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Silicon Graphics

Submission + - SGI Files for Chaper 11, plans to sell off assets

Submitted by darkjedi521
darkjedi521 writes: According to Bloomberg, SGI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy April 1st with plans to sell its assets to Rackable Systems unless another buyer is willing to come forward and pay a higher per share price than Rackable. According to the Mercury News, the sale is for $25 million, though the chapter 11 proceedings leave the possibility of sale to another entity open.

Comment Re:I saw LEDs used as colored stage lights (Score 1) 685

by darkjedi521 (#26274239) Attached to: Why LEDs Don't Beat CFLs Even Though They Should
Last time I looked at LED stagelights about a year ago, the LED PAR64 can seemed to be a drop in replacement for 300W PAR56 lamps. Unfortunately, until intensity catches up to their higher wattage cousins, most of the stages I've worked on are going to keep dropping in 750W HPL, 1KW BVT, and 1K PAR64 lamps. The biggest advantage is its easier to get a blue of out an LED than a halogen, for obvious reasons, but losing the light among the other fixtures isn't really desired all the time.

Comment Re:Sun shoots, and... well, you already know. (Score 5, Informative) 249

by darkjedi521 (#25712543) Attached to: Sun Unveils RAID-Less Storage Appliance
Some of that is the custom gear that goes into making those beasts. Yes, it might eliminate the hardware raid card, but in the case of the 7210, the hardware to drive 48 SATA drives and not saturate the bus still isn't cheap. Plus hotswap everything, and the price quickly rises to something close to what Sun is charging. I use 4 x4500s at work for a single cluster, and they are a hell of a lot cheaper for that capacity than the traditional rack of fiber arrays/raid controllers/etc. The 4 of them cost me what another vendor wanted for half the raw storage (and far less usable storage).
Networking

Behind the Cogent-Sprint Depeering 325

Posted by kdawson from the it's-an-ectomy dept.
An anonymous reader brings an update to Sprint's depeering with Cogent, which we discussed a few days back — namely, Sprint's side of the story. According to them, no free peering contract had ever existed, Cogent refused to pay the bills to exchange traffic, and after a year Sprint gave Cogent 30 days notice of their intent to disconnect. During this 30-day period, when one or two connections (out of ten) per week were shut down, Cogent made no alternate arrangements to alleviate the impact on their customers — but they had a press release ready when Sprint snipped the final wire. It will be interesting to see how Cogent responds.
Security

Reliable, Free Anti-Virus Software? 586

Posted by timothy from the when's-it-positively-gotta-be-windows dept.
oahazmatt writes "Some time ago my wife was having severe issues on her laptop. (A Dell Inspiron, if that helps.) I eventually found the cause to be McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully. I installed AVG on her system to replace McAfee, but we have since found that AVG is causing problems with her laptop's connection to our wireless network. She's not thrilled about a wired connection as the router is on the other end of the house. We're looking for some good, open-source or free personal editions of anti-virus software. So, who on Slashdot trusts what?" When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV, and the machine seemed to do as well as most classmates'. What have you found that works?

Is Apple Killing Linux on the Desktop? 1224

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the multiple-alternatives dept.
Domains May Disappear writes "Chris Howard has an interesting commentary at Apple Matters on recent trends in OS market share that says that while OS X has seen continual growth, from 4.21% in Jan 2006 to 7.31% in December 2007 at the same time, Linux's percentage has risen from only 0.29% to 0.63%. The reasons? 'Apple has Microsoft Office, Linux doesn't; Apple has Adobe Creative Suite, Linux doesn't; Apple has easily accessed and easy to use service and support, Linux doesn't; Apple is driven by someone who has some understanding of end-user needs, Linux is not,' says Howard. 'Early in the decade it seemed that if you wanted a Windows alternative, Linux was it. Nowadays, an Apple Mac is undoubtedly the alternative and, with its resurgence and its Intel base, a very viable one.'"
Networking

IBM and Sun Launch Intranet Metaverses 123

Posted by samzenpus from the meet-me-in-thunder-bluff dept.
wjamesau writes "Sun and IBM have launched intranet metaverses designed for business and built to work behind their corporate firewalls, so their worldwide employees can use them to collaborate together. Most interesting to game developers, IBM (which also runs a private, no public access Second Life island as a development lab) created their intranet world from the 3D Torque engine from Garage Games. Will the metaverse actually be thousands of gated community metaverses?"
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - when Macs break

Submitted by
cyber-dragon.net
cyber-dragon.net writes: "I have long been a staunch supporter of Apple and Macs, bordering on but not quite a fan boy. My recent experience with trying to bring them into my department at work has been dissapointing. We had a Mac Pro (the big quad processor monster) die after four days. Ok, it happens, everything else has worked flawlessly. I even delt with the inevitable teasing about the siny new Mac being a lemon.
Well after almost four hours dealing with Apple Care, three hours dropping off and picking up my computer at different stores as per thier instructions trying to get this done quickly... I am beginning to wonder if Apple really wants business customers to rely on these machines. Much as I may dislike Dell like the rest of you... when my Linux box died it was fixed in four hours and I spent maybe 20 mintes of my time setting up the repair. I have spent seven hours of my time so far on this Mac and it still will not power up. Is this just me or have other people lost critical business machines to the depths of Apple Care inefficiency and lack of business level support?"
Businesses

Submission + - Whatever happened to superconductors?

Submitted by
AltGrendel
AltGrendel writes: "Jonathan Fildes of the BBC wrote that 'In 1987, Ronald Reagan declared that the US was about to enter an incredible new era of technology. Levitating high-speed trains, super-efficient power generators and ultra-powerful supercomputers would become commonplace thanks to a new breed of materials known as high temperature superconductors (HTSC). "The breakthroughs in superconductivity bring us to the threshold of a new age," said the president. "It's our task to herald in that new age with a rush."

But 20 years on, the new world does not seem to have arrived. So what happened?'

He shares what he found in this article."
Microsoft

Microsoft Sells Linux To Wal-Mart 245

Posted by kdawson from the devil-you-know dept.
Several readers wrote in to let us know that Wal-Mart is planning to buy SUSE Linux vouchers from Microsoft in the course of building out its infrastructure. These are the support vouchers that Microsoft must distribute to hold up its end of the bargain with Novell. Wal-Mart has been a customer of Red Hat Linux. CBR Online notes that the deal is not entirely unexpected because Microsoft's COO, Kevin Turner, is the former CIO of Wal-Mart.
Space

Submission + - Lost Moon landing tapes discovered

Submitted by de_smudger
de_smudger writes: For years 'lost' tapes recording data from the Apollo 11 Moon landing have been stored underneath the seats of Australian physics students. A recent search has uncovered them.

Recorded on telemetry tapes, they are said to be the best quality images of the landing (unconverted slow scan TV) yet to be seen by a public still fascinated by the early space race. These tapes were mislaid in the early 1980s on their way to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
KDE

Submission + - KDE on Windows

Submitted by
AlanS2002
AlanS2002 writes: "This week's KDE Commit Digest tells about an installer for KDE on Windows and the problems the developers encountered setting up a working environment for KDE to run on. Many screenshots included, showing the first applications (such as Konqueror) running natively."
Software

Submission + - Forced hardware retirement

Submitted by
AlonzoTG
AlonzoTG writes: "I have been informed that I must upgrade my motherboard to a newer and more common type in order to maintain linux compatibility. In my enthuseasm to buy a SMP machine in 2003 I overlooked the fact that my Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466) wasnt very popular as a workstation and would develop serious compatibility issues only four years in to its fifteen year useful life span. Fedora Core cannot be installed on the machine, nor can my existing installation support OpenGL graphics without crashing. (an issue with the GART chip which the kernel still claims to support — it stopped working about eight months ago). If I were to accept this loss, which workstation class boards can I choose which will remain operable under Linux for the entirety of their useful lifespan? Is it possible to obtain a guarentee with respect to a specific board that it will continue to be supported?"

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