When I was at school in the 80s and early 90s there were not that common, but that misses the wider point that many people consider them better than essay type questions. What is the goal of testing? To determine if someone understands the principals and concepts, or if they remember all the formulas and jargon off by heart?

I'll admit multiple choice is not the best way to test understanding, but a lot of people who complain about students being given formulas or allowed to use textbooks in exams seem to miss this point. If you don't know how to use the tools they won't help you. Even if the textbook contains the answer you can't learn enough in a two hour exam to get a good grade, you need to know the subject going in and just use it as a reference.

Aside from not hurting people who aren't blessed with excellent memories this type of testing and teaching is also more flexible. I can switch between disciplines and subjects quickly because I know how to use reference material and come back up to speed fast.

Standards of English have actually risen fairly consistently, it's just that back then a lot of people did non-clerical jobs so their poor skills were not apparent. I certainly wrote a lot when I was at school so I'm not sure your claims are true anyway. Perhaps not as many long form essays, but a similar volume of output.

That is a weakness of the US schooling system. Everyone needs to graduate to get a job, so the bar has to be set at a level where they can demonstrate the core maths ability they need to get on in everyday life. You could rise the bar but even with better teaching that is going to make a lot of people fail, when in fact they are qualified to handle the kinds of maths potential employers want.

In the UK we finish school at 16 so by that level you can get a GCSE which says you are competent, or even pretty good. You can then do two years of college to qualify to a higher level where you are ready for university, which is where the brightest kids in the US are at age 18 too.

The percentage is higher, there is just more demand for them which means you have fewer to pick from.

Only because hundreds of billions of dollars where thrown at it. Give NASA a few hundred billion over the next 9 years and a lofty goal and see what happens.

Not as high as you think. Both sides had large armies and fleets of bombers capable of reducing cities to rubble with conventional weapons. Then surface to air missiles were invented and bombers became useless, so the focus shifted to ICBMs. Even if they were not nuclear tipped there would still have been little anyone could do to stop one taking out important buildings with conventional explosives.

The USSR never had the resources to invade America, and America might have been able to invade the USSR but would have wound up with the same problems the Germans faced with long and bitter winters and difficult conditions. The terrain alone makes it very difficult, and China would never allow US tanks to simply roll through from that side.

Chances are there would have been a similar cold war, with both sides unwilling to enter a major conflict.

Actually that was mainly thanks to Europe. Having just been through a second all-out war we didn't want a third and we made that happen through political means. War was not just impractical, it was unthinkable between western European nations. Combined with a UN that was far more effective than anything which came before it became virtually impossible to have any kind of major war between developed nations.

Maybe someone should start making fake terrorist websites celebrating our loss of freedom. Then the only way to fight terrorism will be not to lose basic rights.

I imagine their official solution will be web based, much like Google Docs or the existing Office Live stuff. Google do a Docs app that optimises the web interface for touch screens and MS could do the same.

Pricing on Windows 8 will be interesting. There are not many mobile apps costing over £10, let along what MS charges for the desktop version of Office.

Since when was ageism okay?

Unfortunately I think the only thing that will save us is a "privacy 9/11". Something like the census data getting leaked, or maybe an MI5 database being posted as a torrent. Something so epic it can counteract everything else.

This is the Telegraph, take the story with a pinch of salt. I don't think that even the UK government is mad enough to try this.

Parts of it don't make sense anyway. For example why log Twitter private communications when Twitter already logs them anyway. They can just demand Twitter hands the data over, no need to duplicate it at enormous expense.

It won't stop black hats looking for them, but it will stop the rest of us finding out about them until we get data-raped.

Walking up to my bank's doors and checking they are locked should not be a crime. Discovering that they are unlocked, taking a quick peek inside to make sure it isn't just a store cupboard I found my way into and then reporting the fact to the bank should not be a crime. Even asking the bank for a job checking that their doors are locked shouldn't be. This guy maybe overstepped the boundary a little bit by downloading some source code, but hardly worthy of jail time.

Presumably the sentence is based on the "cost" to Facebook, even though they would have had to spend that much securing their systems anyway. In fact he probably saved them money by laying out exactly how he got in and where the problem is, instead of forcing them to spend time looking for it.