Just goes to show you that we're not all so addicted to TI's that we don't do anything else! I got a 4.000 GPA this quarter! And I didn't even use my TI to calculate that!

-z86mon, a proud Mac user-

yea, i got at least like a 4.1?? but i instead used my TI to calculate that so muhaha.

yeh will mine is currently a 4.7 with my AP classes

"4.7 with my AP classes"

As long as you're computing it that way then I got an 8.0+pi/e^sqr(1002) .

Sucks to highscool AP classes.

What's wrong with High School AP Classes?!?

I'm getting a C in my AP history class because homework is weighted as 75% of the grade and I don't do much of it.

Hey! Ain't nothin wrong with ap history. Some of this craps good to know for quiz shows.

"What's wrong with High School AP Classes?!?"

1)They're to slow.
2)They're to hard to get into.
3)They aren't really "advanced placement".
4)I hear you gotta take tests to get college credit.
5)Did I mention they're slow?

Explanation:

1)A full year to take writing 121 or Honors Algebra II? No thanks-I'll just go to a community college.

2)I got pulled from AP Chem when I had all the math for it-I spent a year taking regular chem and being bored out of my mind. When I tried signing up for Honors Algebra II the teachers tried to stope me-I had to get premision from my Dad saying he wanted me in the course; I said screw this and took the course over the summer at my local community college.

3)I took Honors Physics and was bored all the way through it. I quit in the middle of my second semester-why?-because the class didn't cover the first four chapters of my introductory university physics text that I studied over the summer.

4)Just what it says-I hear you gotta take tests to get college credit.

5)*place emphasis here*The classes are to slow-I sit through 3/4 the class doing nothing. I like lectures in class and doing homework out of class.

Point of order: it's supposed to be "too" not "to", not taking AP English I assume?

Maybe it's just the fact that you are too lazy to bother to work and/or study for these classes. It's never 'my' fault that *I* got that low grade, the teacher 'gave' it to me. Yeah right. Why don't you stop complaining and work hard.

Did I study for these classes? No. Why? Because some teacher, whom I never seen, decided that I wasn't qualified to take the course. It doesn't seem right that I can't take a course at highschool, but I can take it at a community college.
So far I've taken 11 class terms(6 of them math) at my community college and I have an A in all of them. Is that being lazy? I don't think so. Sitting on my ass in class not doing my homework is lazy.

"stop complaining"

You stop first.

Judging from your comments, your high school either has a bad AP program or you're just lazy as hell (or both). Here, AP works likes this:

We have block scheduling. A 1 credit course is 18 weeks long. We offer AP Calc, AP Chem, AP CS, AP History, and AP English (occaisionally AP Biology). The only one of these courses that is a year long is the AP History course, and this is only because it takes the two regular classes (Early + Modern US History) and combines them. For the others, you have to take some sort of course before them (like Chem II before AP Chem, C Supercomputer before AP CS, etc.) but it's the same as being in an AP course all year long.

The whole purpose of these courses is to ready you for the AP test. The AP test is what colleges look at. It is setup in a five point scale, with most colleges requiring at least a 3 (sometimes a 4) to get credit. The test, though, is $75, which is much less than the cost of a comparable college course (that's what makes them worth it).

Of course, without a good teacher, it's kinda pointless. For example, we used to have a good AP History teacher....all his students that took the test (which was most of them) got at least a three on the test. AP Biology, however, is rarely offered here because no one likes the only person qualified to teach it, and therefore no one wants to sign up for it.

Some places now have the IB (Internation Baccaluarate, I think it is) courses, which is supposed to be better than AP. I don't know this for sure....anyone have experience with that?

------------
asim
http://asimweb.org - it seemed like a good idea at the time

When I was a senior, AP tests cost only $46 at my school (the other $30 came from the taxpayers), so I only paid $230 for the tests that year.

IB (International Baccaluarate) is a program to help you get into schools overseas. Hence international. Anyways at my school AP and IB classes are equally hard and both get weighted grades so I have no idea which to take. I don't plan on going to college outside the US, so I'll probably do AP.

At my school, we don't have AP classes, yet we have the IB program. We also have a really odd grading system... However, at my (small) school, there is only one set of courses that IB offers, and you have one period of electives (7 periods per day) for one semester.

You must take:

IB Economics I/II
IB Biology I/II
IB Theory of Knowledge 1 sem/year, 2 yrs
PE/Health 1 sem
IB English 11/12
IB Advanced Math/IB Calculus
IB Religion I/II (I think these are 1 sem/year)
IB Italian/Spanish/French III/IV

I believe it adds up to having 1 sem of an elective as a junior and a full year of having one elective as a senior. (I'm probably going to be taking honors Physics)

The grading system goes like this (I know it will get squashed):

GPA:L :#
4.3:A+:97-100
4.0:A :93-96
3.7:A-:90-92
3.3:B+:87-89
3.0:B :83-86
2.7:B-:80-82
2.3:c+:77-79
2.0:C :73-76
1.7:C-:70-72
1.0:D :65-69
0.0:F :50-64

College Prep (non-honors) courses give you your GPA as your QPA, Honors courses give you your GPA+1 as your QPA, and IB classes give you a much-needed GPA+2. If you fail a course you are unconditionally awarded 0.0. Sorry. (If you ace IB Econ you get a nice 6.3 [although it works towards class ranks, colleges still see it as 4.0]) This pretty much forces the Valedictorian to be in IB. ToK is supposed to be fun, same thing with IB Religion (great teacher), and IB Econ (another great teacher), but IB Bio can be really really tough.

IB Calculus... well, that's just math. All you need is your trusty 83, a brain good at deriving formulae, and a knack at programming -- or an 86.

What does the 'Q' stand for?

I don't know where you go to school, but where I come from, A. P. classes are not slow. In my U. S. history class, we read 100 pages a week from the text book. That often equates to about 100 years of history in five days. A. P. classes are "hard to get into" because only students willing to work hard to learn the topics and be able to analyze them are accepted.

You say that you "hear" that one must take tests in order to get college credit for A. P. classes. This does not sound as though you have actually been enrolled in any A. P. classes. In any case, the reason "you gotta take tests to get college credit" is to make sure that people taking allegedly easy A. P. classes such as the ones you speak of do not get the same credit as those who take A. P. classes that are challenging, as they should be.

Finally, for someone so seemingly arrogant about their intelligence, you should at least know that "stop" is not spelled with an "e," and "to slow" means "to decrease one's pace," not "exceedingly slow-paced."

> 4)I hear you gotta take tests to get college credit.

Could you please tell me how it's possible to earn college credit without taking any tests?

This from the person who said, "Let the lying begin." :-)

Hey, I've got a 4.83 GPA

My GPA is equal to 3.1415926535897932384626433832795 028841971693993751058209749445... That's the maximum you can get on our scale. Whoever designed it is irrational.

I wonder if that scale was created by my CS prof. My grade (post-curve) on the midterm was 10*sqrt(83).

that irrational pun was n't anywhere near funny :)

lol

And I suppose that a 'B' is 2.718 281 828 459 and a 'C' is 1.618 033 988 750, right?

Three cheers for TI Mac users!!! The TI and the Mac were made for each other. Now if only we can get that USB cable...

Don't you think that the usb-cable is slightly too expensive to buy???

Macs stink. They are stupid. Only the stupid need or use Macs (except for people in the graphics biz).

I pity your ignorance... No wait, I pity you...

--Robin Kay--
UltraSparc forever (as soon as I can afford one ;-)

I hate macs because I don't know how to mess them up, anbd I do know how to mess up a PC. DOWN WITH MACS!!!

If you are talking about hacking then any true hacker doesn't have to brag in BBS's about their skillz. "I don't know how to mess them up"??? Why would you want to mess up a mac? Macs are the perfect computer. A 300Mhz G3 processor is equal to a 700Mhz Intel Pentium III... and the Apple G4 has DUAL *700Mhz* G4 processors... that's like 3ghz of pentium...
You have to give both Microsoft and Apple credit, but Apple moreso. They make both Hardware AND an OS... two very difficult things to make (Trust me, for my C++ final we had to make a powerful OS capable of running 3 different programs that are made for windows and stuff)

Macs are for people who don't like having to mess with windows and the accompaying flaws, errors and viruses.

My soon to be flamed 2 cents

Go Mac Users!

Flame?!?! Ha! Macs rule! I can't believe anyone in their right (or left, for that matter) would flame someone who speaks the truth!

Now if only I could convince the rest of the world this....

A Mac a day keeps the Windoh!s bugs away!

have you tried linux? it's much better than windows and it's free too!

-Andrew
A^2 Programming

where do i get it free?

www.redhat.com, click on download. if you have a cd burner, you can download the image and burn your own copy.

Macs are really great machines. They have a pretty powerful OS, its just that they don't have a lot of apps. I think macs would rule the world today if they had as many titles as the pc does.

No kidding! If someone would just sit down and put as much effort into making software for the mac as they do for PC, we would be living in a society run on Mac!

I can't wait for OS X! It will be sooooooo cool! Plus, it is supposed to make it easier to program. Yaaaa!

Can we say "Virtual PC?" It lets you run almost every Windows', Linux's, Unix's, and some other OS' programs in MacOS!

IMacs rule!!!

... at a very unreliable and slow pace. For free software, upgrade to the ultimate OS.

PC users, the URL is:
http://www.slackware.com

Mac users, the URL is:
http://www.linuxppc.com

Wine should eventually provide reliable cross-platform support for Linux. Linux is *almost* bug-free, as it is Open Source, and more specifically Free Software (not as in price, but freedom).

If you think Linux is _almost_ bug free then you have not used it very much. Linux is far from making it in the mainstream world. It is good for people who know what to do but for people that need something easy Linux is anything but that. Once Linux gets a good web browser (no netscape sucks) then I would be more into booting Linux all the time.

--neotope.com

Heh... Kde already comes built in with a web browser that's way ahead of the crappy IE.
Plus, Netscape i feel is more reliable since it doesn't crash as much on my system and plus if IE crashes, your system goes down half of the time

I've been using Linux for all of 2 or 3 weeks and I think it's much better than windoze! And it's free, too! Anyone who hasn't used it yet should try. The only downside is lack of hardware support. And as soon as i get Wine to work i'll be able to run all my windoze apps in it.
-Andrew
A^2 Programming

:>>> Only the stupid need or use Macs (except for people in the graphics biz).

Uhm. Do you realize that most of the awesome special effects in movies are done entirely on Macs? Ever see a flick called "Jurassic Park"? All of the dinosaurs in it and it's sequel were done on Macs. As well as all of the special effects used in Terminator 2.

Have you ever used a Mac for a while and then used a PC (presumably running Windows)? Windows is, without a doubt, one of the most shaky, buggy OSes out there. If you'd take a minute to actually look at it, you'd realize that too. The MacOS is a much more smoothly running OS, both in appearance and managability. And, if you're really ambitious and want the "best of both worlds", buy yourself a nice Mac, and then get yourself an equally-good PC for about $150. That's right, simply buy Virtual PC (www.connectix.com) and your Mac becomes both a Mac and a FULLY-FUNCTIONAL PC. Don't believe me? I've got Windows 98 running as we speak, on this very computer, which happens to be an iMac. I'm writing this comment via the "Mac Side" in Netscape.

Anyway, you probably won't listen anyway, so I guess I just wasted about 10 minutes coming up with this profoundly-useless statement. Oh well, that's life.

Hey, I just got an idea. I've got this big "bucket" thing full of pennies. Each time I post something on ticalc, I'll take two out and put them somewhere else, in representation of my worthless comment. Wow, I'll start with this one.


Now I just need to find a "bucket". Hmmmm. brb. Back, found a small container that used to be full of hand cleaner.

-Fil's "Bucket" O' Pennies(TM)' First @0.02

View Fil's "Bucket" at http://209.50.19.75/coinage.html

This comment is actually one of the more worthwhile ones I have seen on ticalc. I have the same thing (Vertual PC) on my iMac. The only probem is that you can't get any good software for them (the MacOS platform), and it is hard to get anything compatable with the USB ports (note: if someting has universal in it, it's not compatable with anything)

Go Mac users!

Yeah, I admit I went a little bit overboard, but it's still really cool. It takes a bit of work (but then again so does anything on a PC) to get something that's plugged into a USB port on a computer that's PHYSICALLY a Macintosh but VIRTUALLY a PC to work correctly. I do have a Compact Flash card reader that works fine with both the Mac and PC. Once TI releases that USB graph link, I'll be fine. They've been working on it for how many years now? C'mon.

-Fil's "Bucket" O' Pennies(TM)' Second $0.02

View Fil's "Bucket" at http://209.50.19.75/coinage.html

Bzzt. Thumbs Down.

All of the FX done in Jurassic Park and T2 were done on hefty SGI Irix boxen. The power in both realtime and brute force rendering is several times (well, was) that of both a Mac and an Intel based box (since the graphics hardware was 9000% that of what was available to the general public, ie NOT voodoo).

90% of the special effects in movies today are done either on NT or Unix (read: SGI) machines, with rendering done on some form of Unix in a massive rendering pool.

Softimage|3D, Softimage|XSI, and Softimage|DS are the 3 most commonly used tools for high end 3D and video editing (including both Alias|Wavefront and a few others), and most of that runs on either NT or IRIX. Very little is actually done on Macs, save sound.

Though this hopefully will change with MacOS X, or with Alias (wavefront) and Avid (Softimage) porting their products to linux...

Now Mr. Jobs needs to cut the cost on those G4 cubes, maybe then I'd buy one!!!

Actually, he did cut the cost of the cube. If you buy it you get $300 off (I think). I almost bought a cube a few months ago but ended up with the top-end iMac instead, and am very, very pleased.

-Fil's "Bucket" O' Pennies(TM)' Third $0.02

View Fil's "Bucket" at http://209.50.19.75/coinage.html

Hmm...Windows is buggy and unstable, huh? I guess you've never used Windows 2000.

Matt Smith

yeah win9x is lousy because of that. i run linux and it never crashes unless I mess it up somehow, and i've heard similar things about win2k. (and nt4.)
-Andrew
A^2 Programming

Not to dis you or anything and say your GPA of 4 is bad (great going), but there are other things that count. Having fun while doing well in school (I am not sure exactly what my GPA is but I'm somewhere between an A- and B+) is the key point. If you can go out and have fun with friends and still do what you want later on in life...that's what matters.

My 2c x 7.5 (in to Francs) = 15 centimes!!!

From another proud mac user,

Aram

yes. for example, some people have a life. some people have a girlfriend, some people do things besides school. some people get their report card and go 'holy crap look at this i got a 3.0!' and are amazed as all hell. yessir. god i'm glad i have a 3.0...

> (great going)

Maybe not. He never said the GPA was based on a 4-point scale ;-)

I must concur,(if spelled wrong, it shows I'm not too good at english) macs are great. Back on subject:
A=90-100
B=80-89
c=70-79
d=60-69
f=<59

PS: for my classes senior year I don't have to take the mid-terms and finals if I have an A Average, what I wouldn't give for a 80-100=A!