Although it can 'ampere your life, it would give me a shock to find that it could also cause one to simply switch off. In parallel with other disorders, however, there are effects that cannot be rectified.
If the goal of the exam is to measure and distinguish between the performances
But one has to select a band of performances that can be distinguished. It's not practical to have a test which differentiates between everyone from a preschool child up to a postgraduate, for example. At some point, you're going to have to say, "this is the highest level we expect anyone taking this test to have." The question is whether that level might allow in, say, three people who are amazingly clever, or twenty people, from some large number of students taking the test. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow those 20 to get 100%, since at a certain level, it's no longer useful to do more differentiation. Indeed, in the UK you are often limited to the grades themselves, so for differentiation purposes, it makes no difference whether 3 or 20 people get 100%, as long as the same number of people got more than 80% to get an A.
I think people should be able to get 100%, since it's a target to aim for, but it should be a challenge even for the top students. I have just done A levels and got full marks on 3 modules, 2 of which were in maths. In the case of chemistry, the other one, I think the exam should have been harder - the questions were essentially straightforward, I'm not particularly brilliant at chemistry, and 90% would have been more appropriate for my proficiency (apropos, an A grade is 80%+ at A level in the UK) although exams are always a bit random.
In maths, I think given the level of difficulty of the exams, I ought to have got more full-mark papers, since I lose most of the marks due to careless mistakes. Maths is an interesting one. I knew all the material pretty much back-to-front, but many of the other students didn't. I wouldn't say I'm in the very top group of maths students, though, so perhaps maths is still the right difficulty?
One thing is important to note - the summary doesn't mention the distinction between the two types of exams it discusses. Some oaf is trying to get more multiple choice questions into GCSE Science - the end of High School exam, taken at age 16. The summary implies that this change is occurring in A level science - where there are currently hardly any multiple choice questions (Maybe 2 or 3 marks on a 90 to 100 mark paper in chemistry)
Reading the article though, highlights an interesting point. The idea, at least, is not that more people attain top grades, but that more people attain a grade at all. We have some crazy system in the UK where any grade from G up (or E up at A level) is considered a pass. (Although employers and universities obviously have different ideas) This will get more people onto the G to D grades - according to its proponents. That is actually something I think is probably not a bad idea. At the same time, I think that we should have some harder questions at the top end. On the AS/A level science papers that I have done, the only questions that were actually challenging were because I'd missed something when revising (not surprising considering my revision tactic) or because I just forget the answer. For the high-level students, the exam papers do not present any questions involving much thought. (this is not the case, IMHO, on, say philosophy or English or whatever) While the exams have moved towards understanding over rote learning, if you have done your revision, you have all you need for the exam. You don't need that extra bit of mental agility to think of an answer to something you've really not encountered before - all the "new" things on exam papers are just rehashes of the same ideas.
Even that technical solution could be bypassed by using anonymizing software, surely? If you used Tor and Privoxy, then any outgoing packets would be encrypted, and their destination unknown. The only fix is to have the computer directly observable.
I meant punishment figuratively speaking. It was a slightly ironic nod to the ubiquitous slashdot groupthink; I am well aware that this is simply because the authorities have no monitoring software available for his chosen OS, and that it is the monitor that is his "punishment" (Or rather, as you rightly state, terms of his probation.)
Anyway, back to the subversion of the system, which was what I was really interested in. If he's so accustomed to the internet, it can't be too difficult to either sniff the protocol, see if it's crackable, use VMWare, mingle with Windows, use a second box, or whatever. There are a multitude of ways. Also, I'm not actually suggesting he break his probation, I'm just pointing out the, should he wish to, it is unlikely to be difficult or detectable.
What I want to know is why he can't just install Linux on the machine once they're done installing this software - in fact, I'm intrigued as to whether this tracking software requires actual complicity of the convict to work. If you buy another computer, possibly get another internet account, what can they do? Seems you may as well say, "OK, you don't need to do jail time, but only if you promise you're not going to be naughty again." And they'd only have his word for it.
I assume I'm just unaware of some nuance of the monitoring setup, but perhaps it really is that silly.
I'm undecided as to whether this guy is being a prat about this interesting part of his sentence, but the website, at least, is definitely retarded. There they are decrying this man's conviction when he pled guilty, for goodness' sake.
While this works well in Hitchhiker's Guide, it's not actually a solid argument. God's existence isn't predicated on faith at all, it's just that certain believers think faith is important. (If you ask me, the only reason they're saying that is because they have no evidence. They choose to make virtue of a vice.) Besides, the glue on the cupboard represents the fact that there is no way to test a God that's defined vaguely enough.
It's not a cop-out, it's a consequence of the unfalsifiability of the concept of God, and the vagueness as well. If a theist has retreated to deism, there can be no test that will show whether or not that God exists. That is why "we cannot know" makes sense. The important thing to remember is that we also cannot know whether fairies exist, and no-one believes in those.
Not quite. Contrary to what some rethorically challenged people like to state, you can prove a negative. You can prove that a certain entity doesn't exist by proving that it has contradicting characteristics.
Quite true; I have pointed this out myself. But one doesn't always get a nice trite quotation by saying everything...
Suppose someone suggests to you that there is a pencil in your cupboard. If you don't look in the cupboard, do you have any evidence that there is no pencil there? No - you merely have absence of evidence. In the case of God, the door to the cupboard is effectively glued shut - we can't test the proposition. Nonetheless, we still don't have any evidence that there isn't a pencil inside the cupboard. Obviously, no-one goes around thinking there are pencils in cupboards, because absence of evidence is good grounds for not believing in something. But it's not the same as evidence that the thing isn't there.
Why should I proof that something does not exist when you can't even proof that it does exist in the first place?
You shouldn't! You don't have to at all - and nor do I (I'm an atheist, by the way) but without proof, one cannot reasonably state that something is 100% incontrovertible. As such, we may treat God as not existing (because there's no evidence) but to go further and say it's an absolute fact is unreasonable.
The point is a hypothesis is not a hypothesis unless there is some potentially falsifying data. You can't falsify Intelligent Design because it's too fuzzy. You can try, you can make IDers look like fools by pointing to obvious unintelligent design, but in the end, there's no potential disproof.
The best piece of evidence for evolution, in my opinion, is human chromosome number 2. Apes have one more chromosome pair than humans do - 48 to our 46. Knowing this, scientists made a prediction. Because humans came from apes, there should be evidence of two of these chromosomes fusing together, since chromosomes don't usually just go missing without killing the offspring. Sure enough, if you lay a certain two chimp chromosomes next to our chromosome 2, the genes match up. Not only that, but human chromosome 2 has the remnants of a second centromere - the structure in the middle of the chromosome pairs, which causes the characteristic pinch. Naturally, this centromere-remnant matches position with the centromere of one of the chimp chromosomes, the real centromere matching the other one. Finally, if you look near the middle of chromosome 2, we find the remnants of telomere sequence - a big repeating sequence that exists normally only at the ends of the chromosomes, to prevent damage to DNA during replication. Again, this is in the right place compared to chimp chromosomes.
Creationists often try to lead you off track talking about the origins of life or even the universe. This immediately cuts out all that irrelevant nonsense and goes straight for the neck - if we didn't descend from apes, then why on earth could evolution, based on the premise that we did, make this prediction? There are more airtight pieces of evidence, like ERV patterns and the Vitamin C gene, but none so simple - two chimp chromosomes match the gene sequence, the human one has a second, broken structure that normal chromosomes have just one of, and it has bits of DNA in the middle that are normally at the end. Everything matches position with the two chimp chromosomes. Brilliant.
That's what always comes up. Let me turn it this way: I believe that there is an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster, and it created the entire universe after drinking an awful lot.
I hope you agree, if you do not: prove that I am wrong!
This is correct, but you've not done what he asked - proved that God does not exist. The statement "God does not exist," is not "100% incontrovertible fact" however senseless the opposite might seem. It doesn't make sense to believe in God due to lack of evidence. But it doesn't make sense to actively deny God for exactly the same reason - just as you would be foolish to deny that there are invisible pixies in your cupboard - how could you know? They're invisible!
That's not what was requested. You still haven't given any proof that God doesn't exist. Absence of evidence, my friend, is not evidence of absence. There is no evidence for leprechauns but they nonetheless could exist. Same goes for God.
That doesn't mean you have to act as if he does - because no-one thinks leprechauns are real. But let's get the philosophy straight.
In actual fact, you are wrong. God is an unfalsifiable concept, so the best you can get is "There is no evidence that God exists," and "There is evidence that God is made up," but neither amount to, "There is evidence God doesn't exist." What all this means is that, for all practical purposes, one can claim God doesn't exist but really, that is not "Fact. Absolute, 100% uncontrovertible[sic] fact."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you're not a psychologist, or anyone who has to deal with trauma victims. Neither am I, but I know people who do, and I'm pretty sure that in some cases, all your "accept it, cope with it, get over it" just makes it worse.
If you can read or see a bunch of Shakespeare's works and get nothing relevant or educational out of them, you probably live in a small, opaque metal box with breathing holes and no possibility of human contact. Fictional works in general can be extremely educational, and very much relevant to life.
Can be, but aren't necessarily. Shakespeare may be a classic, but he's not to everyone's tastes - and that doesn't mean they're just uncultured, or living in a metal box.
Kasparov was allowed to tinker with his software, too - he can change his strategies, consult with other players, read books and so on at any point. He can change is strategies mid-game, even. In the end, the complaint appears to amount to the idea that Deep Blue was using experts to guide and develop the machine - just the same as Kasparov surely had his teachers and experts to look to.
Slashdot Mirror
That's no moon^H^H^H^H Earth!
Dude... it's script-fu.
Although it can 'ampere your life, it would give me a shock to find that it could also cause one to simply switch off. In parallel with other disorders, however, there are effects that cannot be rectified.
But one has to select a band of performances that can be distinguished. It's not practical to have a test which differentiates between everyone from a preschool child up to a postgraduate, for example. At some point, you're going to have to say, "this is the highest level we expect anyone taking this test to have." The question is whether that level might allow in, say, three people who are amazingly clever, or twenty people, from some large number of students taking the test. I don't think it's unreasonable to allow those 20 to get 100%, since at a certain level, it's no longer useful to do more differentiation. Indeed, in the UK you are often limited to the grades themselves, so for differentiation purposes, it makes no difference whether 3 or 20 people get 100%, as long as the same number of people got more than 80% to get an A.
In maths, I think given the level of difficulty of the exams, I ought to have got more full-mark papers, since I lose most of the marks due to careless mistakes. Maths is an interesting one. I knew all the material pretty much back-to-front, but many of the other students didn't. I wouldn't say I'm in the very top group of maths students, though, so perhaps maths is still the right difficulty?
One thing is important to note - the summary doesn't mention the distinction between the two types of exams it discusses. Some oaf is trying to get more multiple choice questions into GCSE Science - the end of High School exam, taken at age 16. The summary implies that this change is occurring in A level science - where there are currently hardly any multiple choice questions (Maybe 2 or 3 marks on a 90 to 100 mark paper in chemistry)
Reading the article though, highlights an interesting point. The idea, at least, is not that more people attain top grades, but that more people attain a grade at all. We have some crazy system in the UK where any grade from G up (or E up at A level) is considered a pass. (Although employers and universities obviously have different ideas) This will get more people onto the G to D grades - according to its proponents. That is actually something I think is probably not a bad idea. At the same time, I think that we should have some harder questions at the top end. On the AS/A level science papers that I have done, the only questions that were actually challenging were because I'd missed something when revising (not surprising considering my revision tactic) or because I just forget the answer. For the high-level students, the exam papers do not present any questions involving much thought. (this is not the case, IMHO, on, say philosophy or English or whatever) While the exams have moved towards understanding over rote learning, if you have done your revision, you have all you need for the exam. You don't need that extra bit of mental agility to think of an answer to something you've really not encountered before - all the "new" things on exam papers are just rehashes of the same ideas.
Even that technical solution could be bypassed by using anonymizing software, surely? If you used Tor and Privoxy, then any outgoing packets would be encrypted, and their destination unknown. The only fix is to have the computer directly observable.
I read this comment.
I am clearly no poet;
it seemed rather odd.
I meant punishment figuratively speaking. It was a slightly ironic nod to the ubiquitous slashdot groupthink; I am well aware that this is simply because the authorities have no monitoring software available for his chosen OS, and that it is the monitor that is his "punishment" (Or rather, as you rightly state, terms of his probation.)
Anyway, back to the subversion of the system, which was what I was really interested in. If he's so accustomed to the internet, it can't be too difficult to either sniff the protocol, see if it's crackable, use VMWare, mingle with Windows, use a second box, or whatever. There are a multitude of ways. Also, I'm not actually suggesting he break his probation, I'm just pointing out the, should he wish to, it is unlikely to be difficult or detectable.
I assume I'm just unaware of some nuance of the monitoring setup, but perhaps it really is that silly.
I'm undecided as to whether this guy is being a prat about this interesting part of his sentence, but the website, at least, is definitely retarded. There they are decrying this man's conviction when he pled guilty, for goodness' sake.
That common ancestor, however, was an ape, so to say "came from apes" is nonetheless correct. To say we came from chimps, on the other hand, is false.
While this works well in Hitchhiker's Guide, it's not actually a solid argument. God's existence isn't predicated on faith at all, it's just that certain believers think faith is important. (If you ask me, the only reason they're saying that is because they have no evidence. They choose to make virtue of a vice.) Besides, the glue on the cupboard represents the fact that there is no way to test a God that's defined vaguely enough.
It's not a cop-out, it's a consequence of the unfalsifiability of the concept of God, and the vagueness as well. If a theist has retreated to deism, there can be no test that will show whether or not that God exists. That is why "we cannot know" makes sense. The important thing to remember is that we also cannot know whether fairies exist, and no-one believes in those.
Suppose someone suggests to you that there is a pencil in your cupboard. If you don't look in the cupboard, do you have any evidence that there is no pencil there? No - you merely have absence of evidence. In the case of God, the door to the cupboard is effectively glued shut - we can't test the proposition. Nonetheless, we still don't have any evidence that there isn't a pencil inside the cupboard. Obviously, no-one goes around thinking there are pencils in cupboards, because absence of evidence is good grounds for not believing in something. But it's not the same as evidence that the thing isn't there.
You shouldn't! You don't have to at all - and nor do I (I'm an atheist, by the way) but without proof, one cannot reasonably state that something is 100% incontrovertible. As such, we may treat God as not existing (because there's no evidence) but to go further and say it's an absolute fact is unreasonable.
The point is a hypothesis is not a hypothesis unless there is some potentially falsifying data. You can't falsify Intelligent Design because it's too fuzzy. You can try, you can make IDers look like fools by pointing to obvious unintelligent design, but in the end, there's no potential disproof.
Creationists often try to lead you off track talking about the origins of life or even the universe. This immediately cuts out all that irrelevant nonsense and goes straight for the neck - if we didn't descend from apes, then why on earth could evolution, based on the premise that we did, make this prediction? There are more airtight pieces of evidence, like ERV patterns and the Vitamin C gene, but none so simple - two chimp chromosomes match the gene sequence, the human one has a second, broken structure that normal chromosomes have just one of, and it has bits of DNA in the middle that are normally at the end. Everything matches position with the two chimp chromosomes. Brilliant.
This is correct, but you've not done what he asked - proved that God does not exist. The statement "God does not exist," is not "100% incontrovertible fact" however senseless the opposite might seem. It doesn't make sense to believe in God due to lack of evidence. But it doesn't make sense to actively deny God for exactly the same reason - just as you would be foolish to deny that there are invisible pixies in your cupboard - how could you know? They're invisible!
That doesn't mean you have to act as if he does - because no-one thinks leprechauns are real. But let's get the philosophy straight.
In actual fact, you are wrong. God is an unfalsifiable concept, so the best you can get is "There is no evidence that God exists," and "There is evidence that God is made up," but neither amount to, "There is evidence God doesn't exist." What all this means is that, for all practical purposes, one can claim God doesn't exist but really, that is not "Fact. Absolute, 100% uncontrovertible[sic] fact."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you're not a psychologist, or anyone who has to deal with trauma victims. Neither am I, but I know people who do, and I'm pretty sure that in some cases, all your "accept it, cope with it, get over it" just makes it worse.
Not too taxing - one only needs a pinch!
Can be, but aren't necessarily. Shakespeare may be a classic, but he's not to everyone's tastes - and that doesn't mean they're just uncultured, or living in a metal box.
Kasparov was allowed to tinker with his software, too - he can change his strategies, consult with other players, read books and so on at any point. He can change is strategies mid-game, even. In the end, the complaint appears to amount to the idea that Deep Blue was using experts to guide and develop the machine - just the same as Kasparov surely had his teachers and experts to look to.
That's the reason I've not scored 100% on any of my public maths exams so far. I have my fingers crossed for those published next Thursday, though.