It’s that simple. Throughout my college admissions process, I’ve tended to let things build up. For example, on my floor I have a “Guide of USC” book. USC is the University of Southern California.
Am I going to go there? No way. It’s too far away for me at this point in my life. But, I’ve let the yellow and purple book with friendly faces on it just sit there (and other places) for months, as if it’s important. If there’s any lesson one can learn in life, it’s to learn to throw irrelevant stuff away, especially while going through the college admissions process. Less is more in this case. I feel so much better after doing a purge of my room.
I came across an interesting blog the other day and left a comment on an article about Wikipedia and plagiarism. The rant is here. I quote the applicable parts below:
I came across this post while googling “plagiarizing Wikipedia”, because I was curious to find out how plagiarism changes when you’re not stealing from one author, but instead stealing from a collaborative, open source work like Wikipedia. I haven’t yet found my answer, but this is a great blog post, so I’ll throw in my two cents:
This last year I finished a ridiculous high school ‘health’ class, which had a focus on research. The class itself was a joke, and I feel confident saying that as someone who considers himself an intellectual in training, because the teacher wasn’t able to practice what she preached. She ranted almost daily about how plagiarism would end in severe consequences, but was never able to spot it. Meanwhile, I was able to. For example, the class had to work on different research projects and distribute their findings to the rest of the class. I found it odd when many student’s documents used different fonts throughout, and had underlined hyperlinks. I kid you not, there were hyperlinks _everywhere_, a sure sign of very sloppy copying and pasting.
Furthermore, the teacher’s PowerPoint presentations were taken straight from Wikipedia! How could I tell? She had underlined hyperlinks in her presentations. I even wrote down a sentence and googled it in quote to see where it came from. Low and behold, Wikipedia.
One day, I was sick of it and stayed after class to discuss this with her. I pointed out half a dozen examples of plagiarism from the latest round of research projects and how you can spot it, and all she simply said was, “I didn’t know that.”
Today, none of the plagiarizing students were punished for their crimes. Now, that teacher has since taken a job at a great college, where she’s sure to be making a great sum of money. I can’t figure some things out.
Anyone else have any plagiarism stories?
I came across an interesting story the other day, linking to this site. It’s a site to send viewers who use Firefox and Mozilla-based browsers to because they have the ability to block web advertising with an extension. That’s absolutely ridiculous. Blocking any of your viewers from reading your site only harms you, even if they can’t see your advertising. Also, it’s possible that those viewers using Firefox aren’t blocking advertising, and have no idea what advertising blocking even is.
About 20% of my blog’s visitors use Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you were unaware, I have a seething hatred for Microsoft’s browser due to its complete disregard for web standards. Back in the old days, before IE7 premiered, IE was a security and feature nightmare. Now that it is ‘fixed’, I live with it. I still completely disrespect the application as a browser, but I wouldn’t ever stop you, my reader, from visiting Exposay.
To restore the balance, let’s learn how to block advertising in Firefox, our favorite web browser. Continue reading ‘Thoughts on Web Advertising’
It’s known that I’ve made a movie bashing iMovie ’08 on YouTube, now with over 1,000 views, which isn’t awful for the topic. Let it also be known that I’m not the only person who believes that the product is, in fact, a downgrade. The New York Times‘ own David Pogue bolsters my arguments in a well written blog post:
I can’t help thinking that Apple would have done better to call a spade a spade, and give the new program a different name. Call it FlyMovie, or ByeMovie, or WhyMovie.
But one thing’s for sure: it sure isn’t iMovie.
You might wonder what the fuss is about this; the issue is that although one can continue to use iMovie HD, the old version, to edit his or her movies, support for newer cameras and video formats will be nonexistent. It’s forcing iMovie HD users like me and David Pogue to upgrade to more expensive and unnecessarily complicated software packages like Final Cut Express, which costs $299.
The new application certainly has a niche; The Pixel Corps‘ founder, Alex Lindsay, believes that it will be perfect for making quick videos at conventions and throwing them onto the web. Perhaps, but I’m still perturbed that Apple has sacrificed such a fine application. I wish they would open source iMovie HD. That would let the community thrive, but still let Apple move ahead with their more simple movie editing agenda. I can dream, can’t I?
Let’s face it, Exposay looked a little pale. I took its temperature, and decided to brighten it up by changing the banner. Besides that, I removed the Site Admin tool from the site navigation (it’s now located under ‘Site Tools’ on the right), removed the link to the pub (users can still use it), rewrote the About page, and added a dedicated “College” page. If you don’t see the changes, refresh a few times. Enjoy!
I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. The bad news is that I don’t have a RPI tour video. The good news is that I instead have a pretty decent photo album.
Photos on Facebook, publicly viewable.
I’m always trying to move forward, turning the page of my book. To keep this up, I’m changing my blog’s directive. I’ll make videos when I can, and other content when it’s more appropriate to do so.