Gotta love Yes Minister statistics quotes: Sir Humphrey: If local authorities don't send us the statistics that we ask for, then government figures will be a nonsense. Jim: Why? Sir Humphrey: They'll be incomplete. Jim: But government figures are a nonsense anyway. Bernard: I think Sir Humphrey wants to ensure they're a complete nonsense.
Sir Humphrey: Statistics, you can prove anything with statistics. Jim: Even the truth. Sir Humphrey: Ye...no. [...later that episode...] Jim: These figures are just guesses. Sir Humphrey: No they're government stat... they're facts.
The number of times i've seen those who have learnt English as a second (, third, fourth...) language correcting native English speakers is absurd. The main problem is that you're not taught the ins and outs of your native language in the same way.
I often correct foreigners' mistakes on things such as "I have 16 years", as opposed to "I am 16", but those are just because that's how they say it natively (I learnt something in German!)...now i don't punctuate after that closing parenthesis, do i?
Of course, the network accused of being biased against all 3 major political parties, by the respective party, is obviously highly biased!
Liberal is considered an insult in America from what i gather (Even the tone of "BBC is to the left of even the two most liberal senators" suggests that). You might want to know that the "Liberal Democrats" got 22% of the vote (After 35.2% and 32.3%).
Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content on the internet?
Funny, i've been getting free news broadcasts off BBC News for ages, and it's decent news programming at that! No "free registration", random cookies and adverts either.
When Fry spilled beer on a TV control panel, taking the "Ally McNiel" final off air, the Omicronians invaded 1000 years later (It happened to take 1000 years for the signal to reach them) to demand the final episode.
Right, i've seen a load of these articles and thought "Why not give it a try". I experimented with the letterless keyboard idea when it came up, so i have a keyboard without any letters on it.
Can i get a nice little program to re-map my keys for me, and all that i need to do is put the "letter-caps" back on the keys in the Dvorak layout?
Note to self: A keyless keyboard would be useless, perhaps letterless makes more sense.
Where do you get the uterly stupid idea that as long as the government don't charge you directly for being entered on the database and getting an ID card, it has no cost to you?
But if they did do it the taxation way, it's not an easy way to make money by charging people more then the card is worth, for example.
If you max out your upload, your download likes to shit itself. I always limit my upload to about 1-2kb/s below my maximum, and get torrents going nicely at a full download. If my upload maxes out, my download halves almost instantly.
This is motivation to go to Further Education which is optional, doesn't apply to compulsory education.
Introduced the year i went into Further Education, and i don't qualify damnit. It's means tested depending on your income to £30, £20 or £10 a week depending on where you come. Of course, it's nicely set to a very low level of income...
So the big problem at your school would seem to be that the teachers "own" the new smart whiteboards. To them, education is just students sitting passively while the teachers lecture. If they went to a more participatory model -- which is a good idea, even without the technology -- the story would be rather different.
No, it isn't. We're not lectured at but taught interactively actually. The problem is the teachers don't know how to use them, and those that have find that they're more of a hinderance. They can't write properly with the pens compared to the old whiteboard pens, the software is buggy, crashes, the works. That's what the problem is.
These interactive whiteboards are not just "gee whiz" toys, but once you get used to them, are truly powerful.
Our school got a grant of £30,000 to be spent on interactive whiteboards, at £3,000 each. Only 3 teachers ever use them, one uses it simply as a projector, one switches back to using it as a normal whiteboard frequently as it's easier and the other has lots of problems. He erases something, it pops back up when he starts writing again, undo then undoes the last minute of text and then he has to start again. He has used it for some useful purposes (Graphs from Autograph), but has a lot of problems.
Add to this the fact that it's one of the top schools it the country (About 5th in league tables), i can see a lot of wasted money on these things.
Why don't they do what i regularly saw in maths papers at GCSE? Add the words "Show your working" to the question. If you don't show the working, you don't get the marks. Infact in my FP1 A-Level exam yesterday the question asked you to "Calculate the square root of the complex number 20-21i using an algebraic method". My calculator can do that easily, i don't get any of the marks if i write the answer down straight.
Alternatively, have two papers like you also get at GCSE, a calculator paper and a non calculator. The first, testing whether you are able to use a calculator properly, effectively and accurately. The second, testing whether you know what to do, how to do it and the method / reasoning behind it.
They're both officially one thousand million now, because in financial terms, a UK billion is pretty useless.
Wrong reason there, but the point remains valid that officially we use the US definition for Billions, trillions etc. But mostly refer to "One thousand million" instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Gotta love Yes Minister statistics quotes:
... they're facts.
Sir Humphrey: If local authorities don't send us the statistics that we ask for, then government figures will be a nonsense.
Jim: Why?
Sir Humphrey: They'll be incomplete.
Jim: But government figures are a nonsense anyway.
Bernard: I think Sir Humphrey wants to ensure they're a complete nonsense.
Sir Humphrey: Statistics, you can prove anything with statistics.
Jim: Even the truth.
Sir Humphrey: Ye...no.
[...later that episode...]
Jim: These figures are just guesses.
Sir Humphrey: No they're government stat
The number of times i've seen those who have learnt English as a second (, third, fourth...) language correcting native English speakers is absurd. The main problem is that you're not taught the ins and outs of your native language in the same way.
...now i don't punctuate after that closing parenthesis, do i?
I often correct foreigners' mistakes on things such as "I have 16 years", as opposed to "I am 16", but those are just because that's how they say it natively (I learnt something in German!)
And that's the point of this whole thing. He's poking a massive hole in the Government's proposed law against incitement to religious hatred.
It's a stupid law, phrased poorly and will fail in a similar way.
The area of London i live in is about a year out of date, that's for the areas that don't look whitewashed.
Alarm bells were ringing when i read the FOX News bit, damn me!
Ah well, at least someone thought it was informative!
Of course, the network accused of being biased against all 3 major political parties, by the respective party, is obviously highly biased!
Liberal is considered an insult in America from what i gather (Even the tone of "BBC is to the left of even the two most liberal senators" suggests that). You might want to know that the "Liberal Democrats" got 22% of the vote (After 35.2% and 32.3%).
According to the summary:
Is this another nail in the coffin of paid content on the internet?
Funny, i've been getting free news broadcasts off BBC News for ages, and it's decent news programming at that! No "free registration", random cookies and adverts either.
Futurama - When Aliens Attack.
When Fry spilled beer on a TV control panel, taking the "Ally McNiel" final off air, the Omicronians invaded 1000 years later (It happened to take 1000 years for the signal to reach them) to demand the final episode.
We'd better make sure there are plenty of copies of "Ally McNiel" for 1000 year's time!
So we need to charge for Linux and ensure that it is easy to pirate? I see!
Found the option now and am preparing myself for a very slow learning curve.
Man that was a slow sentence to write.
Right, i've seen a load of these articles and thought "Why not give it a try". I experimented with the letterless keyboard idea when it came up, so i have a keyboard without any letters on it.
Can i get a nice little program to re-map my keys for me, and all that i need to do is put the "letter-caps" back on the keys in the Dvorak layout?
Note to self: A keyless keyboard would be useless, perhaps letterless makes more sense.
Where do you get the uterly stupid idea that as long as the government don't charge you directly for being entered on the database and getting an ID card, it has no cost to you?
But if they did do it the taxation way, it's not an easy way to make money by charging people more then the card is worth, for example.
Yup, it's been lead story on BBC News for many months, it's had a lot of coverage for a year or so now.
Oh yeah, they've already admitted that the ID card scheme will not help capture terrorists.
If you max out your upload, your download likes to shit itself. I always limit my upload to about 1-2kb/s below my maximum, and get torrents going nicely at a full download. If my upload maxes out, my download halves almost instantly.
My computer is slow (a 2.2 GHz Celeron with 512 MB RAM)
Happy?
This is motivation to go to Further Education which is optional, doesn't apply to compulsory education.
Introduced the year i went into Further Education, and i don't qualify damnit. It's means tested depending on your income to £30, £20 or £10 a week depending on where you come. Of course, it's nicely set to a very low level of income...
So the big problem at your school would seem to be that the teachers "own" the new smart whiteboards. To them, education is just students sitting passively while the teachers lecture. If they went to a more participatory model -- which is a good idea, even without the technology -- the story would be rather different.
No, it isn't. We're not lectured at but taught interactively actually. The problem is the teachers don't know how to use them, and those that have find that they're more of a hinderance. They can't write properly with the pens compared to the old whiteboard pens, the software is buggy, crashes, the works. That's what the problem is.
These interactive whiteboards are not just "gee whiz" toys, but once you get used to them, are truly powerful.
Our school got a grant of £30,000 to be spent on interactive whiteboards, at £3,000 each. Only 3 teachers ever use them, one uses it simply as a projector, one switches back to using it as a normal whiteboard frequently as it's easier and the other has lots of problems. He erases something, it pops back up when he starts writing again, undo then undoes the last minute of text and then he has to start again. He has used it for some useful purposes (Graphs from Autograph), but has a lot of problems.
Add to this the fact that it's one of the top schools it the country (About 5th in league tables), i can see a lot of wasted money on these things.
The fact that an email can have multiple labels, but can only be in one folder?
Why don't they do what i regularly saw in maths papers at GCSE? Add the words "Show your working" to the question. If you don't show the working, you don't get the marks. Infact in my FP1 A-Level exam yesterday the question asked you to "Calculate the square root of the complex number 20-21i using an algebraic method". My calculator can do that easily, i don't get any of the marks if i write the answer down straight.
Alternatively, have two papers like you also get at GCSE, a calculator paper and a non calculator. The first, testing whether you are able to use a calculator properly, effectively and accurately. The second, testing whether you know what to do, how to do it and the method / reasoning behind it.
They're both officially one thousand million now, because in financial terms, a UK billion is pretty useless.
Wrong reason there, but the point remains valid that officially we use the US definition for Billions, trillions etc. But mostly refer to "One thousand million" instead.
Umm?
A US Billion "One thousand million"
A UK Billion "One million million"
A billion in England is/was a trillion in the US.
They're both officially one thousand million now, because in financial terms, a UK billion is pretty useless.
UK Prices must include VAT and as far as i know Ireland is the same, prices should include tax. So unless you've got a 46% sales tax on music...