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Submission + - Will ASU Online's Starbucks Baristas Outearn Their Professors? (Yes. Duh!)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Following up on the recent slashdot story "Starbucks Offers Workers 2 Years of Free College" (http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/06/16/1927205/starbucks-offers -workers-2-years-of-free-college), Steve Foerster commented that "This is a major PR boost for ASU as well, and considering many adjuncts make less than the baristas they'll be teaching, I doubt ASU is losing money here." (http://chronicle.com/article/In-Deal-With-Starbucks/147181/#comment-1439171567)

Mr. Foerster's comment caused the Chronicle of Higher Education to ask "Is it possible that Starbucks baristas will be better paid than their instructors? (http://chronicle.com/article/Will-ASU-Online-s-Starbucks/147239/)" While the article is behind a paywall, the answer is obvious to anyone who knows how little adjunct professors are paid.

Comment Re:Federal Govt. outsources most of its IT (Score 1) 465

by McGruber (#47262151) Attached to: IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation

any system the IRS has is going to be horrendously old because they pretty much never get funding to upgrade anything.

Here's a Delivery Order (contract) that the Internal Revenue Service used to buy $12.5 million worth of Dell computers from June 23, 2004 to September 30, 2011:

http://government-contracts.fi...

On September 29, 2009, that contract was used to purchase $150,590 worth of "Desktop Replacement Notebooks".... so, back in 2010, the employees now under investigation could have all been using 1-year old Dell laptops running Windows XP or 7.

Comment Federal Govt. outsources most of its IT (Score 1) 465

by McGruber (#47260031) Attached to: IRS Lost Emails of 6 More Employees Under Investigation
From the AP article:

Investigators from the House Ways and Means Committee interviewed IRS technicians Monday.

The federal IT sector is heavily outsourced -- the investigators should be looking to see which firm(s) provided IT services to the IRS in 2010 and bringing those firms in. There should have been contract documents specifying requirements about backing up email servers.

This part is also laughable:

Lerner’s computer crashed in the summer of 2011, depriving investigators of many of her prior emails. Flax’s computer crashed in December 2011, Camp and Boustany said.

Sorry, but federal government IT standards in 2011 required that PCs run XP or Win-7. Even a Linux and BSD guy like myself knows that XP was reliable enough that it is extremely unlikely that both of their computers crashed with data loss.

I can't find the specific federal IT standard that was in place during 2011, but it did require the use of Windows XP or later. Here's a September 10,2009 article titled: "Federal agencies prepare to make the leap from XP to Windows 7": http://gcn.com/articles/2009/0...

Comment Re:BSES (Score 2) 169

by McGruber (#47250023) Attached to: Starbucks Offers Workers 2 Years of Free College

Just tossing out a stray thought, but how much value would there be in having maybe one person at a Starbucks with some sort of culinary arts education/training?

That would increase healthcare costs because Starbucks employees trained in culinary arts would need to consume a lot of antidepressants.

Submission + - Kansas City Science Store Resurrects AC Gilbert Chemistry Set, the best-ever toy (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The A. C. Gilbert Company (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...) was once one of the largest toy companies in the world. It manufacturered Erector Sets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erector_Set), American Flyer toy trains (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Flyer), and chemistry sets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry_set).

Chemist John Farrell Kuhns (https://www.kickstarter.com/profiles/1742632993/bio) received an AC Gilbert Chemistry set for Christmas 1959, while he was still in grade school. By the time Kuhns was twelve years old he had a home lab set up in my family's basement. Now, more than 50 years later, he still has a home lab.

As an adult, Mr. Kuhns wanted to share these experiences with his daughter, nephews and nieces, and their friends. But he soon discovered that real chemistry sets were no longer available. He wondered how, without real chemistry sets and opportunities for students to learn and explore, where would our future chemists come from?

In 2004, Kuhns and his wife opened their science store, H.M.S. Beagle (http://www.hms-beagle.com/) and last year used Kickstarter to launch a new Heirloom Chemistry set. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742632993/heirloom-chemistry-set). Kuhns uses a CNC router to cut out his wood cases, which are then hand assembled and finished with the shiny brass hardware and exotic wood inlays. Kuhns also synthesizes, purifies and/or formulates and packages all of the chemicals.

Gary Hanington, professor of physical science at Great Basin College, was another child who was lucky enough to own a Gilbert chemistry set. Hanington wrote about his set in this article (http://elkodaily.com/lifestyles/speaking-of-science-a-c-gilbert-chemistry-sets/article_30dc31c8-c258-11e1-9dfd-001a4bcf887a.html).

Sadly, not everyone sees the educational value of real chemistry sets. The AC Gilbert chemistry sets are #3 on Cracked's "The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Toys" (http://www.cracked.com/article_19481_the-8-most-wildly-irresponsible-vintage-toys_p2.html) and #8 on Complex.com's "The 25 Worst Must-Have Christmas Toys Ever (http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/12/25-worst-must-have-christmas-toys-ever/gilbert-chemistry-set)

Submission + - Study: Half of US jobs to be replaced by computers, robots & autonomous cars (ox.ac.uk)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The answer to the "Ask Slashdot: Does Your Job Need To Exist?" (http://ask.slashdot.org/story/14/05/10/1953227/ask-slashdot-does-your-job-need-to-exist) is a big "NO!", according to a study from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology. They found that half of US jobs could be susceptible to computerisation over the next two decades. (http://www.futuretech.ox.ac.uk/news-release-oxford-martin-school-study-shows-nearly-half-us-jobs-could-be-risk-computerisation).

‘The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?’ report measured the vulnerability of 702 occupations in terms of their likelihood to be replaced by various forms of computerisation, including within robotics, sophisticated data-scanning software or autonomous vehicles. Yhe study found that jobs in transportation, logistics, as well as office and administrative support, are at “high risk” of automation. More surprisingly, occupations within the service industry are also highly susceptible, despite recent job growth in this sector.

“We identified several key bottlenecks currently preventing occupations being automated,” says co-author Dr Michael A. Osborne. “As big data helps to overcome these obstacles, a great number of jobs will be put at risk.”

The full report is available here: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac....

Submission + - Missing Malaysian 767:Experts unable to replicate satelite company's analysis (theatlantic.com) 1

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The lynchpin of the investigation of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has been the pings from the plane to one of Inmarsat’s satellites. The pings are the sole evidence of what happened to the plane after it slipped out of radar contact. Without them, investigators knew only that the plane had enough fuel to travel anywhere within 3,300 miles of the last radar contact—a seventh of the entire globe.

Inmarsat concluded that the flight ended in the southern Indian Ocean, and its analysis has become the canonical text of the Flight 370 search. It’s the bit of data from which all other judgments flow—from the conclusive announcement by Malaysia’s prime minister that the plane has been lost with no survivors, to the black-box search area, to the high confidence in the acoustic signals, to the dismissal by Australian authorities of a survey company’s new claim to have detected plane wreckage.

But scientists and engineers outside of the investigation have been working to verify Inmarsat's analysis and many say that it just doesn’t hold up.

Submission + - Absent-minded IT Specialist inadvertently drives onto White House grounds (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: IT Specialist Mathew Goldstein’ was driving his gray Honda Civic along 17th Street NW in Washington, DC when he made a wrong turn and inadvertently followed the motorcade carrying President Obama’s daughters into the secure perimeter for the presidential compound.

Goldstein’s mistaken left turn raised serious questions about how an unauthorized vehicle was able to travel within five feet of the Obama girls’ motorcade and get through two rows of metal security bollards at the checkpoint at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Submission + - IBM System/360 joins "Mad Men" television show (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: The May 4, 2014 episode of the "Mad Men" introduced a new bad guy character: an IBM System/360 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360).

The computer replaced the "creative lounge" where the show's fictional copywriters spit-balled ideas. Fictional character explained "This machine is intimidating because it contains infinite quantities of information and that's threatening because human existence is finite. But isn't it godlike that we've mastered the infinite? The IBM 360 can count more stars in a day than we can count in a lifetime. "

Submission + - Google celebrates Teacher Appreciation Day by granting Wishlists of 356 Teachers (ajc.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper blogger Maureen Downey reports (http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2014/may/06/teacher-appreciation-day-google-atlanta-chooses-fu/) that, to celebration Teacher Appreciation Day, Google Atlanta today flash-funded the classroom requests of every Greater Atlanta teacher on DonorsChoose.org, Google’s $340,000 donation will provide materials for 356 Atlanta teachers and their 38,775 students.

“With two kids in the Atlanta Public School system, I’m inspired daily by the hard work of our local teachers,” said Tom Lowry, head of Google’s Atlanta office. “Today, we’re excited to team up with DonorsChoose.org to say a big thanks to teachers and to support all their classroom projects in the Atlanta area.”

Submission + - High School students google Criminal Justice Teacher, find his criminal record (wsbtv.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Remember the slashdot story about the Nissan Leaf owner who was arrested for stealing 5 cents worth of electricity from his child's school? (http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/04/1817227/ev-owner-arrested-over-5-cents-worth-of-electricity-from-schools-outlet) Well, the Dekalb County School District (http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/) that had him arrested is in the news again after a few DeKalb County High School Technology South (http://www.dhstsouth.dekalb.k12.ga.us/) students googled their teacher.

The students discovered that their CRIMINAL JUSTICE teacher had engaged in a sexual act with a student past. The State of Florida had banned the teacher from teaching in 2009 after he entered a nolo contendre plea to a single count of child abuse. (http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/dekalb-teacher-resigns-after-past-sexual-accusatio/nfnk8/)

While two wrongs don't make a right, I can't help but think the school district's time would have been better spent keeping child molesters out of the classroom instead of prosecuting a parent for 5 cents worth of electricity.

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