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Comment Georgia customers billed for it since 2009 (Score 4, Interesting) 142

Since 2009, Georgia electric customers have been paying a "Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” fee to fund the building of the Plant Vogle reactors. This tax currently adds 7.6% to a customer's electric monthly bill.

Here is an October 2013 article about a protest against the tax: Georgia Power Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery Tariff Excites Local Protest

And here's an organization that is protesting the tax: STOPCWIP.COM, which is short for STOP Construction Work In Progress

They point out that the Nuke owners are guaranteed a 11.5% return no matter how late the plant is:

In 2009, the Georgia General Assembly passed “Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act,” making it legal for Georgia electric utilities to charge customers in advance to construct the nuclear reactors. The Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) subsequently approved Georgia Power and other owners of Plant Vogtle to charge the CWIP tax which will be collected during the whole construction period, no matter how long it will take, and allow Georgia Power and the other Vogtle owners a guaranteed profit with a protected return on investment of 11.15%.

Submission + - Pwned by Jeff Bezos,Washington Post embeds Amazon Buy It Now buttons midsentence

McGruber writes: Reading a story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/what-divisive-charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory-cover-says-about-books-and-readers/2014/08/15/23163b8a-219a-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html) in the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, I saw that the paper had begun embedding Amazon Buy-It-Now links in the middle of story sentences. One such sentence read:

Depp can confirm this: At Politics and Prose, the traditional [BUY IT NOW] version — featuring the iconic eyes floating on a blue background — sold better than the DiCaprio [BUY IT NOW] cover.

The change follows the July news of much larger than expected losses at Amazon and a 10-percent decline in the Amazon's stock value. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/24/amazon-sales-soar-but-losses-are-the-biggest-since-2012/)

In related news, the Post reports that the literary executor of George Orwell’s estate has accused Amazon.com of Doublespeak. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/orwell-rep-accuses-amazon-of-doublespeak/2014/08/14/ecda1252-23c5-11e4-8b10-7db129976abb_story.html)

Comment Re:Where do I sign up? (Score 1) 327

Seriously? You're posting this here without telling me how I can get this job?

Sorry about that - you apply for federal jobs at USA Jobs Website

There are not any patent examiner openings posted right now, but here are some current IT openings at the Patent Office:

IT Acquisitions Specialist - DE

IT Specialist (APPSW) - Software Developer - DE

Systems Development Lead - IT Specialist (SYSANALYSIS/APPSW) - DE

Submission + - Everyday is Goof Off at Work Day at the US Patent & Trademark Office (washingtonpost.com) 1

McGruber writes: An internal investigation by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office found that some of its 8,300 patent examiners repeatedly lied about the hours they were putting in and many were receiving bonuses for work they did not do. While half of the USPTO's Patent Examiners work from home full time, oversight of the telework program — and of examiners based at the Alexandria headquarters — was “completely ineffective,” investigators concluded.

The internal investigation also unearthed another widespread problem. More than 70 percent of the 80 managers interviewed also told investigators that a “significant” number of examiners did not work for long periods, then rushed to get their reviews done at the end of each quarter. Supervisors told the review team that the practice “negatively affects” the quality of the work. “Our quality standards are low,” one supervisor told the investigators. “We are looking for work that meets minimal requirements.”

Patent examiners review applications and grant patents on inventions that are new and unique. They are experts in their fields, often with master’s and doctoral degrees. They earn at the top of federal pay scale, with the highest taking home $148,000 a year.

Submission + - Cringley: IBM not a viable company, propping itself up by trippling its debt (cringely.com)

McGruber writes: Robert X. Cringely has a new ebook out, titled "The Decline and Fall of IBM" (http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/04/decline-fall-ibm/). Cringely believes that IBM is in deep trouble and has been since before the Great Recession of 2008. He also says that the company has probably been doomed since 2010.

On Sunday, Cringley was interviewed on the nationally syndicated talkradio program Moneytalk. Program host Bob Brinker (http://bobbrinker.com/) pointed out that Warren Buffett bought almost $11 billion worth of IBM common stock, then asked Cringley "what did he miss?" Cringley answered that IBM is in a downward spiral because it is focused on maintaining and increasing earnings per share (EPS). IBM is borrowing money to buy back shares, propping up EPS but adding debt. IBM's debt has tripled in the last 5 years.

Cringley also told Brinker that IBM has gone from hardware sales to selling services but they have poor customer retention, having lost the state of Texas and The Walt Disney Company. Their sales culture tends to bid low to win the contract and then extract more dollars by selling extra services. IBM also lost a contract with the CIA to Amazon. A person who called-in to the program pointed out that IBM lost its leadership in product development, lost sales of its core products to Fortune 500 companies, and its software business is eroding because of open source applications. Cringely concurred with the caller and told him "you made my point."(http://honeysbobbrinkerbeehivebuzz3.blogspot.com/)

Submission + - Australia rebooting search for MH370, the missing Malaysian Airlines 777-200ER (wsj.com)

McGruber writes: The Wall Street Journal reports that two months after pausing its search for the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is ready to reboot its search. The ATSB is poised to select among bids from the world's most-advanced deep-water specialists, including offshore oil-and-gas companies, maritime research institutions and treasure hunters eager to use their technologies and experience to solve the Flight 370 riddle—and potentially raise their own profiles in the process. The ATSB is expected to choose one or more of the bidders over the next several weeks before relaunching the search with $56 million in funding in late August.

With no hard evidence of where the plane went down, the search will test the recovery industry's abilities like nothing before. In June, Australian authorities shifted the search zone for a third time—by about 600 miles to the southwest—after reanalyzing satellite transmissions. Even then, they said it was impossible to know whether the fresh search area would prove correct.

Comment Re:Earthshaking (Score 2) 124

It's an electrical problem in a single building.

Actually, the complex is four separate builidings connected in a U-shape; the tallest is 24 stories. The complex has its own entry on skyscraperpage.com and is also described in this 6-page PDF by Trane, the air-conditioning company. That PDF includes this description of the buildings in the complex and how it is all designed for 24/7 operation:

The facility, named for the former U.S. Senator from Georgia, is one the largest federal office buildings on the East Coast. It encompasses 1.87 million square feet of space. The structure straddles a busy downtown street. The building is also located atop an underground train tunnel of the Atlanta transit system, MARTA. The building units include the remodeled 1924 department store, Rich's, which was a downtown Atlanta landmark and an Atlanta institution.

Now this renovated six-story building and its beloved clock are a visual cornerstone for the center. Other elements are a 10-story mid-rise section, an eight-story bridge, six stories over Forsyth Street and a 24-story high-rise tower. Adjacent to the building is a 10-story parking garage. Construction of the building was a joint urban redevelopment enterprise of the City of Atlanta and the Federal Government. The design architect for the facility was the California firm of Kohn, Peterson, Fox and Associates. Newcomb & Boyd, a large Atlanta firm, was chosen as the project engineer.

Designed For 24-Hour Operation Southeastern Facility Management, Inc., is contracted by GSA to operate this facility. The system was designed for 24-hour seven days a week operation to accommodate the mission of the various agencies housed in the facility. One or more of the 1,310-ton chillers were to operate, depending on the building load, between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. After 6:00 p.m., the 400-ton chiller was to carry all computer rooms and miscellaneous building loads. As a consequence, the facility designers and engineers needed to plan for continuous occupancy. Atlanta has significant cooling loads for much of the year and high humidity as well. The goal of the HVAC system design was to assure complete comfort in the building around the clock, year-round. To achieve this, significant emphasis was placed on humidity control with a central chilled water plant, air handlers for each area and a zone- controlled VAV air delivery system. Building designers also recognized that an important part of the office environment is acoustic performance. For this reason, rigorous sound level standards were set for occupied areas throughout the facility. The air conditioning system efficiency was extremely important due to the 24/7 operation.

Submission + - Bad "Buss Duct" causes week-long closure of 5,000 employee Federal Complex (ajc.com)

McGruber writes: In Atlanta, an electrical problem in a "Buss Duct" has caused the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center to be closed for at least a week (http://www.ajc.com/news/news/nunn-federal-building-expected-to-reopen-monday/ngnSZ/). 5,000 federal employees work at the center.

While many might view this as another example of The Infrastructure Crisis (http://www.asce.org/Content.aspx?id=25562) in the USA, it might actually be another example of mismanagement at the complex's landord, the General Service Administration (GSA). The GSA has had many scandals [http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20120416/DEPARTMENTS07/204160301/GSA-scandal-Heavy-fallout-expected] and has been the subject of several Congresssional Hearings, including an August 1, 2012 hearing titled "GSA: A Review of Agency Mismanagement and Wasteful Spending — Part 2" (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-112hhrg75419/html/CHRG-112hhrg75419.htm). That hearing followed an $823,000 GSA employee conference in Las Vegas and a one-day-long $250,000 GSA employee conference in Crystal City, Virginia (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/gsa-scandal-widens-dozens-conferences-investigated/?page=all)

The closed Atlanta complex is named for Samuel Augustus "Sam" Nunn, Jr., who served for 24 years as a United States Senator from Georgia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Nunn). His daughter is the current Democratic Party nominee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Nunn) for a Georgia Senate seat.

Submission + - India building Highest Railway Bridge in the World (businessinsider.com) 1

McGruber writes: Up in the Mimalayas, Indian engineers have restarted work on the world's highest railway bridge. When completed in 2016, the arch-shaped steel structure will be 359 metres (1,177 feet) high — 35 metres (115 feet) taller than the Eiffel Tower!

The bridge is part of the Jammu Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla Railway Link
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_Railway), a railway line being built to connect the state of Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of the country. When completed, the route will shorten the travel time from Baramulla to Jammu to six-and-a-half hours, almost half the time it currently takes.

Submission + - Uber Driver flees taxi police with passengers aboard (washingtonpost.com)

McGruber writes: The Washington Post has the news that a Uber driver fled from police with passenger Ryan Simonetti aboard:

As they approached their Uber car, they spotted a D.C. taxi inspector talking to the driver.

Simonetti got into the front seat, and his colleagues got into the back seat. The inspector walked away. Thinking back, Simonetti suspects the inspector was going to check the documents the Uber driver had handed to him. Then, the Uber driver started driving down the street. The inspector turned his lights on and started to follow.

“That cop’s following you. What’s going on?” Simonetti said he asked the driver. He said the driver told him not to worry. “Oh no, he’s not a real cop,” the Uber driver replied. Simonetti said the driver then told them: “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to run this red light.”

The Uber driver then headed for the 9th Street tunnel, got on I-395 and proceeded to race down the highway going “well above the speed limit,” Simonetti said.

The taxi inspector followed.“It was like an episode of ‘Cops,’” Simonetti said.

A spokesman for Uber said the driver in question is no longer with the company.

Comment Re:The article "Jorge Fiasco" wants you to forget (Score 3, Informative) 110

Another article Jorge Carasco would like you to forget: The Seattle Times: City Light leader Jorge Carrasco fell for copper con

Last year, two men claiming to be members of the Cherokee Nation who had traveled from Oklahoma came to Seattle with a simple goal: score some scrap copper.

Dressed in beads and fringed suede, with one wearing a cap that said “Native,” they headed to the offices of Seattle City Light, where they chanced upon its superintendent, Jorge Carrasco, in the lobby. They told him they ran a nonprofit that taught disabled children how to make jewelry and needed some copper wire.

Minutes after meeting them, Carrasco authorized the men to be given some scrap.

But the two were actually con men. Once inside City Light’s secure facilities, they were able to drive off with 20 tons of copper wire and scrap metal worth $120,000.

Comment The article "Jorge Fiasco" wants you to forget (Score 3, Informative) 110

I RTFA and learned that this is the article that "Jorge Fiasco" (Jorge Carrasco" wants google and everyone else to forget about:

Short Fuse: Jorge Carrasco's Polarizing Tenure at the Top of City Light

I also see that the deal with brand.com has cost Jorge Fiasco a six figure pay raise: The Seattle Times: No pay raise for City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray says he will not give City Light CEO Jorge Carrasco a pay raise, citing “judgment” issues, including a contract aimed partly at boosting Carrasco’s online image.

Murray made the comments at a City Hall news conference Wednesday.

The Seattle City Council had authorized a pay increase of up to $119,000 for Carrasco, who currently makes $245,000. Murray’s office previously had said he was considering raising Carrasco’s pay by $60,000.

Comment Re:A legend of OS design (Score 3, Interesting) 136

Minix was really the first of its kind; a Unix-like OS that you could run on cheap (relatively speaking at the time) commodity hardware and that you could get the source code for. A lot of the computing we take for granted now comes from Tanenbaum's work.

Truly!

I first learned of Minix by reading about it in Byte magazine. At the time, I was an undergrad at a big US university, a member of the Association of American Universities. The only multitasking computers on the entire campus were a Unix mainframe, a VAX, and a cluster (lab) of Sun workstations that only graduate engineering students could have accounts on. The Unix and VAX machines could be accessed using VT-100 (and later) terminals in computer labs spread out all over the campus. There were also BYOF (Bring Your Own Floppies) computer labs filled with DOS (pre-windows) PCs, and a few labs filled with early Macs, but those labs were mostly used by humanities majors hunting-and-pecking their term papers out.

Booting a multitasking unix-like OS on a personal computer was a huge deal back then.

Submission + - Senator Al Franken accuses AT+T of 'skirting' net neutrality rules (washingtonpost.com)

McGruber writes: In a letter to the U.S. Federal Communication Commission and the Department of Justice, Senator Al Franken warned that letting AT&T acquire Direct TV could turn AT&T into a gatekeeper to the mobile Internet. Franken also complained that AT&T took inappropriate steps to block Internet applications like Google Voice and Skype: "AT&T has a history of skirting the spirit, and perhaps the letter" of the government's rules on net neutrality, Franken wrote.

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