Interesting Links for 17-03-2012
Mar. 17th, 2012 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Play.com (and other companies shipping from The Channel Islands) are about to vanish, as the tax loophole is closed.
- How Not to Attract Tourists (The USA being the prime example of what not to do)
- Government committee recommends bundling small loans up and selling them on. Because that's never caused devestation before.
- Play (and other companies shipping from The Channel Islands) are about to vanish, as the tax loophole is closed.
- Writer talks to book pirates, interesting discussion occurs.
- Cineworld cuts online booking fees - it will finally cost more to buy the tickets on the door. As it should.
- Texas loses Medicaid funding in effort to spite Planned Parenthood
- Why software patents are evil
- The bizarre regulations around distilleries in Tennessee
- 100 Real Tweets from Homophobes Who Would Murder Their Gay Child
- Possibly the most racist bumper sticker of the 2012 campaign
- Borderlands 2's _literal_ love letter to PC players is a work of genius
- Obsidian didn't get a bonus for Fallout: New Vegas because they were 1% too low on Metacritic.
- Is Magazine Publishing Really Screwed?
Tags:
- alcohol,
- bigotry,
- borderlands,
- business,
- children,
- cinema,
- contraception,
- copyright,
- criticism,
- ebooks,
- evil,
- finance,
- games,
- government,
- healthcare,
- invention,
- law,
- lgbt,
- links,
- magazine,
- media,
- money,
- patents,
- pc,
- politics,
- publishing,
- racism,
- reviews,
- security_theatre,
- tax,
- texas,
- tourism,
- twitter,
- uk,
- usa,
- women,
- wtf
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 11:33 am (UTC)Bought a few things from Amazons Starfish Indigo affiliate that is Channel Islands based though. But again, Marketplace sellers are usually the cheapest source these days.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-19 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-19 12:14 pm (UTC)http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2012/march/removal-of-channel-islands-vat-loophole-is-consistent-with-eu-law-court-says/
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 11:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 05:53 pm (UTC)Obviously, given that system, There Are Complaints.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 05:56 pm (UTC)(Personally, I think that an F clearly means the same as "no stars out of 5", which is 0%. Some people obviously differ.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 06:04 pm (UTC)I have a problem with "B-", which is coded hard into North American brains as "a respectable, worthy result, not mindblowingly awesome but entirely worthy of attention, with a few minor hitches and hence the '-'" as "67".
Whereas if you were giving a rating out of 100, "67" is, of course, "C" - barely a pass at all.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 06:37 pm (UTC)Of course, 67% _is_ a perfectly reasonable result on a decent grading system with hard questions and a grading curve. But not all places do things that way.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 06:45 pm (UTC)And while I agree with you about star ratings, letter grades are different because letter grades are NOT evenly distributed.
The traditional method is "F is 60% or less, a completely unacceptable utterly shit must-do-over rating". D is "barely a pass", 60-69. C is 70-79. B is 80-89. A is 90+.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 06:52 pm (UTC)(And 67% wouldn't necessarily be "You got 1 in three questions wrong." It could well be "You got all of the easy questions right, half of the medium ones, and only a couple of the hard ones.")
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 06:57 pm (UTC)67% wouldn't necessarily be "You got 1 in three questions wrong." It could well be "You got all of the easy questions right, half of the medium ones, and only a couple of the hard ones."
Would "one third of what the test-makers thought mattered, you flubbed" be better?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 07:05 pm (UTC)My point is, "B" is way better than 67%. It's not "absolute top of the class", but it's not "consistently gets things wrong."
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 07:26 pm (UTC)Just went googling, here's what Edinburgh uni does for conversions of grades:
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/registry/exams/regulations/credit-allocation
Which indicates that for North American students transferring a C is 50-60, and a B is 60-70.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 07:33 pm (UTC)Which, beyond "The Binding Of Isaac" getting a non-0, is yet another reason to mistrust Metacritic and not tie your compensation to them.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 07:39 pm (UTC)(Seriously, New Vegas was one of the best games this decade. I would buy, sight unseen at full price, an Obsidian game based on Skyrim in the way that New Vegas was based on Oblivion. Hell, I would have bought Duke Nukem Forever on the strength of Borderlands had I not known the history of Duke Nukem Never and had Gearbox not said, outright, that they took no responsibility for the shit-tastic nature of the game and that they had refused to address content.)
no subject
Date: 2012-03-18 12:01 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to New Vegas.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 10:28 pm (UTC)A 85–100
In addition to the qualities required for Pass 2, to achieve this grade the essay would additionally have to show special signs of excellence, for example: particular clarity, originality of argument and exceptional presentation.
B 70–84
A rich and well-developed argument with a clearly stated and well-structured conclusion, showing the ability to range over appropriate areas of AA318, with acuteness of analysis, or intelligent challenges to the question set, or abundance of varied evidence, logically applied. The more of such features in the essay, the higher the level in this range of marks.
C 55–69
A considered argument marshalling some of the pros and cons, with well-selected evidence. The higher levels of this range of marks also require the essay to include some sort of verdict on the general tendency of the evidence brought forward in relation to the question. (Note: a verdict that an equal weight of evidence has been produced on both sides of the question is, where appropriate, perfectly allowable.)
D 40–54
Some sign of use of relevant evidence to tackle the question, even though treatment may be one-sided or scanty.
E 30–39 Fail
An essay seriously marred by vagueness, error or general lack of understanding of the question or the themes of AA318.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-19 10:45 am (UTC)The grade-boundaries weren't fixed though - if they managed to set an exam on which no-one did better than 50% then the passmark would be much lower.
I don't think percentages turn usefully into named-grades; especially not cross-culturally.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-19 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 10:23 pm (UTC)This comment brought to you by someone who is seriously fucked off with not being able to go out on her own without self-harming beforehand. It feels like it's open season on disabled people.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-18 01:12 am (UTC)