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MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

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Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#541

Post by chrisseaton »

bluGill wrote: post #531
chrisseaton wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same reason any other cop would need guns. So, none. Regular police routinely carrying guns is crazy. Leave it to specialists. You don’t need a gun to police a place of learning.

I have never need an AED device, but I know where the one is in my office and I know how to use it. A gun for a police officer should be the same: they have it and know how to use it, but almost all retire without even once having used it. A gun is almost never needed for police duty, but when it is nothing else will substitute and seconds are counting (police only use a gun when not killing someone fast will make th…

> police only use a gun when not killing someone fast will make the overall situation worse

I'm not sure this is really true. I've seen quite a few news stories about them shooting when it didn't really look like there was any need at all. I think police officers also fairly regularly injure themselves accidentally with their weapons.

I fundamentally don't think a gun is an appropriate tool for a civilian community police force. Batons and electric stunners yes in an emergency if really needed. Actual firearms? Not really appropriate in my opinion.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#542

Post by asveikau »

bluGill wrote: post #519
magicalhippo wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of year 2000. Yes complete overreaction, but I'm also certain it would not have been such a non-event if it weren't for that extreme attention it got.

Most of the bad things predicted by the media wouldn't have happened even if no effort was spent. However there would have been a lot of things not predicted by the media that would have been bad. The bad things the media predicted were easy to put into a sentence, while the bad things that would have happened would take books to explain. They would only really be bad because of the sum total happening all at once.

This.

Everyday people in the leadup to y2k assumed it meant that every computer would somehow explode. Almost nobody stopped to actually reason through the real life consequence of a program getting the date and time wrong.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#544

Post by classified »

PureParadigm wrote: post #50

I think large decisive moves like this may seem to some to be an overreaction, but it will prove to be the correct decision in hindsight (like the early travel bans). Exponential growth is real, and anything we can do to slow the rate of infection will save lives. As a current undergrad at UC Berkeley, they've moved all classes here online [1], and exams are either being postponed or converted to take-home assignment…

Security measures are always an "overreaction", until they aren't.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#545

Post by ergothus »

aatharuv wrote: post #340
kelnos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly restaurants nearby, but not sure I'd call them cheap. I imagine a lot of MIT students don't have the money to eat out every day. And since most dorms don't have any kind of kitchens or cooking implements, buying food from the grocery and cooking isn't really an option. Pre-made meals or other things from grocery stores that don't require cooking could work, but, again, I'd expect some/many student…

What dorms don't have kitchens? Certainly when I went to MIT, most (if not all) dorms at least had kitchenette's, 20 years back. Shared, of course, which is the main problem.

You describe luxury. When I went to Penn state two people shared a single room a bit larger than a walk in closet. We had a "microfridge" which was one of those tiny soda refrigerators with an equally tiny microwave bolted on. Two chairs, two desks built into the wall, two built in sets of drawers, and two armoires were the rest if the room besides the two twin beds. Shared bathroom for the floor down the hall.

Hot plates and other heating elements were banned. Use of a dorm room was mandatory for freshman year.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#546

Post by whatshisface »

eropple wrote: post #538
blendo wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor will in-person, small group seminars be moved on-line. It might be fairer to just extend spring break for 2-3 months, and pick up the semester again in May or June. Or, refund this semesters’s tuition, room, and board, and give everyone a do-over until next fall. (I am assuming the virus will burn out in 2-3 months.) Maybe the best outcome would be radically improve remote learning, this time with full institutio…

> I am assuming the virus will burn out in 2-3 months. This is a really optimistic assumption. I hope you're right, but I would hope no political unit is making plans based on it.

Actually, that's extremely pessimistic. Unchecked exponential growth until it slams in to the population ceiling is both the worst-case scenario for fatalities, and also the scenario that would finish in three months.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#547

Post by whatshisface »

SkyBelow wrote: post #520
kart23 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UC Irvine as well! Not excited to install a rootkit on my computer to take finals, but oh well.

What does the rootkit even achieve? People can easily have a second laptop available.

Or a phone...

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#548

Post by Jill_the_Pill »

eropple wrote: post #536
easytiger wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you thought about inverting your thinking? Every pandemic this century ended up being a damp squib despite WHO et al promising doomsday.

Did they end up being a "damp squib", or were corrective and protective measures implemented to slow them sufficiently so as to control them before they became endemic?

It may be that when the Boy Cried Wolf, the wolf didn't show up precisely because the villagers had turned out with torches and successfully scared it away, unseen.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#549

Post by whatshisface »

rockmeamedee wrote: post #415
smallgovt wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think it's likely going to be seen as an overreaction in hindsight by the general public (even though it may not be). If these actions are successful in curbing the virus' spread, most people won't appreciate how bad things could have really gotten.

It's a common thread in Incident Response & "Resilience Engineering" that preventative measures that reduce the blast of incidents are always blamed, especially if they work. Whatever ends up working to fix the incident, you should have done it sooner or it was too drastic a response. (No matter the fact that it _did_ fix the incident, outsiders will blame you that way). One example is the Knight Capital trading disa…

There is one thing that will help avoid some of this: across every county, state, and nation, there will be differing levels of response, and when it's all over it will be clear who got their medical systems overwhelmed as a result of denialism, and who wasted a bunch of money due to alarmism.

Re: MIT moves all classes online for the rest of the semester

#550

Post by curryst »

SkyBelow wrote: post #520
kart23 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UC Irvine as well! Not excited to install a rootkit on my computer to take finals, but oh well.

What does the rootkit even achieve? People can easily have a second laptop available.

I took a quick glance at their website and it says:

"No non-religious head coverings"

Which makes me think that they record a video of you while you're taking it, which is kind of eerie.

That being said, it won't stop anyone who has a USB webcam you can just unplug, unless the software requires you to have a webcam plugged in and pointed in the right direction.

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