Engie's weblog

I subscribed to Constitutional Struggles in Coursera, and the below is an email from our professor showing the true and ugly side of the American Legal System: Dear All, I write this email under protest and with a considerable degree of anger and sadness. Few things illustrate the bone-headedness, short-sightedness, and sheer chauvinism of the political structure of the United States better than the extent to which its ideologues are willing to go to score cheap domestic political points with narrow interests in the pursuit of a sanctions regime that has clearly run its course. You might remember the Apple ad from a few years back, in which the company proudly announced that their machines were now so powerful that they fell under export restrictions: "For the first time in history a personal computer has been classified as a weapon by the US government ..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4dDuocAXTY Well, that was a tongue in cheek quip at their Winte...

After finishing CS101 at Coursera, I decided to give Udacity a shot. At first, I was a bit skeptical, particularly that most of the comparisons between Coursera and Udacity that I have met, most of them have praised Udacity's style but none has delved deep into comparing the content. Let's begin with first things first. What shall I compare here? - Programming Languages, - Instructors, - Content of course, - Platform, - Forums, and - Grading. * Programming Languages:  a- Udacity        --> Python 2.x (2.6 or 2.7, not sure)  b- Coursera     --> Modified version of javascript In this respect, I am completely biased against Coursera. The modified version of javascript is really easy to grasp and use, but, at the end of the day it is a __modified__ version. The real javascript is much more difficult. Moreover, the course just scratches the surface using javascript. For me, I think Coursera should have used an unc...