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Comment Re:Seems like a good trade-off (Score 4, Informative) 44

What value does Turnitin actually bring?

As a teacher when I was forced to use it, it meant another bureacratic headache and more time assisting students to solve upload and account problems. It never caught anyone cheating which wasn't instantly clear to me upon reading their paper. To me the value was zero.

For students who do not cheat, Turnitin causes additional anxiety and stress. I've been on the receiving end up trying to help my students manage that stress and it sucks. For those who do cheat, its just means that cheating costs a little more by having to pay someone to ghost write, rather than just paying for a pre-written paper. Again I think for students the value is either zero or negative.

Administrators love Turnitin because it creates graphs and numbers which they'll then fashion into reports to justify their enormous salaries. In reality its another expensive case of garbage data in, unreliable analysis out.

There are real pathways to reduce academic dishonesty. An easily fooled piece of very expensive pattern matching software is not it. This is $2 million that would be better spent hiring more teachers and tutors to help students learn.

Comment Re:Math is hard. (Score 1, Informative) 44

Adjuncts are typically paid about $3000 per course, far lower than regular professors. $400,000 per year could have kept 150+ of them employed at 10 courses / year (which a a very full load). It's also not a zero sum game as putting on those courses likely means more enrollment and more tuition to allow even more to be hired.

The adjuncts have a positive impact on the University and the students they teach. For students who do not cheat, Turnitin causes additional anxiety and stress. For those who do cheat, its just means that cheating costs a little more by having to pay someone to ghost write, rather than just paying for a pre-written paper. Even if it only saved 150 of those Adjunct jobs, it would be worth it.

Comment Re:huh (Score 2) 264

Ahem. Beam divergence. At the distance an aircraft would be from the laser-pointer, the spot will have spread sufficiently that this is not the case.

Incorrect. Even if the beam has increased significantly in size (to tens of cm), your eye is great at focussing light coming from infinity. This means the intensity at the back of the retina can still be high enough to cause damage. Remember that the pilots are also in the dark so their pupils are fully dilated and their blink reflex may be slowed. With the multi-watt laser pointers available online, its only a matter of time before we see pilots being permanently blinded in these cases. Of course, permanent damage is irrelevant if the plane crashes because the pilot has been temporarily blinded by a lower intensity beam.

Comment Perovskite is a mineral ... but this isn't it (Score 5, Informative) 79

When the article references perovskites, it is referring to a crystalline structure similar to the mineral perovskite (calcium titanate). These solar cells are NOT made of calcium titanate, nor is calcium or titanium even in them. Instead, they are make of organic - inorganic halides, in this case: CH3NH3PbX3 (where X = Cl, Br, I). The proper wikipedia link for the summary is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Comment Re:Home owner declines Tesla assitance? (Score 3, Insightful) 329

http://business.financialpost.... When Tesla offers to pay the owner of the car for the damages to his home, the guy declines. Now, call me stupid, but that's a little weird no?

Its not really that unusual. He likely has fire insurance that will cover the damage to his house and would rather deal with the insurance company than directly with Tesla. The insurance company can send the bill to Tesla and deal with the hassle, administrative details and lawyers, rather than the car owner.

Comment Re:Pretty sure you can't block them all (Score 1) 445

Just issue the pilots with anti-laser glasses. They can choose for themselves when to filter and when not to.

In addition to the distraction that putting goggles on during landing would cause, the goggles would filter out everything in the green range and significantly impact peripheral vision. While most laser of the offending laser pointers are 532 nm (frequency doubled 1064nm), some will be off by +-20nm and so the goggles would need to block in the proximity of 40 nm of spectrum. The standard goggles that offer protection against green block 190nm~600nm. So not only will the laser be blocked, but many indicator lights as well. While green laser pointers all all the rage now, if the idiot pranksters switch colours to red, the green blocking goggles would need to be completely replaced. Goggles may be able to provide last minute protection in some cases, but they are certainly not a panacea. If you've ever had to wear laser safety goggles, you'd know its highly disorienting to wear them for a long period of time.

Comment Re:I'm a developer in Vancouver... (Score 1) 84

Its even worse than that in BC. Here we have what's often referred to as the "EA Exemption;" if you're a "high technology professional," then the ESA doesn't apply. I'm pretty sure the Section 39 (mentioned above) also doesn't apply as Part 3 of the Act is essentially ripped out.

"The hours of work provisions of the Act, including those governing meal breaks, split shifts, minimum daily pay and hours free from work each week, as well as the overtime and statutory holiday provisions, do not apply to “high technology professionals”.

You can find more about it on the governments fact sheet here: http://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/esb/facshts/high_tech.htm

Announcements

Gen Con Goes Up For Sale 34

Trask writes "LivingDice has documents indicating that Gen Con LLC is up for sale. Additionally, there is an offer pending which could close by the end of the year. This may finally put an end to the uncertainty caused by Gen Con's chapter 11 filing and the recently dismissed Lucasfilm lawsuit."

Comment 200 kHz and it breaks apart clumps (Score 3, Informative) 136

Taken from the US Clinical Trials Site:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00379470?orde r=2

"Since they change direction very rapidly (200 thousand times a second), they do not cause muscles to twitch, nor do they have any effects on other electrically activated tissues in the body (brain, nerves and heart). Since the intensities of TTFields in the body are very low, they do not cause heating."
->So it appears to be low intensity EM radiation at approximately 200 kHz.

"Due to the unique geometric shape of cancer cells when they are multiplying, TTFields cause the building blocks of these cells to move and pile up in such a way that the cells physically explode."

->To me it sounds like a rather localized effect requiring significant tuning to see any effect meaning that you're still safe to use your cell phone and can save the tinfoil for BBQing.

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