From FBI tries to fight zombie hordes
The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed Operation Bot Roast.
The FBI is contacting more than one million PC owners who have had their computers hijacked by cyber criminals.
The initiative is part of an ongoing project to thwart the use of hijacked home computers, or zombies, as launch platforms for hi-tech crimes.
The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.
With the oil companies gouging, utility companies gouging, insurance companies gouging, pharmaceutical companies gouging, banking institutions gouging, politicians wanting to raise my taxes and fees on everything but breathing, and now this, I feel so used.
PRNewswire
The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced a
$60.7 million Clean Air Act settlement with Nevada Power Company that will improve air quality in the Clark County/Las Vegas, Nev. area by requiring the company to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a harmful air pollutant, from its Clark Generating Station by about 2,300 tons annually.
The settlement resolves the federal government's claims that Nevada Power violated the New Source Review (NSR) provisions of the Clean Air Act at its Clark Generating Station by undertaking modifications of combustion turbines and increasing emissions of NOx without installing the required air pollution controls.
This is the first NSR settlement with an electric utility concerning alleged violations at a gas-fired power plant. It is also the second NSR settlement in the past year in the Western United States.
Just nice to know that the utility companies have legal staffs which apparently don't know much about environmental regulations. I don't think it has been any secret for some years that modifications without adding new pollution controls has been a tricky area, but I suppose someone thought if we don't ask, the EPA won't know. Or maybe one of those "well-trained" or at least highly paid (over-paid) attorneys could have typed "new source review plant modifications" into Google and looked at New Source Review (NSR) at epa.gov where said highly trained attorney could have read, "All new major sources of air pollution will need to comply with the best control technology and existing sources which make major modifications and have a significant increase in actual emissions also will have to meet these requirements." I know it is extremely difficult to find this info and needs a highly educated individual paid extreme amounts of money because it took me exactly two minutes and eleven seconds to find and copy the above quote, and I know I should be paid obscene amounts of money for every two minutes I work--just like a corporate CEO.
From KLAS:
The Clark County School District made a public plea for teachers Friday. The school district needs 1,163 teachers to fill vacancies before August. That is almost twice the number the district needed last year.
There are not many options if the vacancies are not filled.
The school district will have to increase class size, meaning fewer teachers, or some teachers would have to teach second classes in addition to their normal work load taking away from lesson planning.
Missy Nettleingham teaches first grade at Tate Elementary School. She moved from Washington State to teach at the year-round school.
She said, "The first year is tough. I was lucky to have a co-teacher, but your first year you feel lost. You don't think you are giving your kids the best education you can give them. You think you are doing everything wrong."
That's part of the reason 30-percent of first year teachers resign every year.
I bet that other reasons include a lack of supportive administrators in the buildings, such as principals; a regional administration system that does not support teachers when their building administrators won't address questions or issues; mentor teachers who are more interested in checking their e-mail than mentoring a first year teacher; computer and technology failures (all grades and attendance are supposed to be on computers, but what if no one put one in the classroom); harassment for not using enough technology in the classroom (see computer and technology failures above); not even a teacher's manual for the subject and the first year teacher may have to scrounge the closets even to have enough books in the classroom for each student, though not to issue a copy to each student; no access to students achievement scores on standardized test to determine skill level activities and no information on Individualized Education Plans (IEP's) for special needs students being mainstreamed in the "regular" classroom, which is a violation of state and federal regulations; watching a large number of other teachers who are apathetic, incompetent, or thoroughly P.O'ed, while basically feeling that the prevailing coping strategy in the schools is "Don't ask, because we won't tell you--or can't--and if you persist in trying to be a teacher or have standards, you are an enemy to education; just give the students A's and B's or go home."
Add that to low pay and walking into a self-contained room five days a week with 100 to 150 or more children who have had no discipline, learned their social skills from Fox cartoons, can hardly read (and wouldn't if they could unless it is a text message on their cell phone held under their desk), and simply can't stand the subject you spent your time and education enjoying and you have to wonder why teachers don't regularly commit suicide--like every day, over and over. It scares me just to think about what they face; it's no wonder to me why 30 percent quit after the first year; for me the question is why not more?
Oh, and by the way...if they can't find 3,000 teachers, why are legislators and school administrators continually pushing all day kindergarten? How many more teachers will that demand? Simpler to make the school day longer, but I bet the apathetic, incompetent, and underpaid teachers would fight that one to the death--who wants to spend even more time on a job you can't stand?
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