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Comment Re:This is news? (Score 1, Redundant) 161

by ZX-3 (#25305753) Attached to: Mathematicians Deconstruct US News College Rankings

When it comes to landing a job, it's the other way around: Ranking within majors (let alone concentration within majors) is meaningless and the only thing that matters is the overall university ranking. All recruiters, headhunters, and HR departments know is the overall reputation. That's why Ivy beats everything, and might-as-well-be-ivy (MIT, Stanford, Duke, etc.) beats everything else.
United States

Submission + - Phone card plan for soldiers in Iraq gathers steam

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Since the military made it impossible for most service people overseas to communicate with home via YouTube and other social networking sites, they have at least stepped up the effort — along with the American public to help soldiers talk with their families. By logging on to the Army & Air Force Exchange Service or calling (800) 527-2345, moms, uncles, neighbors and civic groups can take part in the "Help Our Troops Call Home" effort by sending any one of three Military Exchange Global Prepaid Phone cards, including a 550-minute card capable of providing more than two hours of call time from any of 72 phone centers in operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom to the United States. Phone cards may be sent to an individual servicemember designated by the sender or distributed to "any servicemember" through the American Red Cross, Air Force Aid Society, Fisher House Foundation, Navy-Marine Corps Relief, Soldier & Family Assistance Center, and United Service Organizations. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1567 7"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Earthlink Says It Will Remove Ads At My Request

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This is a fun one. It's almost too good to be true — because it probably is.

Today, Earthlink added a huge new ad position to its webmail page that dramatically shrinks the space available for actual display of messages. When I complained, a customer service rep in live chat promised that he would "escalate the issue" to "engineers" who would remove the ad for everyone! A transcript follows.

My question: what do you think the chances of this actually happening are? Can a CSR really change corporate policy on an important business issue on the basis of a single complaint? Or is it possible that mine was one of a deluge of complaints — and things really WILL change?

info: 'Adam' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today?
XXXX@earthlink.net: I am very upset by the huge ad on the webmail page. It is so disruptive that I may have to cancel my account. Are these ads now a regular part of the page?
Adam: I apologize for the inconvenience caused. I'll do my best to help you.
Adam: I am can understand your concern.
XXXX@earthlink.net: Please answer my question. This huge ad takes up almost 20% of the page. Is it now a regular feature?
Adam: I am sorry to say that the ads are provided by our sponsors. This is the reason why you are getting the ads on the Web Mail page.
XXXX@earthlink.net: There have always been ads. But today's is huge. It's for FibreSUre. My question remains unanswered. I will now repeat it for a third time: Are these huge new ads now a regular opart of the page?
XXXX@earthlink.net: If so, Please advise procedure on account cancellation.
Adam: Please stay on hold while I check it.
Adam: Thank you for the time. I need to escalate the issue to our engineers. You will not face the issue again.
XXXX@earthlink.net: Please explain further. I do not understand your answer.
Adam: I mean I will escalate the issue to our engineers. They will check it and remove the ad from the Web Mail page and resolve your issue.
XXX@earthlink.net: You willblock the ads just for me? Or the big ads are a one time occurence for everyone?
Adam: I am sorry to say that all the customers are getting these ads. I will escalate the issue to our engineers. So, that tey will remove the ads for every one.
XXXX@earthlink.net: Fine. Thank you for your response. Can you email me a transcript of this chat for future reference?
Adam: I am sorry for the typo. I mean they.
Adam: Sure, please give me few minutes
XXXX@earthlink.net: Thank you. That resolves the matter.
Adam: I had emailed your the chat transcript.
Adam: Please check it once.
XXX@earthlink.net: Thank you again and goodbye.
Adam: You are welcome.
Adam: I apologize for the inconvenience caused.
Adam: Is there anything else I may assist you with today?
XXX@earthlink.net: No that's it. Thank you and goodbye.
Adam: You're welcome and thank you for using EarthLink LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.
Adam: Have a nice day.
Adam: Bye.
Education

Submission + - Hope Peeps Out for Quality Essay Seekers

Submitted by
Craig Willis
Craig Willis writes: "Quality work and efficient performance are never out of demand. Love, respect, and care are the constants in our personal domain; similarly, superior quality is in the professional domain. It is appreciated by one and all and distinguishes the ordinary from the extra ordinary. Customessaymeister.com, a relatively newer site proves its excellence and has established enormous amount of goodwill in less than a year. The website is valued for its high quality essay assistance and term paper writing and plagiarism free materials, which it has provided month after month ever since the beginning. Other subtle reasons behind its success have been traced to be its extraordinary strategy for human resource management and strict policies and systems to rule out plagiarism. Superbly yet suitably adorned custom essays and custom research papers, yet another reason for its shining success story, are accomplished by the finishing touch given to each one of the term papers and research papers by expert editors and proofreaders. Customessaymeister.com employs only skilled Americans into its staff in order to ensure quality and good language in the book reports and essays. In the search for this kind of skilled labor, most of which is provided by college or graduate students studying in US universities, it has to pay considerably handsome sums, a thing the company prefers above uncertain and often, unskilled staff, for cheaper remunerations. The sternness of the company in the staff selection process has been the main reason why the company is so confident about the quality of the term papers and research papers it provides. This company efficiently provides services in custom essays of type required by the client, such as custom research papers and custom term papers in all citation styles, movie reviews, college papers, applications and admission essays, grant proposals, speeches, and dissertations. This broad spectrum, however, has not affected its quality, perhaps because of the diversely qualified and committed writers it contains. Quality is further ascertained by the absence of plagiarism that it guarantees and has proved over the past months. It assures the materials to be originally typed rather than cut-pasted. Special care has been taken by the company in this field to forbid any chance of plagiarism. All the essays and other writings are run through elaborate tests and plagiarism detection software to ensure that there is no plagiarism, for the company believes that plagiarism is the biggest problem of the content writing industry. Visit the site www.customessaymeister.com and get detailed information about the useful site."
Television

Submission + - FiOS TV? Maybe Verizon ought to stick to phones

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Yes, this is just one disgruntled customer in one Massachusetts community. But four regional service outages in eight weeks are enough to call into question whether Verizon has its TV act ready for prime time. What does the company have to say for itself? We don't know because Verizon didn't want to respond to questions posed by a mere blogger — even one who writes for a major IT trade publication.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1567 5"
Math

Submission + - Today, Mathematica Is Reinvented

Submitted by
Chris Chiasson
Chris Chiasson writes: "Wolfram Research, Inc just released Mathematica 6. For those that don't know, Mathematica is a system for doing mathematics by computer and is typically regarded as one of the best pieces of software for this purpose. The new version brings many graphics improvements that have long been requested by users, including the ability to manipulate the primitives that make up plots via the user interface instead of via code, simpler methods for plotting on restricted non-(hyper-)rectangular domains, adaptive meshing for more-efficient plotting, and transparency. Perhaps the most impressive change is the ability of the user interface to display active content, making it practical to create embedded spreadsheet-type functionality and other interactive interface features while retaining the TeX-like math typesetting present in the older versions. It can export some of these interactive displays to Adobe Flash files, which may be found in abundance at the Wolfram Demonstrations website. If you are looking for an open-source numeric & symbolic math project that is at a point where it could possibly use your help, check out Math.NET."

Feed Ancient Amphibians Evolved A Bite Before Migrating To Dry Land (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Ancient aquatic amphibians developed the ability to feed on land before completing the transition to terrestrial life, researchers from Harvard University report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their work is based on analysis of the skulls of the first amphibians, which arose 375 million years ago, and their fish ancestors.
Microsoft

Submission + - Zune Guest Hack: Sync, delete, edit, rip ANY files

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I am very excited today to inform you all of a new hack created by one of our members, Marshillboy. Through his ingenius reasoning and programming know-how, he has given us the opportunity to proudly release the "No Guest Hack", exclusively from ZuneBoards.

What does this do you may ask? Well, this hack will eliminate "Guest Syncing" forever. It's hard to explain, so I've brought some visual aids:

In the Zune program, when you plug in a Zune that is not registered as the "Home" Zune, you get a nasty pop up that looks like this:



This not only disallows you from fully syncing to any Zune other than your own, ifyou had to reinstall the Zune program or it messed up for any reason, it also forces you to delete everything off of your Zune before you can register it as the regular Zune. Thankfully, you can kiss your troubles goodbye with Marshillboy's Guest Zune Hack. After installing it and connecting a Guest Zune, you will get a pop up that now looks like this:




Don't worry, this will not mess up your Zune in any way (I've tested it myself). After you've clicked "Next", this just tricks the program into thinking the Zune you've connected is the normal one.

So, without further ado, here is the link to the download (hosted by ZuneBoards): http://www.zuneboards.com/staff/H&M%...est%20Hack. exe

Just place the file downloaded in your Zune directory, (probably C:\Program Files\Zune), and run it. If you are having troubles, there is a more comprehensive how-to in the forum. You can find that here."

Feed No Show: U.S. Bioterror Defenses (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
The Centers for Disease Control can't show how the $5 billion given to public health departments after Sept. 11 has prepared the country for a bioterrorism attack or flu pandemic. By the Associated Press.


Space

Submission + - YORP effect observed and measured

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Yarkovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack (Yorp) effect describes the torque, or rotational force, created when light particles hit the surface of an object, causing it to heat up. The theory was proposed in order to explain various Solar System phenomena which show peculiar regular behaviour. From the article: Now, separate studies published in the journals Nature and Science have observed and measured the tiny stellar shoves on two spinning asteroids. They reveal that both are gradually starting to spin faster and faster, which could eventually create new Solar System landmarks. "If we can spin up an asteroid so fast, there's a really good chance that these objects will fly apart," said Dr Stephen Lowry, a planetary astronomer at Queen's University Belfast and lead author of one of two Science papers. In this case, the fragments could form a binary asteroid where two objects orbit each other, he said. "This is a phenomenon that gradually affects the evolution of the Solar System," said Dr Mikko Kaasalainen of the University of Helsinki, who is an author of the Nature paper.
Education

Journal Journal: New Species Of Dinosaur

Journal by Video Cat
According to http://www.wastedblog.com/viewcontent.php?IdContent=4655 a new species of dinosaur has been discovered. Michael Ryan, curator of vertebrate paleontology for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, published the discovery in this month's Journal of Paleontology. He dug up the fossil six years ago in southern Alberta, Canada, while a graduate student for the University of Calgary. The new dinosaur has been named
Editorial

Submission + - Prehistoric Men Liked Big Behinds, Researchers Say

Submitted by
acgrissom
acgrissom writes: "Continuing with the trend of presumptuous historical reconstruction, Polish researchers claim that cave men from 15,000 years ago were much more interested in a developed posterior than in any other area of the body. This is based on the unearthing of several figurines which show developed posteriors, and which conspicuously lack heads.

http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=1356 "
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Peter Molyneux wants "love" in Fable 2

Submitted by Red Samurai
Red Samurai writes: The BBC reports that game designer Peter Molyneux plans to incorporate love into his latest project, Fable 2. In an interview, he says: "I need you to experience something in Fable that you as gamers have never experienced before". Wow, now us nerds won't even have to leave the house to find love. Excluding online dating, of course.

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