teacher questions that group would talk amongst each other.

The funny:
One day a few weeks before the final when the material was pretty tough the girlfriend was asking away and the teacher stopped class.
He walked from the blackboard to the front of the desks(class gets quiet execpt for the boyfriend explaining away) and said "HEY, you might want to listen. You'll need to know this when your out playing with your Tonkas in the sandbox".
To that the boyfriend responded " Yeah but when I'm out palying, excuse me, building bridges, making real money, you'll still be here teaching this class."

The ending:
The teachers face got so red and he didn't know what to do. He just turned around, walked back to the board, and started lecturing again.

madcompnerd

10-13-2004, 10:07 AM

And when he gets his nose broken for making a smart assed comment to someone less kind than that prof he may even get it through his thick skull that his money making skills don't make him any better of a person.
There's nothing worse than a person with no sense of politeness, and it's very rude to speak in a small class all the time. If he knows everything he should skip.
Obviously his mother failed to teach him any manners, maybe his girlfriend will.
I hate to take a prof's side, but that guy just sounds like a jerk, smart or not, and the prof doesn't sound so bad; after all if I were running the class I'd just kick the kid out.

drummerboy195

10-13-2004, 10:10 AM

People talking during class, and people using laptops to surf/email/IM/whatever. Those are the two things that I hate in a class.

nko

10-13-2004, 11:15 AM

The icing on the cake: when they try to make friends with you, and after a short while, all they ever seem interested in is "okay, I was really busy during class, what they hell did we talk about?"

Talk about classy.

Ludootje

10-13-2004, 11:22 AM

Originally posted by drummerboy195
People talking during class, and people using laptops to surf/email/IM/whatever. Those are the two things that I hate in a class.
Ok so maybe I can understand the talking, but why the surfing, etc? I don't see how that could possible bother _you_?

And isn't it a bit hypocrite to say this? I mean, it's not like you're always paying attention I suppose...

drummerboy195

10-13-2004, 11:43 AM

For two reasons, first of all, it generally occurs during a boring lecture class where it is hard enough to pay attention as it is, lacking the visual and often auditory stimulation that people and computer generally provide. Second, I would be very offended as a teacher if students that I was suppoed to be teaching were blatantly ignoring me.
For example, as part of the Honors program here, the freshman are required to attend a class where various professors come in and speak on their area of expertise. The other day we had a rather boring speaker, I will admit, and three of the 15 or so people in the class were on laptops, clearly not paying attention. The speaker at one time alluded to laptop use during lectures, expressed his displeasue with such a concept, and made eye contact with each of the three people using their laptops. Not one of them even tried to pretend they were paying attention, and went immediatley back to their clacking keyboards, IMing, whatever they happened to be doing.

After writing all this, I realize it isnt the laptop use that bothers me, but rather the attitude of the people who do it most often is what bothers me.

blight

10-13-2004, 12:28 PM

Im taking a class that is based around microshaft works. I'm only taking it beacuse its required in order to take any of the cool classes (C++, java, xml). Any way... I really dont like this class much and its rather boring, so I asked the professer if I could "test out" of the class. She askes why I would want to do such a thing, and I say " well basicly I don't even use windows, so its rather unbenaficial for me to take it right now". and of corse she asks what I do use and I say "I use Linux". I was rather humored at the puzzled look that she gave me. :P

Sepero

10-14-2004, 08:12 AM

nice blight :p

PS.
Did you test out yet?

blight

10-14-2004, 10:34 AM

I wish. :(
the time window to do so has expired.
o well, life goes on

nko

10-14-2004, 11:07 AM

Blight: I had a class like that. I ended up spending about 10% of my time acing the assignments, 40% of my time answering questions other people had that the teacher couldn't answer as concisely, and 50% of the time drawing tiny bitmaps in Paint.

I ended up with a lot of extra credit. I think I got an A+ with like 145% of credit. I sat next to a guy who got a C because he sat there and listened to music while surfing the web the whole time. That happened to be the class where I first saw a music CD that had "Multimedia PC Features". The guy had a LOT of CDs....

ensane

10-14-2004, 06:49 PM

Originally posted by X_console
I know a computer prof who doesn't even know how to FTP, or what FTP is. I feel sorry for the students.

Lets hope it continues to be that way.. SCP anyone?

scsa20

10-20-2004, 02:41 AM

Well... I was stupid enough to go into a computer class to learn ontop of what I alreadly know (and to review myself) just to get a teacher who doesn't really know what he's talking about... Like last week he said that Linux shows when a file was modified and was last created and accessed but Windows only shows you when it was modified. I had to tell him that he had to go under the file's properties to show him when the file was last modified >_>

I also had a computer teacher in highschool (had her twice, one for adcance computing and for VB Programming)... both time I was in that class the other students looks up to me and not the teacher >_> (in fact, in college, the other classmates keeps telling me I should be the one teaching).

Cerf

10-20-2004, 11:10 AM

Originally posted by blight
I wish. :(
the time window to do so has expired.
o well, life goes on

just ssh to your home computer, thats what I do in all my programming classes.:D

ensane

10-20-2004, 03:48 PM

Originally posted by Ludootje
Ok so maybe I can understand the talking, but why the surfing, etc? I don't see how that could possible bother _you_?

And isn't it a bit hypocrite to say this? I mean, it's not like you're always paying attention I suppose...

I also am annoyed by surfing in class. Why should it bother me? Simple... When a teacher is talking about something and I have a short attention span, its annoying when my eye catches the cool cars someone is looking at on their computer screen right in front of me.

I had a teacher that at the beginning of class would say "everyone turn your computer screens off". Of course that would suck considering I took all my notes on my computer.

Maybe if people didn't surf the net wasting their money and being inconsiderate to the teacher I coulda used my computer to take notes. Oh wait.. I've been guilty of surfing or working on assignments during class... hmm sucks being a hyprocrite.. I'm trying though!!

Damn I hate people like me... I bet I can beat myself up and not get in trouble.. hehe (Liar Liar anyone? LOL!)

elderdays

10-20-2004, 03:54 PM

Alright class....we're going to be using Java in here.

Sepero

10-20-2004, 05:52 PM

Originally posted by ensane
I also am annoyed by surfing in class. Why should it bother me? Simple... When a teacher is talking about something and I have a short attention span, its annoying when my eye catches the cool cars someone is looking at on their computer screen right in front of me.That could easily be solved by requiring students with laptops to sit in the back row. (or YOU sitting in the front row)

sharth

10-20-2004, 06:12 PM

I sit in the second row of my criminal justice class. The kid in the first row (of a fricking 200 some person class) is on the laptop, looking at some car website.

You can't always beat the system. :-p

But yeah, the main problem is mandatory attendence. If you really don't want to have to deal with people not caring in your class, then you shouldn't force them to show up. That way mostly the people who care will go.

Cerf

10-20-2004, 06:20 PM

Originally posted by elderdays
Alright class....we're going to be using Java in here.

LOL, my only programming class now is a into to object with java. Its great watching the n00bs who think that there 1337 just by knowing one language/java. Well its funny until they start asking me questions about the assignments

Stupid Boy

03-24-2005, 10:20 PM

A tech and one of the nerds at my school contstantly tell me:

"Linux sucks."

Cerf

03-24-2005, 10:51 PM

Originally posted by Stupid Boy
A tech and one of the nerds at my school contstantly tell me:

"Linux sucks."

Then why do you call him a nerd?

endoalpha

03-25-2005, 12:27 AM

An instructor once told the class to "Go to justlinux.com to get your linux questions answered"...

treebug

03-25-2005, 12:43 AM

okay so im sittin in class today...
my college professor is "teaching" us about linux file permissions...

he types in
cdmod 755 <some file>

after his command doesnt work...
he changes to his home directory

where he tries
cdmod 755 <some other file>

after his 'cdmod' s didnt work. he told the class that he cannot change the file permissions because he does not have root access on that computer.

at first i have to say i felt a little bit smart because i knew more than him... then i realized i was paying alot of money just to sit there and feel smart

soulestream

03-25-2005, 01:03 AM

most of the teachers I have are pretty good. as far as the internet access thing we dont have wireless setup over most of the campus so if the teachers get pissed about people surfing they just unplug the switch from the backbone.

dumbest thing Ive heard recently is

"Computers can have up to what, 512 megs of RAM now?"

soule

XiaoKJ

03-25-2005, 04:51 AM

Oh.... another Dead thread alive... :D and a good one at that...

Anyway, some still insist that amd are hotter than intel. just tell them amd64 is coller and they will faint.

I hope the cell processor comes out to be power64 than x86. This backward-compatibility is going way out of hand. We need a way to shift all users to the better processors than old ways.

Sepero

03-25-2005, 08:02 PM

"Today we will be learning about Linux 10.0"

Stupid Boy

03-26-2005, 12:31 AM

Not a professor, just an idiot:

I had previously given him Ubuntu, which he hated.

Idiot: Linux sucks
Me: Which distro did you try?
I: The full version
M: Was it Redhat, Mandrake, ...
I: I downloaded the full version with a word processor and everything.
M: Where did you get it?
I: Limewire

I don't remember it entirely, and I'm making it seem a little stupider than it is.

dannybunkins

03-28-2005, 12:43 AM

overheard this conversation in my CS class:

kid1: do you have a gmail account?
kid2: yeah I do, do you wan't me to send you an invite?
kid1: can't I just sign up at google.com.
----here is the part that i found funny----
kid2:no you can't, they havn't made it "open source" yet.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

this is mostly funny because the kid thinks that he is the linux guru.

probably not that funny but i got a good laugh out of it. it gave me a good opportunity to tease the kid.

endoalpha

03-28-2005, 01:11 AM

Originally posted by Cerf
LOL, my only programming class now is a into to object with java. Its great watching the n00bs who think that there 1337 just by knowing one language/java. Well its funny until they start asking me questions about the assignments

Will you feel so superior when you get to a writing class?

Cerf

03-28-2005, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by dannybunkins
overheard this conversation in my CS class:

kid1: do you have a gmail account?
kid2: yeah I do, do you wan't me to send you an invite?
kid1: can't I just sign up at google.com.
----here is the part that i found funny----
kid2:no you can't, they havn't made it "open source" yet.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

this is mostly funny because the kid thinks that he is the linux guru.

probably not that funny but i got a good laugh out of it. it gave me a good opportunity to tease the kid.

And you are in what, the third grade?:)

ph34r

03-28-2005, 01:27 PM

For all you folks whinging about other students using laptops, etc. and how the instructors get upset, I'd like to share how I get to teach teachers (support/training for online education) and to a number they *all* do those things they raise heck about when they are teaching, like checking email, surfing, etc...

dannybunkins

03-28-2005, 02:08 PM

Originally posted by Cerf
And you are in what, the third grade?:)

actually i am in second grade dude.:rolleyes::) :D

cybertron

03-29-2005, 12:38 PM

Originally posted by ph34r
For all you folks whinging about other students using laptops, etc. and how the instructors get upset, I'd like to share how I get to teach teachers (support/training for online education) and to a number they *all* do those things they raise heck about when they are teaching, like checking email, surfing, etc...
Oh man, I feel sorry for you. We hosted a conference this summer on online education and almost none of the profs who showed up to it had any clue about computers, much less online education. I actually had to show one of them how to download and save a multimedia file off a web site (okay, you click the link, now click save, and you're done;)).

Mind you, I understand that these were not CS profs so they can't necessarily be expected to know computers, but it would still be frustrating to deal with that all the time.

hiwa

03-29-2005, 09:48 PM

I like to add a pointer here if no one has done it for that yet.

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=611574&start=0&tstart=30

It is not funny. It makes me feel deeply gloomy because he may still
be teaching at the college.

cybertron

03-29-2005, 10:22 PM

There are no pointers in Java (or crying in baseball for that matter):D

Sorry, bad pun. Seriously though, that guy clearly doesn't understand C(++) compilers. When you use ++ or -- like that the result is undefined because that's the way that C chooses to implement it. That's why you shouldn't use them like that.

The only thing that's guaranteed in C is that the code up to a ; will execute before code after the ; (and of course mathematical order of operations are respected, but it doesn't apply to increment and decrement operators). So in reality the prefix or postfix versions of these operators really have no meaning in some situations since they can be done in an arbitrary order anyway.

Interestingly enough (and to keep this post semi-on-topic), my programming teacher in high school who probably had significantly less experience than me at the time (and would have no doubt provided fodder for this thread if I could remember any of it;)) knew about this behavior and was the one who first introduced it to me.

hiwa

03-29-2005, 11:15 PM

Just one thing.

> mathematical order of operations are respected
No. It's just that, for our convenience, a part of their operator precedence rule happens to match that of one of math standards, our mundane one, in which if we had two types of ++ and -- for long, whole hassle might be eliminated from the language semantics definition and discussion around it, with the same 'convenience consideration' supported.

The poor teacher in that thread stubbornly has a delusion that we have them in our mundane math rule with a particular operational semantics that he believes to be right.

And most importantly, he is an unqualified CS teacher because he can't distinguish the language from any existing rules of existing domains.

Sepero

03-30-2005, 11:21 AM

Originally posted by hiwa
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=611574&start=0&tstart=30

It is not funny. It makes me feel deeply gloomy because he may still be teaching at the college. I thought it was mildly humorous. :)

I believe this type of mental handicap comes from the school systems imbred thinking of "there is only one correct answer".

SpookyFox

03-30-2005, 04:14 PM

I think the most frustrated that I've been at school when I was taking CS courses at the University of Washington was listening to my professor tell us:

"Java. Java is the wave of the future. All programs will be coded in Java. It's quick, useful, and just fantastic."

We were then forced to program ALL our programs in Java. I wanted to shoot myself. It sucked!

nickj6282

03-30-2005, 07:05 PM

Here's one straight out of the textbook:

"The master boot record (MBR) is located at the first sector of each partition of a hard drive."

Which ended up being a test question, that I answered right (or wrong according to the book), and got a point taken off for. Then, when I went to the instructor to have it fixed, she just repeated it verbatim out of the textbook. I ended up having to google it and show it to her before she would change my grade.

Long story short, avoid ITT Tech at all costs.

Cerf

03-30-2005, 10:01 PM

Originally posted by SpookyFox
I think the most frustrated that I've been at school when I was taking CS courses at the University of Washington was listening to my professor tell us:

"Java. Java is the wave of the future. All programs will be coded in Java. It's quick, useful, and just fantastic."

We were then forced to program ALL our programs in Java. I wanted to shoot myself. It sucked!

lol, I see the usefulness of useing java to teach OOP. Its quick and easy, (not just because java is bad but) limiting your self to programming in just one language is academic/cs suicid

thaddaeus

03-31-2005, 12:46 AM

I limit myself to 2 languages at once, I program my website in php while in my CS2 ADS class Which is taught from java.

I also can now relate to having a professor who dosn't speak very good english, whats worse is his laptop is an old compaq with half the screen dead, running powerpoint, it crashed in the middle of class trying to compile an exampleof a binary search tree.

XiaoKJ

04-02-2005, 03:07 PM

Originally posted by hiwa
I like to add a pointer here if no one has done it for that yet.

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=611574&start=0&tstart=30

It is not funny. It makes me feel deeply gloomy because he may still
be teaching at the college.

This is sad. This is a forum on sun. And how big is sun???

Lets see -- who says the C++ compiler is correct? if I follow operator precedence on C++, then the Microsoft one is correct. The Java one doesn't have a rule --- once you get a rule working with int a, you cannot apply on int b, and much less int c.

Anybody with a real answer instead of Java sucks or something?

And I've seen so many books on C++ that documents increments and decrements. what were those guys implying? that they are morons?

By the definition I've seen, C++ says post-increments (and decrements. For this post I shall use them together) come after the whole equation ended and pre-increments are done before the equation starts. so a=b-- - a--=7-(-2)=9 Then we have to decrement this in this equation so a=8, b=6, c=19

Then b=a-- + b-- + --c=8+6+(19-1)=32 then decrements to a=7, b=31 and c=18

Next, c=a-- + ++b=7+(31+1)=39 then decrements to a=6, b=32 and c=39, corresponding to the MSC++ output.

If you try it out for the java one. if you disregard post and pre differences, you get a=7. or maybe if you invert the definition in C++. however, you just can't get 34 for b. or even c=42 is way too out no matter what way you use for a or b, in any way. Can someone tell me how to get a=7,b=34 and c=42? at least someone email the dean for me? or get on that thread? I don't have the account to reply.

hiwa

04-02-2005, 08:38 PM

C/C++ is undefined for such case, while Java differentiates value from variable.

[C/C++]
#include <stdio.h>

int main(){
int a = -2, b = 7, c = 19;

a = b-- - a--; // a = 7 - -2 - 1 == 8
printf("a=%d b=%d\n", a, b); // 8 6
b = a-- + b-- + --c; // b = 8 + 6 + 18 - 1 == 31
printf("a=%d b=%d c=%d\n", a, b, c); // 7 31 18
c = a-- + ++b; // c = 7 + 32 == 39
printf("a=%d b=%d c=%d\n", a, b, c); // 6 32 39

// 6 32 39
printf("a=%d b=%d c=%d\n", a, b, c);
}

[Java]
public class MathDifference{

public static void main(String[] args){
int a = -2, b = 7, c = 19;

a = b-- - a--; // a = 7 - -2 == 9
System.out.println("a=" + a + " b=" + b); // 9 6
b = a-- + b-- + --c; // b = 9 + 6 + 18 == 33
System.out.println("a=" + a + " b=" + b + " c=" + c); // 8 33 18
c = a-- + ++b; // c = 8 + 34
System.out.println("a=" + a + " b=" + b + " c=" + c); // 7 34 42

// 7 34 42
System.out.println("a=" + a + " b=" + b + " c=" + c);
}
}

C++ ISO/ANSI STANDARD 5.4
4 Except where noted, the order of evaluation of operands of individual
operators and subexpressions of individual expressions, and the order
in which side effects take place, is unspecified. Between the previ-
ous and next sequence point a scalar object shall have its stored
value modified at most once by the evaluation of an expression. Fur-
thermore, the prior value shall be accessed only to determine the
value to be stored. The requirements of this paragraph shall be met
for each allowable ordering of the subexpressions of a full expres-
sion; otherwise the behavior is undefined. [Example:
i = v[i++]; // the behavior is undefined
i = 7, i++, i++; // `i' becomes 9

i = ++i + 1; // the behavior is undefined
i = i + 1; // the value of 'i' is incremented
--end example]

Java Language Specification 15.14.1
15.14.1 Postfix Increment Operator ++

PostIncrementExpression:
PostfixExpression ++

A postfix expression followed by a ++ operator is a postfix increment expression. The result of the postfix expression must be a variable of a numeric type, or a compile-time error occurs. The type of the postfix increment expression is the type of the variable. The result of the postfix increment expression is not a variable, but a value.

At run time, if evaluation of the operand expression completes abruptly, then the postfix increment expression completes abruptly for the same reason and no incrementation occurs. Otherwise, the value 1 is added to the value of the variable and the sum is stored back into the variable. Before the addition, binary numeric promotion (˜5.6.2) is performed on the value 1 and the value of the variable. If necessary, the sum is narrowed by a narrowing primitive conversion (˜5.1.3) to the type of the variable before it is stored. The value of the postfix increment expression is the value of the variable before the new value is stored.

bwkaz

04-02-2005, 09:29 PM

Originally posted by XiaoKJ
The Java one doesn't have a rule Actually, the Sun Java spec does define exactly what's supposed to happen in all these cases.

It defines it differently from the way most C++ compilers do it, which is why this person was confused.

He was comparing two different languages -- there aren't a ton of differences, but this is one of them.

XiaoKJ

04-04-2005, 08:09 AM

Originally posted by hiwa
C++ ISO/ANSI STANDARD 5.4
4 Except where noted, the order of evaluation of operands of individual
operators and subexpressions of individual expressions, and the order
in which side effects take place, is unspecified. Between the previ-
ous and next sequence point a scalar object shall have its stored
value modified at most once by the evaluation of an expression. Fur-
thermore, the prior value shall be accessed only to determine the
value to be stored. The requirements of this paragraph shall be met
for each allowable ordering of the subexpressions of a full expres-
sion; otherwise the behavior is undefined. [Example:
i = v[i++]; // the behavior is undefined
i = 7, i++, i++; // `i' becomes 9

i = ++i + 1; // the behavior is undefined
i = i + 1; // the value of 'i' is incremented
--end example]

Java Language Specification 15.14.1
15.14.1 Postfix Increment Operator ++

PostIncrementExpression:
PostfixExpression ++

A postfix expression followed by a ++ operator is a postfix increment expression. The result of the postfix expression must be a variable of a numeric type, or a compile-time error occurs. The type of the postfix increment expression is the type of the variable. The result of the postfix increment expression is not a variable, but a value.

At run time, if evaluation of the operand expression completes abruptly, then the postfix increment expression completes abruptly for the same reason and no incrementation occurs. Otherwise, the value 1 is added to the value of the variable and the sum is stored back into the variable. Before the addition, binary numeric promotion (˜5.6.2) is performed on the value 1 and the value of the variable. If necessary, the sum is narrowed by a narrowing primitive conversion (˜5.1.3) to the type of the variable before it is stored. The value of the postfix increment expression is the value of the variable before the new value is stored.

I presume this is the best answer I can get --- Thank you so much. I've got it already! :D

XiaoKJ

06-27-2005, 10:30 AM

Well, with so many threads to relive, I think its time to relive this one too.

I've crashed a course on com sci recently.

I'm shocked by the old monster in front of the stage.

why?

when things like a motherboard showing sockets for a coprocessors appear, and that the textbook recommended is more than a decade old, you'll know why.

that antique in picture, I believe, is a motherboard for the 386-era because that is the last time I remember of 387 and math-coprocessors. Or 486SX

montyw47

07-03-2005, 02:59 AM

My assembler class was in the day of punch cards(dating myself). The college's computer was a RCA Spectra and ran the college & county's payroll, etc. The fact that it was the computer center for a COLLEGE was inmaterial! Student programs had to wait days for compile and printout!.
All other classmates worked for compamies where they could use a company system. Prof.'s deadline wouldn't allow for the hijacking of the college system.

Got a 'F' even though I had graduated IBM customer engineer's school and we had to write in machine language, punch the cards ourselves in machine code of course and create our own PSW's for all possabilities. (THERE was NO OS.) Such as I/O interrupt handling, machine check and front panel buttons on IBM model 30. Writing PSW to be loaded was far more difficult than reading from tape using a prewritten function or writing to the printer in a college class. Our program had to run from our own 3 card absolute loader. This would read the cards after it and execute the program and halt. THERE was NO OS other than those 3 cards!!!
No credit for work experience was given.
Maybe I 'm just a Bitter student who paid a lot of money for my classes and didn't get my money's worth.

XiaoKJ

07-03-2005, 02:23 PM

My friend had a WinXP box and I got him to try out Knoppix and Knoppix even booted faster than WinXP from the CD !?!

My bro's girlfriend has a laptop that has a faulty battery (she uses it as a desktop)

until I deleted many programs, the box took 15 mins to boot. Now it takes 5. Booting off CDs never seemed so quick before...

And another --- Maple 7 was installed into the start menu's program's folder. Imagine the array of files in the programs folder.

This has been going on for a very very long time.

XiaoKJ

07-03-2005, 02:23 PM

Hi

This wasn't in class but in the interview (for lack of a better word) with my mentor after finishing my master's thesis...

The subject of my master's thesis is Linux in Belgium, so I wrote a bit about the history of *nix and mentioned GNU. So I explained that GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix".

My mentor told me:

:rolleyes:
I even drew it out, but still the teacher doesn't understand. :mad:

DimGR

07-04-2005, 10:08 PM

latest version of Linux is Linux 7

there are ONLY 4 filesystems that you can use for a hard drive

128MB is more than enough for wincrapXP

you should not install Unix / Linux on your home pc because it is for buisnesses only

You should use only win because it is safe and VERY secure

Radar

07-08-2005, 10:30 AM

Geez this thread is old

Digi

07-08-2005, 12:46 PM

"You have to buy a special HD for linux"

"No one uses linux these days, moreless on a home computer"

"Linux is expensive"

"Windows 2000 is the most secure operating system on the planet" -- this was told to me no more than 4 weeks ago by the same person who said, "You can't make unix secure" Note, this guy is the one teaching the UNIX ADMINISTRATION CLASS...

"You have to write your own kernel to run linux"

"You can create a website in C++"

"Python and PERL are interchangeable" (implying that they were the same language)

"There's no internet in Japan"

All these come from a husband and wife team who teach at my school, They need to be slapped around with a bag of Slackware CDs or something.

cybertron

07-08-2005, 03:22 PM

All these come from a husband and wife team who teach at my school, They need to be slapped around with a bag of Slackware CDs or something.
That's about all Slackware CDs are good for, after all.:D

/me runs for cover ;)

soulestream

07-09-2005, 12:48 AM

That's about all Slackware CDs are good for, after all.

/me runs for cover

Run, Rabbit, Run :p

soule

XiaoKJ

07-09-2005, 04:36 AM

if you want more slackware cds or other distros too, I have a couple of the older ones. I can donate some....

debian cds are better -- they come in sets! more mass --- greater impact at same speed...

:)

Geez --- finally seeing this thread get some movement after all. Its old, but too worthy to let go.

cybertron

07-09-2005, 10:58 AM

Hehe, yeah I have a 50 CD spindle dedicated to holding my old Linux CDs. Never know when they might come in handy.:)

Now that I use Gentoo I don't get as many though since updates are all over the web. Gentoo is even environmentally friendly!

buulian

07-09-2005, 03:43 PM

"You can create a website in C++"

Sorry, but there is something called Microsoft Visual Studio .net 2003

Not to rain on your parade, but you can technically make a website out of C++, it's hard and messy and utilizes ASP, but it is possible.

Personally, I hate everything about MS, and I run Ubuntu, but I have to admit that MSVS is pretty freakin' tight! Just imagine if a whole group of people got together, cut out all the bull sh**, crappy documentation, and the fact that it's made by MS, that would be pretty cool.

And, my own stupid quote:

Instructor: 'There's no way I'd run anything but C++ on my server! No other operating system is as secure as C++'

I had to shake my head and drop- so not worth my time.

Calipso

07-09-2005, 04:11 PM

My quote isnt what a teacher said but what a student said. Im posting it cause it was pretty funny when it happened.

One of my teachers was talking about CPU's and asked how big of a cpu do we think they use on the mars rovers. A student, with out any delay, yells out "LINUX!!".

A number of us had a good laugh.

XiaoKJ

07-10-2005, 06:04 AM

My juniors' teacher said this:
If you want to see real fibre optic cables, go cut that cable television cables
It seems the whole class exploded on that. Not bad for a class in sec sch.

nko

07-11-2005, 11:52 AM

You can write web sites in C++ with CGI, too. The problem is, you'd have to want to do it.

(Think I've mentioned this three or four times before, but...) My teacher didn't know what OGG or 802.11(b|a|g) were. He *did*, however, know how to make a video stream available online. Soon after showing us this, he revealed that his personal e-mail server had been hacked. It was an older box running Windows, situated on the wrong side of the firewall (connected to the internet without a firewall) because configuration is simpler that way.

Digi

07-11-2005, 12:29 PM

Sorry, but there is something called Microsoft Visual Studio .net 2003

Yeah, I know that, but that was not his implication. I'd be surprised if this idiot would even know what MVS.net 2k3 was. :-)

Therrol

07-12-2005, 07:12 PM

cybertron

07-13-2005, 12:26 AM

He says, then how can I stop the macs from booting up?
I have a few ideas, mostly involving falls from great heights.:D

knute

07-13-2005, 01:03 AM

My computer teacher was bragging about the "new" security system he installed on all of the mac os 9 comps. He says "It's a very secure program, I payed over 300 dollars for it" I said "No it's not, you can turn it off by pressing the right shift button when the mac boots up. He says, then how can I stop the macs from booting up?

LOL This reminds me of a school sys admin (high school) calling in saying that their computer's wouldn't boot up (I was working tech support at the time for the computer manufacturer, btw.) As we were talking I found out he was using fortress to lock down the computers for the students. Well, I'd never heard of the program before, and I walked him thru booting up the computer around fortress in about 3 minutes. (Boot disks are nice things to have!)
Anyway, after we did away with fortress so that the system would boot and we could actually get in, I asked him if he could turn this fortress program off. The only answer that I got was a very very disgusted, "YEAH!" I could tell that fortress most likely lost a customer. When the system worked after disabling fortress, it was no longer our issue. :cool:

janne_oksanen

07-13-2005, 03:32 PM

The first stupid thing that pops into my mind is:

ISO and UTF are 100% compatible with each other.

All of us who live in the real world know it couldn't possibly be further from the truth.

jailbreaker

07-13-2005, 04:26 PM

I got this from my teacher just a week ago when we started linux (one week moduale :s) "Linux is not enterprise ready like windows. windows can do more then linux and in a very secure way."

Sepero

07-14-2005, 04:39 AM

My computer teacher was bragging about the "new" security system he installed on all of the mac os 9 comps. He says "It's a very secure program, I payed over 300 dollars for it" I said "No it's not, you can turn it off by pressing the right shift button when the mac boots up. He says, then how can I stop the macs from booting up?HA!
That's a good one.

Reminds me of a time I went to visit my friend's aunt. She had windoze95. Apparently she had recently set it to popup a window asking for Username and Pass before loading the desktop. She was so proud of how well she had secured her system.

I said something like, "That doesn't mean anything", and pressed the [X] on the popup window. The desktop began to load as usual. As I reflect, I kinda feel a little bad about having to be the one to show her that.

StarTiger

07-14-2005, 11:24 AM

LOL This reminds me of a school sys admin (high school) calling in saying that their computer's wouldn't boot up (I was working tech support at the time for the computer manufacturer, btw.) As we were talking I found out he was using fortress to lock down the computers for the students. Well, I'd never heard of the program before, and I walked him thru booting up the computer around fortress in about 3 minutes. (Boot disks are nice things to have!)
Anyway, after we did away with fortress so that the system would boot and we could actually get in, I asked him if he could turn this fortress program off. The only answer that I got was a very very disgusted, "YEAH!" I could tell that fortress most likely lost a customer. When the system worked after disabling fortress, it was no longer our issue. :cool:

My second high school had that "Fortress" on their computers. It was a nightmare! the only person in the school who liked it was the sys admin. EVERYONE else hated it. Students and faculty alike. In one of my classes the teacher and I showed everyone all the tricks to get around it because we couldn't do anything with it on. Also, the admin password was commom knowledge thoguht out the school, so you could turn it off.

The irony is that you could do a much more secure and much more stable security system with a boot disk and the Microsoft Pollocy Editor than that fortress program ever could do. And how much money did they waist on that program?

XiaoKJ

07-14-2005, 11:26 AM

This reminds me of a school sys admin (high school) calling in saying that their computer's wouldn't boot up (I was working tech support at the time for the computer manufacturer, btw.) As we were talking I found out he was using fortress to lock down the computers for the students.
Ahh, the joys of fortress.

Back in the days of win98, my sch also used fortress to lock down computers. After a few months, none of them actually provided _ANY_ form of protection -- the fortress program can be circumvented just by renaming it before it loads. And it is done so easily that no computers loaded it afterwards since the students removed them. Then the IT management removed it altogether. All hell breaks loose again.

Note how great the IT management used to brag about the protection provided by fortress before the removal.

cybertron

07-14-2005, 02:17 PM

Ah yes, the good old internet filtering software. We had Cyber Patrol, and it was amazing how the admin password for that got around. Of course, it may have had something to do with the fact that the student who worked with the network admin, and therefore knew all the passwords, was one of the shadiest computer users I've ever met. Not to mention the fact that playboy.com was not blocked while dodge.com was (I wasn't visiting playboy.com, honest).:D

Speaking of my high school network administrator, he also made one of the most naive mistakes I've ever seen. We had just gotten a half-dozen new computers (PII's, screamin' fast at the time;)) and one of them wasn't working. Turns out the RAM or something was defective, but we'll never know because the morons in charge left the case sitting wide open in a computer lab for about a month. Naturally all of the valuable components disappeared and the heat sink for the processor ended up with gum stuck to it.

To make things even better, we were bored one day during our networking class (the CCNA if you can believe it, although it was basically independent study for us) because, irony of ironies, we were having network problems preventing us from connecting to the web site. We realized that the nice new computer in the other room wouldn't work anymore anyway, so we decided to see how far we could strip it down. Pretty much anything that was screwed or clipped on to the thing got removed. Incidentally, I was not an active participant in this part of the story - it was just a bunch of guys with not a lot of computer know-how who could use a screwdriver.

Now the best part: a couple of days later the network administrator comes in and asks if we can put the computer back together. We assume he's joking because it's in very little pieces on the table in front of us. He's not joking, they need it in one piece for the warranty replacement. Of course, that's impossible since the RAM and CD drive (which disappeared while we were taking the thing apart - we knew who stole it but couldn't prove it) are long gone. Until we started messing around with this stuff during class I had never taken a computer apart, but fortunately our entertainment for the past couple of weeks had been to try to Frankenstein together as many working computers as we could from the broken ones so I did manage to get this thing put back together, despite the fact that I hadn't taken it apart in the first place. There were definitely some extra screws rolling around in the bottom of the case, but everything worked as well as it was going to without any RAM (boot, beep, shutdown:)). Anyway, the whole mess could have been avoided if they had simply locked up the case like they had all the other ones. Interestingly enough, one of the people working on it who left it open was the same shady student who was handing out passwords. Coincidence? Somehow I don't think so. :rolleyes:

Whew, that post got out of hand. Sorry about the novel.:D

jailbreaker

07-14-2005, 07:22 PM

my old school used DeepFreeze so nobody could do anything for about a week untill someone showed us the password the principal put it (not only is he the "big boss" he's the IT guy too haha). the poor guy wasnt to smart so he told me and a few other firends to take ALL the computers in school and put them in the truck so we could take them back. When asked why he said the computers were "too stupid" then left. so this seemed like a normal routine every other month a new computer.

Finally the local computer store guys were tired to having us bring the computers back all the time. So they asked him again what the problem really was. I don't know what they said because I was too busy playing HL but they just looked at him for a few min before lauging right in front of him then they pointed to the brand new macs that they jut got in :D and once they were paid for they said all he had to do to make sure the students couldnt mess up the computer was to hire a real admin...he never did till this day and it's all wireless now with no firewall no WEP but atleast he had norton antivirus...thats very very old.

anmaxp

07-15-2005, 06:21 PM

Dunno if this is funny ... just a tale of how people like to talk BS, and how incredible it is for me to see these people who dont know a thing about to graduate as a systems engineer

Well this happened this semester in a class where we were I was giving a presentation comparing programming languages and OS's I was talking on about linux and java at some point and this guy just stops me and says:

guy: say what? you know about linux
me: umm yeah i do ive been using it for... <interrupts>
guy: im a linux expert , ive been using it for the whole last month
me: sure dude, what distro do you use?
guy: im using plethora core 2.3
me: umm you might mean fedora
guy: yeah potato potatoe
me: ummm version 2.3 huh?
guy: yup its the latest sh*t
me: well 3 has been out for almost a year now, and there is no 2.3
guy: dude im sure im using plethora core 2.3
me: i dont think so, maybe you are using fedora core 2 test 3 ?
guy: nope, it says 2.3 right on the box

i just decided to ignore the conversation as it was only going to end in more BS coming from this guy

so, at the end it turns out the guy had the "official boxed version" of Fedora Core 2.3 as the latest sh*t to hit the shelves... WTF!!! :D

cya!

fruitbat!

07-19-2005, 04:55 AM

I wil never forget when one of my it tutors tried to tell me that Windows 3.1 was an operating system. They didn't realise that Dos was the os and Windows 3.1 was the the gui - well there is no helping some even if they are teaching. :p

Kaligraphic

09-12-2005, 08:44 PM

(Regarding the C++/Java question a bit back)
If you try it out for the java one. if you disregard post and pre differences, you get a=7. or maybe if you invert the definition in C++. however, you just can't get 34 for b. or even c=42 is way too out no matter what way you use for a or b, in any way. Can someone tell me how to get a=7,b=34 and c=42?
It's a question of whether the postfix decrements are done before or after the assignment. Here's the flow:

Postfix before/after assignment
a = b(7)-- - a(-2)-- = a(9/8) b(6/6) c(19/19)
b = a(9/8)-- + b(6/6)-- + --c(19/19) = a(8/7) b(33/31) c(18/18)
c = a(8/7)-- + ++b(33/31) = a(7/6) b(34/32) c(42/39)

Thus a is 7, b is 34, and c is 42 if the postdecrements are done before the assignment, but a is 6, b is 32, and c is 39 if postdecrements are done after the assignment. Apparently, Java does them before the assignment, but after everything else, so the postdecrements on the variable receiving the assignment are effectively eaten.

(apologies if this explanation is no longer interesting/relevant)

// -----

I've had a classmate tell me, as if imparting some treasure, that California had its own top-level domain. I had to break it to him that the .ca tld was Canada.

Southside

12-06-2005, 03:12 PM

This isn't from a tutor or anything.....from my boss, a report Principle Scientist for a major UK Defence Firm working on a major UK Defence IT project....

Whilst in a meeting with US counterparts discussing the possibility of having a data connection into a US System we were told ' Do you have any problems with us using NFS rather than FTP', to which he replied 'Yes we do because we only use Fat32 on our systems'.

Also, in case you didn't know already....if you have a databreak somewhere in your system you don't need to worry becuase the data will backlog up the cable.

From our systems manager.....whilst working remotely on a system 6,000 miles away with a data problem.....'it's not a Power Outage is it'.

This is a small selection from our crack management team.

GOD, SOMEBODY SHOOT ME OR OFFER ME A JOB.

cybertron

12-06-2005, 05:53 PM

Hooray! This thread is back!:D

My sympathies on your job situation though.:)

nko

12-06-2005, 06:17 PM

Oh no, this thread is back! And now, a couple years after it started, I'm a Computer Science teacher!!!!!

Kidding, kidding. I *wish* I was a CS teacher. I'm *glad* this thread is back.

devilkund

12-08-2005, 03:44 PM

read most messages but laugh with all. I teach CS and make my students think

devilkund

12-08-2005, 03:48 PM

even when they don't want to

linuxbrain

12-12-2005, 09:00 PM

The problem with most CS Teachers is they are usually older (55+) no offence.

I was taking a telecomm class in school and we were doing some typing and the teacher told me the thigs were easier with type-writters. I asked her what she meant and she replied with ... there weren't so many confusing this to get into. (Mind you we were using like EDIT or Qbasic id DOS)

Later in the year we were in the "Updated Internet Lab" A bunch of windows 95 boxes with PIII 450's and she told us to search the web and do a report on a topic. She said it should be a hand written page front and back. I asked "Why can't we type it?" She replied with that will take too long.

JamminJoeyB

12-13-2005, 11:04 AM

She said it should be a hand written page front and back. I asked "Why can't we type it?" She replied with that will take too long.

Where is my hammer, chisel and stone tablet? Lets see her lug that out in her brief case. LOL

cybertron

12-13-2005, 04:12 PM

Boy I hope I get a few more quotes to post here before I graduate. I should because I'm in a sophomore level class even though I've already completed all the requirements to graduate (short a couple of gen ed credits but have to take at least 12 to remain a full-time student). There's always someone in those classes who thinks they know more than they do.* Granted the profs are pretty good here, but I figure stupid student quotes work too.;)

*Mind you, this was me a couple of years ago.:D

DSwain

12-19-2005, 10:46 PM

Well the one CS professor I've had so far hasn't been bad for me, so all is well as of now, but I have a few good student ones.

Student: "Linux is great! It's free, and you can look at the source code, etc. etc."
Professor: "Oh yeah?"
Student: "Yeah. Linux even comes with a Fortran compiler!"

Student: "How do I install games on Linux"
Me: "Uh... what games?"
Student: "You know, Star Craft and all those crazy games"
Me: *Laughing* "Sorry dude, you don't unless you can emulate it or get/make a native port of it"
Student: *Disappointment and confusion*

Student: "Man, this Linux stuff is so hard. I tried to install video drivers, and it's so hard"
Me: "How so?"
Student: "Well, I have to kill the X, and then use the CLI and stuff. It's scary!"
Me: "Oh, right. Forgot about the whole Windows deal"
Student: "It's scary. I don't like the CLI!"
Me: "Oh haha, that's about all I use. I prefer it these days"
Student: *Mass confusion*

And I'm sure it goes on. At any rate, funny times with people and Linux. Oh well, at least people are pushing the norm for themselves a little and exploring something new.

WhiteKnight

12-20-2005, 12:36 PM

Student: "Man, this Linux stuff is so hard. I tried to install video drivers, and it's so hard"
Me: "How so?"
Student: "Well, I have to kill the X, and then use the CLI and stuff. It's scary!"
Me: "Oh, right. Forgot about the whole Windows deal"
Student: "It's scary. I don't like the CLI!"
Me: "Oh haha, that's about all I use. I prefer it these days"
Student: *Mass confusion*

Seems like thats the trend now.. Ppl that i know of that started using computers after windows became the norm are usually 'afraid' of CLI. I'm used to typing and am happy with how precise typed instructions are compared to clicks. However, most of the ppl i know feel lost with presented with a blank screen and a blinking cursor, even though some might be rather well versed with computers. They just dont like CLI.

cybertron

12-20-2005, 01:24 PM

The problem is that it's much easier to figure out which button to click when presented with a couple of buttons than which command to type when presented with "bash-2.05$" or whatever. The CLI does require a bit more know-how, but once you know how to use it almost everything can be done faster.

DSwain

12-20-2005, 04:37 PM

Oh yeah, I understand that it can be more hard. Don't get me wrong, almost three years ago I was there also. I dunno though, I just found it amusing to see how terrified he was. I mean... well I don't know, but it didn't seem like something to be that terrified of. Oh well though. Gotta learn eventually I suppose, and at least he's giving it a good shot.

Sepero

12-22-2005, 02:29 AM

The CLI does require a bit more know-how, but once you know how to use it almost everything can be done faster.Hold up.
I read that earlier, and thought "yeah, true" and went on about my day... but for some reason I wasn't able to shake it from my mind. As I later thought about it more, I had to come back and say how right cybertron is. I honestly have an xterm open on my desktop at-all-times! The commandline offers a level of power and flexibility that is often unmatched by anything in existance for the GUI. Until a person actually experiences for oneself the sheer power, they remain completely oblivious to the commandline's true potential.
Even something as simple as:
cat /dev/hda | bzip2 > backup.bz2

With the ability to connect programs with pipes and redirection, the limits are virtually endless.

bwkaz

12-22-2005, 10:46 AM

Even something as simple as:
cat /dev/hda | bzip2 > backup.bz2 Psst! How about:

bzip2 -c </dev/hda >backup.bz2

or:

bzip2 /dev/hda >backup.bz2

? :p

On the having "an xterm open on [your] desktop at-all-times", let me agree as well -- in fact, I don't actually run a full desktop, because I do everything from one of 2 Eterm windows that are always running here. A full DE like GNOME or KDE would be a complete waste of compile time -- although the libraries are needed for some other programs I use. (And if I run out of terminals, for instance because I have Firefox running in one and Thunderbird running in the other, I have a menu item in the root window's menu that pulls up an extra xterm that I can use.)

Sepero

12-22-2005, 08:15 PM

bzip2 /dev/hda >backup.bz2That would be:
bzcat /dev/hda > backup.bz2

Mr. Smartypants ;)

Bwkaz, how come you don't use screen? One xterm = infinite terminals.

bwkaz

12-23-2005, 12:42 PM

That would be:
bzcat /dev/hda > backup.bz2 Sure about that? I do believe that bzcat only takes in bzip2-compressed files. It won't compress-and-output, it'll only decompress-and-output.

So, for instance, you could "bzcat patchfile.bz2 | patch -Np1", but not "diff -Naur dir1 dir2 | bzcat >patchfile.bz2".

;)

(Or, you could just use "bzip2 -c" for everything, adding a -d argument if you need it to decompress. Or, you could just "tar cjf"/"tar xf", if you use GNU tar 1.15.1 or newer and you need to compress multiple files. Etc., etc.)

Bwkaz, how come you don't use screen? One xterm = infinite terminals. Probably just because I never installed (or, for that matter, learned) it. It's a "why learn it if I don't need it" type of laziness, mostly. ;) Same reason I know only a very little about office-type programs, or Emacs; I simply don't use either of them.

I'm sure that if I actually used it once or twice, it'd become quite an xterm-saver (actually, I'd probably never use xterm again; I'd just use the 2 Eterm windows for everything). But when I install X, its default twm menu comes up with an xterm option already on it, so it's always been available, so I never really had to look for anything else.