November, 2000

  1. Interesting Computer Game Promotional Page

    The other day I bought Shiny’s amazing RTS game, “Sacrifice,” and spent too many hours playing it over the weekend (review coming soon). Anyway I was visiting the game’s web site to see if there was a patch out yet. There isn’t yet but they did have another interesting feature — a sort of mini-Pricewatch…

  2. Review of John Allen Paulos’ Innumeracy

    Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences By John Allen Paulos No sense mincing words — this is the worst skeptical/debunking book that I’ve ever read. Period. How this book became a national bestseller at the end of the 1980s (and its author a mini-celebrity for awhile) is something I will never understand. For one thing,…

  3. Can Computers Detect Internet Cheating?

    Duncan Smeed, who is an educator, worries enough about traditional plagiarism and notes that, “of course, the situation is further complicated by the ready availability of vast resources over the Internet.” He points to a group that is evaluating iParadigms’ electronic system that claims it can detect papers copied off the Internet. Several comments. First,…

  4. The More Freedom You Have, the Less Privacy You Need

    The United States and the European Union recently published a draft version of an international cyber crime agreement with an interesting proviso — the less political freedom users have, the more privacy they will be granted. Conversely, the more political freedom users have, the less privacy the states of the world will cede them. Make…