Comment Re:Power Steering failure? (Score 1) 609
The assumption your post relies upon only holds true if you are driving a vehicle with a standard (read manual) transmission.
Google Envisions 10 Million Servers 169
miller60 writes "Google never says how many servers are running in its data centers. But a recent presentation by a Google engineer shows that the company is preparing to manage as many as 10 million servers in the future. At this month's ACM conference on large-scale computing, Google's Jeff Dean said he's working on a storage and computation system called Spanner, which will automatically allocate resources across data centers, and be designed for a scale of 1 million to 10 million machines. One goal: to dynamically shift workloads to capture cheaper bandwidth and power. Dean's presentation (PDF) is online."
Comment Re:So it's only a matter of time . . . (Score 1) 762
The battery can be removed once the vehicle's engine is running. Its purpose is to be a store of energy for starting the vehicle. The alternator is the device that provides the electric power needed while the engine is running.
Author Encourages Users to Pirate His Book 237
mariushm writes "Peter Cooper, the author of Beginning Ruby, breaks down how he gets paid for the book, including the advance and royalties, giving a nice clean explanation of how authors get paid for their books. He also describes the negotiations over the second edition of the book, in which he begged his publisher, Apress, to offer the ebook version for free, believing (strongly) that it would promote sales of the paper book. He even notes that the original version's ebook barely had noteworthy sales, so it seemed reasonable to offer up the ebook for free to drive more attention. No dice. Even though Apress has done that with other similar titles, it wouldn't agree. As he retains the copyright for the actual text, he encourages people to buy the book and create an online version of it without covers, contents table and indexes, promising not to enforce his copyright over the new work."
Submission + - LHC completely online and ready to go (bbc.co.uk)
Smelly Jeffrey writes: The BBC is reporting that the LHC has had all eight of its sectors cooled to 1.9 Kelvins. Their tagline is that it is now "colder than deep space", as caused by CMB. LHC engineers have spent nearly $40,000,000 USD on a new system to prevent the "quench" condition that caused the LHC to be down for warming, repairs, and re-cooling over the last several months. The entire LHC is now cold enough to being colliding particles in search of the Higgs Boson. High power collisions won't be started until late this December, or more likely early next January. However, some low power collisions could be begun as early as next week!
The Ultimate Limit of Moore's Law 418
BuzzSkyline writes "Physicists have found that there is an ultimate limit to the speed of calculations, regardless of any improvements in technology. According to the researchers who found the computation limit, the bound 'poses an absolute law of nature, just like the speed of light.' While many experts expect technological limits to kick in eventually, engineers always seem to find ways around such roadblocks. If the physicists are right, though, no technology could ever beat the ultimate limit they've calculated — which is about 10^16 times faster than today's fastest machines. At the current Moore's Law pace, computational speeds will hit the wall in 75 to 80 years. A paper describing the analysis, which relies on thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and information theory, appeared in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters (abstract here)."
BSA Says 41% of Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated 569
An anonymous reader writes "Individuals are turning to P2P networks and auction sites in staggering numbers to acquire or transfer illegal software and in doing so are harming the economy whilst exposing themselves to malware, identity theft and criminal prosecution, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance. Beyond P2P and auction site piracy, the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware, which often exploit vulnerabilities in illegal software that does not benefit from security updates provided by manufacturers. Although the correlation is not universal, geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware."
Debian Elevates KFreeBSD Port to First-Class Status 376
Reader tail.man points out this press release from Debian which says that the port of the Debian system to the FreeBSD kernel will be given equal footing alongside Debian's several other release ports, starting with the release of Squeeze. Excerpting from this release:
"The kFreeBSD architectures for the AMD64/Intel EM64T and i386 processor architectures are now release architectures. Severe bugs on these architectures will be considered release critical the same way as bugs on other architectures like armel or i386 are. If a particular package does not build or work properly on such an architecture this problem is considered release-critical. Debian's main motivation for the inclusion of the FreeBSD kernel into the official release process is the opportunity to offer to its users a broader choice of kernels and also include a kernel that provides features such as jails, the OpenBSD Packet Filter and support for NDIS drivers in the mainline kernel with full support."
Most Mac Owners Also Own a Windows PC, But Not Vice Versa 814
Barence writes "More than eight out of ten Mac owners also own a PC, according to a new piece of research. The NPD survey found that 12% of US computer-owning households have a Mac. However, 85% of those also own a Windows PC, suggesting that the Mac/PC divide is nowhere near as clear cut as both Apple and Microsoft suggest. Mac owners are also far more likely to have multiple computers in the house. Two thirds of Mac owners have three or more computers in the home, while only 29% of PC owners have two or more PCs."
Ex-Astronaut Developing Plasma Rocket To Revitalize NASA 277
TechReviewAl writes "Former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz believes that the private sector can revitalize NASA, and his company is developing a plasma rocket to back up that claim. Chang Diaz argues that private industry can be used to develop much of the basic technology needed for space exploration, allowing NASA to focus on more sophisticated and critical components. His company, Ad Astra, is developing a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMR) that will be used to reposition the International Space Station. Last week, the rocket passed an important milestone in testing — reaching 200 kilowatts (enough to move the ISS). A video of the rocket can be seen on Ad Astra's site."
Auto-Detecting Malware? It's Possible 178
itwbennett writes "If antivirus protectors could collect data from machines and users, including geographic location, social networking information, type of operating system, installed programs and configurations, 'it would enable them to quickly identify new malware strains without even looking at the code,' says Dr. Markus Jakobsson. In a recent article, he outlines some examples of how this could work. The bottom line is this: 'Let's ignore what the malware does on a machine, and instead look at how it moves between machines. That is much easier to assess. And the moment malware gives up what allows us to detect it, it also stops being a threat.'"
Comment Re:Recipe for disaster? (Score 4, Informative) 465
Automated external defibrillators, such as the Physio-Control LifePak 500, will only administer a shock if they detect a valid shockable rhythm, i.e. ventricular fibrillation. This AED will not shock anyone or anything that does not have that rhythm present.
Manual external defibrillators, such as the Physio-Control LifePak 12, which may only be used by EMT-I or EMT-P (Paramedics) in my home state, can be used to administer a shock regardless of the presence or absence of any cardiac rhythm. This requires a manual override, and from what I have seen, is used even less often than the precordial thump.
Firefox To Replace Menus With Office Ribbon 1124
Barence writes "Mozilla has announced that its plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up its 'dated' browser. 'Starting with Vista, and continuing with Windows 7, the menu bar is going away,' notes Mozilla in its plans for revamping the Firefox user interface. '[It will] be replaced with things like the Windows Explorer contextual strip, or the Office Ribbon, [which is] now in Paint and WordPad, too.' The change will also bring Windows' Aero Glass effects to the browser." Update: 09/24 05:01 GMT by T : It's not quite so simple, says Alexander Limi, who works on the Firefox user experience. "We are not putting the Ribbon UI on Firefox. The article PCpro quotes talks about Windows applications in general, not Firefox." So while the currently proposed direction for Firefox 3.7 involves some substantial visual updates for Windows users (including a menu bar hidden by default, and integration of Aero-styled visual elements), it's not actually a ribbon interface. Limi notes, too, that Linux and Mac versions are unaffected by the change.
Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It's Still Alive 638
An anonymous reader points out a story in Wired introducing us to the Doomsday Machine built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s — and that remains active to this day. It was called "Perimeter." The article explains why the device was built, and why the Soviets considered it to be something that kept the peace, even though they never told the US about it. "[Reagan's] strategy worked. Moscow soon believed the new US leadership really was ready to fight a nuclear war. But the Soviets also became convinced that the US was now willing to start a nuclear war. ... A few months later, Reagan... announced that the US was going to develop a shield of lasers and nuclear weapons in space to defend against Soviet warheads. ... To Moscow it was the Death Star — and it confirmed that the US was planning an attack. ... By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, [an informant] says, was 'to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished.'"
Submission + - Student design cardboard computer case aimed at su (chron.com)
SpaceGhost writes: The Houston Chronicle has a story on a Grad student at the University of Houston who has designed a cardboard case for a computer. This is not a new concept, but this one is meant to be used in manufacture. The idea is that it will be faster and easier to produce (no fasteners for example) and dramatically easier to recycle. With computers having such short lifespans nowadays, could this be a good direction to move towards? Or will overclockers burn their house down?
"This isn't built to last",HoustonChronicle,20090917
"This isn't built to last",HoustonChronicle,20090917
