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Networking

Comcast Planning 2Gbps Service, Starting With Atlanta 208

Posted by timothy from the which-tradeoffs-do-you-prefer dept.
joemite points out a PC Mag article which begins "There's been a lot of talk about Google's 1Gbps "gigabit" Internet service, but Comcast said today that it is planning a 2Gbps service, beginning in Atlanta," and writes: All of the ISPs seem to be "out-doing" each other in terms of offering faster and faster service, but why can't they compete on reasonable rates for "slower" speeds? My 5Mbit service from Comcast is currently costing me $50/month, about what it was 10 years ago. Seems that if they can push a 2 Gigs for a few hundred dollars, I could get at least get 50Mbit for what I'm paying now.
Education

The End of College? Not So Fast 145

Posted by Soulskill from the beer-companies-and-loan-companies-won't-allow-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The advent of MOOCs, Khan Academy, and the hundreds of other learning sites that have popped up caused many people to predict the decline of expensive, four-year universities. But Donald Heller writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that most of the people making these claims don't have a good understanding of how actual students are interacting with online classes. He points out that it's a lot easier for a 40-year-old who's in a stable life position, and who has already experienced college-level education to work through an MOOC with ease. But things change when you're asking 18- to 20-year-olds to give up the structure and built-in motivation of a physical university to instead sit at their computer for hours at a time. (The extremely low pass rate for free online courses provides some evidence for this.) Heller also warns that prematurely hailing MOOCs as a replacement for colleges will only encourage governments and organizations to stop investing in institutions of higher learning, which could have dire consequences for education worldwide.
Encryption

NSA Worried About Recruitment, Post-Snowden 247

Posted by Soulskill from the should-have-thought-of-that-before-being-jerks dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The NSA employs tens of thousands of people, and they're constantly recruiting more. They're looking for 1,600 new workers this year alone. Now that their reputation has taken a major hit with the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, they aren't sure they'll be able to meet that goal. Not only that, but the NSA has to compete with other companies, and they Snowden leaks made many of them more competitive: "Ever since the Snowden leaks, cybersecurity has been hot in Silicon Valley. In part that's because the industry no longer trusts the government as much as it once did. Companies want to develop their own security, and they're willing to pay top dollar to get the same people the NSA is trying to recruit." If academia's relationship with the NSA continues to cool, the agency could find itself struggling within a few years.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 294

by Meneth (#49328181) Attached to: Steve Wozniak Now Afraid of AI Too, Just Like Elon Musk

You seem to underestimate the inventiveness of a superintelligence, and the diversity of hardware controlled by computers, and our reliance on them. It is also possible to use electronic communication to make humans do work for you.

For example, if the AI solves the Protein Folding Problem, it could contact a Protein Sequencing Service and have them build proteins that fold into self-replicating nanobots.
NASA

Politics Is Poisoning NASA's Ability To Do Science 416

Posted by Soulskill from the pretend-to-be-surprised dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Phil Plait just published an article about how politics is interfering with NASA's ability to perform vital scientific experiments. As expected when we heard that Ted Cruz would be made head of the committee in charge of NASA's funding, the Texas senator is pushing hard for NASA to stop studying Earth itself. Plait writes, "Over the years, NASA has had to beg and scrape to get the relatively small amount of money it gets—less than half a percent of the national budget—and still manages to do great things with it. Cruz is worried NASA's focus needs to be more on space exploration. Fine. Then give them enough money to do everything in their charter: Explore space, send humans there, and study our planet. Whether you think climate change is real or not—and it is— telling NASA they should turn a blind eye to the environment of our own planet is insanity." He concludes, "[T]he politics of funding a government agency is tying NASA in knots and critically endangering its ability to explore."
Mars

A Mars One Finalist Speaks Out On the "Dangerously Flawed" Project 169

Posted by samzenpus from the on-second-thought dept.
superboj writes Dr Joseph Roche is one of the finalists to go on Mars One's much-hyped mission to the Red Planet. And yet he says he's never had an in-person interview, had to organize his own physical exam, was only tested on prepared questions, and is being encouraged to give more and more money to the group. That's why he's decided to quit.
Privacy

Hertz Puts Cameras In Its Rental Cars, Says It Has No Plans To Use Them 188

Posted by samzenpus from the all-the-better-to-see-you-with dept.
schwit1 writes Hertz has added a camera to many of its newer cars that uses the "NeverLost" navigational device. So why is Hertz creeping out customers with cameras it's not using? "Hertz added the camera as a feature of the NeverLost 6 in the event it was decided, in the future, to activate live agent connectivity to customers by video. In that plan the customer would have needed to turn on the camera by pushing a button (while stationary)," Hertz spokesperson Evelin Imperatrice explained. "The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so."
Communications

Why There Is No Such Thing as 'Proper English' 667

Posted by Soulskill from the but-feel-free-to-continue-screaming-at-random-internet-commenters dept.
Pikoro writes: A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explains why the concept of a "proper" English isn't realistic. Quoting: "It's a perpetual lament: The purity of the English language is under assault. These days we are told that our ever-texting teenagers can't express themselves in grammatical sentences. The media delight in publicizing ostensibly incorrect usage. ... As children, we all have the instinct to acquire a set of rules and to apply them. ... We know that a certain practice is a rule of grammar because it’s how we see and hear people use the language. ... That’s how scholarly linguists work. Instead of having some rule book of what is “correct” usage, they examine the evidence of how native and fluent nonnative speakers do in fact use the language. Whatever is in general use in a language (not any use, but general use) is for that reason grammatically correct. The grammatical rules invoked by pedants aren’t real rules of grammar at all. They are, at best, just stylistic conventions.
Science

Scientific Study Finds There Are Too Many Scientific Studies 112

Posted by Soulskill from the my-study-can-beat-up-your-study dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Chris Matyszczyk reports at Cnet that a new scientific study concludes there are too many scientific studies — scientists simply can't keep track of all the studies in their field. The paper, titled "Attention Decay in Science," looked at all publications (articles and reviews) written in English till the end of 2010 within the database of the Thomson Reuters (TR) Web of Science. For each publication they extracted its year of publication, the subject category of the journal in which it is published and the corresponding citations to that publication. The 'decay' the researchers investigated is how quickly a piece of research is discarded measured by establishing the initial publication, the peak in its popularity and, ultimately, its disappearance from citations in subsequent publications.

"Nowadays papers are forgotten more quickly. Attention, measured by the number and lifetime of citations, is the main currency of the scientific community, and along with other forms of recognition forms the basis for promotions and the reputation of scientists," says the study. "Typically, the citation rate of a paper increases up to a few years after its publication, reaches a peak and then decreases rapidly. This decay can be described by an exponential or a power law behavior, as in ultradiffusive processes, with exponential fitting better than power law for the majority of cases (PDF). The decay is also becoming faster over the years, signaling that nowadays papers are forgotten more quickly." Matyszczyk says,"If publication has become too easy, there will be more and more of it."
Businesses

Steve Jobs's Big Miss: TV 205

Posted by samzenpus from the blow-up-your-tv-throw-away-your-paper dept.
jfruh writes Steve Jobs was a well-known audiophile and music lover, which helps explain why Apple transformed the music industry in the '00s with the iPod and iTunes. But according to a new biography soon to be released, Apple may have failed to do the same for TV because of Steve Jobs's disdain for the medium. One of his first acts upon returning to the company was to kill the flashy, expensive 20th Anniversary Macintosh, in part because it had a built-in TV tuner. "Apple will never make a TV again," Jobs declared.
Security

Panda Antivirus Flags Itself As Malware 99

Posted by Soulskill from the self-fulfilling-prophecy dept.
An anonymous reader writes An update to a number of Panda antivirus programs Wednesday mistakenly flagged core files as malware, putting them in quarantine. In doing so, the antivirus system ceased working. Panda's free antivirus, retail 2015 service, and its enterprise cloud-based antimalware service are all affected. The company took to Twitter to warn users: "Please, don't reboot PCs. We'll keep you posted." In an advisory, Panda said the erroneous signature file was "repaired immediately," but warned under certain conditions it is possible for the "incident to persist."

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