Kansas.com: News2Use

Smart ways to use your time

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:38 CDT

Laundry, cooking, carpooling -- your days are filled to the brim with stuff you've got to get done.

Doesn't it make sense to find shortcuts so you have time to do the things you want to do? Here are some smart ideas from Parents magazine.

Buy it when you see it

Don't run to the store every time your child gets a birthday-party invite.

Instead, stock up on one-size-fits-all presents whenever you spot a sale. Keep your treasures on a designated closet shelf so there's always something you can pull out, wrap and give.

Tips on naming your pooch

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 01:38 CDT

The American Kennel Club offers the following tips to consider when naming your pooch:

• Names often reflect the character of your pet. Observe your dog for a few days and see if his personality suggests a name.

Is he regal? Does she always want to be the center of attention? If so, how about "King" or "Star?"

• Short, sweet and easily recognizable names work best in getting your dog to be responsive. Use a name that is one or two syllables ending with a vowel, such as "Sadie" or "Rocky."

• Don't choose a name that is too long or difficult to say. A name such as "Sir Barks A Lot" will only confuse your dog.

FAA working to improve airline inspections

JOAN LOWY — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:38 CDT

Nine major U.S. airlines are farming out aircraft maintenance at twice the rate of four years ago and now hire outside contractors for more than 70 percent of major work, the government says. Contractors overseas handled one-quarter of the outsourced maintenance.

At the same time, U.S. oversight of repair facilities is lagging, the Transportation Department's inspector general found. Investigators said the Federal Aviation Administration has failed to closely track how much maintenance is outsourced and where it is performed.

Although the FAA has taken steps to improve, "the agency still faces challenges in determining where the most critical maintenance occurs and ensuring sufficient oversight," investigators said in the report this past week.

In airlines' effort to lower costs, the report said, they continue to shift heavy airframe maintenance from in-house mechanics and engineers to hundreds of repair companies in the United States, Canada, Mexico and countries in Central America and Asia.

Nine major airlines examined by the inspector general outsourced 71 percent of their heavy air frame maintenance -- repairs and servicing to an aircraft's body, wings and tail -- in 2007, compared with 34 percent in 2003. Also, 27 percent of that work was performed at foreign repair facilities.

Malicious software turning to cell phones

TROY WOLVERTON — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:38 CDT

You've been battling malware -- viruses, worms, spyware and the like -- on your PC for years.

Is your phone the next battleground?

Security experts think it could be, particularly if it's a smartphone, a handset that has a full operating system and can run applications much like a desktop computer. The more that phones can perform the same functions as PCs, the greater the chance they will have similar vulnerabilities, experts say.

"I'd put it in the looming threat category," said Natalie Lambert, a senior analyst who covers mobile security issues for Forrester, a technology research firm. "There's huge potential."

But experts caution that consumers should put that potential threat in perspective. Other security issues -- such as simply losing a phone -- are arguably of more concern to mobile phone users today.

How to protect your children's identities

EILEEN AJ CONNELLY — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:38 CDT

Among the people Linda Foley is currently working to help are a 3-year-old whose Social Security number is being used by someone for work purposes. And there's a 5-year-old whose identity is linked to driver's licenses, arrest warrants for drunken driving, and a warrant for unpaid child support.

These stories may sound unusual, but Foley has heard of many such situations since she started the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center in 1999, and she's convinced that the poaching of children's identities is more common than anyone knows.

Because identity theft is typically associated with financial matters like the misuse of credit cards, most people don't consider the possibility that their child's personal information could be stolen and misused. But more than 34,000 reports of identity theft reported to the Federal Trade Commission from 2005 to 2007 concerned children under age 18.

"I think we just see the tip of the iceberg, we don't know how deep this problem goes," Foley said.

Because children don't have complex financial lives, there is less opportunity to notice that something has gone awry than for adults who try to access loans, mortgages and credit cards -- one major factor that plays into child identity theft going undetected for years.

SAT and ACT: Should they be the standard?

LEE BIERER — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 01:39 CDT

Much has been written about the diminished value colleges place on standardized tests such as the SAT and the ACT.

There's even an organization (www.fairtest.org) whose mission is to "end the misuses and flaws of standardized tests" and remove these tests from the college application mix.

Fairtest, based in Cambridge, Mass., places "special emphasis on eliminating the racial, class, gender, and cultural barriers... posed by standardized tests."

It's true that there are more and more colleges, though mostly small private ones, that consider themselves "test-optional" -- which means that students may submit their test scores but will not be penalized if they choose not to submit them. You can find a list of test-optional colleges at www.fairtest.org/univ/optional.htm.

Wake Forest, the only top 30 national university with a test-optional policy, recently made splashy headlines when it decided to join this group.