It's been a while since I read the series, but wasn't it 2010 where the Russians and Americans end up doing a joint mission and competing with the Chinese?
"Here, go to this website" is pretty simple. Simpler than "here, download this mp3 and play it."
Both are bad. Neither visiting a website nor playing an mp3 should be able to root your device. I'm all for making jailbreaking easy, but it should absolutely require a wired connection to the device.
Take your pick. There's enough rounding in there that the difference between Kelvin and degrees C is irrelevant. True, it didn't strike me that anyone might think it was in Fahrenheit. Nor any of the other weird old temperature scales.
Most people remember any high school subject you care to mention as being miserable, pointless drudgery. Yes, it's tragic. I don't think dumbing down the curriculum is the cure.
Rather the opposite, in fact. I hear Americans complaining about how a college degree is becoming required for anything but the most basic jobs. Which makes perfect sense when you realize that bachelors graduates are nearing the level of high school graduates of the past. Require more of students in high school, make failure and repeating grades a real possibility and treat the whole enterprise as something that's important and students will treat it as something important again.
Except that some random Slashdotter managed to post a publicly available sample test, and another found publicly available copies of the actual tests from the last few years.
I'm under the impression calculus is pretty much optional in US high schools. Someone posted samples of the actual test he took. It's mostly basic algebra.
An electrician charges a $45 fee to make a house call plus an hourly rate for labor. If the electrician works at one house for 3 hours and charges $145.50 for the job, what is the electrician’s hourly rate?
He should have been able to get SOME of the questions. There are also simple systems of (two) equations and find the slope of a line questions.
The sample test DOES lead with a halfways interesting question though.
Not bad. The sample you link to is fairly reasonable, with a few soft balls added in. It's still alarming that someone with a bachelors of science couldn't get ANY of the questions. In your sample there were a couple of dead easy arithmetic problems and lots of simple geometry. Several of the questions had a logic element as well.
You're a big proponent of measure twice, cut once, I see.
Talk to a carpenter or other reasonably skilled construction job. Those guys are far better at fast mental fractions than most people. And for all but the most basic construction jobs a quarter inch does matter.
Looking at a given answer, or a few possibilities, and quickly figuring out which ones are reasonable is a commonly used skill though. The WHOLE test shouldn't be multiple choice, but mc isn't completely unrealistic.
Well, the LHC is currently 27 km in circumference and uses something like 120 MW, all in. So there is some work to do on miniaturization and battery technology before the hand held model is available.
We know the basics of how cancer originates. Something, either radiation, a chemical, a replication error or other damage causes multiple failures in a cell's regulatory pathways. The cell then replicates out of a control. Additionally, the immune system has to fail to deal with it. Cancer isn't a bacteria or virus (although some cancers can be caused by them). It's not Star Trek temporal mechanics but it is, most definitely, random chance, weighted by genetic predisposition. A cosmic ray hits just the right atom in the right bit of DNA and there you go.
Cancer is normal cells that become damaged, lose their internal checks and proliferate out of control. If you kill all the cancer cells, the cancer is gone. You might be predisposed to developing cancer and do so again, but if you kill off all the cancerous cells, that cancer is gone.
Cancer treatments usually focus on reducing the number of cancerous cells and hoping the immune system will handle the rest. Surgery very rarely gets rid of everything, which is why it's usually followed up with radiation or chemotherapy. Even those therapies may leave cancer cells alive, particularly if the cancer has metastasized.
The point is, in cancer the problem is clear and, at least in theory, identifiable. We don't understand autoimmune diseases nearly as well.
GPS isn't overly accurate (or reliable) when it's view of the sky is significantly blocked, and it doesn't matter how good your receiver is. Add to that streets that are narrow and frequently close enough together to be confused due to an inaccurate fix and you're going to have problems.
Besides which, you answered your own question. Why don't London cabbies just use GPS? Because "the generic stuff that civilians get is not good enough."
Slashdot Mirror
It's been a while since I read the series, but wasn't it 2010 where the Russians and Americans end up doing a joint mission and competing with the Chinese?
It does do rather a lot of conversions. 20 to 30 MB isn't that much. It also takes up a lot of memory, but it's written in Java, isn't it?
"Here, go to this website" is pretty simple. Simpler than "here, download this mp3 and play it."
Both are bad. Neither visiting a website nor playing an mp3 should be able to root your device. I'm all for making jailbreaking easy, but it should absolutely require a wired connection to the device.
Didn't read the post I replied to, hey?
Take your pick. There's enough rounding in there that the difference between Kelvin and degrees C is irrelevant. True, it didn't strike me that anyone might think it was in Fahrenheit. Nor any of the other weird old temperature scales.
Most people remember any high school subject you care to mention as being miserable, pointless drudgery. Yes, it's tragic. I don't think dumbing down the curriculum is the cure.
Rather the opposite, in fact. I hear Americans complaining about how a college degree is becoming required for anything but the most basic jobs. Which makes perfect sense when you realize that bachelors graduates are nearing the level of high school graduates of the past. Require more of students in high school, make failure and repeating grades a real possibility and treat the whole enterprise as something that's important and students will treat it as something important again.
Don't forget, you're in the US so you have to use imperial and know fractions too.
Except that some random Slashdotter managed to post a publicly available sample test, and another found publicly available copies of the actual tests from the last few years.
Impossible indeed.
I'm under the impression calculus is pretty much optional in US high schools. Someone posted samples of the actual test he took. It's mostly basic algebra.
If you want another eureka moment, try integrating and differentiating the simple equations of motion with respect to time.
Cordial... Isn't that some kind of booze? ;)
Don't forget this one:
He should have been able to get SOME of the questions. There are also simple systems of (two) equations and find the slope of a line questions.
The sample test DOES lead with a halfways interesting question though.
I liked the picture at the bottom. Oooh, puppies! So soothing after reading that hard article!
Not bad. The sample you link to is fairly reasonable, with a few soft balls added in. It's still alarming that someone with a bachelors of science couldn't get ANY of the questions. In your sample there were a couple of dead easy arithmetic problems and lots of simple geometry. Several of the questions had a logic element as well.
You're a big proponent of measure twice, cut once, I see.
Talk to a carpenter or other reasonably skilled construction job. Those guys are far better at fast mental fractions than most people. And for all but the most basic construction jobs a quarter inch does matter.
I seriously doubt there are any proofs in grade 10 US math.
Even managers should know at least some reasonable algebra. Then they have a hope of following what their analysts are telling them.
Yeah, in real life I never have to read something I didn't choose, understand the details quickly, then make a judgement call.
Looking at a given answer, or a few possibilities, and quickly figuring out which ones are reasonable is a commonly used skill though. The WHOLE test shouldn't be multiple choice, but mc isn't completely unrealistic.
As is quick estimation.
Well, the LHC is currently 27 km in circumference and uses something like 120 MW, all in. So there is some work to do on miniaturization and battery technology before the hand held model is available.
We know the basics of how cancer originates. Something, either radiation, a chemical, a replication error or other damage causes multiple failures in a cell's regulatory pathways. The cell then replicates out of a control. Additionally, the immune system has to fail to deal with it. Cancer isn't a bacteria or virus (although some cancers can be caused by them). It's not Star Trek temporal mechanics but it is, most definitely, random chance, weighted by genetic predisposition. A cosmic ray hits just the right atom in the right bit of DNA and there you go.
Cancer is normal cells that become damaged, lose their internal checks and proliferate out of control. If you kill all the cancer cells, the cancer is gone. You might be predisposed to developing cancer and do so again, but if you kill off all the cancerous cells, that cancer is gone.
Cancer treatments usually focus on reducing the number of cancerous cells and hoping the immune system will handle the rest. Surgery very rarely gets rid of everything, which is why it's usually followed up with radiation or chemotherapy. Even those therapies may leave cancer cells alive, particularly if the cancer has metastasized.
The point is, in cancer the problem is clear and, at least in theory, identifiable. We don't understand autoimmune diseases nearly as well.
GPS isn't overly accurate (or reliable) when it's view of the sky is significantly blocked, and it doesn't matter how good your receiver is. Add to that streets that are narrow and frequently close enough together to be confused due to an inaccurate fix and you're going to have problems.
Besides which, you answered your own question. Why don't London cabbies just use GPS? Because "the generic stuff that civilians get is not good enough."
Not really. The idea has a bunch of minor exceptions but good evidence that the adult brain can routinely significantly remodel itself is pretty new.
Heavens. You could use some other port than 80 and a protocol other than HTTP for communication too.