The beautiful thing about the internet is that you can cheerfully criticize people, making the most malign assertions based on your 'vision' of 'how things should be' all from the comfort of your easy chair in mom's basement.
In the internet world, resources are infinite, so you can wave your hand and have these guys put out that fire because it's "the right thing to do" regardless of the consequences of wear & tear on equipment, insurance coverage for the firemen, or any of those silly, petty mundane concerns.
Apparently in the internet world, you don't have to pay for fire trucks, repair them, train firefighters, or send them to RISK THEIR LIVES fighting a fire (that's real danger and real life, not just "I lose some xp and have to respawn" internet-life, by the way)?
You can simply declare these men - you know, these VOLUNTEER firefighters, who routinely risk their lives to save people who do all sorts of self-destructive things like drunk-driving, bungee jumping, drug use, etc. - are "evil" and "monsters" because they refused to exercise their blood, toil, tears, and sweat to save the PROPERTY of some dickwad that couldn't be bothered to write a $75 check.
Go ahead and call these men "evil" for not giving this guy a free ride. Claim anyone that defends them is some blind libertarian hewing to some sort of utopian ideal. In fact YOU'RE the one who's living in a fantasy, assuming that everything that "needs doing" will be done regardless of cost or consequence.
Let's play it your way: despite not paying the fee, this guy has a fire. Should the fire station be called out to put out his garage fire? What if there are kittens in there? How about his empty shed? Are they obligated to respond to ANY fire, or just the "serious" ones? Should the nearest town be obligated to provide police services free of charge as well? Snowplowing? Water? Sewer?
It's very, very simple - the county has limited resources. Their fire service is paid for by municipal taxes, but the widespread rural population (and probably low tax revenue from their properties) can't be covered. So rural people have a choice - $75 gets you fire coverage for a year. They didn't pay. They get no coverage. If they didn't like it, they could pay or, optionally, move closer to town where the coverage is available.
Nevertheless I wish my world were as simple as yours. Might get tough to navigate if everything's so black and white.
Look at it this way - let's say out of the goodness of their hearts, the firemen fight the fire. Oops! One got hurt or killed. Will the insurer (who bases his premiums certainly on the number of houses covered) pay for the injury/death? NOPE.
Look at it another: what if they're fighting this guy's fire and someone (who HAS paid) also has a fire? Whups, I'd expect the assive, slam-dunk lawsuit in about 0.0001 seconds.
Many of the articles state that the homeowner claims he 'forgot' to pay the $75. Really? Did he have a consistent history of paying it in previous years? It's ironic that this isn't mentioned, as far as I've seen.
If you think this seems 'heartless', you simply need to grow up. There are a finite amount of resources in the world, and a fire service costs MONEY to train / equip. As per the comment above - what if one of my fire guys gets injured and insurance won't pay because essentially we were doing work outside of what was covered? What if I spend the time fighting this doofus' fire, and someone else's house burns down that HAD paid?
It's very easy to be oh-so-touchy-feely if you aren't responsible for things. Basically this is one of the major things wrong I see with society today - stupid short-sighted decisions can have radically BAD consequences, but we (as a society) have decided that we have an obligation to protect people from the consequences of their decisions. I don't understand why.
Political-correctness be damned, it's just a GOOD IDEA. It's an old saying that 'amateurs discuss tactics; professional soldiers talk about logistics'.
The vulnerability of our fighting forces (or any modern military) to attacks on their fuel/supply trains is staggering, and was proven in Iraq. If the opposition in Iraq or Afghanistan was anything close to a peer-level opponent, it would have been catastrophic.
The ability to thin the supply lines also multiplies the effectiveness of the logistics assets you have, as well.
This is a great idea, and the fact that the military is addressing is extremely encouraging for our society. Not that the DoD is magical, but due to their requirements and hard field-testing, their solutions to things tend to be far more pragmatic and practical than the "political" solutions of politicians. Take "integration" as an example - the politicians talked themselves blue in the face about it for decades, but AFAIK there is no more color-blind, racially neutral employer today than the US military.
I'd argue that what the military develops in terms of robust, practical methods of reducing energy consumption will translate into civilian systems relatively quickly.
"...(they) thought that the real story was the invention of Facebook..." Perhaps the makers of the movie knew what their "real story" was, while some internet talking head (hey! I'm "internet famous!") is simply flogging his personal dead horse?
Everything I've seen suggests that Win7 is a better OS - stability, security, etc. However we have 6 computers in the house. Two are 3.0+ GHz dual+ CPUs with 4 gigs of RAM; those are the only two that I suspect would run it well. The other 4 range from 2.7 GHz 4 gig RAM (my older gaming rig, that probably could run it) down to a 1 GHz Athlon with 1 gig of RAM.
XP runs "well enough" for everything we want/need to do. I'm uninterested in climbing another learning curve so I can admin 2 different OS's in my house. I'm uninterested in buying new hardware just to all run Win7. I'm uninterested in buying 6 licenses of Win7.
So....no Win7 here, although I readily agree it would probably be a better system on the hardware that could run it. Sorry Microsoft.
...because when I'm pretending to be an elf, or an orc, slaying dragons and collecting loot, I want NOTHING more than my neighbors (or better - my boss!) to see that I'm doing it. Even possibly during work!
Sweet!
(Do any of this company's brilliant marketeers ask themselves why people haven't used their real names for login id's?)
I think I'll go change my/. login info to use my real name, too!
Are Selsis' numbers based on liquid water or what criteria? I'd agree that in terms of determining the likelihood of a planet having life that would be more useful, while von Bloh's photosynthesis-based standards have more to do with the ability of terrestrial organisms to survive there (a narrower definition).
"Finding this ancient virus will... help scientists predict and prevent future human viral pandemics that originate in birds"
You mean like that catastrophic pandemic last year that ended up killing what, 14 people?
Weeks, even months of warnings that the sky was falling, thousands of businesses implementing catastrophe plans, TV and radio giving us 'pandemic alerts' warning repeatedly that we were on the verge of epidemics where it was conceivable that deaths would be in the "hundreds of thousands" in the US alone....sure, I'm guessing that we don't need more help detecting pandemics, it's that we need a little more judiciousness in pressing the panic button when we do detect a potential threat.
...because, you see, a lot of people have become tired of the United States. It's very fashionable right now to hate the US and highlight everything that's wrong with the American agenda. Even in the relatively short span since the end of the Cold War, and due to some relatively severe foreign-policy bungling by the last administration, much of world opinion has focused gleefully on the failings of the US as the sole remaining superpower. Much is true.
However, any reasonable examination of a situation can only be assessed fairly when one considers the realistic alternative possibilities.
Now, with the growth of China, Asian powers may start to recognize that perhaps the (relatively) benign incompetence of the US isn't quite so bad. Every time China throws its weight around, one might be reminded that China doesn't really have much of a history of plurality, openness, liberality, or empathy. In fact, the only times that they haven't been expansive (within their understood natural frontiers), brutal, corrupt, and oppressive is when they've been too incompetent to manage their own massive domestic failings.
Perhaps the grass on the other side of the Pax Americana fence may not be that shimmering green that some seemed to think it was. Thanks China for doing your best to remind everyone.
Clearly the Kindle. The child, intrigued by the discovery of an old piece of tech, decides to investigate the pleasures of ebooks and pressures his parents to buy him an old reader, and subscribes to dozens of ancient magazines and texts. This allows a number of starving artists and publishers to finally get more residuals.
OTOH, finding the books is sheer piracy. None of the authors nor authors' umpteen generations of descendants get paid for the enjoyment of their intellectual work. None of the publishers get any more money for their hard work distributing those books in a permanent format.
No, surely that poor kid reading those paper books is being led into a life of piracy (and probably terrorism), getting the mistaken impression that "things" are "ownable" and that people don't have to pay entirely reasonable and fair user fees every time they access them.
Yes, but there's also a concept called 'diminishing returns'.
If you could buy a movie format that would let you see the film image in micro-molecular resolution, down to the ability to see the atomic composition of the skin of the actor...would you? No, that's a level of resolution so far beyond what's necessary it's absurd. It's entirely possible that High-Definition has crossed that line as well, at least in SOME contexts. For sports, it's great to be able to see the action in wideview, but ALSO be able to resolve players' names on their jerseys. But watching Masterpiece Theater? Dr. Who? As it was mocked on Family Guy, do you *really* want to see the craggy, makeup-caked face of the just-past-her-prime newswoman, or can we all just agree that she's smokin' hot in standard-def and not look too closely?
That aside, there are bandwidth/convenience issues too. Sure, it might be COOL to be able to watch Transformers in 1080p. But if I can see it for FREE, NOW in 480p (or whatever Netflix streams it at), my interest in the movie's details isn't worth the $20 (or whatever) to buy it or wait to get it in the mail.
Ironic that you say "figures don't lie"...and then present percentages, the EASIEST way to 'make figures lie'.
I had a friend who bought 1 blu-ray disk in 2009. He bought 4 in 2010. THAT'S A 400% increase!!!
It also remains trivial compared to the number of movies he watched over streaming services (Roku) and infinitesimal compared to the 1500+ disks of other media he owns.
He bought the expensive blu-ray player, so he's invested in the tech and has to justify his expense by buying his favorite films on BR. But even he agrees that streaming is killing all physical media. The moment he gets fiber to the home he probably won't buy another actual disk.
...but first, you're never going to legislate away nationally motivated cybercrime, so that's out.
Second, as far as I can tell it was the Europeans who started getting all squirrelly about the 'nationalism' on the net when the US wouldn't do what they wanted.
No country worth it's peoples' loyalty is going to voluntarily give its sovereignty to the UN, a non-democratic pack of calumnious backbiters or bored dilettantes, depending on who you're speaking about.
Meh. It's the Internet. The US built it. If you don't like it or the rules it's operating under, build your own.
I had the same reaction as the parent-poster - watching teens post 10,000+ (not exaggerating) texts a month, most of them "'sup?" "nothin" "whr r u?" sorts of things that would be much more easily and quickly communicated by a brief phone call.
This is going to sound like a get-off-my-lawn post, but I'll say it: the teenagers I encounter who are amply connected through texting are utterly STUNTED when it comes to interpersonal communication in realtime. Some actually blanch if they're required to make a phone call to a non-friend. Not only that, their basic phone-handling skills are almost entirely absent. Self-identification? Leaving a number? Clarity? None.
On the other hand, they are staggeringly competent at multithreaded conversations - I've watched people raiding a hard instance in WoW *while* conducting 3 simultaneous in-game personal chat conversations, AND 2+ AIM conversations. As a 42-year old, I simply couldn't comprehend juggling all those conversations at once, and they do it effortlessly.
As far as the preference for texting - aside from the ability to multithread, which is useful, I put it down to a root-narcissism. With texting you aren't interrupted, you can carefully compose your thoughts, and respond at your own pace, without the uncomfortable and unpredictable immediacy of a phone conversation. You can cheerfully ignore that person until YOU want to 'talk' to them.
Aha, I went and dug out my old magazines and yep, I was wrong but differently than you mention.
The 386DX was a full 32-bit chip, the 386SX was the 32bit internal architecture, but with a 16-bit bus. With the 386 the coprocessor was a separate part (80387). Further, because of the bus differences, the 80387 coprocessor had to purchased in the right variant (387DX to go with a 80386DX processor, 387SX to go with the 80386SX processor).
But you're right in the sense that it was the 486 series where the (now internal) coprocessor was disabled deliberately to provide the 486SX at a lower price point.
To suggest that humans can breed nonstop and fill every nook and cranny of terrain on the planet, then cry when the tide comes in because they're getting wet is disingenuous and short-sighted.
Some women called in from 500,000 years ago, they'd like their common knowledge back.
As a great snake handler in Rapid City SD once put it "Rattlesnakes and testosterone are a lethal combination; like alcohol and testosterone, gasoline engines and testosterone, fireworks and testosterone...well, pretty much anything can be fatal when combined with excessive amounts of testosterone, sometimes creatively so."
...wouldn't one solution be to have at least a half-dozen DIFFERENT tests? You wouldn't have to necessarily even rewrite all the questions. For a 10-question test, write 50 questions, and each test paper has a random 10 from that 50.
Or be a right sadistic bastard, and give them each the same 10 questions...but with SLIGHTLY different values in the problems. Shuffle the problems so that it's not immediately evident.
I think that would destroy 99% of the cheaters, or certainly make cheating prohibitively difficult.
You're right, I think we should ban YOU from slashdot for calling him a lunatic. Clearly that's hatespeech, and nobody has any responsibility to aid you in spreading your message of hate.
Slashdot Mirror
The beautiful thing about the internet is that you can cheerfully criticize people, making the most malign assertions based on your 'vision' of 'how things should be' all from the comfort of your easy chair in mom's basement.
In the internet world, resources are infinite, so you can wave your hand and have these guys put out that fire because it's "the right thing to do" regardless of the consequences of wear & tear on equipment, insurance coverage for the firemen, or any of those silly, petty mundane concerns.
Apparently in the internet world, you don't have to pay for fire trucks, repair them, train firefighters, or send them to RISK THEIR LIVES fighting a fire (that's real danger and real life, not just "I lose some xp and have to respawn" internet-life, by the way)?
You can simply declare these men - you know, these VOLUNTEER firefighters, who routinely risk their lives to save people who do all sorts of self-destructive things like drunk-driving, bungee jumping, drug use, etc. - are "evil" and "monsters" because they refused to exercise their blood, toil, tears, and sweat to save the PROPERTY of some dickwad that couldn't be bothered to write a $75 check.
Go ahead and call these men "evil" for not giving this guy a free ride. Claim anyone that defends them is some blind libertarian hewing to some sort of utopian ideal. In fact YOU'RE the one who's living in a fantasy, assuming that everything that "needs doing" will be done regardless of cost or consequence.
Let's play it your way: despite not paying the fee, this guy has a fire. Should the fire station be called out to put out his garage fire? What if there are kittens in there? How about his empty shed? Are they obligated to respond to ANY fire, or just the "serious" ones? Should the nearest town be obligated to provide police services free of charge as well? Snowplowing? Water? Sewer?
It's very, very simple - the county has limited resources. Their fire service is paid for by municipal taxes, but the widespread rural population (and probably low tax revenue from their properties) can't be covered. So rural people have a choice - $75 gets you fire coverage for a year. They didn't pay. They get no coverage. If they didn't like it, they could pay or, optionally, move closer to town where the coverage is available.
Nevertheless I wish my world were as simple as yours. Might get tough to navigate if everything's so black and white.
A lot of people are whinging about this.
Look at it this way - let's say out of the goodness of their hearts, the firemen fight the fire. Oops! One got hurt or killed. Will the insurer (who bases his premiums certainly on the number of houses covered) pay for the injury/death? NOPE.
Look at it another: what if they're fighting this guy's fire and someone (who HAS paid) also has a fire? Whups, I'd expect the assive, slam-dunk lawsuit in about 0.0001 seconds.
Many of the articles state that the homeowner claims he 'forgot' to pay the $75. Really? Did he have a consistent history of paying it in previous years? It's ironic that this isn't mentioned, as far as I've seen.
If you think this seems 'heartless', you simply need to grow up. There are a finite amount of resources in the world, and a fire service costs MONEY to train / equip. As per the comment above - what if one of my fire guys gets injured and insurance won't pay because essentially we were doing work outside of what was covered? What if I spend the time fighting this doofus' fire, and someone else's house burns down that HAD paid?
It's very easy to be oh-so-touchy-feely if you aren't responsible for things. Basically this is one of the major things wrong I see with society today - stupid short-sighted decisions can have radically BAD consequences, but we (as a society) have decided that we have an obligation to protect people from the consequences of their decisions. I don't understand why.
Political-correctness be damned, it's just a GOOD IDEA. It's an old saying that 'amateurs discuss tactics; professional soldiers talk about logistics'.
The vulnerability of our fighting forces (or any modern military) to attacks on their fuel/supply trains is staggering, and was proven in Iraq. If the opposition in Iraq or Afghanistan was anything close to a peer-level opponent, it would have been catastrophic.
The ability to thin the supply lines also multiplies the effectiveness of the logistics assets you have, as well.
This is a great idea, and the fact that the military is addressing is extremely encouraging for our society. Not that the DoD is magical, but due to their requirements and hard field-testing, their solutions to things tend to be far more pragmatic and practical than the "political" solutions of politicians. Take "integration" as an example - the politicians talked themselves blue in the face about it for decades, but AFAIK there is no more color-blind, racially neutral employer today than the US military.
I'd argue that what the military develops in terms of robust, practical methods of reducing energy consumption will translate into civilian systems relatively quickly.
They should check other states. Maybe they too have former state senators/KKK members spinning in their graves at the idea of a black US president?
Either that, or Satan finally came to collect his due.
"...(they) thought that the real story was the invention of Facebook..."
Perhaps the makers of the movie knew what their "real story" was, while some internet talking head (hey! I'm "internet famous!") is simply flogging his personal dead horse?
I still use xp.
Everything I've seen suggests that Win7 is a better OS - stability, security, etc.
However we have 6 computers in the house. Two are 3.0+ GHz dual+ CPUs with 4 gigs of RAM; those are the only two that I suspect would run it well. The other 4 range from 2.7 GHz 4 gig RAM (my older gaming rig, that probably could run it) down to a 1 GHz Athlon with 1 gig of RAM.
XP runs "well enough" for everything we want/need to do. I'm uninterested in climbing another learning curve so I can admin 2 different OS's in my house. I'm uninterested in buying new hardware just to all run Win7. I'm uninterested in buying 6 licenses of Win7.
So....no Win7 here, although I readily agree it would probably be a better system on the hardware that could run it. Sorry Microsoft.
It's almost like the tools for social change have been co-opted.
Heh.
...because when I'm pretending to be an elf, or an orc, slaying dragons and collecting loot, I want NOTHING more than my neighbors (or better - my boss!) to see that I'm doing it. Even possibly during work!
Sweet!
(Do any of this company's brilliant marketeers ask themselves why people haven't used their real names for login id's?)
I think I'll go change my /. login info to use my real name, too!
Are Selsis' numbers based on liquid water or what criteria? I'd agree that in terms of determining the likelihood of a planet having life that would be more useful, while von Bloh's photosynthesis-based standards have more to do with the ability of terrestrial organisms to survive there (a narrower definition).
Thanks!
"Finding this ancient virus will... help scientists predict and prevent future human viral pandemics that originate in birds"
You mean like that catastrophic pandemic last year that ended up killing what, 14 people?
Weeks, even months of warnings that the sky was falling, thousands of businesses implementing catastrophe plans, TV and radio giving us 'pandemic alerts' warning repeatedly that we were on the verge of epidemics where it was conceivable that deaths would be in the "hundreds of thousands" in the US alone....sure, I'm guessing that we don't need more help detecting pandemics, it's that we need a little more judiciousness in pressing the panic button when we do detect a potential threat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Habitable_zone-en.svg
Actually, Venus is a little too far in, and Mars a little too far out.
...because, you see, a lot of people have become tired of the United States. It's very fashionable right now to hate the US and highlight everything that's wrong with the American agenda. Even in the relatively short span since the end of the Cold War, and due to some relatively severe foreign-policy bungling by the last administration, much of world opinion has focused gleefully on the failings of the US as the sole remaining superpower. Much is true.
However, any reasonable examination of a situation can only be assessed fairly when one considers the realistic alternative possibilities.
Now, with the growth of China, Asian powers may start to recognize that perhaps the (relatively) benign incompetence of the US isn't quite so bad. Every time China throws its weight around, one might be reminded that China doesn't really have much of a history of plurality, openness, liberality, or empathy. In fact, the only times that they haven't been expansive (within their understood natural frontiers), brutal, corrupt, and oppressive is when they've been too incompetent to manage their own massive domestic failings.
Perhaps the grass on the other side of the Pax Americana fence may not be that shimmering green that some seemed to think it was. Thanks China for doing your best to remind everyone.
Clearly the Kindle. The child, intrigued by the discovery of an old piece of tech, decides to investigate the pleasures of ebooks and pressures his parents to buy him an old reader, and subscribes to dozens of ancient magazines and texts. This allows a number of starving artists and publishers to finally get more residuals.
OTOH, finding the books is sheer piracy. None of the authors nor authors' umpteen generations of descendants get paid for the enjoyment of their intellectual work. None of the publishers get any more money for their hard work distributing those books in a permanent format.
No, surely that poor kid reading those paper books is being led into a life of piracy (and probably terrorism), getting the mistaken impression that "things" are "ownable" and that people don't have to pay entirely reasonable and fair user fees every time they access them.
Respectfully,
-The RIAA
So make it.
Civ 5 was *built* from the design up to be easily modded.
I would expect within a year we'll have Alpha Centauri mods, as well as Masters of Magic-style mods.
It's a great game.
Yes, but there's also a concept called 'diminishing returns'.
If you could buy a movie format that would let you see the film image in micro-molecular resolution, down to the ability to see the atomic composition of the skin of the actor...would you? No, that's a level of resolution so far beyond what's necessary it's absurd. It's entirely possible that High-Definition has crossed that line as well, at least in SOME contexts. For sports, it's great to be able to see the action in wideview, but ALSO be able to resolve players' names on their jerseys. But watching Masterpiece Theater? Dr. Who? As it was mocked on Family Guy, do you *really* want to see the craggy, makeup-caked face of the just-past-her-prime newswoman, or can we all just agree that she's smokin' hot in standard-def and not look too closely?
That aside, there are bandwidth/convenience issues too. Sure, it might be COOL to be able to watch Transformers in 1080p. But if I can see it for FREE, NOW in 480p (or whatever Netflix streams it at), my interest in the movie's details isn't worth the $20 (or whatever) to buy it or wait to get it in the mail.
Ironic that you say "figures don't lie"...and then present percentages, the EASIEST way to 'make figures lie'.
I had a friend who bought 1 blu-ray disk in 2009. He bought 4 in 2010. THAT'S A 400% increase!!!
It also remains trivial compared to the number of movies he watched over streaming services (Roku) and infinitesimal compared to the 1500+ disks of other media he owns.
He bought the expensive blu-ray player, so he's invested in the tech and has to justify his expense by buying his favorite films on BR. But even he agrees that streaming is killing all physical media. The moment he gets fiber to the home he probably won't buy another actual disk.
(looks both ways) ...and you'll notice that THEY'VE made it much, much harder to find authentic tinfoil in the grocery store anymore?
...but first, you're never going to legislate away nationally motivated cybercrime, so that's out.
Second, as far as I can tell it was the Europeans who started getting all squirrelly about the 'nationalism' on the net when the US wouldn't do what they wanted.
No country worth it's peoples' loyalty is going to voluntarily give its sovereignty to the UN, a non-democratic pack of calumnious backbiters or bored dilettantes, depending on who you're speaking about.
Meh. It's the Internet. The US built it. If you don't like it or the rules it's operating under, build your own.
I had the same reaction as the parent-poster - watching teens post 10,000+ (not exaggerating) texts a month, most of them "'sup?" "nothin" "whr r u?" sorts of things that would be much more easily and quickly communicated by a brief phone call.
This is going to sound like a get-off-my-lawn post, but I'll say it: the teenagers I encounter who are amply connected through texting are utterly STUNTED when it comes to interpersonal communication in realtime. Some actually blanch if they're required to make a phone call to a non-friend. Not only that, their basic phone-handling skills are almost entirely absent. Self-identification? Leaving a number? Clarity? None.
On the other hand, they are staggeringly competent at multithreaded conversations - I've watched people raiding a hard instance in WoW *while* conducting 3 simultaneous in-game personal chat conversations, AND 2+ AIM conversations. As a 42-year old, I simply couldn't comprehend juggling all those conversations at once, and they do it effortlessly.
As far as the preference for texting - aside from the ability to multithread, which is useful, I put it down to a root-narcissism. With texting you aren't interrupted, you can carefully compose your thoughts, and respond at your own pace, without the uncomfortable and unpredictable immediacy of a phone conversation. You can cheerfully ignore that person until YOU want to 'talk' to them.
Aha, I went and dug out my old magazines and yep, I was wrong but differently than you mention.
The 386DX was a full 32-bit chip, the 386SX was the 32bit internal architecture, but with a 16-bit bus. With the 386 the coprocessor was a separate part (80387). Further, because of the bus differences, the 80387 coprocessor had to purchased in the right variant (387DX to go with a 80386DX processor, 387SX to go with the 80386SX processor).
But you're right in the sense that it was the 486 series where the (now internal) coprocessor was disabled deliberately to provide the 486SX at a lower price point.
Anyone remember the 386SX chip? It was the 386DX with the math coprocessor deliberately disabled to sell to a different market niche.
I know it's a crisis for them, but sea level changes all the time.
Current sea level changes don't even SHOW UP on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png 24 kyr graph.
To suggest that humans can breed nonstop and fill every nook and cranny of terrain on the planet, then cry when the tide comes in because they're getting wet is disingenuous and short-sighted.
Some women called in from 500,000 years ago, they'd like their common knowledge back.
As a great snake handler in Rapid City SD once put it "Rattlesnakes and testosterone are a lethal combination; like alcohol and testosterone, gasoline engines and testosterone, fireworks and testosterone...well, pretty much anything can be fatal when combined with excessive amounts of testosterone, sometimes creatively so."
...wouldn't one solution be to have at least a half-dozen DIFFERENT tests? You wouldn't have to necessarily even rewrite all the questions. For a 10-question test, write 50 questions, and each test paper has a random 10 from that 50.
Or be a right sadistic bastard, and give them each the same 10 questions...but with SLIGHTLY different values in the problems.
Shuffle the problems so that it's not immediately evident.
I think that would destroy 99% of the cheaters, or certainly make cheating prohibitively difficult.
You're right, I think we should ban YOU from slashdot for calling him a lunatic. Clearly that's hatespeech, and nobody has any responsibility to aid you in spreading your message of hate.
That would be ok with you then?