ah... how times change. Or is it now white-hat is a researcher and black-hat is a hacker?

My apologies--my attempt at humor apparently failed.

You forget yourself, citizen. Corporations are undead and almighty. They are, however, a bit more tangible than sky fairies.

Please mod this up. I think there is a serious lack of understanding about real world conditions which drive this. Also, working one less hour is not really an option for a lot of people--you work what your boss tells you need to work.

For those who like their wisdom delivered in a more "folksy" manner, try this: To quote my grand-dad, "All Indians walk in single file. At least the one I saw did."

lp0 on fire

I thought mono was part of the MS ecosystem?

Oh... you mean U.N.I.T.? Good, then the Doctor's already on this one.

FYI, CAT (Computer Adaptive Testing) is *not* proprietary. There a lot of papers out there about how to do adaptive testing and how to do it well. That said, all of these systems, as an earlier respondent noted, are based upon actual responses rather than predicted responses. As a professional in assessment, I would not want to base any decisions about item presentation on 80% accuracy. We assess because there is uncertainty and we need evidence to model and demonstrate our best estimate of whatever it is we are measuring. The trouble with adapting before you have evidence is that you never push a examinee to their extremes. You've already artificially constrained the range of difficulties and items that a student will see. Restriction of range is already a huge problem on existing tests because of people's preconceptions of what's appropriate for certain ages or groups of examinees. It's promising technology and I intend on watching how it evolves.

You math is a bit off: 25 000 000 / 55 000 = 454.545455

Before anyone flames this guy too much,... looking at his comment history, he is Swedish. His comment may have roots in a teacher telling him that the Civil War really was just about "states rights". It could also be a language thing--many of his other comments have been thoughtful. This one is just ill-informed.

You forgot the bitchy link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

English majors and computer/science people don't always communicate the same way, do they? Though not "waxing poetic", I think it is a fair amount of "poetic license" to say near infinite. To keep on with my overuse of cliches, language is a bit more like horseshoes and hand grenades, isn't it? Plus, you weren't expecting scientific or mathematical precision from the Slashdot editors, were you? ;-)

They would be up in arms about 45%... currently they pay around 35% if they have bad accountants.  Some rich people brag about paying less in taxes than their employees and are screaming and kicking about restoring their tax rate to what it was under Bush (39ish%).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Netherlands#Genetics

Looks like 80% "white" or ethnic Dutch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France

It's currently illegal to count people by ethnicity in France, so hard to say for sure. However:

"Solis, a marketing company, recently estimated the numbers for ethnic minorities (immigrants and 2nd generation) in France in 2009 as 3.26 million Maghrebis (5.23%), 1.83 million Black people (2.94%, 1.08 million Sub-Saharan Africans and 757,000 French from French West Indies) and 441,000 Turkish (0.71%) ."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States

Looks like 72% "white", but of this, the US counts persons of Hispanic origin differently. Consider also that that 72% is not monolithic (e.g., there are persons that are Dutch, German, English, Nordic, etc.) rather than solely one ethnic origin. The US doesn't even try to count people of different "white" origins in census data.

Yes--immigration has become more of an issue in the last 50 or so years for Europe. Your point may stand, but it is on very shaky ground since pretty much 80+ percent of Holland or France appears to be of one origin. Perhaps one could be informed by a population and a continent that has been dealing with immigration issues a little longer? I think the Americas have been dealing with the issue for about 520 years.