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Submission + - California Declared Carpooling Via Ride-Share Services Illegal (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ride-share companies like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar got letters from the California Public Utilities Commission this week telling them that carpool features for their services are illegal. "Basically, the CPUC says that under California law it's illegal for these ride-sharing services to charge passengers an individual fare when carrying multiple people in one vehicle. If the companies would like to add a carpool feature, they first have to request an adjustment to their existing permits with the CPUC or petition the state legislature to modify the law. Uber, Lyft and Sidecar all unveiled carpool features last month. The three companies say the feature lets strangers in multiple locations, but heading the same direction, share rides and split fares — saving passengers up to 50 percent per ride."

Submission + - NASA to perform reformat of Mars Rover Opportunity flash storage (nasa.gov)

Submitted by bobbied
bobbied writes: After a ten years of survival on the Martian surface, Opportunity continues to show that it is getting older. Recently the computer has been resetting itself more and more often. Controllers believe that the flash memory where the rover stores it's variable instructions has a number of bad cells which have simply worn out and stopped working. Doing a reformat operation will find these cells and remove them from use, hopefully eliminating the problematic reboots.

So, "Have you tried to re flash the firmware and power cycle it?" really IS rocket science.

Submission + - E-Books on a $20 cell phone (librarycity.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Moon+ Pro Reader, FBReader, Kindle, you name it--many popular Android e-book apps can run on a smartphone available for $20 and shipping.

The trick is to respect the device’s limits and keep down the number of apps you install. This fun isn't for eager multitaskers.

On the bright side, the $20 phone can do Acapela TTS, includes a 4GB memory card and works with cards of up to 32GB--easily enough for scads of pre-loaded books. Plus, the WiFi is great. And the screen of 3.2 inches isn’t that much smaller than the 3.5 inchers on the older iPads.

What could cell phone e-reading mean in the many "book deserts" of the U.S.? And how about the U.K. where miserly pols are closing libraries even though the Guardian says "a third of UK children do not own a single book and three-quarters claim never to read outside school"?

The smartphone post on the LibraryCity site tells how librarians and others could start "cell phone book clubs" to promote the discovery and absorption of books as well as smarter use of technology.

Submission + - Popular Science Magazine: About the Cell towers (popsci.com)

Submitted by Trachman
Trachman writes: Popular Science magazine has published an article about a network of cell towers that are owned not by telecommunication companies but by internal US agencies that are, well... gathering, data of US citizens. Many of them are built in US military bases. The revelation states that individual users are being tracked without court order or any warrant nor the knowledge of cell service providers and are built with the sole purpose of .... data gathering (spying, monitoring).

Submission + - Study: Antarctic Sea-Level Rising Faster Than Global Rate

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Melting ice is fuelling sea-level rise around the coast of Antarctica, a new report in Nature Geoscience finds. Near-shore waters went up by about 2mm per year more than the general trend for the Southern Ocean as a whole in the period between 1992 and 2011. Scientists say the melting of glaciers and the thinning of ice shelves are dumping 350 billion tonnes of additional water into the sea annually. This influx is warming and freshening the ocean, pushing up its surface. "Freshwater is less dense than salt water and so in regions where an excess of freshwater has accumulated we expect a localised rise in sea level," explained Dr Craig Rye from the University of Southampton, UK, and lead author on the new journal paper.

Submission + - Code.org Quacks Like a $4.5 Million Microsoft Duck

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Its "efforts to reshape the U.S. education system," explained the ACM, included working with CSTA, NCWIT, NSF, Microsoft and Google "in a new public/private partnership under the leadership of Code.org" to enable and popularize computer science education at the K-12 level. It's hard to quibble with the alliance's success — less than 10 months after its ya-got-trouble-right-here-in-River-City film starring Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went viral, Chicago and New York City tapped Code.org to educate their school kids, and now 100+ members of Congress are poised to pass a federal law making CS a "core subject". So, if you're curious about how much cash it takes to reshape the U.S. education system, Code.org's Donors page now lists those who gave $25,000+ to $3,000,000+ to the K-12 CS cause (the nonprofit plans to raise $20-30 million for 2015-16 operations). Microsoft, whose General Counsel Brad Smith sits on Code.org's Board, is at the top of the list as a Platinum Supporter ($3,000,000+), while Bill Gates is Gold ($1,000,000+), and Steve Ballmer is Silver ($500,000+). Probably not too surprising, since Code.org's mission does jibe nicely with Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, "a two-pronged approach [to solving tech's 'pipeline' problem] that will couple long-term improvements in STEM education in the United States with targeted, short-term, high-skilled immigration reforms." Coincidentally, six of Code.org's ten biggest donors are also Founders of Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC (Ballmer, Partovi, and Smith are 'Major Supporters'), which tackles the tech immigration prong of Microsoft's plan. By the way, tech's recent decision to disclose select diversity measures en masse after years of stonewalling may work in Code.org's and FWD.us's favor, since the woeful numbers are now being spun as a tech 'pipeline' problem that needs fixing. Hey, deal tech companies labor lemons, and they'll make labor lemonade!

Submission + - China gives Microsoft 20 days to respond to competition probe

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: China has given Microsoft three weeks to explain "compatibility issues" in Windows and Office that could violate Chinese competition laws. The State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) questioned Microsoft Vice President David Chen and gave the company a deadline to make an explanation, the agency said in a short statement on its website. Microsoft's use of verification codes also spurred complaints from Chinese companies. Their use "may have violated China's anti-monopoly law", the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

Comment Re:400 years for one murder (Score 2) 51

by ZorglubZ (#46883393) Attached to: Supreme Court Makes It Easier To Get Lawyers Fees In Patent Cases
Almost, but not quite, true. In Norway, you get your sentence of e.g. 21 years imprisonment, then there's forvaring (translates to something like custodial sentence), which means you cannot be released until a board deems you to be rehabilitated. This can mean that you may get out of jail after 2/3rds of the sentence, i.e. 14 years (unless there's a different minimum specified), if the board thinks you've understood the seriousness of the crime and are remorseful; if they don't think so, you're stuck.

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