Hmm. I`ve managed to get my 610C working (using the 500C driver) at least to the extent that it can print some out. However, it`ll only print with the colour cartridge, meaning that simple text jobs take far too long (and it`s a waste of ink too). If HP can bring out better drivers for the Deskjet series, I`d be well happy.
On the other hand, even sites with 128-bit SSL don`t always have a clue. Lloyds Bank, for example, has online transaction facilities, and requires that passwords be between six and eight characters long, and alphabetic characters only. The idea that a password should not be easily guessable doesn`t seem to have occurred to them.
Well, actually, the window tax was a very early and simple form of means-testing: it attempted to assess the value of your property. The larger and more luxurious the house, the more windows it was likely to have. So the number of windows was a way of measuring how rich you were, and therefore how much tax you should pay.
Of course, a lot of people bricked up their windows to avoid paying the tax. But that`s people for you, isn`t it?
However, some companies genuinely are international. Should they be restricted geographically in the one place where there really aren`t any geographical restrictions?
No, it`s a perfectly valid sentence, if slightly convoluted.
'It's ironic that "End Of Days" arrives in theaters the same day as the brilliantly conceived and executed "Toy Story 2," as original and technologically dazzling a film as "End of Days" is boring and ludicrous.'
I suspect that you got confused in the second half of the sentence. What it means is that the originality and technological brilliance of TS2 is quantitatively equal to the boredom and ludicrosity of EoD. An opinion on which I can make no comment, not having seen either film.
If you want a keyboard that`s better for you, go out and buy one. Such things are available - in the same way that manual cars are. The differenced is that more people are prepared to learn to use manual cars than the different keyboard layouts. It`s not a matter of regulation: no-one`s passing a law saying that the caps lock key should be to the immediate left of the a. It`s a matter of market forces. People sell what the customers will buy. And the customers are not drooling idiots. They merely don`t see the point in putting in what is, in all honesty, quite a considerable effort, for what may be little gain. In the same way that some people don`t see the need to learn to use a gearstick when automatic cars are available.
What I am objecting to is not your stated preference for keyboard layout, but the gratuitous insulting of everyone who isn`t quite as skilled on the keyboard as you are.
Neither are the others. They are normal, fairly bright people. They just happen not to know a particular skill. Maybe they`ve never felt the need to; maybe they don`t realise the improvement it would make; maybe they consider it not worth the time they`d have to invest in it compared with the time they actually spend typing. But that doesn`t make them drooling idiots, any more than my not having a motorbike licence makes me a drooling idiot.
Besides, it all depends on what you`re used to, doesn`t it? I notice you`re not arguing for a complete redesign of the keyboard layout (Dvorak instead of Qwerty, for example). That`s because you learned to type on Qwerty, and other keyboards would only slow you down. You basically want the keyboard you`re most used to. Well, surprise, surprise, so does everyone else, including those whom you so arrogantly dismiss as `drooling idiots`. You know the reason everybody hasn`t gone over to Dvorak? The improvement gained in typing speed isn`t enough to make it worth relearning the layout. And don`t you think some people might consider this to be true of the non-alphabetic keys too?
I have never met a programmer who couldn't touch type.
Maybe not. However, this may come as a surprise to you, but most people who use computers aren`t prorgammers. They type the odd letter in a wordprocessor, they check their email, they might do a spreadsheet every once in a while. These are the majority users, and there`s no particular reason for them to learn to touch-type. And these, as I said before, are the people the keyboards are designed for.
Re:A few random points..
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 2
Yes; everything got shuffled around a bit to make way for the £ sign..
Keyboard preference is often a historical thing. I always use ` instead of ' for my apostrophes. This is because once upon a time I typed on an Amiga keyboard, which only had the one, which was in the position that ` is on PC keyboards. I also took quite a while to adjust to the repositioning of the capslock and ctrl keys too.
As to `the penalty zone`, I can actually see good ergonomic reasons for keeping it, mainly related to those people (the majority) who do not touch-type. By removing the less-commonly-used keys from the main array, it reduces confusion on the part of the hunt-n-pecker, who knows they don`t have to consider these keys as they search for the one they want. As for the arrow keys - well, it may be difficult for extended use, but you can`t say that the placement of the up key above the down key isn`t intuitive!
Please remember that most people these days can`t touch-type, and would be at a disadvantage on the sort of keyboard proposed here. And since the market depends on what `most people` want, it`s the non-touchtypers who have - and should have - most say in the design of our keyboards.
They`ve also applied for the patent in Europe (EP0889421) and Australia (AU6991598) as well as worldwide (WO9857276). The application no. is EP19980304651 19980612. As far as I can tell, these haven`t (yet) been granted.
This I got from esp@cenet, which holds a searchable database of the last two years of patent applications from several countries.
The point being that the author of the post was referring to IDG`s `..for dummies` series when he wrote it. So IDG don`t really have anything to complain about, as they would have realised if they`d actually read the article. This is probably some generic mail that gets spewed out every time their search engine gets a hit on "for dummies".
However, the reason we're in such shit from M.Tuberculosis and S.Aureus is the ridiculous overuse of antibiotics. Vancomycin -- the antibiotic that kills anything -- is proving less than effective against some strains of both. This is a problem that's entirely of our own making, and one that's being exacerbated by the overuse of animal feed, the growing of GM crops and people pestering their doctors for antibiotics and then not taking the full course.
It`s got nothing to do with GM crops. But it`s certainly to do with antibiotics in animal feed. Farmers routinely stuff their animals with antibiotics even when they`re not ill, because it makes them grow faster. If you can be bothered ploughing your way through this, there`s a lot of good stuff there. The most important thing I want to bring out of it is that many strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria currently populating hospitals have been traced (by techniques related to DNA fingerprinting) to farm animal bacteria.
Certainly in the UK, the problem of antibiotic resistance is severe. I never want to fall seriously ill here. The Glasgow Royal Infirmiary, just a few yards away from where I work, has the worst record in the country for antibiotic resistance, and you have a fairly high chance of going out of there with something far worse than you went in with. The hospital environment is overrun with `superbugs` (bacteria resistant to all hospital antibiotics), and iatrogenic diseases (iatrogenic=caused by doctors) are becoming more common because of this.
The solution is, of course, to design new antibiotics. But these may in turn fail in the same way, even if they`re not given to the animals. Since 1950, animal antibiotics have been kept separate from human antibiotics (as in, they`re different chemicals), and yet they`re still sufficiently similar to enable the resistance mechanism to work against both. It`s a biological arms race. Our survival depends on developing new antibiotics. The bugs` survival depends on overcoming them. The trouble is that a resistance mechanism may (depending on the mechanism and the drug) confer resistance to a whole swathe of antibiotics in one go. And it spreads fast. Most of these resistance genes are on plasmids, which can be transferred from bacterium to bacterium as well as down the generations (which are fast as it is: a bacterial population will, under optimum conditions, double every 20 minutes).
Overprescription of antibiotics is, of course, also a factor, and for this I tend to blame the patients rather than the doctors. But the reason that antibiotic resistance is so rife in hopitals is not overpresciption, at least not here (it tends to be patients coming to their GP with a cold and complaining if they don`t get a prescription for something - perhaps vitamin pills ought to be available on prescription..). It`s because there are so many ill people (who probably do need antibiotics) that there is a considerable selection pressure in favour of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Once it gets in, it`ll spread like wildfire, and become stronger.
I don`t think there`s such a thing as an antibiotic that no bacterium can become resistant to. If nothing else, the bug can change its cell membrane to prevent the antibiotic from getting in. But if we find new types on antibiotic, that work in a way that no current antibiotic does, then it`ll take a lot longer for the bugs to become resistant. And that gives us more breathing space.
Google is good for most things. But it isn`t that great if the thing you`re looking for is quite obscure, because it goes by the number of pages linked to it. If it`s obscure, there won`t be that many links, and so it`ll get a lower rating.
Private industry stepped up to the plate and said that they will finish the task in less time than their overfunded government counterparts. Does anyone here really believe that academia alone would have finished the job?
The reason that Celera has managed to do it so fast is that they are merely churning out the sequences, whereas the academic research labs are actually taking the time to figure out what the genes do. Now, which is the more useful approach?
Unfortunately, the precedent is already there. Genes of creatures other than humans have been being patented for years by the researchers who isolate them. It`s not pretty, but it`s happening.
A lot of people have posted comments to the effect of `Will I have to pay royalties if they`ve patented the gene for blue eyes?`. That`s not what the patents are for. The patents prevent other researchers from working on the same gene. This means that a company can hold onto a gene that could be a useful target for gene therapy, and no other company would be allowed to research it, even if the company who filed the patent thought it not worth their while to look into it. This is an indisputably Bad Thing.
If you actually look at a gene patent, you`ll see that what`s patented is the isolated form of the gene, not the gene in the context of the genome - along with methods for purifying and assaying the resulting protein. What is not covered in this patent is the gene in situ. So people with blue eyes, or whatever, needn`t get worried. The gene in your body isn`t patented. What`s worrying is the idea that because a company is patenting so much, it`ll be years before they get round to looking at some of the genes, some of which could be useful either in terms of finding out more about the way humans work, or in terms of finding cures for inherited disorders. The company can sit on the gene, safe in the knowledge that, because it`s patented, no-one else is going to research it until they`re ready.
The thing is, this gene patenting idea is fairly recent. But these days, academics, too, are having to patent their research just in order to prevent their work from being stolen out from under them. This goes completely against the information-sharing ethic that has always been a part of academic science.
So, not quite as scary as the idea of paying royalties to some corporation for your brown hair or strawberry birthmark, but scary nonetheless. Mass patenting of genes is already stifling research. Mass patenting of human genes can only make the problem worse.
I know exactly what sort of mouse I want. The trouble is, it doesn`t seem to exist. I want three ordinary buttons on the top, and a scrollbutton at the side for my thumb. I`ve seen all sorts of mice; some of them have thumb-buttons, but none have thumb-scrollers. All the scrollers seem to be in the same place: where the middle mouse button ought to be.
Take the exact opposite event: the Baby Boom. At the height of the 18-year long Baby Boom in the US, fertility rates were something like 3.6. (Compare this to the notoriously out of control demographics of India today: fertility rate 3.7.) Then, in a matter of a couple years around 1963 or so, it all stopped. Now the obvious questions are a) why did it happen, and b) why did it stop. Problem is, we don't really know the answer to either of them.
Well, this might seem a trifle obvious, but wasn`t it in the early sixties that the Pill came into common use? So as soon as people had the choice to stop having children, they stopped having children.
I`m wondering whether to boycott Amazon.co.uk myself. I don`t know how closely related they are, or whether the UK branch acts as a separate country. In other words, is it fair to do so?
Amusingly enough, from the amazon.co.uk website:
Governing Law Your use of this Web site and any purchase by you on this Web site of any products will be governed by English Law and will be deemed to have occurred in the United Kingdom.
Disclaimer TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED AT LAW, AMAZON.CO.UK IS PROVIDING THIS WEB SITE AND ITS CONTENTS ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND MAKES NO (AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL) REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO THIS WEB SITE OR ITS CONTENTS INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. IN ADDITION, AMAZON.CO.UK DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE INFORMATION ACCESSIBLE VIA THIS WEB SITE IS ACCURATE, COMPLETE OR CURRENT. Price and availability information is subject to change without notice.
The amusing thing is, of course, that under english law, companies are obliged to offer warranties of fitness of purpose.
Disclaimer: I have no experience of the SAT test and make no claims to knowledge as to how it is used. However, there`s a possibility that it`s being used wrongly.
Scores still go from 200 to 800 for each section, with 500 being the proverbial Average Student. The dumbing-down you speak of occured becuase the Average Student now would score a 460 or so - so they added a few points to our friend's score (and hence, everyone else's as well), bringing him back to 500.
Uhm.. what`s the point in that? Surely someone who is doing badly is doing badly, even if everyone around them is also doing badly. So if the SAT was at all decently designed in the first place, there should be no reason to revalue the whole jing-bang just because the average crop was low for a couple of years.
Of course, the SAT may not have been well-designed. Many tests, including IQ tests, aren`t. Some contain large amounts of cultural reference, which puts people foreign to the culture in question at a disadvantage when all you`re trying to measure is mental potential. Certainly cultural references date after a few years, so a revision of the SAT test may well not have been a `dumbing-down`, but in fact an attempt to make it more relevant. On the other hand, if the SAT test is mainly about showing how much you`ve learnt, then obviously it has to be relevant to the syllabus, and thus, again, would need to be changed now and again to reflect what the children are actually learning.
However, if all they are doing is using the same test and just re-aligning the scores in order to keep the current average score at 500, then there`s something very wrong in what they`re doing, because you can then only compare a child`s achievement with other children in her year, rather than with children in years past. Which I think is a shame, because it ignores the fact that the acheivement of objectively measurable skills is absolute, not relative.
I am saying nothing here about how relatively hard or easy children may find it to pick up these skills. The difficulty of the task (and thus the subjective acheivement to the child on performing it) is indeed relative. But that`s not what`s being measured. What`s being measured is the ability of the child to perform a task. And, in a properly designed and calibrated test, the average should remain constant - unless the ability of the children really is changing. And if it is, we need to find out why this is happening, not just recalibrate the test.
Re:Further thoughts on Snow Crash
on
Snow Crash
·
· Score: 1
Now, if only Stephenson could learn to end a novel properly, without having to resort to the #&$^ showdown between the forces of Good and Evil...
It`s not the showdown so much as the fact that he doesn`t seem to want to deal with aftermath. Most stories have a climax, and then let you down gently before opening the door and letting you out into the real world. It1`s not a matter of tying up loose ends - I tend to like some to be left hanging so that you can imagine what happened next - but a matter of winding down after the climax. Yes, it`s very hackneyed: almost all films and books do it. But there`s a reason for that, and that`s that it`s structurally required in order for it to feel finished. Perhaps the lack of it here ss related to the fact that it was originally conceived as a graphical novel, where the rules are to some extent different.
My DNA or variations herein will not be used for the purposes of sexual reproduction without my written consent
It`s the `variations herein` bit that`s the problem. One human`s DNA is very very similar to another human`s DNA. If they use someone else`s DNA, how is that not a variation of yours? Are you saying you need to be consulted before anyone anywhere has a child?
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm. I`ve managed to get my 610C working (using the 500C driver) at least to the extent that it can print some out. However, it`ll only print with the colour cartridge, meaning that simple text jobs take far too long (and it`s a waste of ink too). If HP can bring out better drivers for the Deskjet series, I`d be well happy.
When I play on BattleNet and someone finds out I'm female, their next comment is usually
"No way- what's your bra size?"
And then you wonder why you`ve never encountered another female. *sigh*
On the other hand, even sites with 128-bit SSL don`t always have a clue. Lloyds Bank, for example, has online transaction facilities, and requires that passwords be between six and eight characters long, and alphabetic characters only. The idea that a password should not be easily guessable doesn`t seem to have occurred to them.
Well, actually, the window tax was a very early and simple form of means-testing: it attempted to assess the value of your property. The larger and more luxurious the house, the more windows it was likely to have. So the number of windows was a way of measuring how rich you were, and therefore how much tax you should pay.
Of course, a lot of people bricked up their windows to avoid paying the tax. But that`s people for you, isn`t it?
However, some companies genuinely are international. Should they be restricted geographically in the one place where there really aren`t any geographical restrictions?
No, it`s a perfectly valid sentence, if slightly convoluted.
'It's ironic that "End Of Days" arrives in theaters the same day as the brilliantly conceived and executed "Toy Story 2," as original and technologically dazzling a film as "End of Days" is boring and ludicrous.'
I suspect that you got confused in the second half of the sentence. What it means is that the originality and technological brilliance of TS2 is quantitatively equal to the boredom and ludicrosity of EoD. An opinion on which I can make no comment, not having seen either film.
If you want a keyboard that`s better for you, go out and buy one. Such things are available - in the same way that manual cars are. The differenced is that more people are prepared to learn to use manual cars than the different keyboard layouts. It`s not a matter of regulation: no-one`s passing a law saying that the caps lock key should be to the immediate left of the a. It`s a matter of market forces. People sell what the customers will buy. And the customers are not drooling idiots. They merely don`t see the point in putting in what is, in all honesty, quite a considerable effort, for what may be little gain. In the same way that some people don`t see the need to learn to use a gearstick when automatic cars are available.
What I am objecting to is not your stated preference for keyboard layout, but the gratuitous insulting of everyone who isn`t quite as skilled on the keyboard as you are.
Neither are the others. They are normal, fairly bright people. They just happen not to know a particular skill. Maybe they`ve never felt the need to; maybe they don`t realise the improvement it would make; maybe they consider it not worth the time they`d have to invest in it compared with the time they actually spend typing. But that doesn`t make them drooling idiots, any more than my not having a motorbike licence makes me a drooling idiot.
Besides, it all depends on what you`re used to, doesn`t it? I notice you`re not arguing for a complete redesign of the keyboard layout (Dvorak instead of Qwerty, for example). That`s because you learned to type on Qwerty, and other keyboards would only slow you down. You basically want the keyboard you`re most used to. Well, surprise, surprise, so does everyone else, including those whom you so arrogantly dismiss as `drooling idiots`. You know the reason everybody hasn`t gone over to Dvorak? The improvement gained in typing speed isn`t enough to make it worth relearning the layout. And don`t you think some people might consider this to be true of the non-alphabetic keys too?
I have never met a programmer who couldn't touch type.
Maybe not. However, this may come as a surprise to you, but most people who use computers aren`t prorgammers. They type the odd letter in a wordprocessor, they check their email, they might do a spreadsheet every once in a while. These are the majority users, and there`s no particular reason for them to learn to touch-type. And these, as I said before, are the people the keyboards are designed for.
Yes; everything got shuffled around a bit to make way for the £ sign..
Keyboard preference is often a historical thing. I always use ` instead of ' for my apostrophes. This is because once upon a time I typed on an Amiga keyboard, which only had the one, which was in the position that ` is on PC keyboards. I also took quite a while to adjust to the repositioning of the capslock and ctrl keys too.
As to `the penalty zone`, I can actually see good ergonomic reasons for keeping it, mainly related to those people (the majority) who do not touch-type. By removing the less-commonly-used keys from the main array, it reduces confusion on the part of the hunt-n-pecker, who knows they don`t have to consider these keys as they search for the one they want. As for the arrow keys - well, it may be difficult for extended use, but you can`t say that the placement of the up key above the down key isn`t intuitive!
Please remember that most people these days can`t touch-type, and would be at a disadvantage on the sort of keyboard proposed here. And since the market depends on what `most people` want, it`s the non-touchtypers who have - and should have - most say in the design of our keyboards.
They`ve also applied for the patent in Europe (EP0889421) and Australia (AU6991598) as well as worldwide (WO9857276). The application no. is EP19980304651 19980612. As far as I can tell, these haven`t (yet) been granted.
This I got from esp@cenet, which holds a searchable database of the last two years of patent applications from several countries.
The point being that the author of the post was referring to IDG`s `..for dummies` series when he wrote it. So IDG don`t really have anything to complain about, as they would have realised if they`d actually read the article. This is probably some generic mail that gets spewed out every time their search engine gets a hit on "for dummies".
However, the reason we're in such shit from M.Tuberculosis and S.Aureus is the ridiculous overuse of antibiotics. Vancomycin -- the antibiotic that kills anything -- is proving less than effective against some strains of both. This is a problem that's entirely of our own making, and one that's being exacerbated by the overuse of animal feed, the growing of GM crops and people pestering their doctors for antibiotics and then not taking the full course.
It`s got nothing to do with GM crops. But it`s certainly to do with antibiotics in animal feed. Farmers routinely stuff their animals with antibiotics even when they`re not ill, because it makes them grow faster. If you can be bothered ploughing your way through this, there`s a lot of good stuff there. The most important thing I want to bring out of it is that many strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria currently populating hospitals have been traced (by techniques related to DNA fingerprinting) to farm animal bacteria.
Certainly in the UK, the problem of antibiotic resistance is severe. I never want to fall seriously ill here. The Glasgow Royal Infirmiary, just a few yards away from where I work, has the worst record in the country for antibiotic resistance, and you have a fairly high chance of going out of there with something far worse than you went in with. The hospital environment is overrun with `superbugs` (bacteria resistant to all hospital antibiotics), and iatrogenic diseases (iatrogenic=caused by doctors) are becoming more common because of this.
The solution is, of course, to design new antibiotics. But these may in turn fail in the same way, even if they`re not given to the animals. Since 1950, animal antibiotics have been kept separate from human antibiotics (as in, they`re different chemicals), and yet they`re still sufficiently similar to enable the resistance mechanism to work against both. It`s a biological arms race. Our survival depends on developing new antibiotics. The bugs` survival depends on overcoming them. The trouble is that a resistance mechanism may (depending on the mechanism and the drug) confer resistance to a whole swathe of antibiotics in one go. And it spreads fast. Most of these resistance genes are on plasmids, which can be transferred from bacterium to bacterium as well as down the generations (which are fast as it is: a bacterial population will, under optimum conditions, double every 20 minutes).
Overprescription of antibiotics is, of course, also a factor, and for this I tend to blame the patients rather than the doctors. But the reason that antibiotic resistance is so rife in hopitals is not overpresciption, at least not here (it tends to be patients coming to their GP with a cold and complaining if they don`t get a prescription for something - perhaps vitamin pills ought to be available on prescription..). It`s because there are so many ill people (who probably do need antibiotics) that there is a considerable selection pressure in favour of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Once it gets in, it`ll spread like wildfire, and become stronger.
I don`t think there`s such a thing as an antibiotic that no bacterium can become resistant to. If nothing else, the bug can change its cell membrane to prevent the antibiotic from getting in. But if we find new types on antibiotic, that work in a way that no current antibiotic does, then it`ll take a lot longer for the bugs to become resistant. And that gives us more breathing space.
Google is good for most things. But it isn`t that great if the thing you`re looking for is quite obscure, because it goes by the number of pages linked to it. If it`s obscure, there won`t be that many links, and so it`ll get a lower rating.
Private industry stepped up to the plate and said that they will finish the task in less time than their overfunded government counterparts. Does anyone here really believe that academia alone would have finished the job?
The reason that Celera has managed to do it so fast is that they are merely churning out the sequences, whereas the academic research labs are actually taking the time to figure out what the genes do. Now, which is the more useful approach?
Unfortunately, the precedent is already there. Genes of creatures other than humans have been being patented for years by the researchers who isolate them. It`s not pretty, but it`s happening.
A lot of people have posted comments to the effect of `Will I have to pay royalties if they`ve patented the gene for blue eyes?`. That`s not what the patents are for. The patents prevent other researchers from working on the same gene. This means that a company can hold onto a gene that could be a useful target for gene therapy, and no other company would be allowed to research it, even if the company who filed the patent thought it not worth their while to look into it. This is an indisputably Bad Thing.
If you actually look at a gene patent, you`ll see that what`s patented is the isolated form of the gene, not the gene in the context of the genome - along with methods for purifying and assaying the resulting protein. What is not covered in this patent is the gene in situ. So people with blue eyes, or whatever, needn`t get worried. The gene in your body isn`t patented. What`s worrying is the idea that because a company is patenting so much, it`ll be years before they get round to looking at some of the genes, some of which could be useful either in terms of finding out more about the way humans work, or in terms of finding cures for inherited disorders. The company can sit on the gene, safe in the knowledge that, because it`s patented, no-one else is going to research it until they`re ready.
The thing is, this gene patenting idea is fairly recent. But these days, academics, too, are having to patent their research just in order to prevent their work from being stolen out from under them. This goes completely against the information-sharing ethic that has always been a part of academic science.
So, not quite as scary as the idea of paying royalties to some corporation for your brown hair or strawberry birthmark, but scary nonetheless. Mass patenting of genes is already stifling research. Mass patenting of human genes can only make the problem worse.
I know exactly what sort of mouse I want. The trouble is, it doesn`t seem to exist. I want three ordinary buttons on the top, and a scrollbutton at the side for my thumb. I`ve seen all sorts of mice; some of them have thumb-buttons, but none have thumb-scrollers. All the scrollers seem to be in the same place: where the middle mouse button ought to be.
Anyone know of a mouse like this?
Take the exact opposite event: the Baby Boom. At the height of the 18-year long Baby Boom in the US, fertility rates were something like 3.6. (Compare this to the notoriously out of control demographics of India today: fertility rate 3.7.) Then, in a matter of a couple years around 1963 or so, it all stopped. Now the obvious questions are a) why did it happen, and b) why did it stop. Problem is, we don't really know the answer to either of them.
Well, this might seem a trifle obvious, but wasn`t it in the early sixties that the Pill came into common use? So as soon as people had the choice to stop having children, they stopped having children.
Amusingly enough, from the amazon.co.uk website:
The amusing thing is, of course, that under english law, companies are obliged to offer warranties of fitness of purpose.
Don`t just mail Amazon to say how crap this is. Mail Barnes & Noble as well, and tell them you support their fighting this lawsuit.
Disclaimer: I have no experience of the SAT test and make no claims to knowledge as to how it is used. However, there`s a possibility that it`s being used wrongly.
Scores still go from 200 to 800 for each section, with 500 being the proverbial Average Student. The dumbing-down you speak of occured becuase the Average Student now would score a 460 or so - so they added a few points to our friend's score (and hence, everyone else's as well), bringing him back to 500.
Uhm.. what`s the point in that? Surely someone who is doing badly is doing badly, even if everyone around them is also doing badly. So if the SAT was at all decently designed in the first place, there should be no reason to revalue the whole jing-bang just because the average crop was low for a couple of years.
Of course, the SAT may not have been well-designed. Many tests, including IQ tests, aren`t. Some contain large amounts of cultural reference, which puts people foreign to the culture in question at a disadvantage when all you`re trying to measure is mental potential. Certainly cultural references date after a few years, so a revision of the SAT test may well not have been a `dumbing-down`, but in fact an attempt to make it more relevant. On the other hand, if the SAT test is mainly about showing how much you`ve learnt, then obviously it has to be relevant to the syllabus, and thus, again, would need to be changed now and again to reflect what the children are actually learning.
However, if all they are doing is using the same test and just re-aligning the scores in order to keep the current average score at 500, then there`s something very wrong in what they`re doing, because you can then only compare a child`s achievement with other children in her year, rather than with children in years past. Which I think is a shame, because it ignores the fact that the acheivement of objectively measurable skills is absolute, not relative.
I am saying nothing here about how relatively hard or easy children may find it to pick up these skills. The difficulty of the task (and thus the subjective acheivement to the child on performing it) is indeed relative. But that`s not what`s being measured. What`s being measured is the ability of the child to perform a task. And, in a properly designed and calibrated test, the average should remain constant - unless the ability of the children really is changing. And if it is, we need to find out why this is happening, not just recalibrate the test.
Now, if only Stephenson could learn to end a novel properly, without having to resort to the #&$^ showdown between the forces of Good and Evil...
It`s not the showdown so much as the fact that he doesn`t seem to want to deal with aftermath. Most stories have a climax, and then let you down gently before opening the door and letting you out into the real world. It1`s not a matter of tying up loose ends - I tend to like some to be left hanging so that you can imagine what happened next - but a matter of winding down after the climax. Yes, it`s very hackneyed: almost all films and books do it. But there`s a reason for that, and that`s that it`s structurally required in order for it to feel finished. Perhaps the lack of it here ss related to the fact that it was originally conceived as a graphical novel, where the rules are to some extent different.
My DNA or variations herein will not be used for the purposes of sexual reproduction without my written consent
It`s the `variations herein` bit that`s the problem. One human`s DNA is very very similar to another human`s DNA. If they use someone else`s DNA, how is that not a variation of yours? Are you saying you need to be consulted before anyone anywhere has a child?