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Education

Tuition Should Be Lower For Science Majors, Says Florida Task Force 457

Hugh Pickens writes "Jordan Weissmann writes that a task force commissioned by Florida Governor Rick Scott is putting the finishing touches on a proposal that would allow the state's public universities to charge lower tuition for studying topics thought to be in high demand among Florida employers including science, technology, engineering, and math. The hope is that by keeping certain degrees cheaper than others, Florida can encourage students into fields where it needs more talent. For some, it might seem inherently unfair to send dance majors deeper into debt just to keep tuition low for engineers, who are already poised to earn more once they graduate, but task force chair Dale Brill says tax dollars are scarce, and the public deserves the best possible return from its investment in education and that means spending more generously on the students who are most likely to help grow Florida's economy once they graduate. Brill also argues that too few young people consider their career prospects carefully when picking a major. 'We're trying to introduce some semblance of a market dynamic information in an environment where there is none,' Brill says. 'Most students couldn't tell you what they pay in tuition. In economics, pricing is all we have to determine and work out supply and demand. So, when the consumer is completely separated from the cost of a product, then the cost rises.'" Remember when everyone was supposed to become an aerospace engineer and then the industry collapsed in the early 90s?

Comment Re:parental self control (Score 1) 322

As a parent, I totally accept responsibility for my kids' well-being and health. I am totally guilty of taking my kids through drive-thrus and letting them watch TV. The wife and I have adopted an American suburban, 2-car, 2-income, white-collar lifestyle with the kids also being swept up in the hectic pace that it entails.

By the time one of us gets to the child care center to get them (since the elementary school closes way before COB), they're whining how they're hungry, and on many days we need to get one of them to an after-school sports event. As much as we try to do the right thing, we're so physically and emotionally tired that we give in to doing the easy thing; we get them fast food and let them watch TV for an hour before we really sit down with them for homework time.

So am I an ideal parent? Do I make the absolutely best choices for them? No of course not. Unfortunately we cannot make those decisions in an ideal vacuum. I make decisions that still meet my kids' needs that still balances out with time constraints, external commitments, and, honestly, plain old selfishness to watch out for my own interests.

Comment Re:frist (Score 1) 249

Windows comes with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and a file system which supports block level snapshots. VSS works with VSS aware applications (VSS writers) such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database Server, Exchange Server, Active Directory, NTFS and Hyper-V server. When a service is a VSS writer it participates in VSS coordination/synchronization to create consistent disk state.

...

To my knowledge, Linux doesn't have anything like VSS. Which means that each application/service must be handled separately. Typically you will stop the service during the backup. Some services such as PostgreSQL can recover from a non-consistent disk image; others can not. Individual applications may have commands/services which allow admins to "dump" state to a file to be backed up separately. All in all reliably backing up a running Linux server is more complicated compared to backing up a running Windows server with VSS aware services.

I am currently running a number of VMs using CentOS KVM with virtual disks being hosted on volumes being managed by LVM. Granted KVM and LVM are separate entities, but they can be made to work together to achieve the same result you mention above. I've backed up and restored VMs a number of times (as validation tests) and it's pretty robust.

Comment YMMV (Score 1) 660

Sure, this guy may not want to supersize his smartphone, but he doesn't speak for me or other people who may want the functionality of a smartphone with the usability of a tablet. Either the author doesn't realize different devices fit different needs, or the author wasn't able to think of a more interesting or pressing issue to write about.

Comment Re:Ending badly? (Score 1) 407

The true underlying cause of this problem is that we simply have too many people on this planet all consuming finite resources at a rapid, unsustainable rate. You can't necessarily use technology to help humanity wiggle its way out of this problem. As nice as the Green Revolution was to improve the living standards of people around the world, this created a huge demographic bulge because people didn't realize this event had to be accompanied by a decrease in birth rates.

Transportation

Gamera II Team Smashes Previous Best Human-Powered Helicopter Flight Time 118

Zothecula writes "For over 30 years, the $250,000 for the American Helicopter Society's Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition prize has looked decidedly secure, but Gamera II has changed all that. Last week, Clark School of Engineering team pilots came close to breaking one of the competition's major milestones. Ph.D. candidate from Kyle Gluesenkamp from the School's mechanical engineering department, hand-cranking and pedaling like his life depended on it, managed to keep the huge quad-rotor craft aloft for 50 seconds, an impressive new world record that's currently awaiting validation by the National Aeronautic Association (NAA)." We previously covered their attempt to break the record last May.

Comment Another nail in physical media's coffin? (Score 1) 734

All the movies I've watched on my PCs/iPhone/Amazon Fire have either been via Netflix or video files of ripped disks I already own. And when I did (occasionally) watch DVDs on my PCs I did it via VLC.

All of the content we've watched off of a DVD were played using our home theatre system; I can't imagine there's too much penetration of media PCs.

Comment Re:Either way (Score 2) 139

IANAH, but it's been something I've thought about in the context of our current political climate. We've been taught in school that the casus belli was because of either slavery or "states' rights". Either way, doesn't that mean that the white soldiers of the South were fighting to protect a system that keeps wealth and money in the hands of a few wealthy plantation owners and keeps them down by owning slaves and keeping labor wages down? And this could also be an example of the people with power and money buying off their politicians, having them fight on their behalf for "states' rights." At the end of the day, these poor people fought for a system that kept them (and the slaves) down, and that war destroyed their farms once it was over (assuming they survived and weren't maimed), all in the name of Southern tradition.

I guess there will always be those who don't think for themselves.

Comment Re:the bigger problem (Score 1) 592

If all our children were given adequate access to education and when of a suitable age, access to birth control, I think abortion rates (and over-population) would become less and less.

I actually have mod points today, and I wish I could mod this up more. I came to this conclusion long ago and I'm glad I'm not alone in this thought.

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