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Mars

Indian Mars Mission Has Completed 95% of Its Journey Without a Hitch 117

Posted by samzenpus from the almost-there dept.
First time accepted submitter rinka writes India's Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan, has made some progress since we last discussed it. The mission is on target and has completed 95% of its journey. It will reach its destination before the end of the month. Scientists will undertake a "challenging task" on September 24 when they will restart the onboard liquid engine, which has been in sleep mode for nearly ten months, for a critical maneuver of the spacecraft.
Microsoft

Microsoft Shutting Down MSN Messenger After 15 Years of Service 127

Posted by samzenpus from the so-long-farewell dept.
New submitter airfuz writes Microsoft took a bold move announcing that users have to move away from the old version of Internet Explorer to the new version 11. And now not long after that, Microsoft announced that they are shutting down the 15-year-old MSN Messenger. Most people have moved away from the service to Facebook and other mobile based messengers such as Whatsapp, and so MSN is left with few users. But still, ending a 15-year messaging service like the MSN Messenger means something to the ones who grew up using it.

Comment Re:$230 (Score 5, Insightful) 611

by Tim the Gecko (#47719895) Attached to: Study: Ad-Free Internet Would Cost Everyone $230-a-Year

...OK...where do I sign up?

You can sign up for our flat rate Gold Plan at $1000, or the Silver Plan where we will nickel and dime you until you pay $2010 per year, or the Bronze Plan where you will get some carefully selected ads in return for a lower fee of $500.

This service brought to you by your trustworthy ISP.

Notes: (1) You may occasionally see ads, (2) Ads you don't see will still count against your bandwidth cap, (3) We hate you.

Comment Re:IPv6 How will it happen? (Score 3, Informative) 146

by Tim the Gecko (#47525475) Attached to: Comcast Carrying 1Tbit/s of IPv6 Internet Traffic

How do you [Slashdot users] see IPv6 transition actually happening?

Will each internet user have dual stack?

Yes. They will have a dual stack with the IPv6 address being used for a bigger and bigger proportion of traffic. Meanwhile IPv4 will probably traverse some NAT.

Once IPv4 is the minority of traffic (many years in the future), it will turn into a legacy PITA to administer separately. But that is a while away.

IPv6 is much more complex, how will companies support users who barely understand IP addressing when IPv6 is going to seem like a long string of meaningless characters?

Those 30% of Comcast customers aren't calling a helpdesk and reading out hexadecimal digits. If DNS is working they will say things like "www.facebook.com". If DNS isn't working then they can't fix it by reading out or typing those "meaningless characters".

Do you see something like a dynamic IPv6 to IPv4 DNS/NAT translator to hide IPv6 complexity from the user a viable solution?

Not viable. It wouldn't help more than a single digit percentage of users anyway.

Comment Re:If it's paid (Score 3, Informative) 37

by Tim the Gecko (#47235947) Attached to: FCC Looking Into Paid Peering Deals

This is the common definition:

  • Settlement free peering: Doesn't take money from you. Advertises their routes to you. Advertises your routes to their customers.
  • Paid peering: Takes money from you. Advertises their routes to you. Advertises your routes to their customers.
  • Transit: Takes money from you. Advertises the whole Internet routing table to you. Advertises your routes to their customers and peers.

You will see that there is no technical difference between settlement free and paid. It's the same router configuration. The money flow is just the end result of the poker game of which peer needs the other more.

Comment My freezing summer (Score 2) 216

by Tim the Gecko (#46990405) Attached to: Who controls the HVAC at work?
A few summers ago I was in the cube where the air conditioning sent in the cold air. Unfortunately the cube with the temperature sensor was occupied by a guy with a space heater. As the aircon pumped in more and more cold air I ended up taking warmth breaks standing outside in the summer sun. Finally, after a long negotiation between my neighbor and the HVAC guy, sanity was restored.

Comment Re:Many polite people (Score 1) 490

Thanks for this. Another year-round commuter here, and I get nice weather most of the time even in winter. I love your positive attitude, and it's sending me out on my Sunday morning ride in a much better mood. It will be even better if I don't see any driver looking down at his or her phone.
Data Storage

Seagate Releases 6TB Hard Drive Sans Helium 147

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the platters-like-to-breathe dept.
Lucas123 (935744) writes "Seagate has released what it said is the industry's fastest hard drive with up to a 6TB capacity, matching one released by WD last year. WD's 6TB Ultrastar He6 was hermetically sealed with helium inside, something the company said was critical to reducing friction for additional platters, while also increasing power savings and reliability. Seagate, however, said it doesn't yet need to rely on Helium to achieve the 50% increase in capacity over its last 4TB drive. The company used the same perpendicular magnetic recording technology that it has on previous models, but it was able to increase areal density from 831 bits per square inch to 1,000. The new drive also comes in 2TB, 4TB and 5TB capacities and with either 12Gbps SAS or 6Gbps SATA connectivity. The six-platter, enterprise-class drive is rated to sustain about 550TB of writes per year — 10X that of a typical desktop drive."

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It seems that more and more mathematicians are using a new, high level language named "research student".

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