Comment Re:Bring back car trains (Score 1) 140
It still exists in the US as long as you want to travel between Washington DC and Sanford FL.
See the Auto Train
See the Auto Train
Comment Re:Not just a journalist (Score 1) 147
Unlimited resources? Around here assistant prosecuting attorneys are making ~$50K per year and a case load such that nights and weekends are not uncommon. This leads to most of the staff being young and inexperienced with a fair amount of turnover due to the idealism of youth being brought down by the crushing grind and lack of support for the important work they do in trying to protect their community.
It sucks that all parts of the court system are being pushed too hard. I know an immigration judge who had a 1100-1200 case backlog(Pre COVID). He had all of 5-10 minutes to make a life changing decision before moving on to the next defendant because there would be another 100-150 cases added to his docket the next day. It is a tragedy that due to these short comings, justice(meaning guilty are properly held accountable and innocent are exonerated) is elusive for those with limited means.
I hope the family and friends of Safarain Herring will eventually know who gunned him down.
Comment Re:If law enforcement was serious (Score 1) 44
An idea I have heard mentioned would be for the US to return to issuing
Letters of Marque
Comment Re:National Emissions Inventory (Score 1) 64
The NEI isn't about regulation per se, it is an attempt to capture what is already happening.
The NEI is then fed into more specialized models (See https://www.cmascenter.org/ for some examples) which then are used to forecast things like Ozone color ratings, or as ammunition (for and against) in the fights to create new regulations or roll back existing ones.
Some groups may use it to show how many fewer ER visits happen if a category is regulated, while other groups may use the same inventory to point out that it is stupid to regulate pollutant n in industry x when industry y is the driver of the problems.
The NEI is then fed into more specialized models (See https://www.cmascenter.org/ for some examples) which then are used to forecast things like Ozone color ratings, or as ammunition (for and against) in the fights to create new regulations or roll back existing ones.
Some groups may use it to show how many fewer ER visits happen if a category is regulated, while other groups may use the same inventory to point out that it is stupid to regulate pollutant n in industry x when industry y is the driver of the problems.
Most of the folks I worked with were dedicated to trying to give the most accurate picture possible given the limitations of data sources and staffing. However the staffing and contractor budgets were affected by who was in power. I became very cynical when the R's claimed there was no money for the EPA, but raised nary a peep when they dropped close to a billion dollars shooting $2M Tomahawk missiles at Libya. I was let go soon after that, but it worked out for the better. I changed industries and got a 30% raise.
Comment National Emissions Inventory (Score 4, Informative) 64
The EPA already covers Asphalt production as one of the hundreds of categories in the non-point section of the National Emissions Inventory (NEI). My guess is that it is already too late to update the estimation method for the 2020 NEI.
As usual, there are politics involved with who estimates which categories (State, Local, and/or Tribal agencies vs EPA) and all agencies have to choose which categories to focus their limited resources on.
Speaking as someone who spent almost a decade working on emission inventories, the best chance of getting the estimation method improved will be to develop a model that uses as few inputs (and ideally publicly available) as possible so busy staff can get calculations using a straightforward process.
Read more about the NEI at https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/national-emissions-inventory-nei
As usual, there are politics involved with who estimates which categories (State, Local, and/or Tribal agencies vs EPA) and all agencies have to choose which categories to focus their limited resources on.
Speaking as someone who spent almost a decade working on emission inventories, the best chance of getting the estimation method improved will be to develop a model that uses as few inputs (and ideally publicly available) as possible so busy staff can get calculations using a straightforward process.
Read more about the NEI at https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-inventories/national-emissions-inventory-nei
Submission + - Red Hat CEO: Software vendor model is broken (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: The current model of selling commercial enterprise software is broken, charged the CEO for Red Hat. It is too expensive, doesn't address user needs and, worst of all, it leaves chief information officers holding all the risk of implementing new systems.
"The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken," said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. "Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for."
Whitehurst estimated that the total global IT market, not including telecommunications, is about $1.4 trillion a year. Factor in the rough estimates that half of all IT projects fail or are significantly downgraded, and that only half of all features in software packages are actually used, then it would follow that "easily $500 billion of that $1.4 trillion is fundamentally wasted every year," he said.
Of course, being an executive of an open-source software company, Whitehurst would naturally be critical of the standard model of software sales, and he has spoken critically of the model in the past. In his presentation at Interop, however, he also discussed how cloud computing could offer a break from this routine, depending on how it is implemented.
"People say [they are interested in the] cloud but what they are really espousing are frustrations with existing IT business models," Whitehurst said in an interview with IDG News Service after the presentation.
"The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken," said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. "Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for."
Whitehurst estimated that the total global IT market, not including telecommunications, is about $1.4 trillion a year. Factor in the rough estimates that half of all IT projects fail or are significantly downgraded, and that only half of all features in software packages are actually used, then it would follow that "easily $500 billion of that $1.4 trillion is fundamentally wasted every year," he said.
Of course, being an executive of an open-source software company, Whitehurst would naturally be critical of the standard model of software sales, and he has spoken critically of the model in the past. In his presentation at Interop, however, he also discussed how cloud computing could offer a break from this routine, depending on how it is implemented.
"People say [they are interested in the] cloud but what they are really espousing are frustrations with existing IT business models," Whitehurst said in an interview with IDG News Service after the presentation.
Submission + - FSF Asks Apple to Comply With the GPL (fsf.org)
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "The Free Software Foundation has discovered that an application currently distributed in Apple's App Store is a port of GNU Go. This makes it a GPL violation, because Apple controls distribution of all such programs through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is incompatible with section 6 of the GPLv2. It's an unusual enforcement action, though, because they don't want Apple to just make the app disappear, they want Apple to grant its users the full freedoms offered by the GPL. Accordingly, they haven't sued or sent any legal threats and are instead in talks with Apple about how they can offer their users the GPLed software legally, which is difficult because it's not possible to grant users all the freedoms they're entitled to and still comply with Apple's restrictive licensing terms."
After Domain Squatting, Twitter Squatting 201
carusoj writes "Squatting on domain names is nothing new, but Twitter has created a new opportunity for squatters, in the form of Twitter IDs. Writes Richard Stiennon: 'Is there evidence of Twitter squatting (squitting?) Let's check. Yup, every single-letter TwitID is taken ... How about common words? Garage, wow, war, warcraft, Crisco, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, and Chevrolet are all taken. My guess is that Twitter squatters have grabbed all of these in the hopes that they will be worth selling in the not too distant future. Of course the legitimate holders of brands can sue for them and Twitter can just turn them over if asked. But, because the investment and risk for the squatter is zero, you are going to see the rapid evaporation of available Twitter IDs.'"
Submission + - Getting Gouged by Geeks (www.cbc.ca)
dottyslashdottydot writes: CBC Marketplace recently ran a sting operation and discovered that most home computer repair technicians failed miserably at diagnosing a simple RAM failure. Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades. (or even a new computer!) However, the worst offender was one guy who claimed that the hard drive had failed, and that the only remedy was to pay $2,000 to have a special facility with a clean room recover the data.
Submission + - Tatooine's Double-Sunset a Common Site
anthemaniac writes: Thirty years ago, Luke Skywalker saw what scientists are just now realizing, that double sunsets are likely common in the universe. Astronomers have long known that binary star systems are common. And models suggested that planets could form in these systems, even though there's a double-tug of gravity on the material that would have to form a planet. Observations from NASA's Spitzer telescope, show that binary systems are just as likely to be surrounded by planet-forming debris disks are are lone stars.
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