Delicious LiveJournal Links for 12-9-2008

[andrewducker]

• The Short Bus of Social Interactivity
  Some very useful tips for the nerdy among us. Which includes all of us. Especially you. You nerd.
  (tags: sociology tips social)
• Neal Patrick Harris and Jack Black In Prop 8: The Musical
  That was altogether funnier than I expected
  (tags: funny homosexuality USA video law equality)
• What not to do
  Various coders admit to their worst coding moment
  (tags: wtf funny coding)
• Entire class fails computing exam by submitting in Word format
  D'oh!
  (tags: computers microsoft education funny)

Comments

[johnbobshaun.livejournal.com]

I loved the worst coding moments. The rogue semi colon in a SQL statement brought back some unpleasant memories. :-)

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

The one about mixing up logoff and shutdown brings back horrible memories too - a former boss was in the US and accidentally shutdown two of the UK servers remotely rather than restarting them. I had to go in at 3am (I was the poor sod on-call) to push two buttons, turn round and go home again.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Entire class fails computing exam by submitting in Word format

As someone says early on in the comment thread there are a lot of unanswered questions here and The Register doesnt' really bother to look at them.

[andrewducker]

Oh, absolutely. Punishing all of the students for a mistake made by the teacher seems dumb, as does not catching this earlier and asking for resubmission.

[blackmanxy.livejournal.com]

It actually reminded me very strongly of the earlier article you posted about about companies "just following procedures."

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

The follow-up article clarifies some of it - including the fact that the school was slow to appeal and the board will now accept resubmission. Given the examiners don't actually have the facilities on their systems to mark submissions in Word, they couldn't do any more than mark what they were given. Can't really award passes if you have no work you can makr, so they kinda had to issue fails in the first instance.

It does seem a bit jobsworth-y, but I do think it's up to the school to sort it out, not the examiners. It's not like they weren't quite clear about what format submissions had to be in.

[andrewducker]

Cheers for that!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Prop 8: The Musical

:)

Although, if I was picking biblical propositions the sort of mormons who campaigned against prop 8 preferred to gloss over, I might not pick "sell your daughter into slavery" at that;

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The Short Bus of Social Interactivity

:) That's interesting. It contains some things most people get wrong, and some most people get right but some people get wrong.