setrofim_

I believe this is the case for most British universities, most "traditional" universities anyway (not sure about former polytechnics, etc). Sometimes there is also coursework that contributes to your final degree (my CS course had a group project in the second year and an a dissertation based on an individual project in the final year), but all the exams take place at the end of the year.

My uni also weighted the exams so that the final year contributed much more to the final "grade" than the first year, effectively putting most of the pressure on the final term of the last year.

I've just finished reading Bruce Schneier's "Liars and Outliers": http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Outliers-Enabling-Society-Thrive...

Very interesting and gives you a lot to think about. Highly recommended.

IIRC, it's basically has to be the combinations of the two. Monopolies aren't illegal in and of themselves. But neither are actions that may be deemed anti-competitive. It's only illegal when a monopoly (or a dominant player - doesn't have to be a monopoly) exploits its position to gain further advantage through anti-competitive actions.

I guess it depends how you define the market. One could argue that they're abusing their dominant position in "consumer operating system" market.

    On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enabled.

Does this mean that , on compliant ARM devices, only Windows 8 may be run? If so, how is this not anti-competitive?

Yup. This looks like it was just a PR stunt. An attempt to show the users that FB are "listening" to them. And if that's the case, then it seems to have backfired.

Allowing arbitrary TLD's is semantically equivalent to getting rid of TLD's (e.g. in your last example, "google" could be thought of as a TLD).

Not really. If you don't know what you're looking for, you just go to http://pepsi/ and navigate from there.

You're probably right. But given the choice, isn't it better to go with something that's easier to remember, even if it won't matter most of the time?

Why not? Some companies only own <company>.net or <company>.co.uk, without owning <company>.com.

Yes, but you're not forced to repeat "pepsi". It could be alex@customerrelations.pepsi or inquiries@distribution.pepsi

The US are claiming legal dominion* over all domains under a large number of TLD's (.com, .org, etc.). New TLD's may help mitigate that.

*http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/feds-seize-foreign-...

"If you just add one character to the length of the domain name you have 26 times as many names you can choose from. There's no shortage."

True, but TLD's like .pepsi and .HTC are a lot easier to remember than random combinations of letter.

>DNT is not implemented in most browsers

That's true, but only (or at least, partly) because the sites can just ignore the header. If this became a standard HTTP hear and there was a requirement for it to be respected, browsers will quickly start supporting it.

>and it's not the default policy in any, AFAIK. It'd hardly have the same effect.

That's the whole point. It would still allow for analytics to be collected and made use of to improve web experience, while giving concerned users an easy way to opt out without being constantly hassled with "Will you allow us to track you?" question from each and every site they visit.

Wouldn't it be better to mandate that sites honor the Do Not Track* HTTP header, rather than require each site to explicitly seek user consent?

* http://dnt.mozilla.org/

You can set your browser to do that; but making it the default will make too may sites unsable (e.g sites with shopping carts, banking sites etc.)

IIRC, double jeopardy doesn't stop both criminal and civil charges from being filed for the same offense (it only applies to being criminally charged multiple times)?

>Is the color->note map arbitrary or is there some logic behind it?

One way of doing this would be to map from the electromagnetic wavelength of the color to a corresponding audible frequency.

Audible range is something like 32 to 32768 Hrz. Assuming speed of sound in air of 343 m/s, this translates to wavelength range of 0.010437 to 10.6875 m . This can then be mapped onto the visible spectrum of 390 to 750 nm.

light_range = (750 * 10^-9) - (390 * 10^-9)

sound_range = 10.6875 - 0.010437

light_wavelength = (light_range * ((343 / sound_freq) - 0.010437) / sound_range) + (390 * 10^-9)

There is another concern besides screen space -- bandwidth. Since a mobile device can be accessing the site over 3G as well as WiFi, where bandwidth is at a premium, it is better to serve up the smaller mobile version.

>That said, I don't think this is an excuse to take 'revenge' on these companies, "one download at a time".

If this isn't, I don't know what is.

Note that the author was talking about the fragment of his own film that he uploaded (and subsequently took down). "one download at a time" is referring to the downloads of that fragment (which, by the other party's admission, he had the right to shoot, and holds the copyright to). He is not talking about anything illegal (such as pirating content).

Also here: http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=136546

Given what what was happening in the Czech Republic and Poland (and also the protests in Germany itself), it's not that surprising. Let's hope other EU countries follow.

Yes, pretty much everything other than BBC.

>Do you pay for broadcast TV program or radio ? They are funded by advertising.

Actually, in the UK, we do pay for it (BBC broadcasts, at least) through a TV license.

If a company seriously uses such tests to select hires, you're probably better off not working for them. Personality and "cultural fit" are important aspects (for some jobs more than others), but a much better way to assess those is to spend an hour talking to the potential employee; not through some standardized test.

I've also heard that some companies still use graphology in their screening process (though this may be just an urban myth).

This is full disclosure[1] principle in action, and why security experts actually like "hackers" like Anonymous[2].

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_disclosure

[2]http://risky.biz/lulzsec

"but other alternatives (for example, hiring a thousand engineers and building a thousand planes a year) would have found the same answer"

Before MacCready came along, there were a thousand (well, a large number) of engineers building a thousand planes a year. But because these attempts were disjoint, there were all making the same mistakes and were slow to learn from them.

The point of the article (as I understood it) is that when you're working towards a goal, you usually don't fully understand why that goal may be difficult to achieve -- what the real problems are. This is why is import to get early feedback about whether or not you're on the right track, and to adjust your attempts accordingly.

Things will certainly get more difficult for these "middle men", but not by all that much. There is no need for them to replicate the retina/fingerprint scans or do anything hi-tech/expensive like that. The poor will still need to exchange the money paid into their accounts for actual goods and supplies like food and clean water. Simply giving the money directly to the poor will not affect the scarcity of these resources.

What will happen is that the poor will simply withdraw the entire sum the day it has been paid in to their accounts, and give it to these "middle men". All that changes is the direction. Instead of the welfare money flowing down from the government to the individual programs to the "middle men", it will be flowing up from the poor through the individual traders to these same "middle men".

There is "generalizing", and then there is "over-generalizing". The problem pointed out by the author of the article is that we're often doing the latter instead of the former. Something that is a good practice for a "compiler writer" or a "web developer" (both generalizations) is ofter presented as good "programming practice" over-generalization.