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Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Postal Service: Will keep rural post offices open
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service sought Wednesday to tamp down concern over wide-scale cuts, revealing it will seek to keep thousands of rural post offices open with shorter hours.
At a news briefing, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the mail agency was backing off its plan to close up to 3,700 low-revenue post offices sometime after May 15. Citing strong community opposition, Donahoe said the agency will now whittle down full-time staff but maintain a part-time post office presence in rural areas, with access to retail lobbies and post office boxes.
Under the emerging strategy, no post office would be closed. But more than 13,000 rural mail facilities could see reduced operations of between two and six hours.
The Postal Service intends to seek regulatory approval and get community input, a process that could take several months. The new strategy would then be implemented over two years and completed in September 2014, saving an estimated half billion dollars annually.
"We've listened to our customers in rural America and we've heard them loud and clear ? they want to keep their post office open," Donahoe said. "We believe today's announcement will serve our customers' needs and allow us to achieve real savings to help the Postal Service return to long-term financial stability."
Under the new plan, communities would be given the option of keeping their area post offices open but at reduced hours. Another option would be to close a postal office in one area while keeping a nearby one open full-time. Communities also could opt for alternatives including creating a Village Post Office in which postal services are offered in libraries, government offices or local stores such as a Wal-Mart, Walgreens or Office Depot.
"At the end of the day, we will not close rural post offices until we receive community input," said Megan Brennan, the Postal Service's chief operating officer. "We believe very few post offices will be closed over the next few years."
The latest move comes as the Postal Service is making a broad push for Congress to pass legislation this summer that would allow the agency to move forward on its multi-billion dollar cost-cutting plan, which include an end to Saturday mail delivery.
High concern in rural communities over proposed cuts has been a principal barrier to the cost-cutting effort, with residents in the sprawling and remote areas expressing fears about their ability to get timely mail delivery of prescription drugs, newspapers and other services. That has raised the ire of rural-state lawmakers in particular in an election year.
Due to rural opposition, the Senate this month passed a bill that would in part impose a one-year moratorium on shuttering rural post offices and place additional restrictions afterward, a move that the Postal Service later denounced as "totally inappropriate" because it kept unneeded facilities open.
In the House, hesitancy among rural lawmakers is helping to stall a separate bill that would allow for far more aggressive postal cuts.
Most of the 3,700 post offices that had been under review for possible closing had been in rural areas with low volumes of business, with as many as 3,000 only having two hours of business a day even though they are open longer. Currently the post office operates more than 31,000 retail outlets around the country.
The mail agency said it expects to save more money off the new plan, mostly by weeding out full-time postmasters who don't have labor contract protections and replacing them with part-time workers. It plans to offer buyouts for the nation's more than 21,000 postmasters, noting that more than 80 percent of its postal costs in rural areas are labor-related.
The Postal Service has been grappling with losses as first-class mail volume declines and more people switch to the Internet to send messages and pay bills. The agency has forecast a record $14.1 billion loss by the end of this year; without changes, it said, annual losses will exceed $21 billion by 2016.
It also is pushing Congress to pass legislation by early summer. If the House fails to act soon, postal officials say, they will face a cash crunch in August and September, when the agency must pay more than $11 billion to the U.S. Treasury to prefund future retiree health benefits. Already $13 billion in debt, the health payment obligation will force the mail agency to run up against its $15 billion debt ceiling, causing it to default on the payments.
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Samsung, Qualcomm start up Alliance for Wireless Power to take on Qi
Wireless power has until now been closely associated with the Wireless Power Consortium's Qi standard. There's now a second proposed common ground in the Alliance for Wireless Power, or A4WP. Samsung and Qualcomm, along with some help from Powermat, SK Telecom, Ever Win Industries, Gill Industries and Peiker Acustic, are making an alternative that allows for "spatial freedom" between your gadget and the charging source, although whether or not that's better than the 1.6-inch distance of the updated Qi spec is left to the imagination. The strategy doesn't just let your device avoid French kissing the charger: it lets you power up through a material besides a metal plate, and it reduces the cost by eliminating repeaters. A4WP should power everything from low-power headsets through to smartphones and tablets, although with partnership talk just getting started at CTIA Wireless 2012, we wouldn't hold off on buying wired-power gadgets in the near future.
Continue reading Samsung, Qualcomm start up Alliance for Wireless Power to take on Qi
Samsung, Qualcomm start up Alliance for Wireless Power to take on Qi originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 May 2012 04:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Microsoft officially offering Xbox 360 4GB console for $99, two-year Live Gold subscription required
Whoa, Nelly! As rumored, Microsoft is indeed shattering the home console pricing paradigm by trying something that US wireless carriers have been doing for years. As of now, the official Microsoft Store is hosting up a coupon that'll enable prospective Xbox buyers to snag a 4GB console bundle for just $99 (a $200 savings versus the outright unit)... so long as you agree to pay $14.99 per month for two solid years. That monthly fee -- which amounts to some $360 over the 24 month term -- gets you on the Xbox Live network with a Gold subscription, but remember, Microsoft's maintaining the ability to "terminate this offer at any time." Looking to score one yourself? Hit the source link and visit that "Find a store" icon; hopefully there's a B&M Microsoft Store near your neck of the woods.
Update: In case you're curious, yes, early termination fees will apply if you cut out of your two-year deal early. It's a prorated affair, with users asked to pay less the longer they maintain the contract. Those who part ways after only a month will have to pay $250, while those who cancel with just a month remaining will owe $12. All told, someone buying this and keeping true to the contract terms will pay $459 for the bundle and Live access, whereas those buying outright could snag it for $420 (or less, if scouring the web for cheaper Live subscriptions). The full ETF schedule is shown after the break.
Update II: Joystiq has confirmed that, for now, this is simply a pilot program. These machines will be sold only through the 16 US-based Microsoft Stores, and we can only assume the marketing and finance folks at the company will be watching reception like hawks.
Microsoft officially offering Xbox 360 4GB console for $99, two-year Live Gold subscription required originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 May 2012 12:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Jetman swoops across Brazilian skyline (+video)
The Swiss aviator Yves Rossy recently flew across the Rio de Janeiro sky with his jet-propelled wing, parachuting safely to a southern Brazilian beach.
Thursday morning, the Swiss pilot Yves Rossy fell into the blue Rio de Janeiro sky with the backward rolling entry of a scuba diver. He began with a downward plunge toward the Brazilian cityscape, then leveling off and completing a barrel role before vapor-trailing past the Deco statue Cristo Redentor, tracking south and finally pulling his parachute to land safely on Copocabana beach.
Skip to next paragraphAll of this was done with the jet-powered wing that Rossy helped design.
Lasting over 11 minutes, this was only one in a series of flights made by the self-described "Jetman." Over the past half-decade, he has flown across the Grand Canyon, over the Alps and even between actual jet airplanes.
His recent successes have come with some ominous setbacks, though. In 2009, Rossy attempted to fly across the Strait of Gibraltar, which geographically separates Spain from Morocco, but strong winds and engine complications forced him to scuttle into the Mediterranean, where he had to be rescued by?helicopter.?The Spanish coast guard later retrieved his jet wing.
Rossy's wing is the result of over a decade of trouble-shooting, which decade has seen over 15 prototypes of the model. In its current design, the wing is made from carbon-fiber and spans roughly eight feet. Strapped to the back of the pilot, it is propelled by four mounted kerosene jet engines up to speeds of 189 miles per hour.
Classified as a legitimate aircraft by the FAA, the wing was engineered to let Rossy "fly like a bird, with a minimum of instruments but with the ability to steer himself in space," according to the Jetman website. One of the most complex technologies Rossy's wing employs, aside from the engines, are the altimeter, used for safety purposes, and the throttle that Rossy holds in his hand. He uses his body to steer.
Perhaps more interesting than Rossy's innovative technology is the endeavor it embodies. Human flight has always been motivated by the desire to mimic bird flight. The word "aviation," after all, comes from the Latin word for bird, "avis." By attempting to create the most visceral experience of human flight, the Jetman project might be the truest expression of our envy for the utter freedom of the birds that soar overhead.
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Justin Bieber Graduates High School!
He has proven himself in the acting world, the publishing world and, oh yes, the music world.
But Justin Bieber continues to impress, conquering yet another discipline this week by officially graduating from high school.
"I just finished," Bieber tells Great Britain's The Daily Telegraph. "I passed my test -- I'm free! It was hard doing school and work every day."
Why would a 19-year old millionaire even need his high school diploma?
"That was something my mom really wanted me to do, so I had to do it for her," he said. "I mean, this kind of lifestyle has given me a different perspective on life. I've been able to travel the world. At school, usually you have to do a lot of writing and reading. I'm really not into that stuff. I like to be out there."
And out there he clearly has been, traveling the world, coming up with new business ventures. The latest, the fragrance "Someday," will serve as a means of charity: for every bottle sold in Australia, $2 of the proceeds will go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
"I'm so blessed to be in this position," Justin says. "With everything I do, I try to give back."
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Monday, May 7, 2012
Fathom Travel Site Taps Kate Spade To Guide You Through Your Next Vacation
There are plenty of travel sites out there, but have you ever noticed that almost all of them help you get where you're going and then leave you all alone in the dark once you actually arrive there? What spots are must-see, what food is must-eat, and which shops do you absolutely have to pop into? There really isn't a great way to efficiently and reliably plan out a trip itinerary on the web, except of course for the new travel site and service, Fathom. And thanks to a new partnership with Kate Spade, Fathom is about to get a whole lot more fashionable in destiations like New York, L.A., London, Tokyo and Tahiti.detroit tigers st louis weather guinea bissau google stock google stock gawker hayden panettiere
George Lindsey, Goober From Andy Griffith Show, Dies at 83
George Lindsey, who played the memorable character of Goober Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show, died early yesterday morning at the age of 83.
Lindsey, who later was a regular on the long-running country music comedy show Hee Haw, passed on at a healthcare center in Nashville, Tenn.
"George Lindsey was my friend," Andy Griffith said in a statement released on Sunday. "I had great respect for his talent and his human spirit."
Noting that they last spoke a few days ago, Griffith said: "I'm happy to say that as we found ourselves in our 80s, we were not afraid to say, 'I love you.' That was the last thing George and I had to say to each other. 'I love you.' "
The Andy Griffith Show, the classic 1960s sitcom starring Griffith as the kindly sheriff of Mayberry, N.C., was in its fourth season in 1964 when Lindsey appeared as the cousin of naive gas station attendant Gomer Pyle, played by Jim Nabors.
Lindsey's character became more prominent after Nabors left the show to star in the spin-off series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. in 1964. R.I.P.
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Sunday, May 6, 2012
The Natural Way: The Holistic Guide to Total Mind-body Health ...
The Natural Way: The Holistic Guide to Total Mind-body Health & Fitness
The Natural Way, written by national fitness champion, actress, and model Beth Horn, offers a complete guide to healthy living with eating plans, food lists, and numerous Exercise plans specific to your goals. This book is an inspirational celebration of the mind, body, and spirit with an effective plan of action to help you achieve your personal best. It includes chapters on flexibility, motivation, nutrition, Exercise, and training for teens. The Natural Way is fully illustrated with more than 100 photographs, including eight photos of Beth in full color. Foreword by Steven Hartman, Author of The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita. List Price: $ 19.95 Price: $ 9.99 Related Health Products
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Ping Monitor Professional 4.7.2
EMCO Ping Monitor ($49) checks the availability of systems on a network by sending pings at regular intervals and analyzing the responses from each machine. Administrators monitoring multiple servers and concerned about uptime often write shell scripts to keep track of these statistics. Ping Monitor performs the same task in an easy-to-use graphical interface but doesn?t really offer any advanced features or capabilities.
IT administrators use the application in an ?autopilot? mode to supervise network connections to critical equipment. The scheduling feature allows administrators to schedule times when certain machines don?t need to be monitored, such as during scheduled maintenance windows or when they are powered off on weekends, without having to stop the monitoring process for other machines.
While the software needs to be installed on a Windows machine (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Vista, XP, and Server), Ping Monitor can monitor any machine regardless of the operating system, provided it can respond to ping (ICMP echo) requests. Ping Monitor is available in a free version as well as a Professional version. The free version is limited to tracking up to five machines while the Professional version is unlimited. A 30-day evaluation of Ping Monitor Professional is available online.
Using Ping Monitor
A Windows host monitoring tool, Ping Monitor tracks connections to multiple network hosts by simultaneously sending pings (ICMP echo requests) to all the machines in its "to watch" list. It detects changes in machine status and analyzes responses to calculate connection statistics, such as high, low, and average response times, response time deviation, uptime, and other values to evaluate connection quality and stability. The monitoring interface displays all scanned IP addresses with the associated information in a long list.
If a host doesn't respond to multiple requests, Ping Monitor flags the machine and sends out notifications about the outage. The message can be sent by email, displayed in the Windows system tray, or an audio alert. The non-responding machine is also highlighted in red in the interface.
The main interface feels a little crammed, as it displays the IP addresses being monitored, Application Log, details about the host, and actions to take when a machine doesn't respond, all in one single view. It's possible to turn off the log and host details pane, or rearrange them. Double-clicking on an IP address opens up an edit window to modify notification and monitoring rules.
Ping Monitor allows users to enter individual IP addresses, hostnames, or IP ranges that need to be monitored. Network administrators can then customize the notification messages on a per-host or per-event basis. For example, administrators can configure Ping Monitor to change who would be alerted by email depending on which host encountered the issue. Or send an email message first, and then follow up with an SMS notification if the computer remains offline.
The monitoring results can also be formatted to use outside the tool. The tool supports XML and CSV formats.
Setting Up Ping Monitor
To get started, all I had to do was enter the IP addresses of the servers and desktops running on my test network in to the tool. Ping Monitor supports a list of IP addresses, an IP range, or even hostnames. Once I entered the list of machines, I hit the Start button on the application?s toolbar. Ping Monitor pinged systems at regularly spaced intervals and displayed basic statistics, such as how long the tool had been monitoring that address, the machine?s uptime, and the average response time. If the server is not available, the tool displays that address in red.
I turned on a few machines while the tool was already running. Before I turned them on, I noticed the corresponding IP addresses were highlighted in red within the interface. As soon as the machine was online, the screen reflected the change automatically by removing the red highlight.
I could tweak most of the settings, such as configuring the ping itself, including its timeout period, packet size, and time to live (TTL) value. I could create a schedule to specify which days of the week (and time of day) the machines should be pinged. I could also design a customized list defining what the machine should do when it didn't respond to a ping request, who to contact in case of an outage, and how to send out the notifications. In the Professional version, every single one of these settings can be customized for each host.
Monitoring host connectivity can be handled easily with a shell script. Ping Monitor doesn't have any advanced features to differentiate it from a script. If the network is complicated or has machines that are regularly offline for maintenance reasons, network administrators would find the ability to automate when the machines are being monitored and for how long a true time-saver.
Ping Monitor Under the Hood
Network administrators can customize the scripts that take into account scheduled maintenance windows and rules for each host and automate the entire process. For managers monitoring multiple machines, Ping Monitor is handy for monitoring what machines are online and notifying appropriate users when something goes wrong. For environments where machines don't need to be monitored on different schedules and simpler networks, Ping Monitor seems a little redundant since a shell script and a cron job would accomplish the task just as well.
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Saturday, May 5, 2012
Video: The Outlook on Jobs & the U.S. Economy
Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary and Steve Moore, Wall Street Journal senior economic writer, discuss Friday's disappointing jobs numbers and the outlook on the U.S. economic recovery.
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Lightning signature could help reveal the solar system's origins
Friday, May 4, 2012
Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere. This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth's surface until, in 2011, scientists discovered they could also detect it using NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite.
In a paper published on May 1 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers describe how this new technique could be used to study other planets in the solar system as well, and even shed light on how the solar system formed.
"The frequency of Schumann Resonance depends not only on the size of the planet but on what kinds of atoms and molecules exist in the atmosphere because they change the electrical conductivity," says Fernando Simoes, the first author on this paper and a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So we could use this technique remotely, say from about 600 miles above a planet's surface, to look at how much water, methane and ammonia is there."
Water, methane and ammonia are collectively referred to as "volatiles" and the fact that there are different amounts on different planets is a tantalizing clue to the way the planets formed. Determining the composition of a planet's atmosphere can be done with a handful of other techniques ? techniques that are quite accurate, but can only measure specific regions. By looking at the Schumann Resonance, however, one can get information about the global density of, say, water around the entire planet. Simoes and his colleagues believe that combining this technique with other instruments on a spacecraft's visit to a planet could provide a more accurate inventory of the planet's atmosphere.
"And if we can get a better sense of the abundance of these kinds of atoms in the outer planets," says Simoes, "We would know more about the abundance in the original nebula from which the solar system evolved."
Accurate descriptions of planetary atmospheres might also help shed light on how the evolution of the solar system left the outer planets with a high percentage of volatiles, but not the inner planets.
Detecting Schumann Resonance from above still requires the instruments to be fairly close to the planet, so this technique couldn't be used to investigate from afar the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system. Instead, scientists imagine something much more dramatic. After a spacecraft is finished observing a planet, it could continue to detect Schumann resonance as it begins its death dive into the atmosphere. During the process of self-destruction, the spacecraft would still provide valuable scientific data until the very last minute of its existence.
###
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center: http://www.nasa.gov/goddard
Thanks to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Student loans: Do Republicans really think program is socialist?
President Obama said Friday that Republicans in Congress are calling federal student loans socialism. Republicans reject the charge. But the issue is highlighting political differences.?
President Obama repeated his drumbeat for student-loan relief on Friday, telling an audience of Virginia high school students that Congress must act soon to prevent a doubling of federal-loan interest rates.
Skip to next paragraphWith the cost of subsidized Stafford loans set to double for borrowing that occurs after July 1, the issue has become a major theme for the president in the past couple of weeks.
Republican lawmakers show an openness to preventing the interest rate from jumping to 6.8 percent. But they and Mr. Obama are also using the issue as an election-year opportunity to underscore their political differences.
In no small measure, this year's campaigns for control of the White House and Congress could boil down to a fight over government's proper role in the economy. Obama wants to paint the Republicans as outside the mainstream in their antipathy toward government programs, while Republicans are labeling him as an extremist in his advocacy of big government.
Obama used his address at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Va., to return to the fray.
One GOP congressman, he said, likened the government's student-loan activity to socialism. Is it socialism, Obama implied, to build a?better-skilled work force?
"America is not just about protecting a few people who are doing well. America is about giving everybody a chance to do well," Obama said, giving his own take on rugged individualism and drawing applause. "Everybody here, you're only here, you're only succeeding because somebody, somewhere, felt a responsibility not just to themselves, not even just to their own families, but to the country as a whole."
Some Republicans, however, say Obama's focus on government-subsidized loans for students represents a weak effort to cover himself for the poor performance of the economy on his watch.
On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the US created just 115,000 jobs in April, a cooler pace than earlier in the year. The unemployment rate edged down, but mainly because many working-age Americans have dropped out of the labor force. And the jobless rate, at 8.1 percent nationwide, is even higher for young Americans like the ones Obama addressed in Virginia.
The socialism charge, in the context of student loans, arose recently from Rep. Todd Akin (R) of Missouri, who is now running for the US Senate. He criticized a government move to "take it all over" and said, "The government needs to get its nose out of the education business."
Democrats say the private student-loan business is alive and well, and that Obama merely removed a costly role for banks as middlemen in some federal loans.
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YC Price Guide Startup Priceonomics Raises $1.5M Seed From Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel
How much should you pay for a used iPhone, TV, or bicycle? Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel and more think you need to know, so they've invested $1.5 million into Priceonomics, a Y Combinator winter 2012 startup. The seed round that shall be announced later today will go towards hiring front-end developers and back-end engineers to make the site beautiful but simple and beef up its machine learning technology. The site saw 250,000 page views in March and is still growing traffic by a brisk 65% every month. Investors see gold in possible business models built around the data Priceonomics crawls and ads shown to people about to make a purchase. Co-founder Rohin Dhar says the startup aims to beat general search engines by immediately knowing you're looking to buy when you type in the name or maker of a laptop, appliance, camera, or stereo.shonn greene oklahoma state plane crash syracuse university best buy black friday 2011 ads broncos jets jessie james osu basketball
Samsung S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory hands-on
We're here on the floor at Samsung's "next galaxy" event taking a look at the company's new S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory. Curious about how it works? Head on past the break for our initial impressions.
Continue reading Samsung S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory hands-on
Samsung S-Pebble MP3 player / accessory hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 15:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Friday, May 4, 2012
Facebook Releases IPO Prospectus and Roadshow Video Featuring Interviews With Zuckerberg
Watch Zuck, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the gang go to bat for Facebook in the promo video for its pre-IPO roadshow. For your reading pleasure, I've written a sportscaster-style play-by-play followed by some highlights. Hit "Read More" to learn about?Facebook's mission, products and platform, advertising, finance, and future without having to?click past all the SEC disclaimers and sit through the 30-minute video.college football college football ncaa football brian van gorder blazing saddles lsu alabama lsu game
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