I agree that the people that legitimately took the test shouldn't have to take it again. If he knows with 95% or better accuracy who the cheaters are why can he just let those that didn't cheat skip the re-take. (maybe a few cheaters will get away with it but his amnesty period should further eliminate some of them) I disagree with your complaints on the professor though. He has ever right to use a test bank. He shouldn't have to waste his time coming up with new questions each time he gives a test. Its inefficient, its a waste. He should be able to put those tests in an unsecured folder with the expectation that no one will cheat. Its called honor. He has every right to be morally outraged and disappointed with the cheaters. These are his fellow citizens. These are the future leaders of our society. These are students he has spent a semester or more giving the benefit of his knowledge. People he would have helped find jobs and counseled if asked. I'd be disappointed too. It makes me sad just thinking about it. This has nothing to do with high volume or teaching style. You don't cheat, its that simple. There are plenty of ways to complain if you don't like your professor or you think he isn't teaching you what you should be learning in his class.

FWIW, I own a PS3 and I'm happy about it. No annual fees, easy access to new movies, high def discless Netflix with 5.1 sound, a blue ray player, web browser, streaming music and video from my PC and games. My PS3 has worked for 3 years without a hitch. All for a few hundred bucks. I understand the frustration the home brew community has with them. Its was a bait and switch to pull the other OS but the other consoles never even offered the option. They are definitely barking up the wrong tree if they are attacking the purchasers of the dongles. They may have some agreement with software developers to enforce that requires them to use ever means available to prohibit piracy. Not to mention if the dongle or other OS were to facilitate cheats that would ruin the gaming for me. I'm for shutting it down if it makes cheating easier.

I agree. They come off amateurish and juvenile. Their party represents issues that are extremely important for society at large in the coming century. To me their name puts them on even footing with a party dedicated to the legalization or marijuana. It is tough to take them seriously.

Have you ever driven in another country? I assure you dangerous driving is not unique to America. Try driving in many metropolitan areas in Europe and you will see real aggressive driving. Don't get me started on India or China. Your post is simply your opinion but I don't think there are any facts to support your assertion regarding America.

Off topic but I find it ironic that you can't play those flac files on a Sony PS3

According to a recent AP piece I read government spending has not created any real jobs. You can Bing the article if you don't believe me.

Disability insurance companies employ doctors and nurses to review claims periodically. If they have reason to suspect fraud they will hire an investigator to look into the activities of a "disabled" person. In this case we have a "depressed" person on leave for a year and a half. My guess is that length of leave is outside the accepted normal period for depression. They would probably expect a depressed person to receive appropriate medication and counseling and be involved in a return to work program after that length of leave. So they began investigating and terminated the leave to force the issue. Depression is a common trigger for disability these days and often relates to the claimants work environment. I'm not familiar with Canadian insurance funding arrangements but in the US a disability plan for IBM would most likely be self funded meaning the premiums paid by employees coupled with IBM's dollars would be used to fund the claims. Often the insurer has a fiduciary liability to plan participants to protect the plan's assets. Although it is rare the insurer could actually be sued if they didn't investigate and question this claim. Ultimately it should be up to a uniform set of medical guidelines the insurer uses to review such claims. Depression has a well documented set of procedures that should be used to review the case. This evidence by itself seems sketchy but if combined with other factors such as claim duration and other evidence it may be justified. She may have a good lawyer that's doing a snow job on the "big bad insurer". The insurer is also limited by privacy laws as to what they can publicly discuss about the case and her attorney can exploit those rules

I could see using space on the floor to indicate intended motion. Step forward and mimick a walk/run to move forward. Step back again to stand still. They could sell rubber color coded mats for people to use for a visual reference.

I've done some thinking about this but very little research on what is out there. I believe we could measure teaching effectiveness by applying the principals of case mix adjustment. This is what is done to assist with medical reimbursement rates for hospitals. Each student would be a "case" that would include a number of variables (income, race, number of parents, geographic location etc.). All the data would be combined into a database and adjusted to normalize the students profile with others. A class would comprise all the individual profile scores combined with their grades. An effective teacher would need to improve the grades or scores of the students which after a severity adjustment would be comparable to any other scores in any other school in the U.S. I know there are a number of issues with this approach but I think with the right input it could work. Also this approach doesn't deal with "teaching to the test" or grade manipulation.

The real risk score can be a single number however the number changes as time progresses. The investments the banks made were relatively safe in the beginning however as time moved on those investments became riskier relative to market conditions. An investor (bank) needs to be in a position to unwind an investment as soon as the risk score exceeds a certain level. Of course as the investments begin to unwind the risk scores increase for others with similar investments and you have a crash. The key is to diversify the risk and to assume the risk is often greater than the calculated score.

How about the Steorn free energy device?