Re: STUDENTS GO AWAY!!!!!!!??????

[afn03257@freenet2.afn.org (Daniel P Hudson)]

dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote:
>Mark is obviously new to newsgroups, since he has so many misconceptions.
>Sometimes it seems like more and more such people are around.

Mark? What about your own misconceptions?

>Anyway, the misconceptions should be set right for the benefit of
>other neophyte readers of CLA :-)

Setting  it right, doesn't consist of providing mis-informed 
readers with more bad information, does it?

>>Would students post in many thousands of messages a day? I doubt the           
>>Ada student population is big enough! It seems that not many colleges          

>There are hundreds of schools teaching Ada (go check www.adahome.com for
>info), to thousands of students. if all of them posted questions about
>all their assignments, simple arithmetic shows that 99% of the messages

This is by far the most illogical thing I've ever heard. If every
person on earth screamed at the top of their lungs we'd probably 
destroy the Earth too, but we both know neither of these is GOING 
to happen, therefore you're making up fictional situations to argue 
with non-fictional statements, Robert. Second, do you honestly
believe that each and every one of those schools permits usenet 
access freely, much less every student know it is acessable? Hmm.

>>on CLA would be from students. An analogy would be in a big lecture if
>>students never read anything, and each asked dozens of qustions like
>>"I couldn't be bothered to read about arrays, how do they work?" As

And this is reason enough to disallow students with legitimate 
questions, what if they had felt that way about you? I'm sure
you've asked a question inappropriately in your life.

>>in a lecture, you need to put in some work of your own (e.g. visit
>>www.adahome.com and run one of the online tutorials created by hard
>>work of some individuals contributing their time).

This may come as a surprise, Robert, but www.adahome.com isn't exactly 
the best known WWW site. They sort of have to be TOLD about it.
On top of this, many student have put in their work, thay have 
text books, albeit useless ones, but they have looked in many
cases. Obviously anyone who posts

"My teacher gave me assignment X and I'm busy so could you do this 
 for me," 
 
 should be bound, gagged, and given a taste of a cat o' nine tails, 
 but we're not specifing cheaters, but rather students who deserve 
 every chance than can get to learn something in a way which they 
 can understand. Not everyone can learn by reading a textbook, 
 some may need a logical explanation behind the answer that only 
 a user of that language can provide. Such as

 "I know there are DO and FOR loops, and I feel a DO loop is better
 to count from 1 to 100, but someone else says a FOR loop is more 
 appropriate, can anyone explain why?"

>>Am I right in my understanding that most of the academic newsgroups
>>are on servers sponsored by universities? It seems a bitter irony
>>then, that those organisations tasked with creating the new
>>professionals should wish to deny them access to a very valuable
>>resource. Does familiarity breed contempt?

>No, your understanding is completely wrong, the newsgroups are not
>"academic" newsgroups and have nothing whatever to do with universities.
>The newsgroup feeds are of course available to any user of the net, 
>including universities, but they have no special status.

Both of you are wrong. Usenet was FORMED by universities for
the free exchange of information by/from students and professors.
It then expanded to other users as the Internet became avaialble
to more than schools and milliatry operations. However, at no time
were students banned from using the service, Robert, and AFAIK,
universities are still the primary carriers/supporters of usenet
with Texas being the largest. it is Texas we can thank for helping
put AOL and P* into a mode where spamming is a little less common, 
BTW. A few years back it was out rageous, every group had a 
1-800-I-WANT-YOU message, so UT decided to filter out anything 
going to or coming from aol and P*. Needless to say, both
decided the cost of cleaning up theor act ws not the same as 
the cost for bankruptcy.

[SNIP]

I must say I am shocked. It was my understanding that you were a 
well thought of and highly intelligent person, Mr. Dewar.
However, last time I checked, improper usage of inductive logic
was not a sign of high intelligence. In fact, I beleive racism,
sexism, and homophobia are generally considered ignornat, correct?
And your "studentism," is no different.