Posts by Pipe

How the FLAC do I tell MP3s from lossless audio?

Sonos play 1 or 3 are poor sound quality anyway, so if you can live with that then ...

Sonos play 1 or play 3?!

To be honest if you are happy listening on a play1 then you arent going to care. Its a crappy little speaker only good for a kitchen or shower. Almost the same is true of the play 3. Play 5 only just begins to get serious but still to my (and my wife's) ear isnt great.

So if thats what you are happy listening to then you arent the kind of person who can or should be judging this. Not a criticism some people are more bothered by it than others, thats all.

For the record wife and I own a pair of sonos units but both are connects that feed better amp and speakers. We trialled a play 5 and decided not to buy one even for the bedroom, although for that room it would suffice.

GCSE, A-level science exams ARE dumbed down - watchdog

Re: Why do we have a set pass mark for grades?

Whats wrong is blindingly obvious. One day, as humanity gets smarter (if it does), everyone will get 100% and an A. What use is that grade to anyone?

Reductio ad absurdum? Well we have already reached 25% and its already becoming a useless measure.

As for reality, everyone isnt getting smarter. Its arguable if they are being taught better. What is more likely is that that possibility is being taken advantage of to make exams easier to pass.

And for those of you who are clearly in need of dumbing down

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

Re: telling ?

This bull**** about challenged years really gets my goat.

There are about 1.8 million students entering higher education per year.

http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2355&Itemid=161

Lets pretend they all did A levels that year. Some didnt, some got in through other routes, but then equally some a level students didnt go to university at all. So lets just approximate that 1.8 millions A level students per year.

Let me say that again, there are 1.8 million A level students each year!

What is the statistical chance that from one year to the next enough of those 1.8 million are that much smarter than the year before. Statistically extremely unlikely. I realise that stats is one of those 'hard' subjects that most people dont read, but still picking 100 random strangers may result in one group being significantly smarter than another, but not when you are selecting 1.8 million.

If anyone knows stats well enough to work out the chances please do comment. But with a sample that large its just rubbish. Its the kind of fallacious argument that was used to remove a perfectly good marking system and replace it with one that allowed schools and governments to make it look like they were improving when in reality they took the easy way out.