HDD = ROM?!



  •  So I'm taking a summer class at my local community college. The class is the class you need to take before you can do any other IT/CS classes. It mostly deals with MS Office (okay, nothing there I know) I was expecting to know most if not all the class was going to cover, but oh how I was wrong....very wong. Turns out I may need to correct the teacher...

    We were assined a text book that deals with what a computer is and the differnt parts and such. The other day we were assined to read the chapter, the next day the teacher lectures us on the chapter.... it all seemed fine and normal until he started to draw pictures meant to show how data is moved from input to output... type in a key (his example), binary code moves to RAM, the controller gets the data and gives it to the ALU, out puts it back to ram, sends it to output device..... things start to turn for the worse when he talks about how the computer boots up the BIOS checks to make sure everything is responctive, then moves on to ROM (isn't the BIOS ROM?!) to "boot up windows", then how the Hard Drive was "ROM, because the data moves to the RAM before being edited) totaly ingoring the fact that you write thigns to a hard drive. I riase my hand in confusing and hopeing he would correct his mistake (most people in the class don't really know how to use words beon typeing not even how you can hilgiht words by double clicking).... it went something like this:

    Me: "Uh, how is the Hard Drive ROM when you can WRITE on it? With a ROM you can only READ the data ."

     Him: "Because the data moves to the RAM before you edit the data, you can't write on a book you barrow from the libery."

    Me: (trying to make sence to what he said) "But...uh....you edit and can write to a Hard Drive where you can only......"

    Student: "It's like a filling cabent..."

    Him: "yeah you can't cram in the filling cabent and edit something after you closed it."

    Me: "........uh......something doesn't seem write about that.......:

    Student: "yeah well that's how it works some times it doesn't make sence."

     It's going to be a long 8 weeks....

     



  • Oh dear God.

    It makes me sad whe, rather then educating, schools just spread misinformation like this. I'm glad I didn't have to do any thing like that at school.



  • Consider: assigned, different, responsive, ignoring, things, hoping, beyond, highlight, borrow, library, sense, filing, cabinet, right. These are the words you failed to spell correctly.  It will indeed be a long eight weeks.  I recommend not correcting the instructor on his spelling.



  •  While dyslexia is forgiven and forgotten immediately, it would sadly seem that the introductory CS courses are on par with how they teach spelling in school.



  • Yeah  my spelling sucks, I didn't notice until after I could not edit the post that Firefox didn't check my spelling for some reasion. 



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    reasion

    And then there's typing like a spaz, a crime I am contnuously guitlyo f.



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    I could not edit the post that Firefox didn't check my spelling for some reasion.

    Everyone blames it on Firefox. What did you do when you had to write on paper?



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @Stormyaaron said:
    I could not edit the post that Firefox didn't check my spelling for some reasion.

    Everyone blames it on Firefox. What did you do when you had to write on paper?

    He blamed the paper.



  • @mrprogguy said:

    Consider: assigned, different, responsive, ignoring, things, hoping, beyond, highlight, borrow, library, sense, filing, cabinet, right. These are the words you failed to spell correctly.  It will indeed be a long eight weeks.  I recommend not correcting the instructor on his spelling.

    You obviously understood the words so who cares.  This is a forum, not a publication.  Spend some time questioning and correcting factual errors, not spelling!  Perhaps that's too difficult for your superiority complex to accept?



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @Stormyaaron said:
    I could not edit the post that Firefox didn't check my spelling for some reasion.

    Everyone blames it on Firefox. What did you do when you had to write on paper?

     

    Write the paper. Put it on a wooden table. Take a picture. Scan the paper. E-mail it offshore to have an OCR Technician™ transcribe it and e-mail it back. Copy/paste that into firefox and check the spelling. Fix any mistakes and recheck using the same process.

     

    Duh. 



  • Pray that it was spelt correctly, I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...  



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    Pray that it was spelt correctly, I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...  

    So... it's wired for anthropology or animal hubandry, then?



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...

    Liquoring up before class can do that to you.



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    Pray that it was spelt correctly, I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...  

     

    Please use the quote button to quote the text you are replying to. This makes the conversation much easier to read.



  • @soviut said:

    You obviously understood the words so who cares.  This is a forum, not a publication.  Spend some time questioning and correcting factual errors, not spelling!  Perhaps that's too difficult for your superiority complex to accept?

    @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @Stormyaaron said:
    I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...

    Liquoring up before class can do that to you.

     

     Wow soviut was right! Talking about a superiority complex!



  • @Stormyaaron said:

     It's going to be a long 8 weeks....

    I don't think I've heard anything positive about the way CS is taught in public schools in the US (with the exception of big public universities, which do a good job of patching up the damage).  One wonders if we should make like the Japanese and have semi-private cram schools that do the heavy lifting. 



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Talking about a superiority complex!

    I'm not the only one saying stuff. A student taking IT-related classes who can't spell at all ?! I think that deserves a light jab. Under normal circumstances, you would've attacked it, but you're too busy going after me.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    I'm not the only one saying stuff.
     

    Just because other people have a superiority complex too doesn't mean you don't have one.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    Just because other people have a superiority complex too doesn't mean you don't have one.

    Just keep ignoring the rest. It's getting to the point where it's not even worth replying to you because of all the projecting and externalization.



  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @MasterPlanSoftware said:
    Talking about a superiority complex!

    I'm not the only one saying stuff. A student taking IT-related classes who can't spell at all ?! I think that deserves a light jab. Under normal circumstances, you would've attacked it, but you're too busy going after me.

    It's just one class the starter level class that people who are not even going on to IT would take just to learn some thigns, it was one of the few classes offered that I would not of cared having in the summer. I'm not going in to IT, I just have some interest in computers. Yeah sure my spelling sucks I even mock my self over it at times, but why did it become the main focas of this topic? I guess TRWTF was me posting a topic in the fist place knowing that my spelling sucks and TDWTF readers like to point out spelling errors.



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    Yeah sure my spelling sucks I even mock my self over it at times, but why did it become the main focas of this topic? I guess TRWTF was me posting a topic in the fist place knowing that my spelling sucks and TDWTF readers like to point out spelling errors.
     

    Please don't mind abbydonkrafts. He has been having this problem lately.

    You had a decent OP. You should work on your spelling in the future (it keeps your posts more enjoyable for the rest of us), but there is no reason he needs to be like this to you.



  • In college, our introductory computer class included a whole lesson of defragmenting floppy disks. Really.



  • @bstorer said:

    animal hubandry
     

    Nothing wrong with animal husbandry, until they catch you at it (to somewhat mis-quote Tom Lehrer) 



  • @devurand said:

    Write the paper. Put it on a wooden table. Take a picture. Scan the paper. E-mail it offshore to have an OCR Technician™ transcribe it and e-mail it back. Copy/paste that into firefox and check the spelling. Fix any mistakes and recheck using the same process.

    Duh. 

     


  • @Soviut said:

    You obviously understood the words so who cares.  This is a forum, not a publication. 
     

    It's difficult to read and it slows us down. We're busy people.  That's why we spend so much time on forums. I suggest the burden of being bogged down in spelling should be borne by the message author (one person) not the audience (many people). If everyone adopts this we can raise productivity and boost the GDP. We can solve the world's current economic crisis! The power is yours people. Do you want to go down in history as a team player who saved the world or the guy who twaddled with misspellings?



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    ... how the Hard Drive was "ROM, because the data moves to the RAM before being edited) totaly ingoring the fact that you write things to a hard drive.

    I've been very amused (or irked depending on the situation) by "Computing Basics" teachers teaching students how to use the MS Word Operating System.

    I once had to do one of those "Learn Office Courses" for my Community Service back in college, ant explicitly told my "students" (mostly over 40, and a 60-ish couple) about what an Operating System really is, how any Office application was exactly that, a program, not an OS.

    One week later, I arrived late and found the coordinator giving them the class, as I had failed to arrive on time. I got there right on time to hear him say ... and that's how we enter into the Word Operating System. The 60-ish couple looked at me, and grinned, as they had just seen that the coordinator was one of those "clueless people" I had talked about.



  • I had an instructor like that in Junior College.

    Told the class that the 'www' in 'http://www.yahoo.com' was an instruction to the browser to connect using the "www protocol", which was why you can't leave off the www.

     

    Apparently he'd never been to http://slashdot.org 



  • @merreborn said:

    Apparently he'd never been to http://slashdot.org 
     

    And thank $deity for that! If he had been, he would have been spending his class time preaching the merits of FOSS and how evil MS is.



  • It can be very frustrating to have a class start of like that. In one of my first CS classes we got a little book that started of with the famous an informative words "Most computers are white or beige".

     

    Though this statement was true at the time (mid 90s), it didn't really make me want to flip another page...



  • Here is an update for the 4th day of class,  he called Windows Open Source, called the Hard Drive ROM some more, called BOIS Binary Output/Input System. Said when your RAM is full it sends data to the ROM for temp. storage. (again, what part of READ ONLY?!). Said that if you use Open Source Software or edit Open Source Software the modification has to be Open Source also, same idea with Public Domain Software.

    Then this nice little heart to heart (during our break):

    Me:  "How is a hard drive ROM? You WRITE to a hard drive which then is not ROM."

    Him: " Because you don't run the programs in your hard drive..."

    Me: "But.....you still WRITE to a hard drive, you still Write when you add or remove programs to the hard drive, infact if you want to do the library exemple...."

    Him: "Well a library can add and remove books...."

    me: "...ROM is the National Archives unless your Bush you can't go in and edit the Constitution when ever you like...."

    Him: *snickers* 

    Me:"...A hard drive would be a personal library, where you can add, edit, delete, and make your own books as you please. A Basic Output Input System is ROM, a hard drive allows for the writing of data..."

     Him: *pauses*......"well you still can't run programs on your hard drive which makes it ROM."

     Me: "Okay" and I leave to talk to a student I know.

     As I pass by the teacher he saids "Well you got to think about the running of programs" (or something like that.

     As side notes he also called HTML a programming language, and our book called Lindow[sic] a GUI.



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    Here is an update for the 4th day of class,  he called Windows Open Source, called the Hard Drive ROM some more, called BOIS Binary Output/Input System.

    I think this prof fits perfectly into the other BIOS definition we have in Spanish. It is "Bestia Inmunda Operando el Sistema" (Unholy Beast Operating the System) and used a lot, kind of like the "PEBKAC Error".

    @Stormyaaron said:

    me: "...ROM is the National Archives unless your Bush you can't go in and edit the Constitution when ever you like...."

    I think that would make Bush a r00tkit. ;)



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    Here is an update for the 4th day of class, ...

     

     Let me give you some advice:

    Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.



  • @talaxor said:

    Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

    Talaxor's got a point. In situations like these I tend to just shut up and look for an escape route to get away from the stupid before their gems start killing off my brain cells.



  • You should just hope that he isn't the one making the tests.



  • @stratos said:

    You should just hope that he isn't the one making the tests.

    I would love to see this guy's test.  I wonder whose "correct" answers I would use? 



  • @WeatherGod said:

    @stratos said:

    You should just hope that he isn't the one making the tests.

    I would love to see this guy's test.  I wonder whose "correct" answers I would use? 

    use the ture answers,a dn then be prepared to back them up with references if necessary. Presumably you can appeal the answers with a senior member of the academic staff.



  • @Physics Phil said:

    use the ture answers,a dn then be prepared to back them up with references if necessary. Presumably you can appeal the answers with a senior member of the academic staff.

     

    The detention was upheld on appeal.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

    <snip>photo</snip>The detention was upheld on appeal.

    Although the teacher was incorrect in her statement and probably meant to word it the other way around, challenging the entire curriculum should be punishable. If a math book has 1 incorrect answer, it doesn't infer that all the rest of them are.



  • @pitchingchris said:

    Although the teacher was incorrect in her statement and probably meant to word it the other way around, challenging the entire curriculum should be punishable. If a math book has 1 incorrect answer, it doesn't infer that all the rest of them are.
    We had this issue in 8th grade (1996-1997), we got some new science books.  Despite the fact that the books had been printed less than a year ago there were significant inaccuracies in the books, and as opposed to focusing primairly on science, the books focused on 'using eachother's names' and 'what were your feelings' about the day.  

    So we complained to the science teachers.  That got us nowhere. 

    So we wrote a letter to the school board, stating between the inaccuracies in the book, and the lack of any actual 'science' making up our grade we felt we weren't learning enough, that that we would be underprepared for the proficiency tests.  That went nowhere.

    So we forwarded that letter along to the local newspapers.  That got us somewhere.  Kind of.  Apparently the editor in cheif of one of the local papers was friends with our principle so it didn't get published, and they actively tried to cover it up, in the other local paper it got published.   After 'going over his head' and that of the school board a few students got in trouble.  Some got yelled at for hours by the principle (while missing class) attempting to get them to redact the letter and write an appology. The whole affair ended up getting published quite extensively by the paper that cared.  After realizing the extent to which the principle and company went in covering this up some parents started getting involved heavily.  (For the most part parents weren't involved to this point because they were letting us do it on our own)

    In the the princple ended up working in a position where he wouldn't have the chance to work with kids anymore (WTF: on paper he got a promotion because it was the easiest way to get him out) and the school had new books within two years (1998 school year).

    -MBirchmeier

    *I kinda went into more detail than I thought, but I hope you enjoyed it 



  • @pitchingchris said:

    Although the teacher was incorrect in her statement and probably meant to word it the other way around, challenging the entire curriculum should be punishable. If a math book has 1 incorrect answer, it doesn't infer that all the rest of them are.

    Point. However, this exemplifies the worst in the system. Correctness is being sacrificed for authority. True, Alex should not have attempted to instigate a rebellion in the student body. However, either the teacher was lying (betraying the trust given by the parents and the school system to educate, not subjugate, the children), or mistaken (something that teacher should realise is possible long before handing out detentions -- a simple "Let me finish and I'll double-check" might have defused the situation), or just plain wrong (in which case why is that person teaching?).

    My point is, being right, in American education, is less important than being respectful. Even when rightness matters more in the real world.

    One thing I'm sure of, my friend made a very good decision to go to his CPSC125 class drunk. Really made things a hell of a lot less boring for him. The teacher was wrong early and often, but my friend didn't care: he didn't have to.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

    ...[fake-ass letter]...The detention was upheld on appeal.

    This showed up on YTMND about 2 years ago.  This has done the rounds and is most likely fake.  Snopes isn't able to confirm or deny, but provides some reasonable doubts, like the being dated 4/20.  Regardless, there has never been a genuine source that could confirm that this is correct nor provide any additional information about the incident, including your claim the detention was appealed and upheld.



  • @Stormyaaron said:

    Pray that it was spelt correctly, I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...  

    So now this Brian guy is to blame?


  • @AbbydonKrafts said:

    @Stormyaaron said:
    I try my best but my brian is not wired for mathmatics or English...

    Liquoring up before class can do that to you.

     

     

    This acutally reminds me of an event that occured when I was studying Computer Science in New Zealand. They have a large society which spends most of it's time drinking during "Barbecue's" that consist of about $20 worth of meat and $2000 worth of beer.

     At any rate, I was waiting in the lecture room, and this obvioulsy inebriated  guy takes 2 steps through the door and looks around quickly. All of a sudden his face went sheer white with an expression of pure terror, and he ran from the room.


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