One important thing during the pre-Christmas rush at our house was the arrival of my daughter's kindergarten report card. She got 01 praise for her reading, vocabulary and overall enthusiasm. On the other hand, we 02 that she has work to do on her numbers and facility with the computer, though the detailed 03 report her teachers prepared is absent of any words that might be interpreted as negative in describing her 04. A number system indicates how she's measuring up in each area 05 any mention of passing or failing.All of 06 seems to make my daughter’s school neither fish nor fowl when 07 comes to the debate over the merits of giving formal grades to kids. At one 08, the advantages and disadvantages are obvious. A grade system provides a straightforward 09 by which to measure how your child is progressing at school —— and how he or she is getting 10 compared to other children.But as writer Sue Ferguson notes, “Grades can deceive,” The aim should be "to measure learning, not 11 what a student can recall on a test. ” The two aren’t the same — and if you doubt that as an adult, ask yourself whether you could sit down 12 any preparation and still pass those high-school-level examinations.If you're old 13, you've lived through this debate before. At one time, it was considered unfair to put children in direct competition with one another if it could be avoided. The intention 14 that may have been good, but it ignored the fact that competition, and the 15 to come out on top, are essential components of the human condition.This time around, educators working with a no-grades approach are emphasizing different reasons. The thing is, that approach is much more 16 in the adult workplace than is the traditional pass-fail system we place on our children. Many workplaces 17 regular employee evaluations. There are usually fairly strict limits to what an employer can tell an employee in those evaluations — and even then, negative evaluations can be 18 by the employee. No matter 19 you sit in the debate over the grade system, then, the real question is this: if it's so good for kids, why isn't that also true for 20?
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In 1997, 25 Japanese citizens, all older than 60, launched Jeeba (the name means “old man and old woman") to make senior-01 products. They knew they were making history when they 02 their company motto: "Of the elderly, by the elderly and 03 the elderly. " They do not hire young people, and the 04 of their workers is 75.Firms 05 by senior citizens are still a rarity, in Japan and worldwide. But the elderly have numbers on their 06. Healthier and longer-living seniors,born immediately after World War II, are reaching retirement 07 in huge numbers all over the developed world. Extremely low 08 in those same countries mean there are far fewer young workers to take their 09. One likely consequence is now clear: 10 work forces.While the streamlining effects of international 11 are focusing attention on the need to create and keep good jobs, those fears will eventually give 12 to worries about the growing shortage of young workers. One unavoidable solution: putting older people back to work, 13 they like it or not. Indeed, advanced economies like those of Finland and Denmark have already raised their retirement ages. Others are 14 severe pressure to follow suit, as both the European Commission and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have recently warned their members that their future prosperity depends on a 15 contribution from the elderly.Whether these changes are good or bad news to workers depends on 16 they anticipate retirement with eagerness or dread. In the United States, half of working-age Americans now expect to work 17 their 70s, whether by financial necessity or by lifestyle 18, according to a new study by Putnam Investments.Contrary to still widespread assumptions, there is very little hard evidence to suggest that companies cannot stay competitive with a 19 share of older workers. At British hardware chain B&Q, its “elder worker" stores in Manchester and Exmouth were 18 percent more 20 than its regular outlets — due in part, the company says, to six times less employee turnover and 60 percent less shoplifting and breakage.
One of the key challenges in urban architecture over the next 50 years will be figuring out how to squeeze vast numbers of additional people into urban areas that are already extremely 01. London, for example, will 02 have to deal with a projected 100, 000 extra inhabitants every year until 2016. The 03 plan of building new “satellite towns” of the city causes a lot of problems -- but architecture 04 tanks are working on ambitious solutions that go vertical instead of horizontal in search of 05.In 06 of population density, London is one of the 07 crowded major cities in the world — four times fewer people per square kilometer than Paris, for example, six times fewer than New York and eight times fewer than Cairo. But the fact remains that the city's population is 08 at a rapid rate, and horizontal expansion into the surrounding areas is 09 up increasingly important agricultural land, as well as worsening all the transport problems that come with urban 10.Popular Architecture would propose a radically 11 solution. The proposal is to go upwards, with vertical towers of considerable size, each representing an entire new town by the time it's 12. Each tower would be 1500 meters high. 13 mere accommodation, each tower would function as an entire town unit, with its own schools, hospitals, parks and gardens, sports facilities, business areas and community spaces. The population density of such a tower could help 14 the individual energy requirements of each inhabitant, reducing the ecological impact of the population as a whole.The village towers are considered as hollow tubes, with large holes to allow 15 and air through the entire construction. Occasional floor discs spread 16 the height of the building will give inhabitants large central areas in the middle of the tube to use as 17 spaces.While the building itself is 18 ever to be seriously considered for construction -- imagine the number of elevators it would need, let 19 the safety implications of open areas at such heights and with such wind exposure — the concept can serve as a conversation-starter for urban planners looking to 20 the challenges of the current and coming centuries.
Passwords are everywhere in computer security. 01 too often, they are also ineffective. A good password has to be both easy to remember and hard to guess, but 02 practice people seem to pay attention to the former. Names of wives, husbands and children are 03. “123456" or “12345" are also common choices.That predictability lets security researchers ( and hackers ) create dictionaries which 04 common passwords, useful to those seeking to break in. But 05 researchers know that passwords are insecure, working out just how insecure has been difficult. Many studies have only small 06 to work on.However, with the co-operation of Yahoo!, Joseph Bonneau of Cambridge University 07 the biggest sample to date - 70 million passwords that came with useful data about their owners.Mr. Bonneau found some interesting variations. Older users had 08 passwords than young ones. People whose preferred language was Korean or German chose the most secure passwords; those 09 spoke Indonesian the least. Passwords 10 to hide sensitive information such as credit-card numbers were only slightly more secure than those protecting less important things, like 11 to games. “Nag screens” that told users they had chosen a weak password made virtually no 12. And users whose accounts had been hacked in the past did not make more secure choices than those 13 had never been hacked.But it is the broader analysis of the sample that is 14 most interest to security researchers. For, despite their differences, the 70 million users were still predictable 15 that a generic password dictionary was effective against 16 the entire sample and any slice of it. Mr. Bonneau is blunt: “An attacker who can manage ten guesses per account will compromise around l % of accounts." And that is a worthwhile 17 for a hacker.One obvious solution would be for sites to limit the number of guesses that can be 18 before access is blocked. Yet whereas the biggest sites, such as Google and Microsoft, 19 take such measures, many do not. The reasons of 20 not doing so are various. So it's time for users to consider the alternatives to traditional passwords.
John Lubbock, a British member of the Parliament, led to the first law to safeguard Britain's heritage — the Ancient Monuments Bill. How did it 01?By the 02 1800s more and more people were visiting Stonehenge for a day 03. Now a World Heritage Site owned by the Crown, it was, at the time, privately owned and neglected.But the visitors left 04 rubbish and leftover food. It encouraged rats that made holes at the stones’ foundations, 05 them. One of the upright stones had already fallen 06 and one had broken in two. They also chipped pieces off the stones 07 souvenirs and carved pictures into them, says architectural critic Jonathan Glancey.It was the same for 08 pre-historic remains, which were disappearing fast. Threats also included farmers and landowners as the ancient stones got 09 the way of working on the fields and were a free source of building materials.Shocked and angry, Lubbock took up the 10. When he heard Britain's largest ancient stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire was 11 for sale in 1871 he persuaded its owners to sell it to him and the stone circle was saved.“Lubbock 12 national attention for ancient monuments," says Glancey. “At the time places like Stonehenge were just 13 as a collection of stones, ancient sites to get building materials.”“Lubbock knew they were the roots of British identity. He did for heritage 14 Darwin did for natural history."But Lubbock couldn't 15 every threatened site. He knew laws were needed and tabled the Ancient Monuments Bill. It 16 government powers to take any pre-historic site under threat away from uncaring owners, a radical idea at the time.For eight years he tried and failed to get the bill through parliament. Finally, in 1882, it was 17 into law. It had, however, been 18 down; people had to willingly give their ancient monuments to the government. But what it did do was plant the idea that the state could preserve Britain's heritage 19 than private owners.Pressure started to be 20 on the owners of sites like Stonehenge to take better care of them.