"Because what I hadn’t known—this is my first time grading this exam—was that it doesn’t matter how well you write, or what you think. Here we spent the year reading books and emulating great writers, constructing leads that would make everyone want to read our work, developing a voice that would engage our readers, using our imaginations to make our work unique and important, and, most of all, being honest. And none of that matters. All that matters, it turns out, is that you cite two facts from the reading material in every answer. That gives you full credit. You can compose a “Gettysburg Address” for the 21st century on the apportioned lines in your test booklet, but if you’ve provided only one fact from the text you read in preparation, then you will earn only half credit. In your constructed response—no matter how well written, correct, intelligent, noble, beautiful, and meaningful it is—if you’ve not collected any specific facts from the provided readings (even if you happen to know more information about the chosen topic than the readings provide), then you will get a zero."

"The BSI has already admitted it did not know why it was lobbying against the UK's open standards policy, only that is what it had been told to do by ISO in Geneva. ISO in turn says its policy is formed by constituents like BSI. Does anyone know what's going on? BSI's resident standards experts are from non-IT, engineering fields. It's public policy expert is a career standards wonk who cannot explain its software policy either.

It was no surprise this week therefore when ISO was also unable to give Computer Weekly any examples of when it's policy might be justified. That is, when it might be justified for a patent holder to make a claim on a software standard. Neither could BSI."

With respect to the DSM-5, I am agnostic about the diagnostic criteria for individual conditions, such as panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder; in the end, I am not certain that either of these categories capture nature or will even appear in the DSM-6. When it comes to individual diagnostic categories, I would recommend that the DSM-5 take a conservative approach, leaving criteria unchanged unless compelling new evidence suggests that a change would be beneficial. Whatever the ultimate approach to the DSM-5, it is critical that the scientific community escape the artificial diagnostic silos that control so much research, ultimately to our detriment.

"In a nine-month study, four fictitious companies invented by the accountability office also sought EnergyStar status for some conventional devices like dehumidifiers and heat pump models that existed only on paper. The fake companies submitted data indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the most efficient ones on the market. Yet those applications were mostly approved without a challenge or even questions, the report said."

"REvolution Computing offers open source products and services for high performance analytics, including REvolution R Enterprise which delivers 100% R and more—optimized, validated and supported."

"This specification defines an API that allows Web application authors to spawn background workers running scripts in parallel to their main page. This allows for thread-like operation with message-passing as the coordination mechanism."

"In a CouchDB-enabled web, data-flows don't have to be centralized, which means friends can communicate without going through a fixed domain. This makes the web more efficient. It also means I can make data available to my social network without relying on 3rd-party services."

"Standards create opportunities to do stuff. These opportunities may well be patent worthy. So if you want to grow out the thicket around the emerging standard you just lock some smart guys in a room and start them brain storming. Some of what they come up with will be obvious, but that hardly means you won’t be able to capture a patent for it. Just to add to fire to the shit storm it appears that Redhat’s patent is for the mind bogglingly obvious idea of transfering XML data over AMQP. Of course any patent worth it’s lawyering starts with some broad claim and then get’s more focused."

"Finally, which equation should be chosen and how should it be used?

• for basic / fast calculations, you can use dE76 but beware of its problems
• for graphics arts use we recommend dE94 and perhaps dE-CMC 2:1..."

"When SoundExchange, the organization that represents many labels and artists, proposed steep new royalty rates for radio webcasters last year, they shortsightedly killed off their own revenue stream. Instead of their proposed rates being cut back as part of a standard negotiation, they were surprised to see the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board reject opposing arguments and adopt SoundExchange's rates fully. Now Pandora, the popular streaming music site, says it's paying over 70% of its revenue in royalties, and unless Washington changes the rates soon—which looks unlikely— they will have to shut down."