Actually they reinvented the wheel not just in the generic sense but also in the specific sense that someone else has already built a 64 node Raspberry Pi cluster...and instead of some custom designed case theirs used a home build lego case which was definitely cooler. Of course this should not be too surprising. It was made by GCHQ after all so they probably got the idea from reading this guy's email!

If you do it correctly you are re-using some questions out of a very large pool of questions. If some student wants to memorize every question ever asked then let them go for it - they will end up learning the material even if they think they are some how gaming the system. You can also alter some of the details e.g. numbers in a question without really changing the difficulty.

How do you get a minor to agree to this? Their signature carries no weight and it would be a violation of academic integrity and ethics to penalize an exam mark for an action which could not possible affect the mark. The need for restrictions like this are the result of sloppy and lazy exam writing: I've written and administered many exams myself and never needed to do this. Nor when I was a school kid myself was their any such restriction placed on me after taking an exam: even ones which were administered across the country: everyone took the exam at the same time everywhere.

Then that's a copyright argument and you go after that in the courts with lawyers. You do not have the teachers monitor conversations during lunch or monitor discussion sites for any mention of the test. Instead you look for someone posting a copy of the test and then have your lawyer contact them.

Which is pretty much the same state of affairs with English and American although there are quite a few words which are completely different: lift vs. elevator, car bonnet vs. car hood, courgette vs. zucchini, aubergine vs. egg plant, car boot vs. car trunk etc. and more confusing an English word can have a different meaning in American and vice versa often to embarrassing effect e.g. rubber, pants, suspenders, chips, fanny etc.

This is why it is helpful to give the two 'languages' different names: they may be mutually intelligible (for the most part) but it can be helpful to know whether the language is English or American so that words like 'chips' with different meanings can be correctly interpreted. Calling it 'English English' and 'American English' is just redundant and it typically gets shortened to just English and then you are left guessing based on spellings or context what is meant.

Actually the entire quote is:

""The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll"

Interesting link but wow - good thing I was not on her thesis committee because with a claim like that she would fail (either than or they are reporting it wrongly).

The total solar radiation at the Earth, outside the atmosphere, is 1.36 kW/m^2. Multiply that by the area given and the number of hours in a year and you get 762,470 TWh. However this would be the power for a solar satellite always pointing at the sun - so not even in orbit around the earth but say at one of the Lagrange points.

However things are not so simple because the panels on the ground rotate with the Earth. This means that for half the time they get no power and for the daylight period their angle is only optimal at midday. Note that even tracking panels will not help here because they would have to be spaced out so that their shadows did not meet another panel and so you would have less power collected at midday. The day-night cycle reduces the total power to 381,235 TWh and the angle of the sun throughout the day - I'll assume an RMS average here - drops it further to 269,573 TWh.

Now this assumes that the station in on the equator. If it actually was in West Virginia the power would drop further to 209,498 TWh due to the latitude (39 degrees) of the land. Now we need to look at the solar cell efficiency. The best that has ever been achieved in a lab is 46% so this leaves a total energy generating capacity of 96,369 TWh.

Unfortunately in 2008 world energy consumption was 143,851 TWh. Hence there is absolutely no way whatsoever that a solar plant of 25,000 square miles can supply the energy needs of the world. Even if it was located on the equator, there were never any cloudy days, we could mass produce solar cells which have only ever been available in a lab AND world energy needs have not increased since 2008 we still could not power the world from such an area! If the thesis in question makes those claims as reported it is just plain wrong.

It also appears that the question was posted after the test was taken. In this case there is no security issue because the exam has already been administered. If they are not giving the same exam at the same time everywhere - or at least with enough of an overlap that nobody leaves before the exam starts anywhere else - then the problem is their own broken security model. It's not academic cheating if someone who has completed the exam discusses the questions in public and since they are minors they can't even sign a contract to enforce legal penalties.

I completely agree...but isn't this what you are also doing too? Wanting to kill someone while showing zero remorse about doing so? If you are going to argue for the death penalty a far better argument is to say that it removes any possibility that the person can ever re-offend and thus protects society. The problem is that, as practiced in the US, this is very hard to argue. Those convicted are held in prison for a decade or longer and even then there are a shockingly high percentage whose convictions are quashed when carefully examined.

If you want to argue for the death penalty then you need to restrict it to cases where the evidence is overwhelming and you need to make it rapid. Even then mistakes will be made which is why I have so much trouble with the concept. About the only time I would think that it is justified is when you have someone whom you cannot safely imprison e.g. the IRA terrorists in the 1980/90s who used their contacts with the terror organization to threaten guards' families unless they got special treatment while in prison: something which almost lead to their escape. In these cases I would argue that the need to protect society from extremely dangerous criminals might make it justifiable but I'd still have concerns.

Except that you don't always! You use the American date format most of the time except when referring to "the fourth of July" then, or all the times, you always use the English format.

The 22nd of July works for the rest of the word. 22/7 is actually very slightly more accurate than 3.14.

Apart from the highly dubious extrapolation of exponential growth when there are hard physical limits e.g. solar cell efficiency cannot exceed 100% and there is limited land available. There is another problem: what happens on a calm night? There was a study done several years ago in the UK (I apologize but I cannot find the link) which showed that because when you get calm conditions you can get huge areas of Europe becalmed at the same time you would need to convert almost every body of water in the UK into a pumped storage scheme in order to be able to provide power during calm weather...and that's assuming you can get everyone to agree that covering the landscape with wind farms is acceptable.

Wind and solar certainly have their place and are definitely worth developing but they are not the entire solution to our energy problems.

No, because it will presumably still be the nearest in the constellation of Centaurus. It's 'Proxima Centauri' not 'Proxima'

...but will you even be able to buy a replacement battery for it in 100 years? I doubt you can get a replacement battery for a 20 year old laptop now.

I think the real debate is not so much about freedom of speech - I would hope that everyone basically agrees with that to a large extent - but rather about anonymous speech. There are times at which this is essential: spilling the beans on a large corporation or a powerful government. However it is inevitably abused by idiots wanting to deliberately upset people for no good reason. Generally I tend to find anonymous speech far, far less interesting and insightful than non-anonymous...except for the odd exceptions which can be extremely important to learn about. What we really need is difficult, anonymous speech so that people are only willing to go to the lengths required for important messages and not just to troll the rest of us.

That's funny I swear I've seen state politicians promoting their political views while on the job. I've almost never seen them promoting well established scientific discoveries though.

How does that stop them continuing to commit crime? Someone could easily continue to perpetuate fraud with an internet connection. It is not enough to know where they are you also need to know what else is there and what they are doing otherwise they can just continue to operate.