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Comment Don't bother/honor system (Score 2) 284

by alex_guy_CA (#41975991) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How To Catch Photoshop Plagiarism?
I think you should tell them at the outset "It's really easy for you to cheat on your assignments. That's also a horrible way to learn. I've got an honor system, don't cheat. If you do cheat you will learn less, and therefore be wasting your own time." If you need something to base grades on, you need something else that you can watch then do or they can't cheat on somehow.

Comment Caps (Score 1) 250

by alex_guy_CA (#40760503) Attached to: I most recently switched ISPs ...
I had pretty fast internet with AT&T Uverse. Then they announced caps. I'm now paying more money for slower service (crappy DSL with LMI.net) but they don't have caps. On the subjet, I think caps are bad for the economy and the country as they will stillfe innovation in internet companies.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 491

by alex_guy_CA (#38221772) Attached to: Patent Expires On Best Selling Drug of All Time
I agree, lowering prices is not a crime. Aren't they also using their market clout to write deals that don't allow their competitors? I didn't read TFA, but that is what I took this sentence to mean: " Some deals require pharmacies to reject prescriptions for low-cost generics and substitute a discounted name-brand Lipitor while other deals block generic makers from mail-order services that account for an estimated 40 percent of all Lipitor prescriptions." Lowering prices, good, fair, fine. Anti-competitive deals, not so much. Why the quote from David A. Balto is so lame, who knows. Again I didn't read THA.
Science

Is Science Just a Matter of Faith? 1486

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can't-test-faith dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Pastabagel writes that the actual scientific answers to the questions of the origins of the universe, the evolution of man, and the fundamental nature of the cosmos involve things like wave equations and quantum electrodynamics and molecular biology that very few non-scientists can ever hope to understand and that if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. When Richard Fenyman wrote, 'I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics,' he was including himself which is disconcerting given how many books he wrote on that very subject. The fact is that it takes years of dedicated study before scientific truth in its truest, mathematical and symbolic forms can be understood. The rest of us rely on experts to explain it, someone who has seen and understood the truth and can dumb it down for us in a language we can understand. And therein lies the big problem for science and scientists. For most people, science is really a matter of trusting the expert who tells it to us and believing what they tell us. Trust and belief. Faith. Not understanding. How can we understand science, if we can't understand the language of science? 'We don't learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were?'"
Hardware

The New Commodore 64 339

Posted by samzenpus from the blast-from-the-past dept.
An anonymous reader writes "After nearly 30 years, the Commodore brand has taken on new management and is re-releasing its flagship computer, this time with all the amenities of a modern-day computer packed inside. From the article: 'The new Commodore 64, which will begin shipping at the end of the month, has been souped-up for the modern age. It comes with 1.8 gigahertz dual processors, an optional Blu-ray player and built-in ethernet and HDMI ports. The new Commodore is priced between $250 to $900.'"
Government

FCC.gov: A Modern Open Platform 88

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-well-they-used-drupal-then dept.
An anonymous reader writes "FCC.gov just launched a public beta which aims to take the agency into the future. The $1.35 million site follows the WhiteHouse.gov lead to Drupal. Agency director Steven Van Roekel spoke with O'Reilly about the agency's push for an open platform: 'It's not breakthrough stuff, but it's breakthrough for government.'"

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