Standardized tests should never include calculators. They are to test knowledge of concepts, not button pushing skills.
If the calculator allows you to focus on the concepts being tested instead of basic arithmetic then isn't that a good thing? Looking up trig tables and doing the multiplication by hand doesn't strike me as a good way of testing the concepts of trigonometry. And while there are many ways of showing an understanding of the concepts other than seeing if you get the right final answer, it's by far the easiest measurement.
If basic arithmetic is the thing being tested then by all means, ban the calculator from that test, but a blanket statement of "standardized tests should never include calculators" is kind of dumb.
That's right, kids, in the real world you won't have access to reference materials and may very well need to solve equations in your head to save your life, MacGyver style.
Yes! When the zombie uprising comes along and all the calculators are destroyed (why the calculators? who knows!) you'll be thankful when you're trying to figure out the number of bullets you can afford to sink into each zombie.
Seriously though, if primary school maths is just "how to use a calculator" then it's being done wrong.
Well then by your definition it's pretty much impossible to "brick" a device without otherwise destroying it, as it's always possible to "unbrick" it by replacing code (whether via JTAG, secret button presses or other means) or swapping components.
Back in the real world, it's a relative term. If you can't unbrick your device then as far as you are concerned it's bricked, even if the manufacturer or someone with a bit more brains could actually fix it for you.
Our house is already full of such beasts. Total immune to any sort of spray, and event after swatting them they just walk it off for a minute and then fly away (laughing!). For some reason they don't know its the middle of winter and down to freezing most nights.
"open source" is one of those terms made up of two words who's meaning appears to be redefinable to suit the needs of any given agenda. That's why terms like 'GPL' and 'BSD' are more useful as they define what the terms of the 'openness" are. On slashdot "open source" and "GPL" are mostly synonymous but not necessarily in some industries.
but if there are restrictions on redistribution, it's not open source.
Well even GPL fails at that. It places the restriction that if you distribute the binary then you must make the source available too. That's kind of the opposite kind of restriction to what you were saying but it's still a restriction in that it limits your freedom to do what you want with the code, but only in as far as you can't deny others the freedom you were granted, which is widely considered to be a good restriction.
Even Microsoft open their source to various organisations (academic mostly). I think they don't ever refer to it as "open source" though but "shared source" instead, so I guess they are off the hook.
You'll find it will take around 30 days for your number to actually appear on the list, and for the next few months after that you'll get the odd caller who's list is out of date for some reason or another (very apologetic because they are trying to be 'legitimate' and know they can get in a heap of trouble for calling).
You may also have inherited a number that just seems to get a lot of calls. When we first moved in to this house (brand new house but obviously a recycled number) we got heaps of calls for a particular woman, and most of them were creditors wanting money. Nothing in the last few years but even 5 years after we moved in we still got the occasion call.
I've taken a few calls at work from 'my bank' about my bank account who wish to speak to 'the account holder', who's name they don't even know.
The wife of the general manager at work took a call (at home) from someone claiming to be from my work asking if she'd like to buy some cheap computers.
Lately it's been 'my telco' phoning up about a virus infection on my computer. So the DNC register doesn't catch the really crooked guys, but at least they are a bit of fun:)
That's a good idea on the surface but on the basis that these guys are already breaking the law, they can just set up a voip connection themselves locally (even on a compromised PC) and just bounce the call off that. Then they are no longer calling from overseas as far as anyone can tell.
Laws against certain types of telemarketing just pushed it offshore. Better spam filters in turn created better spammers. I will watch with a sort of morbid curiosity what the telemarketing industry comes up with next, assuming that this idea makes their current business model unworkable.
The do not call register in Australia has worked surprisingly well for me. I've had a very very small number of calls that were flat out illegal. We get calls from people trying to get us to sell raffles for charities (which are legal but have to call within certain hours) but they all use listed numbers so we simply don't answer them, and we let withheld numbers go to voicemail most of the time (the phone is configured to not even ring when a withheld number calls).
I can just imagine the call to Telstra to opt-out... "Yes valued customer, we will be happy to take you off of our internet filter and place you on our 'pervert' plan. Please download the necessary forms and fill in the exact nature of your perversion. Your next payment will be identified as 'Telstra Internet Pervert Plan' on your bank statement, in extra bold print. You can be sure that Telstra will be the first to give up your details when the government is hunting down potential internet predators. Thankyou for calling Telstra, you sick bastard."
The changes announced today seem to be little more than a delaying tactic to remove the issue of mandatory Internet censorship from the agenda ahead of the election that is expected to be announced any day now.
I view it more as a strategic backdown while trying to save whatever dignity they have left. I think most people in the industry knew it was flawed from the start and would never come off.
I don't think the government can be trusted not to bring it back in a essentially unmodified form after the next election. Vote accordingly.
You can be sure I will. Unfortunately there are other issues at stake that trump internet access.
A dictatorship that controls the flow of information, doesn't skim too much off the top and cracks down on corruption in the lower ranks is a quite efficient way of governing a nation. We may not like it, and it goes against everything we in the west believe in, but that doesn't mean it can't work. No electoral circuses or free press that get in your hair.
So basically, as long as the people at the top have the interests of the nation in mind rather than their own, things will probably go okay?
If I buy something, I own it. Period. If you want to diddle around and chip away at what you will let me buy, then I will buy from someone else, or not at all.
Fail. You have in your possession a document that will let 'Gothmolly' into an event. You can sell it to someone else (as is your first sale right) but what good to someone else is a document that will let 'Gothmolly' into an event?
The big problem (in Australia at least, but I assume it happens everywhere) is that there are only a limited number of tickets to any concert/festival, and people with the means to get in first are buying up big and then reselling the tickets at ridiculous prices without adding any value at all. Laws have been introduced to try and stop it but they're hard to enforce. So the system was broken, and what do you do with a broken system? (rhetorical question). If you can suggest a better fix then I'm sure the world would be happy to hear it.
The only thing that would bug me is refunds. If they don't give me a refund to a high demand event with reasonable notice (eg enough that they can resell the ticket themselves) then they suck, but otherwise, that's life. Someone else doesn't owe me anything just because I got sick or my grandma died and now I can't go to the concert/festival. These things happen.
I was going to post essentially what you said, but 1 million times the energy makes it somewhat less useful (lets assume that 1 million wasn't an exaggeration pulled out of the air). To make a comparison, a 1000mAh AA battery has enough energy (theoretically) in it to run a device at 1A x 1.2V for 1 hour, so in order to charge this new material to the equivalent amount of energy, you'd need to pump 1000A at 1200V into it for 1 hour (or 1000000A at 1.2V etc, but you get the idea). And then what are you going to do with the leftover 1.2MW of heat? And that's just to get an AA battery's worth of energy to a distant location.
That's a stupid example though, because you'd just use an AA battery instead. A case for this material would be where the power required was a lot higher than 1.2Wh, meaning even more energy to be pumped into it just to charge it.
It's (supposed to be) a charger with an intelligent controller that provides the correct charge curve based on the type of battery. It wasn't particularly cheap either.
Given that it attempted to charge two non-rechargeable batteries and did so in such a way that they both popped (and sprayed crap all over the inside of the charger enclosure), i'm less optimistic that it is as intelligent as the instructions say. I would have thought it wouldn't have been too hard to detect the battery not responding they way a NiMh or NiCd battery should and just shut off that charging socket.
The engineer in me says that such a feature should have been built in. The cynic in me says that you can't out-engineer every single case of human stupidity (or curiosity:)
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I think this is maybe more telling about the people you know, than the people that play WoW
Know _of_. I don't know any one personally who plays WoW (or similar). Or at least they don't admit to it.
If that's true, then why is everybody I know of who plays WoW or other similar games an overweight unemployed loser?
Standardized tests should never include calculators. They are to test knowledge of concepts, not button pushing skills.
If the calculator allows you to focus on the concepts being tested instead of basic arithmetic then isn't that a good thing? Looking up trig tables and doing the multiplication by hand doesn't strike me as a good way of testing the concepts of trigonometry. And while there are many ways of showing an understanding of the concepts other than seeing if you get the right final answer, it's by far the easiest measurement.
If basic arithmetic is the thing being tested then by all means, ban the calculator from that test, but a blanket statement of "standardized tests should never include calculators" is kind of dumb.
That's right, kids, in the real world you won't have access to reference materials and may very well need to solve equations in your head to save your life, MacGyver style.
Yes! When the zombie uprising comes along and all the calculators are destroyed (why the calculators? who knows!) you'll be thankful when you're trying to figure out the number of bullets you can afford to sink into each zombie.
Seriously though, if primary school maths is just "how to use a calculator" then it's being done wrong.
I can't tell if you are agreeing with me or arguing with me (or the parent)...
Bricked is permanent.
Well then by your definition it's pretty much impossible to "brick" a device without otherwise destroying it, as it's always possible to "unbrick" it by replacing code (whether via JTAG, secret button presses or other means) or swapping components.
Back in the real world, it's a relative term. If you can't unbrick your device then as far as you are concerned it's bricked, even if the manufacturer or someone with a bit more brains could actually fix it for you.
Swat 'em and they come back...
Our house is already full of such beasts. Total immune to any sort of spray, and event after swatting them they just walk it off for a minute and then fly away (laughing!). For some reason they don't know its the middle of winter and down to freezing most nights.
Probably just vapourware but someone came up with a way to turn plastic back into oil... is that viable for this mess?
Are we worse or better off having that amount of carbon in the ocean as plastic vs in the air as CO2?
"free" is too ambiguous.
And therein lies the fun :)
"open source" is one of those terms made up of two words who's meaning appears to be redefinable to suit the needs of any given agenda. That's why terms like 'GPL' and 'BSD' are more useful as they define what the terms of the 'openness" are. On slashdot "open source" and "GPL" are mostly synonymous but not necessarily in some industries.
but if there are restrictions on redistribution, it's not open source.
Well even GPL fails at that. It places the restriction that if you distribute the binary then you must make the source available too. That's kind of the opposite kind of restriction to what you were saying but it's still a restriction in that it limits your freedom to do what you want with the code, but only in as far as you can't deny others the freedom you were granted, which is widely considered to be a good restriction.
Even Microsoft open their source to various organisations (academic mostly). I think they don't ever refer to it as "open source" though but "shared source" instead, so I guess they are off the hook.
11 million years, so we have about 16 million years to figure out what happens and then do something about it.
Yep. Just like we're tackling global warming now.
You'd have to ask yourself though, why are these hot women taking antibiotics in the first place?
hehe... yes I've heard of Mary from Melbourne.
You'll find it will take around 30 days for your number to actually appear on the list, and for the next few months after that you'll get the odd caller who's list is out of date for some reason or another (very apologetic because they are trying to be 'legitimate' and know they can get in a heap of trouble for calling).
You may also have inherited a number that just seems to get a lot of calls. When we first moved in to this house (brand new house but obviously a recycled number) we got heaps of calls for a particular woman, and most of them were creditors wanting money. Nothing in the last few years but even 5 years after we moved in we still got the occasion call.
I've taken a few calls at work from 'my bank' about my bank account who wish to speak to 'the account holder', who's name they don't even know.
The wife of the general manager at work took a call (at home) from someone claiming to be from my work asking if she'd like to buy some cheap computers.
Lately it's been 'my telco' phoning up about a virus infection on my computer. So the DNC register doesn't catch the really crooked guys, but at least they are a bit of fun :)
That's a good idea on the surface but on the basis that these guys are already breaking the law, they can just set up a voip connection themselves locally (even on a compromised PC) and just bounce the call off that. Then they are no longer calling from overseas as far as anyone can tell.
Laws against certain types of telemarketing just pushed it offshore.
Better spam filters in turn created better spammers.
I will watch with a sort of morbid curiosity what the telemarketing industry comes up with next, assuming that this idea makes their current business model unworkable.
The do not call register in Australia has worked surprisingly well for me. I've had a very very small number of calls that were flat out illegal. We get calls from people trying to get us to sell raffles for charities (which are legal but have to call within certain hours) but they all use listed numbers so we simply don't answer them, and we let withheld numbers go to voicemail most of the time (the phone is configured to not even ring when a withheld number calls).
I can just imagine the call to Telstra to opt-out... "Yes valued customer, we will be happy to take you off of our internet filter and place you on our 'pervert' plan. Please download the necessary forms and fill in the exact nature of your perversion. Your next payment will be identified as 'Telstra Internet Pervert Plan' on your bank statement, in extra bold print. You can be sure that Telstra will be the first to give up your details when the government is hunting down potential internet predators. Thankyou for calling Telstra, you sick bastard."
The changes announced today seem to be little more than a delaying tactic to remove the issue of mandatory Internet censorship from the agenda ahead of the election that is expected to be announced any day now.
I view it more as a strategic backdown while trying to save whatever dignity they have left. I think most people in the industry knew it was flawed from the start and would never come off.
I don't think the government can be trusted not to bring it back in a essentially unmodified form after the next election. Vote accordingly.
You can be sure I will. Unfortunately there are other issues at stake that trump internet access.
A dictatorship that controls the flow of information, doesn't skim too much off the top and cracks down on corruption in the lower ranks is a quite efficient way of governing a nation. We may not like it, and it goes against everything we in the west believe in, but that doesn't mean it can't work. No electoral circuses or free press that get in your hair.
So basically, as long as the people at the top have the interests of the nation in mind rather than their own, things will probably go okay?
If I buy something, I own it. Period. If you want to diddle around and chip away at what you will let me buy, then I will buy from someone else, or not at all.
Fail. You have in your possession a document that will let 'Gothmolly' into an event. You can sell it to someone else (as is your first sale right) but what good to someone else is a document that will let 'Gothmolly' into an event?
The big problem (in Australia at least, but I assume it happens everywhere) is that there are only a limited number of tickets to any concert/festival, and people with the means to get in first are buying up big and then reselling the tickets at ridiculous prices without adding any value at all. Laws have been introduced to try and stop it but they're hard to enforce. So the system was broken, and what do you do with a broken system? (rhetorical question). If you can suggest a better fix then I'm sure the world would be happy to hear it.
The only thing that would bug me is refunds. If they don't give me a refund to a high demand event with reasonable notice (eg enough that they can resell the ticket themselves) then they suck, but otherwise, that's life. Someone else doesn't owe me anything just because I got sick or my grandma died and now I can't go to the concert/festival. These things happen.
What if you don't have ears? You insensitive clod!
On the other hand, restaurants just need to paint giant ears on their roofs and all iphones will cease to function!
Maybe the iPhone 4 should be dubbed iPhone Vista... it sure sounds that way.
I was going to post essentially what you said, but 1 million times the energy makes it somewhat less useful (lets assume that 1 million wasn't an exaggeration pulled out of the air). To make a comparison, a 1000mAh AA battery has enough energy (theoretically) in it to run a device at 1A x 1.2V for 1 hour, so in order to charge this new material to the equivalent amount of energy, you'd need to pump 1000A at 1200V into it for 1 hour (or 1000000A at 1.2V etc, but you get the idea). And then what are you going to do with the leftover 1.2MW of heat? And that's just to get an AA battery's worth of energy to a distant location.
That's a stupid example though, because you'd just use an AA battery instead. A case for this material would be where the power required was a lot higher than 1.2Wh, meaning even more energy to be pumped into it just to charge it.
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What did you say about my mother???
It's (supposed to be) a charger with an intelligent controller that provides the correct charge curve based on the type of battery. It wasn't particularly cheap either.
Given that it attempted to charge two non-rechargeable batteries and did so in such a way that they both popped (and sprayed crap all over the inside of the charger enclosure), i'm less optimistic that it is as intelligent as the instructions say. I would have thought it wouldn't have been too hard to detect the battery not responding they way a NiMh or NiCd battery should and just shut off that charging socket.
The engineer in me says that such a feature should have been built in. The cynic in me says that you can't out-engineer every single case of human stupidity (or curiosity :)