It's undeniable that across the board (not just in science), exams in the UK have been getting easier. Compare an old O-level paper against the modern "equivalent" GCSE paper in almost any subject, and you'll find almost no resemblance (a better comparison is an old O-level paper against an equivalent modern A-level paper). The same goes for A-levels. And this isn't only happening at Foundation tier - it happens at Intermediate and Higher tiers too, and as a result, universities and employers are having a much harder time selecting applicants based upon their academic qualifications.
The government wants everyone to get their 5 A*-C grades (the benchmark) and be as employable as possible as a result. And over the past couple of decades, the percentage doing so has skyrocketed - not because people are getting more intelligent or are being taught better, but because exams have been getting easier and easier. I once saw a Foundation tier maths question which listed several integers and asked the candidate to pick an even number. This is GCSE, for crying out loud. This is what 16 year olds are meant to be doing, according to our education system. I don't care if it's the Foundation paper, this is ridiculous - people can achieve a C grade by answering such questions.
And what's going to happen if this continues? Well, for a start, employers and universities, some of which are swamped with applicants (I speak as a recent Cambridge applicant) are going to start raising the bar more and more - no longer will 5 A*-C grades suffice, it'll be 6, then 7, etc. and then all those extra GCSEs people have because they were made easier will be devalued. With propsals of an A** grade for GCSE and an A* grade for A-levels (God forbid), this doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. In 5 years time, what good will the A** grade have done when it's worth the same as an A* currently is?
Some universities now ask for individual module marks in A and AS-levels, as well as asking for good grades in their own tests, such as STEP, BMAT etc. Even with a personal statement, a list of grades and perhaps even an interview, they still have a hell of a hard time deciding who to accept.
It's not just the government's fault either - I blame many of the schools that discourage people from taking subjects like maths, sciences and languages because they're seen as difficult subjects and will be detrimental to their position in the league tables, which are now just one big joke. Vocational GCSEs are sometimes worth up to 4 times as much as a normal GCSE. Is Cake Decorating really 4 times as important as Physics?
What's just as bad is the fact that iGCSEs (International GCSE, an extension of the GCSE syllabus, and arguably much more difficult), which some schools are changing to in response to the slipping standards of GCSEs, are not currently recognised. A school can be one of the best in the country and have 0 points in the league tables just because they're shunning GCSE and doing something more substantial. As a result, the uptake of iGCSEs (and other such alternative qualifications) has partly been hindered by school boards anxious about the tables.
The goal of the GCSE was to provide people with a good, compulsory minimum level of knowledge and understanding before they leave school, whilst providing a good "stepping-stone" for those who want to continue their studies. It now does neither. People being taught just the standard syllabus are left nowhere near as knowledgeable as they should be, and it seems that other than in the few places that teach well beyond the syllabus, gifted children are not given the means to flourish, or even be recognised as gifted. How many more modern-day Newtons are we going to waste before our education system is fixed?
It's good to see someone using a common-sense approach to tackling piracy. Whether it'll actually work or not is another matter, but it can't exactly be much less successful than any existing anti-piracy measures, can it?
A lot of patents won't make a company that much money by themselves (i.e. through licensing and lawsuits). But they give companies leverage with which to push around other companies - the result being that there's diminished competition in that area. So they won't be losing as many potential sales of their product to other competitors.
I used to work with an autistic person, at a large technology company. Whilst socially awkward (prancing around wildly in corridors etc), he was one of the most intelligent people I've met, and although no-one ever saw him doing any work, he always finished his workload far ahead of schedule. Autism != mental deficiency. It's better described as a social deficiency.
FTFA:
There's a very strong argument that the re-use of well-known chords in the sequence the instructor played them would be a violation of the copyright I really don't think the use of a sequence of chords should count as copyright violation, unless there really is something special and significant about them. Perhaps a very unusual chord progression with a particular rythym might have some merit (extend this idea far enough and we have an entire song, which does deserve copyright status), but really, who would really think the sequence "G C D" should have any copyright value? They are exactly as described in the article - "well-known chords".
It's incredibly common to see songs using the exact same chords as each other (maybe in a different key), often with the same strumming pattern, e.g.:
- "Someday You Will Be Loved" by Death Cab for Cutie uses the chords of "House of the Rising Sun" all the way through, except in a different key, and with one chord made minor instead of major.
- "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day and "Wonderwall" by Oasis use the same chord progression - this is just a very common progression.
But no-one cares about that, do they? So why should this case be any different? It's not illegal to play a popular song written by someone else, on the guitar. Try and find an electric guitarist who hasn't ever played the riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit". So why on Earth should teaching someone to do so be illegal?
A kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight, so by definition, we wouldn't be using a gravitational acceleration method anyway if we want proper results.
Anyway, the strength of the gravitational field on Earth depends heavily on where in the world you are - the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and so g varies between (IIRC) about 9.78 and 9.81 m/s depending on where you are.
that quantum computer hardware has been making strides recently, I have to think:
Are we going to be thwarted by the difficult of developing software for quantum computers?
I'm no expert on quantum computing, but I can imagine there's a huge amount to think about when programming even trivial applications for it - not so long ago we had an article on parallel programming being too hard - this is just with normal computers where everything is clearly defined in ones and zeroes. I certainly can't imagine dealing with qubits to be any simpler... after all, if quantum computing relies on simultaneity, isn't this a vast extension of the parallel programming problem?
It would be interesting (albeit an ethical grey area) if one day we reached a stage where we can create a clone of someone from their genome (i.e. without needing their actual DNA). We'd be able to recreate people hundreds of years after they die.
But we're still rather a while away from being able to stick together billions of base pairs and create a usable piece of DNA. However - it's actually been done before (article is pretty old, I know) with simpler organisms (viruses) and their RNA, so it's not unthinkable...
I don't think making ODF an ANSI standard is a big threat to Office Open XML (in terms of widespread use) as far as they're concerned:
The American National Standards list does not include a number of document format standards in wide use today, such as PDF,.doc, RTF and HTML.
Slashdot Mirror
It's undeniable that across the board (not just in science), exams in the UK have been getting easier. Compare an old O-level paper against the modern "equivalent" GCSE paper in almost any subject, and you'll find almost no resemblance (a better comparison is an old O-level paper against an equivalent modern A-level paper). The same goes for A-levels. And this isn't only happening at Foundation tier - it happens at Intermediate and Higher tiers too, and as a result, universities and employers are having a much harder time selecting applicants based upon their academic qualifications.
The government wants everyone to get their 5 A*-C grades (the benchmark) and be as employable as possible as a result. And over the past couple of decades, the percentage doing so has skyrocketed - not because people are getting more intelligent or are being taught better, but because exams have been getting easier and easier. I once saw a Foundation tier maths question which listed several integers and asked the candidate to pick an even number. This is GCSE, for crying out loud. This is what 16 year olds are meant to be doing, according to our education system. I don't care if it's the Foundation paper, this is ridiculous - people can achieve a C grade by answering such questions.
And what's going to happen if this continues? Well, for a start, employers and universities, some of which are swamped with applicants (I speak as a recent Cambridge applicant) are going to start raising the bar more and more - no longer will 5 A*-C grades suffice, it'll be 6, then 7, etc. and then all those extra GCSEs people have because they were made easier will be devalued. With propsals of an A** grade for GCSE and an A* grade for A-levels (God forbid), this doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon. In 5 years time, what good will the A** grade have done when it's worth the same as an A* currently is?
Some universities now ask for individual module marks in A and AS-levels, as well as asking for good grades in their own tests, such as STEP, BMAT etc. Even with a personal statement, a list of grades and perhaps even an interview, they still have a hell of a hard time deciding who to accept.
It's not just the government's fault either - I blame many of the schools that discourage people from taking subjects like maths, sciences and languages because they're seen as difficult subjects and will be detrimental to their position in the league tables, which are now just one big joke. Vocational GCSEs are sometimes worth up to 4 times as much as a normal GCSE. Is Cake Decorating really 4 times as important as Physics?
What's just as bad is the fact that iGCSEs (International GCSE, an extension of the GCSE syllabus, and arguably much more difficult), which some schools are changing to in response to the slipping standards of GCSEs, are not currently recognised. A school can be one of the best in the country and have 0 points in the league tables just because they're shunning GCSE and doing something more substantial. As a result, the uptake of iGCSEs (and other such alternative qualifications) has partly been hindered by school boards anxious about the tables.
The goal of the GCSE was to provide people with a good, compulsory minimum level of knowledge and understanding before they leave school, whilst providing a good "stepping-stone" for those who want to continue their studies. It now does neither. People being taught just the standard syllabus are left nowhere near as knowledgeable as they should be, and it seems that other than in the few places that teach well beyond the syllabus, gifted children are not given the means to flourish, or even be recognised as gifted. How many more modern-day Newtons are we going to waste before our education system is fixed?
It's good to see someone using a common-sense approach to tackling piracy. Whether it'll actually work or not is another matter, but it can't exactly be much less successful than any existing anti-piracy measures, can it?
The average age of gamers in the US is actually 33. Surprising, but true.
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to viruses,
Hap...
Fatal Error: HappyBirthday.exe has been corrupted. Please contact your system administrator.
[OK]
A lot of patents won't make a company that much money by themselves (i.e. through licensing and lawsuits). But they give companies leverage with which to push around other companies - the result being that there's diminished competition in that area. So they won't be losing as many potential sales of their product to other competitors.
I used to work with an autistic person, at a large technology company. Whilst socially awkward (prancing around wildly in corridors etc), he was one of the most intelligent people I've met, and although no-one ever saw him doing any work, he always finished his workload far ahead of schedule. Autism != mental deficiency. It's better described as a social deficiency.
It's incredibly common to see songs using the exact same chords as each other (maybe in a different key), often with the same strumming pattern, e.g.:
- "Someday You Will Be Loved" by Death Cab for Cutie uses the chords of "House of the Rising Sun" all the way through, except in a different key, and with one chord made minor instead of major.
- "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day and "Wonderwall" by Oasis use the same chord progression - this is just a very common progression.
But no-one cares about that, do they? So why should this case be any different? It's not illegal to play a popular song written by someone else, on the guitar. Try and find an electric guitarist who hasn't ever played the riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit". So why on Earth should teaching someone to do so be illegal?
Yes, innovation is important. But at the end of the day, implementation is everything.
Looks like someone has a punctuation-removing robot...
If you are hoping that I'm going to tell you now some way of getting DirectX 10 to work on Vista, you are going to be disappointed.
In 20 years time you'll be remembered for being the man who said "180 degrees is enough for anyone".
Atoms don't even have clearly defined boundaries. They're a probability "cloud".
A kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight, so by definition, we wouldn't be using a gravitational acceleration method anyway if we want proper results.
Anyway, the strength of the gravitational field on Earth depends heavily on where in the world you are - the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and so g varies between (IIRC) about 9.78 and 9.81 m/s depending on where you are.
that quantum computer hardware has been making strides recently, I have to think:
Are we going to be thwarted by the difficult of developing software for quantum computers?
I'm no expert on quantum computing, but I can imagine there's a huge amount to think about when programming even trivial applications for it - not so long ago we had an article on parallel programming being too hard - this is just with normal computers where everything is clearly defined in ones and zeroes. I certainly can't imagine dealing with qubits to be any simpler... after all, if quantum computing relies on simultaneity, isn't this a vast extension of the parallel programming problem?
It would be interesting (albeit an ethical grey area) if one day we reached a stage where we can create a clone of someone from their genome (i.e. without needing their actual DNA). We'd be able to recreate people hundreds of years after they die.
But we're still rather a while away from being able to stick together billions of base pairs and create a usable piece of DNA. However - it's actually been done before (article is pretty old, I know) with simpler organisms (viruses) and their RNA, so it's not unthinkable...
Just (2^128 - 2) more to go!
MULTIPLY TEDIOUS BY OVERLY-VERBOSE GIVING COBOL.
Whilst 80% of the world's code is written in COBOL, I have to agree with Dijkstra on this one (see sig).
Sounds like the article was written by Senator Stevens. Nothing to fear, 22 emails can't possibly clog our tubes.
Well yes. Except Phase 2 isn't "???", since only ninjas are that secretive.
Phase 2 in this case is clearly something along the lines of "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!"
I can imagine someone at a LAN party shouting:
When I read the title I thought they'd written everything in Comic Sans MS.
The American National Standards list does not include a number of document format standards in wide use today, such as PDF,
I drink tea.