Inside a Microsoft Computer Lab
My sister needed help studying for a Microsoft Computer Lab test. After taking it, she showed me the exam. She got a hundred.
It really made me laugh to think about how they went out of their way to call it a Microsoft computer lab, then had the students take a very easy examination which two computer literate slackers had no trouble passing. I love to laugh. They had three groups, one of five questions and two of four. Each group shared the same multiple choice answers, more like a matching test as opposed to a real multiple choice test. All the questions simply matched rather lame definitions against one of the shared terms.
Looking at the terms and definitions, it occurred to me that some words have changed. For example, they match “Home Page” with the page which a browser loads upon starting, which I would call a start page.To me, a home page refers to someone’s personal web site. They also refered to saving a local copy of a web page as downloading. To me, downloading refers to saving a file. I wouldn’t consider saving a copy of the currently viewed web page as downloading it, because I have already loaded it. On the other hand, if I explicitly save a single web page, or a hierarchy of pages, I would call that downloading them, since I went out of my way to save them, if that makes sense. Of course, to me, a “computer class” refers to a computer science class, not this hilarious joke.
Things change. When I took my note-taker to class, people still considered it a novelty, and treated it as such. Now, they have kids taking classes and even exams remotely. This opens the door to all sorts of opportunities for good or ill. It also allows for such a disconnect, that the professor would never know which. Why even go? What do students pay for with that sort of arrangement?
I hope you have enjoyed my tour around the potential Microsoft Lab of the future. We will do this once a week for a little while, so I may have more tales of hilarity to report.
Behind the Curtain, Episode 6
Filed under: Behind the Curtain, Politics, Technology
I had quite a show tonight. First, I made fun of Microsoft’s latest
marketing campaign: the Mojave Experiment. Next, I did the usual news. I covered the following articles:
- Sarah Palin’s Career Ends in Tragedy – Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. – Mises Institute
- 15 reportedly killed in U.S.-led Pakistan attack – USATODAY.com
- Al Jazeera English – CENTRAL/S. ASIA – Civilians killed in Pakistan attack
- Britons may be more vulnerable to Aids due to Roman invasion – Telegraph
- Joe Biden says Barack Obama might pursue criminal charges against Bush administration if elected | World news | guardian.co.uk
- Is Sarah Palin a Creationist? | LiveScience
- Jobless rate jumps to 5-year high of 6.1 percent – Yahoo! News
- RussiaToday : News : Maverick Republican steals McCain’s thunder
- Pot kills superbugs | BREAK THE MATRIX
- FT.com / World – US military trained Georgian commandos
- Bloomberg.com: Worldwide
- Libya says oil market is oversupplied
After that, I played Ron Paul’s entire speech at the Rally for the Republic. The personal highlight came when a friend who has not had an interest in politics instant messaged me: “I love this guy” Perfect!
After that, I felt so hyped up and positive, that I played music for an hour and a half! I ended exactly at 04:20 A.M. Eastern daylight time.
Make of that what you will. I didn’t do it!