"1. Making the punishment so extreme (expulsion) that even if the risk of getting caught is low, cheating is not a good idea. The problem with this approach is that as the risks of getting caught decrease, people dismiss the risk as zero."
This is not a problem with humans ability to determine probability. As the penalties go up, the actual risk does go down. Because people are less likely to report instances of cheating or suspected cheating if they perceive the penalty to be unfair or too extreme. On a more practical level, if the penalty is high, only severe cases are likely to be reported just due to documentation issues.
If I can just give a zero for an assignment rather than involve the organization, more cheating will be punished. Many organizations do not allow this.
"2. Increasing the chance of being caught. This is a problem because of the costs involved, as well as an "arms race" between proctors and students."
Your points are lacking. Why not make cheating impractical? It's pretty easy. It also has the advantage of making tests more comprehensive. Granted, you might have less of them because they wouldn't be as easy to score.
"They were married, with all the legal and moral implications of that institution."
Marriage is a contract, no more, no less. Just like a employment contract, a mortgage or a cell phone contract. You are confusing religious ceremony and personal relationships with the actual civil contract enforced by the state. While those might be beneficial, those really aren't important to the actual contract. Put another way, as far as the state is concerned, no civil contract (marriage license), no marriage; the relationship and religious ceremony don't make the marriage (common law marriage was an exception).
Marriage started as a business arrangement. Women were property. The institution you speak of is recent and just as arbitrary.
"The problem with the recent real estate-spawned crisis wasn't the development of these untried tools, but the amount of risk that the entire market subsumed via extraordinary levels of leverage. Merely requiring a greater degree of leverage, would have mitigated the harm from the crisis no matter what crazy and risky financial instruments had been created."
It depends on your definition of mitigate and reasonable leverage. I see no reason that a historically reasonable level of leverage would have been better than a bad one. What's the difference between 30 to 1 and 10 to 1 if everything is interconnected? Sure the long term effects may not be as bad, but everything will still collapse in the short term. So you are still left with the tools that allowed the problem to exist. And someone will always create the tools.
"Well, sure, if your idea is to blow up a plane it's much simpler and less expensive than that, all you need is to buy and smuggle a small number of shoulder fired rocket propelled grenade launchers that may even be heat or otherwise guided and then you just wait by an airport for a plane."
I think toner cartridges will still work. Just be sure to keep the weight down...
Or we could go back to mislabeled oxygen canisters.
"A dog might smell a new material but not understand it. However, a machine might show a human an anomaly and it could raise a red flag."
Sorry, but dogs are better than the machines. Because the machines have to be trained too. Plus you still have to depend on the human to catch the anomaly. And you just can't do that as a human. Screening is boring. In any case, your basic screening (metal detectors) has been sufficient to prevent any explosives of sufficient quantity to down a plane from entering via passengers.
We use machines because we love technology. Rather than what works best.
"I see all three of those mistakes frequently and I can guarantee it's because of spell-checkers."
And you are completely wrong. Spell checkers check spelling and not word use.
"It's just another step on the road towards our schools completely abandoning their jobs and turning out graduates who are even more useless in the workforce."
It's not the job of the schools to turn out graduates for the workforce. It's the job of the schools to educate. There is a difference. You are thinking of technical schools. In any case, our schools are little changed from the 19th century. In which case there is no problem with the graduates they are turning out. It just happens that those jobs don't seem to be in great demand.
The problem with most people complaining about the use of technology in schools (strange concept on Slashdot) is that they have no concept about the test goals. I have actually scored these types of exams. They test state education standards, ultimately set by the legislature. The states require college graduates to score these tests (the non multiple choice portion). Each test is scored by at least two people who have to agree within a point on each response (each response is generally worth between 0 and 5 points). You have about a minute or two to score a test consisting of an essay or up to 5 or 6 math or science questions. On a five point essay, the values break down roughly as follows: 0, no or minimal response, 1, they tried to answer, 2, they have a coherent answer or a paragraph or more that is somewhat coherent, 3, the response is good, 4, the response is really good (college bound), 5, they probably can write better than me or have real talent. States typically expect scores to average between 2 and 3. The essays are graded as a whole, which means that spelling and punctuation and the like are minor issues. If it is really bad, it might cost them a point. But it is very unlikely that they have good writing and poor spelling that would justify a lower score. I've never seen it on a standardized test.
The graduates you are complaining about always existed. You just never looked for them. They are everywhere, including management. I've worked for many of them.
"What I don't get is the stance on Afghanistan. We can now allow the same people to regain power in the region, its just cant happen. If we ignore terrorism it isn't going to go away, and most of the alternative solutions are quite frankly moronic."
What I don't get is stupid and ignorant people like you. We have accomplished our mission in Afghanistan. We have destroyed the people who attacked us. Those who we haven't destroyed are no longer in the country.
We can't stop terrorism. We can't stop the Taliban from controlling Afghanistan when they have the support of the population*. At best we can encourage them not to support terrorism against us. Likewise we can't stop terrorists from relocating across the border or to another region. At best we can adopt policies to minimize the damage from terrorism and the support for it. And then not overreact like we did after 9/11.
*At any level of troops and committment that we are willing to provide.
"I specifically exclude social security/medicare/medicaid payments from this discussion, I'm only talking about what's your net tax on IRS form 1040."
Sorry, but those are taxes too. I've had the opportunity to pay them on my 1040 for many years when I worked as a contractor. They have been used to fund the government for decades.
And you need to realize that the great unwashed masses eventually redistribute the wealth all by themselves when they get mad enough. There is a very good reason for the thing we call welfare. It prevents unplanned urban renewal.
Please define waste. When you get a coherent definition, get back to me. It's certainly easier than defining god. But not by much.
"I mean it's participation in the government by the people, it's the government (pretending at least) listening to the people, it's wet dream of sorts."
We already have people participating in government via elections. Considering how well those turn out, I don't believe people in general can do better on the specifics.
"Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US)."
Why all the worry about the US extraditing Assange from Sweden? He was after all in the UK, an ally of the US. If the US wanted him, the UK would have provided him wrapped up with a fucking bow (with the appropriate regrets in public). And considering our policy of rendition, detention and torture, legal niceties don't really matter anyway.
"Lowest price isn't the only qualification for a happy customer, but it is the only criteria on the Internet."
You are simply incorrect. I order from the internet primarily because of selection and service. Price is not a primary driver unless it is truly significant. In which case we are back to service (treating the customer fairly). Buying online is an indication of a failure of local business.
"One thing that has happened that a lot of people don't like to talk about is that a lot of sub-par small businesses have also shut down."
This cannot be repeated too often. While we may consider big box stores awful, many small businesses were even worse. Just like the good old days, they were never as good as we remembered.
"My experience has been that really expensive clothing lasts a lot longer than the moderately expensive stuff."
The problem with clothing is that it is very difficult to determine durability from price. Basic low end clothing has declined in quality over many decades. And moderately priced clothing seems to be nothing more than low end clothing with a higher price tag. No wonder people buy on price (or the clearance rack).
"So order nicer stuff. I do that just to get t-shirts that last, jeans that don't suck and whole host of other things."
It would be nice to not to have to special order those things. I've noticed the cheap mass market products of 20 years ago hold up much better than the cheap products of today.
Is this a function of Walmart? Or any large box store that is not locally owned? And ultimately, so what?
It's pretty obvious that local stores close. Despite all of the complaints about big box stores, they are superior to most local businesses in most of the ways that people care about (service, price, selection, convenience, etc.) It might be harmful in the long run but we are really bad at long term thinking.
"Getting info in your local store, then going online and buying what they recommend cheaper. You essentially cheat the businessman that way. He gave you a service, his expertise, and his price reflects that."
I think it is very important to support businesses that provide real expertise and service. Which unfortunately for many local businesses do not include them (chain or otherwise). One of the primary reasons I buy from the internet is not price but for expertise and service (not that the price isn't nice). I don't know that local businesses can always compete-after all, it's easy to be an expert and draw customers from the entire US online. Having said that, many businesses seem to think that they are somehow entittled to business because they are local. Even though they have the same or worse service and expertise than the chains. In which case the chains are going to win (when they don't lose out to the internet). And competing on price pretty much attracts people who will go elsewhere to save a buck. Live by price, die by price.
"Why? Partly because she was the Solicitor General [npr.org]:
SHAPIRO: How common is it for a new justice to have to recuse from the number of cases that Kagan is recusing herself from?
TOTENBERG: Well, it's not common because, at least more recently, we haven't had top Justice Department officials migrating to the court."
The really interesting thing is that there is no requirement for her to recuse herself. Supreme Court justices get to decide for themselves whether they have a conflict of interest. So, for instance, if your wife works for one side of the case you don't have to recuse yourself....
"Lets compare Independence Day to say Avatar. In Independence Day they actually blew up a small scale replica of a city with mini explosions."
Let's not. The effects in ID4 were horrid. They also used computer effects in addition to miniatures. They bragged about the quantity of effects they got for the money. It showed in the quality.
"There's a lot to be said for limitations and how it can make movies better."
But those movies you list EXIST because of special effects. And they are impressive because of them. Star Wars without aliens, light sabers, star ships and alien worlds would be a western. Jaws without the shark would be what exactly?
FX enables directors, producers and writers to ruin movies about as much as sound and color and 3D. In any case, it's older than all of those. Saying FX ruins movies provides an excuse for crappy movies and the people who make and like them. Nothing wrong with making and liking them but at least admit that they suck.
"... I see no major problems in being free to go without health insurance."
But most reasonable people do see the problem. We as a society have made the decision to provide everyone with some level of medical care. In the US, everyone that comes to the ED will be treated. Once that decision has been made, it is reasonable to require you to pay for it in some manner.
You can complain all you want but at the present time you cannot totally opt out of the system without leaving the country. I'm not suggesting that you do. The negative part of a society is that it does collectively things that we as individuals don't like.
"2. Price transparency. In most states you can't even check to see if you're being ripped off because price lists are secret!"
That would be nice. If I take my car in for service, the shop is required to provide me with a quote. They are required to follow certain rules in regard to that quote. I wish that medical services had the same rules.
"I would also add removing the mandates on insurance companies that prevents them from being sold across state lines."
And what imaginary restriction would this be?
I'll give you a hint. There isn't one. Insurance companies can sell the same policies across state lines.
What they can't do is ignore STATE insurance requirements. So all those people who "hate" federal involvement in insurance want to limit STATE rights. And screw customers. Because it will reduce coverage. And the rates will keep going up.
Under the present interpretation of the commerce clause it is constitutional. Anyone who believes otherwise is ignorant of the case law. As others have noted, if you can be sent to jail for smoking weed grown in your backyard under the commerce clause, then you can be fined for not buying insurance.
The actual dispute is whether the Supreme Court will follow the current interpretation. And if it doesn't, exactly how it will do it (single exception or larger roll back).
"As many problems as Republicans have had also being addicted to spending, they had an alternative health care plan [gop.gov] (read the house summary PDF) that actually tried to address costs within the system instead of forcing you to buy into a broken system." Just the ability to buy insurance across state lines alone would improve things."
Could we please stop with this crap. The Republicans didn't have an alternative plan. Every major thing they wanted made it into the plan. Hell, this WAS the 1994 Republican plan.
"Just the ability to buy insurance across state lines alone would improve things."
No it wouldn't. It would merely gut insurance. A race to the bottom. And the rates would keep climbing. Nothing stops insurance companies from offering insurance across state lines. They just choose not to do so (they don't want to meet state requirements). Anyone who is opposed to the federal government involvement in health insurance but supports this idea is a fucking lying hypocrite.
Slashdot Mirror
"1. Making the punishment so extreme (expulsion) that even if the risk of getting caught is low, cheating is not a good idea. The problem with this approach is that as the risks of getting caught decrease, people dismiss the risk as zero."
This is not a problem with humans ability to determine probability. As the penalties go up, the actual risk does go down. Because people are less likely to report instances of cheating or suspected cheating if they perceive the penalty to be unfair or too extreme. On a more practical level, if the penalty is high, only severe cases are likely to be reported just due to documentation issues.
If I can just give a zero for an assignment rather than involve the organization, more cheating will be punished. Many organizations do not allow this.
"2. Increasing the chance of being caught. This is a problem because of the costs involved, as well as an "arms race" between proctors and students."
Your points are lacking. Why not make cheating impractical? It's pretty easy. It also has the advantage of making tests more comprehensive. Granted, you might have less of them because they wouldn't be as easy to score.
"They were married, with all the legal and moral implications of that institution."
Marriage is a contract, no more, no less. Just like a employment contract, a mortgage or a cell phone contract. You are confusing religious ceremony and personal relationships with the actual civil contract enforced by the state. While those might be beneficial, those really aren't important to the actual contract. Put another way, as far as the state is concerned, no civil contract (marriage license), no marriage; the relationship and religious ceremony don't make the marriage (common law marriage was an exception).
Marriage started as a business arrangement. Women were property. The institution you speak of is recent and just as arbitrary.
"The problem with the recent real estate-spawned crisis wasn't the development of these untried tools, but the amount of risk that the entire market subsumed via extraordinary levels of leverage. Merely requiring a greater degree of leverage, would have mitigated the harm from the crisis no matter what crazy and risky financial instruments had been created."
It depends on your definition of mitigate and reasonable leverage. I see no reason that a historically reasonable level of leverage would have been better than a bad one. What's the difference between 30 to 1 and 10 to 1 if everything is interconnected? Sure the long term effects may not be as bad, but everything will still collapse in the short term. So you are still left with the tools that allowed the problem to exist. And someone will always create the tools.
"Well, sure, if your idea is to blow up a plane it's much simpler and less expensive than that, all you need is to buy and smuggle a small number of shoulder fired rocket propelled grenade launchers that may even be heat or otherwise guided and then you just wait by an airport for a plane."
I think toner cartridges will still work. Just be sure to keep the weight down...
Or we could go back to mislabeled oxygen canisters.
"A dog might smell a new material but not understand it. However, a machine might show a human an anomaly and it could raise a red flag."
Sorry, but dogs are better than the machines. Because the machines have to be trained too. Plus you still have to depend on the human to catch the anomaly. And you just can't do that as a human. Screening is boring. In any case, your basic screening (metal detectors) has been sufficient to prevent any explosives of sufficient quantity to down a plane from entering via passengers.
We use machines because we love technology. Rather than what works best.
"I see all three of those mistakes frequently and I can guarantee it's because of spell-checkers."
And you are completely wrong. Spell checkers check spelling and not word use.
"It's just another step on the road towards our schools completely abandoning their jobs and turning out graduates who are even more useless in the workforce."
It's not the job of the schools to turn out graduates for the workforce. It's the job of the schools to educate. There is a difference. You are thinking of technical schools. In any case, our schools are little changed from the 19th century. In which case there is no problem with the graduates they are turning out. It just happens that those jobs don't seem to be in great demand.
The problem with most people complaining about the use of technology in schools (strange concept on Slashdot) is that they have no concept about the test goals. I have actually scored these types of exams. They test state education standards, ultimately set by the legislature. The states require college graduates to score these tests (the non multiple choice portion). Each test is scored by at least two people who have to agree within a point on each response (each response is generally worth between 0 and 5 points). You have about a minute or two to score a test consisting of an essay or up to 5 or 6 math or science questions. On a five point essay, the values break down roughly as follows: 0, no or minimal response, 1, they tried to answer, 2, they have a coherent answer or a paragraph or more that is somewhat coherent, 3, the response is good, 4, the response is really good (college bound), 5, they probably can write better than me or have real talent. States typically expect scores to average between 2 and 3. The essays are graded as a whole, which means that spelling and punctuation and the like are minor issues. If it is really bad, it might cost them a point. But it is very unlikely that they have good writing and poor spelling that would justify a lower score. I've never seen it on a standardized test.
The graduates you are complaining about always existed. You just never looked for them. They are everywhere, including management. I've worked for many of them.
"What I don't get is the stance on Afghanistan. We can now allow the same people to regain power in the region, its just cant happen. If we ignore terrorism it isn't going to go away, and most of the alternative solutions are quite frankly moronic."
What I don't get is stupid and ignorant people like you. We have accomplished our mission in Afghanistan. We have destroyed the people who attacked us. Those who we haven't destroyed are no longer in the country.
We can't stop terrorism. We can't stop the Taliban from controlling Afghanistan when they have the support of the population*. At best we can encourage them not to support terrorism against us. Likewise we can't stop terrorists from relocating across the border or to another region. At best we can adopt policies to minimize the damage from terrorism and the support for it. And then not overreact like we did after 9/11.
*At any level of troops and committment that we are willing to provide.
"I specifically exclude social security/medicare/medicaid payments from this discussion, I'm only talking about what's your net tax on IRS form 1040."
Sorry, but those are taxes too. I've had the opportunity to pay them on my 1040 for many years when I worked as a contractor. They have been used to fund the government for decades.
And you need to realize that the great unwashed masses eventually redistribute the wealth all by themselves when they get mad enough. There is a very good reason for the thing we call welfare. It prevents unplanned urban renewal.
"Waste is waste isn't it?"
Please define waste. When you get a coherent definition, get back to me. It's certainly easier than defining god. But not by much.
"I mean it's participation in the government by the people, it's the government (pretending at least) listening to the people, it's wet dream of sorts."
We already have people participating in government via elections. Considering how well those turn out, I don't believe people in general can do better on the specifics.
"Once Sweden extradites him, in all likelihood, he can't be extradited *from* Sweden by another country (say, US)."
Why all the worry about the US extraditing Assange from Sweden? He was after all in the UK, an ally of the US. If the US wanted him, the UK would have provided him wrapped up with a fucking bow (with the appropriate regrets in public). And considering our policy of rendition, detention and torture, legal niceties don't really matter anyway.
"Lowest price isn't the only qualification for a happy customer, but it is the only criteria on the Internet."
You are simply incorrect. I order from the internet primarily because of selection and service. Price is not a primary driver unless it is truly significant. In which case we are back to service (treating the customer fairly). Buying online is an indication of a failure of local business.
"One thing that has happened that a lot of people don't like to talk about is that a lot of sub-par small businesses have also shut down."
This cannot be repeated too often. While we may consider big box stores awful, many small businesses were even worse. Just like the good old days, they were never as good as we remembered.
"My experience has been that really expensive clothing lasts a lot longer than the moderately expensive stuff."
The problem with clothing is that it is very difficult to determine durability from price. Basic low end clothing has declined in quality over many decades. And moderately priced clothing seems to be nothing more than low end clothing with a higher price tag. No wonder people buy on price (or the clearance rack).
"So order nicer stuff. I do that just to get t-shirts that last, jeans that don't suck and whole host of other things."
It would be nice to not to have to special order those things. I've noticed the cheap mass market products of 20 years ago hold up much better than the cheap products of today.
Is this a function of Walmart? Or any large box store that is not locally owned? And ultimately, so what?
It's pretty obvious that local stores close. Despite all of the complaints about big box stores, they are superior to most local businesses in most of the ways that people care about (service, price, selection, convenience, etc.) It might be harmful in the long run but we are really bad at long term thinking.
"Getting info in your local store, then going online and buying what they recommend cheaper. You essentially cheat the businessman that way. He gave you a service, his expertise, and his price reflects that."
I think it is very important to support businesses that provide real expertise and service. Which unfortunately for many local businesses do not include them (chain or otherwise). One of the primary reasons I buy from the internet is not price but for expertise and service (not that the price isn't nice). I don't know that local businesses can always compete-after all, it's easy to be an expert and draw customers from the entire US online. Having said that, many businesses seem to think that they are somehow entittled to business because they are local. Even though they have the same or worse service and expertise than the chains. In which case the chains are going to win (when they don't lose out to the internet). And competing on price pretty much attracts people who will go elsewhere to save a buck. Live by price, die by price.
"I don't think there was any reasonable way with traditional tv to keep Farscape."
I don't know. Lucas can do amazing things with CGI. Give him some script input and ....
So that's the sound of ultimate suffering.....
"Why? Partly because she was the Solicitor General [npr.org]:
SHAPIRO: How common is it for a new justice to have to recuse from the number of cases that Kagan is recusing herself from?
TOTENBERG: Well, it's not common because, at least more recently, we haven't had top Justice Department officials migrating to the court."
The really interesting thing is that there is no requirement for her to recuse herself. Supreme Court justices get to decide for themselves whether they have a conflict of interest. So, for instance, if your wife works for one side of the case you don't have to recuse yourself....
"Lets compare Independence Day to say Avatar. In Independence Day they actually blew up a small scale replica of a city with mini explosions."
Let's not. The effects in ID4 were horrid. They also used computer effects in addition to miniatures. They bragged about the quantity of effects they got for the money. It showed in the quality.
"There's a lot to be said for limitations and how it can make movies better."
But those movies you list EXIST because of special effects. And they are impressive because of them. Star Wars without aliens, light sabers, star ships and alien worlds would be a western. Jaws without the shark would be what exactly?
FX enables directors, producers and writers to ruin movies about as much as sound and color and 3D. In any case, it's older than all of those. Saying FX ruins movies provides an excuse for crappy movies and the people who make and like them. Nothing wrong with making and liking them but at least admit that they suck.
"... I see no major problems in being free to go without health insurance."
But most reasonable people do see the problem. We as a society have made the decision to provide everyone with some level of medical care. In the US, everyone that comes to the ED will be treated. Once that decision has been made, it is reasonable to require you to pay for it in some manner.
You can complain all you want but at the present time you cannot totally opt out of the system without leaving the country. I'm not suggesting that you do. The negative part of a society is that it does collectively things that we as individuals don't like.
"2. Price transparency. In most states you can't even check to see if you're being ripped off because price lists are secret!"
That would be nice. If I take my car in for service, the shop is required to provide me with a quote. They are required to follow certain rules in regard to that quote. I wish that medical services had the same rules.
"I would also add removing the mandates on insurance companies that prevents them from being sold across state lines."
And what imaginary restriction would this be?
I'll give you a hint. There isn't one. Insurance companies can sell the same policies across state lines.
What they can't do is ignore STATE insurance requirements. So all those people who "hate" federal involvement in insurance want to limit STATE rights. And screw customers. Because it will reduce coverage. And the rates will keep going up.
"Do you think it is unconstitutional or not?"
Under the present interpretation of the commerce clause it is constitutional. Anyone who believes otherwise is ignorant of the case law. As others have noted, if you can be sent to jail for smoking weed grown in your backyard under the commerce clause, then you can be fined for not buying insurance.
The actual dispute is whether the Supreme Court will follow the current interpretation. And if it doesn't, exactly how it will do it (single exception or larger roll back).
"As many problems as Republicans have had also being addicted to spending, they had an alternative health care plan [gop.gov] (read the house summary PDF) that actually tried to address costs within the system instead of forcing you to buy into a broken system." Just the ability to buy insurance across state lines alone would improve things."
Could we please stop with this crap. The Republicans didn't have an alternative plan. Every major thing they wanted made it into the plan. Hell, this WAS the 1994 Republican plan.
"Just the ability to buy insurance across state lines alone would improve things."
No it wouldn't. It would merely gut insurance. A race to the bottom. And the rates would keep climbing. Nothing stops insurance companies from offering insurance across state lines. They just choose not to do so (they don't want to meet state requirements). Anyone who is opposed to the federal government involvement in health insurance but supports this idea is a fucking lying hypocrite.