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Comment Re:Spread the FUD (Score 1) 374

I would ask whether the people with swine flu simply died before they had a chance to have secondary issues. If the 'old' flu couldn't kill on its own yet the newer flu can, and very efficiently, and is spreading rapidly, then I'd have to say that I would be worried.

Mind you, I'm *not* actually worried about it as far as I go; I'm 27 and healthy. However, I do know quite a few elderly people and very young people and they are close to me. That is why I follow this story. There are a ton of posts here on /. along the lines of, "Stay home if you're sick, wash your hands, you'll be alright, etc.", and I have a feeling a lot of those people would change their tune if their much older or much younger relatives became ill.

I realize that this is just a new strain of flu, and not some killer ebola; however, afaik no one has been vaccinated for it at least around my area. And we are just about to enter the 'real' flu season where things will get more interesting.

-b

Comment Re:Could you please reboot xatl0as36? (Score 1) 285

The desktop computer that I had immediately prior to this one melted. (Which is why I bought this one.) It looks like the video card overheated and drooped over the motherboard in such a way that it burned a hole in something else and the rest of the motherboard turned into a twisted mess with a hole in the middle.

And yes, it did stink quite a bit, thanks.

The whole thing was contained inside of the case, though. I don't think there was a real fire hazard, though I didn't waste any time pulling the plug when it happened.

Comment Re:30k Ringtones (Score 1) 521

My kids have the LG Xenon and the price for ringtones is $2.49! Zoinks! The whole idea of repaying for songs you already have, for a second purpose is utterly ridiculous. I've made my own mp3's rips that I like to use as notifiers ie ringtones or text notification etc, or sounds like my daughter's cry as a baby. No reason I need to be paying for that and no reason I shouldn't be able to use it. In my mind they are taking advantage of children and teen wonderlust ie the record companies. Now if its your company and you're using the rolling stones to make your company seem hip and cool to the 50 somethings out there then I think you should pay the man, but if you're just a kid who wants to use it on his answering machine or phone then I would like the tell the RIAA, MPAA, Apple, ATT, Verizon, and all the others to SUCK IT and let the creativity grow and fund your intellectual property virally. The corporations are always looking at what the kids are doing and trying to be hip and cool, you can get your money from them. I own the iphone and have lots of my own ringtones that I don't use. ;)

Comment Subjectivity (Score 2, Interesting) 314

The difference is that Apple's website has a "magazine" format that is very easy to duplicate across teams and is conceptually easy to work with and has for a long time, an implicit asumption of uniformality cover-to-cover. Microsoft's webpage is more "web page" like, with less rigourous conceptual designs. Their pages are full dynamic elements, videos, etc... that complement the particular "brand" of software they are selling (notice the website themes within the office suite, the Windows consumer OS, and the Windows Server System and beyond to TechNet and MSDN). Uniformality for navigation's sake is an obvious after-the-fact bolt-on. That being said, MSDN is not conceptually bound to a printed-manual style making it far more usable than Apple's which very much presents like a print-manual converted to HTML.

Comment You really need hardware RAID10 for that (Score 1) 487

At least I wouldn't trust software RAID10 to write to both disk sets and then fill in the the other set with the redundant copy when it had time. That really needs a battery-backed cache to implement safely. The overhead of RAID6 parity calculation should decrease for bulk writes, but at some point the CPU is going to be spending too much time calculating parity and not doing other stuff. 16 100MB/s drives in RAID6 would put quite a load on the system, but if it's only a file server it may be acceptable. I agree that degraded drives suffer a much worse slowdown,especially for partial stripe reads. You could easily start getting only 100MB/s for lots of small reads on that same RAID6 with one or two failed drives, and that's assuming the CPU is fast enough to do error correction at 100MB/s (with two drives missing the fast algorithm for accelerating raid6 stops working and it has to emulate gf(2^8) multiplication with lookup tables). Most of my personal needs are cheap bulk data storage (movies, isos, etc.), so RAID5/6 makes sense. At work, I use RAID1, 10, and 5 since we don't have hardware support for RAID6 on the SANs. Production data goes on RAID10 because we can afford it, mirroring for system drives, and RAID5 for test/development systems that just need lots of storage.
The Military

Marine Corps Wants a Throwable Robot 270

coondoggie writes "The US Marine Corps has a request — build and rapidly deploy more 10lb-or-under robots its personnel can throw into dangerous situations that can quickly gather information without endangering Marines. The throwable robot is part of a family of robots that would range from the 10lb version to one that would act as a central controlling device and weigh close to 300lbs. Marine commanders are demanding ever lighter robots so that troops don't have to offload critical equipment from their rucksacks to accommodate them."
Real Time Strategy (Games)

StarCraft II Delayed Until 2010 453

Blizzard has just announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty won't be released this year. From their announcement: "Over the past couple of weeks, it has become clear that it will take longer than expected to prepare the new Battle.net for the launch of the game. The upgraded Battle.net is an integral part of the StarCraft II experience and will be an essential part of all of our games moving forward. This extra development time will be critical to help us realize our vision for the service. ... As we work to make Battle.net the premier online gaming destination, we'll also continue to polish and refine StarCraft II, and we look forward to delivering a real-time strategy gaming experience worthy of the series' legacy in the first half of 2010."
Biotech

Philips Develops Roadside Drug-Testing Device 647

Al writes "A handheld developed by Philips for law enforcement detects traces of cocaine, heroin, cannabis, and methamphetamine in 90 seconds. The system uses magnetic nanoparticles attached to ligands that bind to traces of these drugs. Once saliva has been placed inside the device, an electromagnet mixes the sample and the nanoparticles. Frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR) — the same phenomenon that underlies fingerprint scanners and multitouch screens — is then used to measure a change to the refractive index. By immobilizing different drug molecules on different parts of a sensor surface, the analyzer is able to identify traces of each different drug. An electronic screen displays instructions and a simple color-coded readout of the results."
Transportation

FBI Nabs Chicago Transit Authority Radio Hacker 177

Wh15per writes "The Chicago FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested an individual for misusing Chicago Transit Authority radio systems. Marcel Carter, 20, is charged with violating a US code that forbids interference with transportation operators. A federal complaint alleges he began using a radio to transmit on CTA frequencies in June 2008, often interjecting comments during communications between the agency's control center and train operators. The CTA claims Carter's radio communications were never followed, and passengers were never in danger."
Earth

Formerly Classified Global Warming Spy Photos Released 791

An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration has released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice, following a declassification request by the National Academy of Sciences. The images feature a 1m resolution, and scientists who have had to base climate models on 15m- or 30m-resolution photos are rejoicing. The photos, kept classified by the Bush administration, show the impact of global warming in the Arctic and the retreat of glaciers in Washington and Alaska."

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