The damn test gives 25 minutes to write a coherent well-thought out essay. Samuel Johnson wouldn't have been able to bang out a readable essay in twenty-five freaking minutes. Nabokov would have taken one look at the time limit, laughed, and then walked out. 25 minutes, holy crap. Are the people who come up with these tests insane?
For more on the reliability of SAT essay questions as a measure of anything except the ability to pile on verbage, here's an excerpt from another NYT article that ran last year:
"In March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits...
In the next weeks, Dr. Perelman studied every graded sample SAT essay that the College Board made public. He looked at the 15 samples in the ScoreWrite book that the College Board distributed to high schools nationwide to prepare students for the new writing section. He reviewed the 23 graded essays on the College Board Web site meant as a guide for students and the 16 writing 'anchor' samples the College Board used to train graders to properly mark essays.
He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. 'I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one,' he said. 'If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time.' The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade."
So to any high schoolers about to take the SAT: when in doubt, write a lot, in third-person, and in cursive.
1. Nikon would try to sue anyway and Adobe wants to avoid the legal headache.
2. Adobe wants to settle the issue nicely without alienating a manufacturer of high-end cameras, cameras which are no doubt used by a lot of people who use Photoshop to edit their photos.
The point of the article is that spreadsheet errors are a problem that is being overlooked, and that oversight is costing businesses a lot of money. FTA:
The real problem, of course, is that business managers don't know that there is a problem (actually, lots of problems) with spreadsheets, while IT regards spreadsheets as falling outside its jurisdiction. So spreadsheet management falls down a hole in the middle.
Fifty-three percent of adult e-mail users in the United States now say they trust e-mail less because of spam, down from 62 percent a year ago and about the same as a June 2003 Pew survey.
Note the reference to "e-mail users". Thus the decline in e-mail users who say they trust e-mail less because of spam may be the result of people getting fed up with spam and ceasing to use e-mail.
Some people do not have access to other broadband services like cable. Wireless might be an option, but it is expensive, and prices for those services are not likely to come down any time soon.
My state library system still has it's database running off an old mainframe from the late 80's. The card catalog search terminals are these funky old greenscreens.
So a couple months ago I went to apply for a new library card (haven't used the system in like 10 years). When I turned in my application, the Librarian ran my info through the system and informed me that I had an eight dollar overdue book fine outstanding from 1987. Ouch. Place was pretty crowded, too, she could've said it in a quieter tone of voice...
The reason average income in India is so low is that the population contains many millions of very poor people.
Keep in mind, though, that India's population is about a billion: there is also a large middle income group in the country who could afford a $200 computer pretty easily. This group makes up a relatively small percentage of the population, but this still amounts to several million people
Way back then, light and matter were only just beginning to separate from each other
14 billion years ago, matter and light were inseperable. They went everywhere together. Friends cheerfully complemented them on their strong attachment to each other, but whispered behind their backs about 'co-dependency'.
Then, something happened. No one apart from a few math-sodden physics profs are quite sure what is was. Some say matter was too indecisive, today forming simple hydrogen isotopes, tomorrow churning out all sorts of unstable heavy metals. Others blame light for being too inflexible, not wanting to 'move too fast'.
Whatever the cause was, matter and light decided to separate. Matter moved on, churning out everything from noble gases to metals that explode in water, satisfying every creative urge. Light, the brighter of the two, contented to be always aglow, yet unafraid to reveal shadows when the opportunity arose.
The tragic part of the tale involves the unfortunate castoff children of the great breakup, as divorces are never easy on offspring. Cosmic ray wreaks havoc anywhere and everywhere. Cynical X-Ray prefers to reveal everything hidden, as if compensating for repressed emotion. Young microwave is communicative, but very hot under the collar, and don't even ask about Gamma ray. Maybe someday the children of the great breakup will work out their issues.
Spitfire, a small e-commerce company that generates five to 30 transactions a day, suddenly was deluged with (62,000!) credit card authorizations.
Damn. And nobody noticed until irate customers started calling? Who dropped the ball here? Presumably Spitfire is ultimately responsible for not paying attention to the transactions through their own website, but I imagine Online Data comes in for some of the blame, since they were actually processing the payments. Interesting to see where the most fingers end up pointing (probably depends on who has the best legal department).
Also: In a situation like this, is Verisgn obligated to contact 62,000 credit card holders to warn them about a possible fraudulent transaction using their card?
Verizon's user allegedly has been swapping songs by artists including Billy Joel, Barry White, Aerosmith, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez, N'Sync and Britney Spears.
Is it possible to be sued for having really cheesy taste in music?
All this talk about envisioning 4-d space reminds me of an interview Forced Exposure did many years ago with SF writer/mathematician Rudy Rucker, who has written extensively about dimensional spaces beyond the third, both in fiction and nonfiction. I couldn't find the interview online anywhere, but the exchange went something like:
FE:So, what's the closest you ever came to experiencing the fourth dimension?
Rucker: Well, there was this one time, we'd been partying all night, and I wanted to get a little higher. We were almost out of drugs, but I did have some acid. So I took it, but then I fell asleep. And when I woke up...
FE: Oh, I've been there. That's the fourth dimension?
The link between computers and RPG's goes back as long as either existed. Geeks' love of Role Playing Games has affected computer culture for decades: from "Adventure" and "Zork" which were both originally programmed on mainframes, to the heavily D&D-influenced classic "Nethack", both computers and RPG's have developed together to the point where today we have... um... faster computers and more elaborate RPGS. ... Damn, I was hoping for something more profound to come out of that line of reasoning...
Per Rusty, K5's budget comes to $70,000 per year, salary and expenses, with himself as the only paid K5 employee.
Yet LWN's article states that they claim they can get by on $15,000 per month for all five of them, or $36,000 per year each. Maybe the staff of LWN can teach Rusty a thing or two about living frugally...
They should have two categories for sports like distance running and track-and-field, one would be drug- and tech(blood doping, etc)- free, the other would be "anything goes". It would be interesting to see the steroid-charged atomic supermen in the "anything goes" category competing against each other. I wounder how fast we could engineer a human body to run?
An slightly longer article on patterned media was published in Technology Research News back in February 2001. The article goes into more detail about how the technology works and about some of the problems associated with development of it. Linkeroo
For the record, the Federal Railroad Administration has a Maglev page here. looks like the page hasn't been updated too recently, which is either good news or bad news, depending on what side of the monorail you're on...
Taiwan has been recently involved in some legal hassles with Microsoft over licensing fees and excessive price increases. I wonder if this plan is a genuine effort to use free software just a bluff to put a scare into Microsoft?
Isn't the rule of thumb" "don't just explain what a given block of code does, instead explain why you put that block of code in there"?
A little simplistic, but a good start, IMHO
Also on Maui
on
Hawaii Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Wiecking's project to bring wireless net to the island Hawaii has gotten a lot of support from the University of Hawaii and the Maui High Performance Computing Center, which is also working to impelment wireless on Maui. The MHPCC has a site here with some nice info pages, including some helpful coverage maps. A lot of the areas the MHPCC's project covers are way out in the 'boonies (Honokaa, Kohala), so any geeks who are interested in doing the whole hermit-in-paradise thing might want to take note.
Cross-species cloning, the technique they want to use with the Tasmanian tiger, was successfully performed this past January using an endangered bull called a gaur, but that was using a living DNA donor, as opposed to extracting DNA from a century-old bone.
A tasmanian tiger would be cool, but personally I'd rather see the giant wombats mentioned at the end of the article.
Slashdot Mirror
The damn test gives 25 minutes to write a coherent well-thought out essay. Samuel Johnson wouldn't have been able to bang out a readable essay in twenty-five freaking minutes. Nabokov would have taken one look at the time limit, laughed, and then walked out. 25 minutes, holy crap. Are the people who come up with these tests insane?
For more on the reliability of SAT essay questions as a measure of anything except the ability to pile on verbage, here's an excerpt from another NYT article that ran last year:
"In March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits...
In the next weeks, Dr. Perelman studied every graded sample SAT essay that the College Board made public. He looked at the 15 samples in the ScoreWrite book that the College Board distributed to high schools nationwide to prepare students for the new writing section. He reviewed the 23 graded essays on the College Board Web site meant as a guide for students and the 16 writing 'anchor' samples the College Board used to train graders to properly mark essays.
He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. 'I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one,' he said. 'If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time.' The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade."
So to any high schoolers about to take the SAT: when in doubt, write a lot, in third-person, and in cursive.
A couple of guesses:
1. Nikon would try to sue anyway and Adobe wants to avoid the legal headache.
2. Adobe wants to settle the issue nicely without alienating a manufacturer of high-end cameras, cameras which are no doubt used by a lot of people who use Photoshop to edit their photos.
Some people do not have access to other broadband services like cable. Wireless might be an option, but it is expensive, and prices for those services are not likely to come down any time soon.
My state library system still has it's database running off an old mainframe from the late 80's. The card catalog search terminals are these funky old greenscreens.
So a couple months ago I went to apply for a new library card (haven't used the system in like 10 years). When I turned in my application, the Librarian ran my info through the system and informed me that I had an eight dollar overdue book fine outstanding from 1987. Ouch. Place was pretty crowded, too, she could've said it in a quieter tone of voice...
The Underwood mod was meant to be used as a prop in a live-action role playing game (which looks like it's a lot of fun) called "Cthulhu Lives!".
Keep in mind the 'why not' factor has been the cause of far stranger human activites than case-modding.
The reason average income in India is so low is that the population contains many millions of very poor people.
Keep in mind, though, that India's population is about a billion: there is also a large middle income group in the country who could afford a $200 computer pretty easily. This group makes up a relatively small percentage of the population, but this still amounts to several million people
Way back then, light and matter were only just beginning to separate from each other
14 billion years ago, matter and light were inseperable. They went everywhere together. Friends cheerfully complemented them on their strong attachment to each other, but whispered behind their backs about 'co-dependency'.
Then, something happened. No one apart from a few math-sodden physics profs are quite sure what is was. Some say matter was too indecisive, today forming simple hydrogen isotopes, tomorrow churning out all sorts of unstable heavy metals. Others blame light for being too inflexible, not wanting to 'move too fast'.
Whatever the cause was, matter and light decided to separate. Matter moved on, churning out everything from noble gases to metals that explode in water, satisfying every creative urge. Light, the brighter of the two, contented to be always aglow, yet unafraid to reveal shadows when the opportunity arose.
The tragic part of the tale involves the unfortunate castoff children of the great breakup, as divorces are never easy on offspring. Cosmic ray wreaks havoc anywhere and everywhere. Cynical X-Ray prefers to reveal everything hidden, as if compensating for repressed emotion. Young microwave is communicative, but very hot under the collar, and don't even ask about Gamma ray. Maybe someday the children of the great breakup will work out their issues.
Damn. And nobody noticed until irate customers started calling? Who dropped the ball here? Presumably Spitfire is ultimately responsible for not paying attention to the transactions through their own website, but I imagine Online Data comes in for some of the blame, since they were actually processing the payments. Interesting to see where the most fingers end up pointing (probably depends on who has the best legal department).
Also: In a situation like this, is Verisgn obligated to contact 62,000 credit card holders to warn them about a possible fraudulent transaction using their card?
Is it possible to be sued for having really cheesy taste in music?
I can convert beer into a water and salts solution! What do I get?
FE:So, what's the closest you ever came to experiencing the fourth dimension?
Rucker: Well, there was this one time, we'd been partying all night, and I wanted to get a little higher. We were almost out of drugs, but I did have some acid. So I took it, but then I fell asleep. And when I woke up...
FE: Oh, I've been there. That's the fourth dimension?
The link between computers and RPG's goes back as long as either existed. Geeks' love of Role Playing Games has affected computer culture for decades: from "Adventure" and "Zork" which were both originally programmed on mainframes, to the heavily D&D-influenced classic "Nethack", both computers and RPG's have developed together to the point where today we have... um... faster computers and more elaborate RPGS.
...
Damn, I was hoping for something more profound to come out of that line of reasoning...
Per Rusty, K5's budget comes to $70,000 per year, salary and expenses, with himself as the only paid K5 employee.
Yet LWN's article states that they claim they can get by on $15,000 per month for all five of them, or $36,000 per year each. Maybe the staff of LWN can teach Rusty a thing or two about living frugally...
They should have two categories for sports like distance running and track-and-field, one would be drug- and tech(blood doping, etc)- free, the other would be "anything goes". It would be interesting to see the steroid-charged atomic supermen in the "anything goes" category competing against each other. I wounder how fast we could engineer a human body to run?
An slightly longer article on patterned media was published in Technology Research News back in February 2001. The article goes into more detail about how the technology works and about some of the problems associated with development of it. Linkeroo
Sorry, jumped the gun. The link only gets you into the front page. You get kicked out when you try to access an article. :(
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/ (The .org story can be found through the Technology link on the left).
Works for me under IE 4.0 and Moz. Doe it work for anyone else?
For the record, the Federal Railroad Administration has a Maglev page here. looks like the page hasn't been updated too recently, which is either good news or bad news, depending on what side of the monorail you're on...
Taiwan has been recently involved in some legal hassles with Microsoft over licensing fees and excessive price increases. I wonder if this plan is a genuine effort to use free software just a bluff to put a scare into Microsoft?
A little simplistic, but a good start, IMHO
Wiecking's project to bring wireless net to the island Hawaii has gotten a lot of support from the University of Hawaii and the Maui High Performance Computing Center, which is also working to impelment wireless on Maui. The MHPCC has a site here with some nice info pages, including some helpful coverage maps. A lot of the areas the MHPCC's project covers are way out in the 'boonies (Honokaa, Kohala), so any geeks who are interested in doing the whole hermit-in-paradise thing might want to take note.
Try digging around on mail-order hardware mecca pricewatch under "not exactly new". There are some good deals to be found there.
A tasmanian tiger would be cool, but personally I'd rather see the giant wombats mentioned at the end of the article.