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Comment who will regulate (Score 1) 273

and ensure the cars are safe, registered, and are not ripping people off ? "Haven't we been around the park already driver....?" While I agree cabby licenses DO restrict who can run a cab or taxi, without some regulation you will soon be riding in a car you'd see on the road in India. I've been a cop and inspected cabs for the county. The owners and drivers of cabs would do without insurance, seatbelts, windows, doors, tread on tires, ANYTHING to make a buck.
Earth

Climate Change Prompts Emperor Penguins To Find New Breeding Grounds 215

Posted by samzenpus from the moving-to-better-quarters-on-campus dept.
An anonymous reader writes Researchers have discovered that emperor penguins may not be faithful to their previous nesting locations, as previously thought. Scientists have long thought that emperor penguins were philopatric, returning to the same location to nest each year. However, a new research study showed that the penguins may be behaving in ways that allow them to adapt to their changing environment. Lead author Michelle LaRue said,"Our research showing that colonies seem to appear and disappear throughout the years challenges behaviors we thought we understood about emperor penguins. If we assume that these birds come back to the same locations every year, without fail, these new colonies we see on satellite images wouldn't make any sense. These birds didn't just appear out of thin air—they had to have come from somewhere else. This suggests that emperor penguins move among colonies. That means we need to revisit how we interpret population changes and the causes of those changes."
Education

Teaching College Is No Longer a Middle Class Job 538

Posted by Soulskill from the dollars-and-sense dept.
An anonymous reader writes When you think of people who teach at a college, you probably imagine moderately affluent professors with nice houses and cars. All that tuition has to go into competitive salaries, right? Unfortunately, it seems being a college instructor is becoming less and less lucrative, even to the point of poverty. From the article: "Most university-level instructors are ... contingent employees, working on a contract basis year to year or semester to semester. Some of these contingent employees are full-time lecturers, and many are adjunct instructors: part-time employees, paid per class, often without health insurance or retirement benefits. This is a relatively new phenomenon: in 1969, 78 percent of professors held tenure-track positions. By 2009 this percentage had shrunk to 33.5." This is detrimental to learning as well. Some adjunct faculty, desperate to keep jobs, rely on easy courses and popularity with students to stay employed. Many others feel obligated to help students beyond the limited office hours they're paid for, essentially working for free in order to get the students the help they need. At a time when tuition prices are rising faster than ever, why are we skimping on the most fundamental aspect of college?

Comment Re:So how is that going to work (Score 1) 188

by Archfeld (#47283453) Attached to: Chinese Vendor Could Pay $34.9M FCC Fine In Signal-Jammer Sting

Individuals who are on call need to make sure they go places they are open to cell phones, much the same way they need to remain within a certain distance of their work. Why should the rest of the world suffer for these few special needs individuals ??
My house is an AT&T black-hole anyways. I had to switch carriers after many complaints because I couldn't receive call in the back of my house. Verizon has NO SUCH problem in this area apparently.

Submission + - HUGO Winning Author Daniel Keyes has died. (locusmag.com)

Submitted by camperdave
camperdave writes: Author Daniel Keyes, 86, died June 15, 2014.

KKeyes is best known for his Hugo Award winning classic SF story “Flowers for Algernon” (F&SF, 1959), the Nebula Award winning and bestselling 1966 novel expansion, and the film version Charly (1968).

Keyes was born August 9, 1927 in New York. He worked variously as an editor, comics writer, fashion photographer, and teacher before joining the faculty of Ohio University in 1966, where he taught as a professor of English and creative writing, becoming professor emeritus in 2000. He married Aurea Georgina Vaquez in 1952, who predeceased him in 2013; they had two daughters.

Submission + - Shadow Network 100 Times Faster than Google Fiber Already Exists

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When the Department of Defense's ARPAnet evolved into the present-day internet, the scientific community didn't actually stop experimenting with networks. Even as the commercial internet grew, scientists were building other nets connected first via land lines, then satellite links, and now via fiber optic cables. Various shadow networks in the U.S. were eventually combined into ESnet (Energy Science Network) that was able in November 2013 to transfer data in 'real world' settings at 91 gigabits per second. ('Real world' settings refer to non-direct connections.) Google Fiber is currently aiming to provide data transfer speeds of 10 gigabits per second to American consumers, much higher than all other U.S. internet providers. ESnet utilizes 'the excess network capacity built-up by commercial internet providers during the late 1990s internet bubble' — i.e., 'dark fiber'. Its data transfer capabilities foreshadow the future for average consumers, but some today may see the disparity between this shadow net and the commercial one and wonder just why exactly such a large disparity exists.

Submission + - The US Government Has No Idea How To Solve A Problem Like Snowden (techdirt.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For all of its surveillance and number-crunching powers, the NSA has had little success in dealing with its Snowden problem. It still seems the agency has no idea what Snowden took, with guesses varying wildly over the past several months. Some reports (not the NSA's) have put that number as low as 60,000. The NSA continues to claim the number is over one million, even with its most recent guess revising its first estimates downward.

Submission + - 4K Monitors: Not Now, But Soon (thewirecutter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 4K monitor prices have fallen down into the range where mainstream consumers are starting to consider them for work and for play. There are enough models that we can compare and contrast, and figure out which are the best of the ones available. But this report at The Wirecutter makes the case that absent a pressing need for 8.29 million pixels, you should wait before buying one. They say, "he current version of the HDMI specification (1.4a) can only output a 4096×2160 resolution at a refresh rate of 24 Hz or 3840×2160 at 30 Hz—the latter, half that of what we’re used to on TVs and monitors. Connect up a 4K monitor at 30 Hz via HDMI and you’ll see choppier animations and transitions in your OS. You might also encounter some visible motion stuttering during normal use, and you’ll be locked to a maximum of 30 frames per second for your games—it’s playable, but not that smooth. ... Most people don’t own a system that’s good enough for gaming on a 4K display—at least, not at highest-quality settings. You’ll be better off if you just plan to surf the Web in 4K: Nvidia cards starting in the 600 series and AMD Radeon HD 6000 and 7000-series GPUs can handle 4K, as can systems built with integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics or AMD Trinity APUs. ... There’s a light on the horizon. OS support will strengthen, connection types will be able to handle 4K displays sans digital tricks, and prices will drop as more 4K displays hit the market. By then, there will even be more digital content to play on a 4K display (if gaming or multitasking isn’t your thing), and 4K monitors will even start to pull in fancier display technology like Nvidia’s G-Sync for even smoother digital shootouts."
Democrats

After Non-Profit Application Furor, IRS Says It's Lost 2 Years Of Lerner's Email 372

Posted by timothy from the computer-crashed-whaddya-do dept.
As reported by the Associated Press, via US News & World Report, the IRS says that it cannot locate much of the email sent by a former IRS official over a two-year period. "The IRS told Congress Friday it cannot locate many of Lois Lerner's emails prior to 2011 because her computer crashed during the summer of that year. Lerner headed the IRS division that processed applications for tax-exempt status. The IRS acknowledged last year that agents had improperly scrutinized applications for tax-exempt status by tea party and other conservative groups." Three congressional committees are investigating the agency because of the allegations of politically motivated mishandling of those applications, as is the Justice Department and the IRS's own inspector general. As the story says, "Congressional investigators have shown that IRS officials in Washington were closely involved in the handling of tea party applications, many of which languished for more than a year without action. But so far, they have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the agency directed the targeting or even knew about it." CBS News has a slightly different version, also based on the AP's reporting.

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