if the student does know that the test will be drawn from a publicly available pool of questions, and that therefore many other students will be looking at it beforehand, it only makes sense to even out the playing field by looking for oneself.

Playing field... as if this were a zero-sum game or something, which I suppose it might very well be if the students are graded on a curve. I went to a postsecondary institution that, at the time, appeared to discourage such grading practices; top-flight work was graded as such, regardless of how many students managed to accomplish it.

Sure, the system is broken, but when it's a person's future prospects we're talking about, can we really blame them for not being the one to stand up and try to fix it when they know they have a near 100% chance of failure?

Welcome to my frustration. Don't worry, after the revolution the socialist meritocracy will solve everything. And give you a pony.

Not to cheat on a test, no. I guess using practice questions to test their own understanding of the material prior to the actual test is too much to hope for, though if someone's willing to engage in boring rote memorization of an answer key, why not make the job even easier and actually try to understand enough of the subject to do well on a test without trying to recall, under pressure, which letter is the correct one?

Goodness, if you're not in school to learn, get out. If employers demand a university degree without actually being concerned about the quality of that credential, that just means our educational and labour assignment structures need serious improvement, not that it's OK to cheat on a test for the sake of getting a degree demanded by employers, whether it means a damn thing or not. Frankly, the increasing emphasis on postsecondary credentials as unnecessary qualifications for jobs is a symptom of too much reliance on automation in hiring processes (goodness forbid enough people should be employed to actually go through resumes; let's just scan for keywords and names!), along with the belittlement and delegitimization of non-institutional education and skills development. Goodness, does every paper-pusher and junior account executive need an MBA? Don't even get me started on the subject of social service agencies that worry more about the presence of the letters "BSW" or "MSW" in a resume than whether the person can actually handle working with people in crisis, without sufficient time or resources, on a daily basis, as that's something I hear about at home on a regular basis.

There must be a better way.

I'm not sure what to make of your equivalence between a minimum of support for those who don't possess property and resources, and the profligate waste and destruction of property and resources.

Elements of this make me think of the Anarchist Free University.

I doubt these will replace established institutions, but instead complement them and bring advanced education to communities that might otherwise treat expanded knowledge as something to suspect, even suppress.

Wow. I feel like I'm reading a summary from 2000 to, say, 2003, during the good ol' days of emergency patches for zero-day IIS holes and Outlook Express-exploiting worms.

Thanks for the memories, MS. Apple may one day produce bigger security holes, but you did it with pathetic panache and stack-smashing style.

Those were the days...

Incredible.

If I pulled the same stunt, my home would be raided, my computers would be seized, and my name would be splashed all over the media as a professional pirate. I might even score jail time.

The big four labels in CRIA? Barely a whimper in the press. I hope they get smacked in the courts.

Hence why someone should investigate.

Brilliant - let's get one up on the Iranians by messing with their nuclear reactor controls! What could possibly go wrong?

If true, this is reckless endangerment, and the people involved - government-backed or lone wolves - should be prosecuted. Just because the Iranian government is full of militaristic and theocratic jerks does not give anyone the right to endanger the lives of any old (or young) person living or working in and around that facility. Indeed, it's the kind of stunt that can only push their ruling class farther into paranoia and fear, the kind tha leads to... nuclear weapons development.

He also seems to specifically target the US and only the US, as if no other country is currently doing dubious shit.

A quick glance at the "Latest disclosures" section puts that claim to rest.

On top of that, a sizable number of the United States pages are related to large leaks, such as a huge Iraq order of battle leak from 2007 where each unit receives an individual page. The country tags also include analysis and news articles, not just leaks, so if the news media isn't discussing it, and no one involved with WikiLeaks notices it, it doesn't get linked and included in the category. Therefore, while the US does receive an inordinate amount of attention, that may have more to do with its status as superpower and present primary occupier of two countries.

There's clearly more to WikiLeaks than Julian Assange, though I wonder why some people want so badly to make the whole thing about him, his own self-promotion aside...

I'm sure Reagan would have tolerated PATCO and airport managers halting service to demand early elections seven months after a coup attempt.

I don't even think there's a need for hyperbole on this (my, uh, previous post aside). Shuttle and Mir both worked, both developed problems and dangerous conditions developed over time. The only difference is which side of which border they were developed on, and national origin is a piss-poor standard upon which to judge the overall success of a project or decision, or even the ethics underlying such.

Canning the upper echelon of staff for political reasons rarely, if ever, has good results (I suspect PDVSA had some difficulty replacing that many people with that much experience). Neither does going cheap on the failsafe gear and deciding regulations don't really need to be followed that closely when dealing with complicated, ecologically-significant projects.

When Reagan broke the ATC union, he was standing up to the Big Bad Union. When Chavez did it, he was being an autocratic commie.

Collusion.

To be clear, there are multiple forms of blindness. I happen to be stuck with severe myopia and cone dystrophy - so shit's blurry and the daystar messes me up. The therapy described won't fix the myopia, but holy crap that's the closest thing I've heard of to a fix for the cone-rod mess in my life to this point. Mitigating that might not improve my ability to focus, but it might help reduce the strain on my eyes from things like looking around outside, even on cloudy days. A pair of good wraparound sunglasses already provides some relief, but they can't be worn everywhere...

I hope this works out. And as for that little aside from kdawson... I understand that some people do not adapt well to gaining visual capability they previously lacked, but unless you're squinting at a computer screen or iPod, or using a screen reader, or you've worked in a therapeutic or adaptive capacity with visually impaired individuals (or lived with one), then I'm not inclined to take that aside as anything but kdawson trying to be "deep". I, personally, just felt patronized and condescended to, and my initial reaction to that bit of editor splooge was much shorter and far more profane.

If your business model/economy can't adapt to deal with the occasional natural event, it's time to change that system to something a bit more robust or flexible.