unborracho - Slashdot User

Submission + - Project Blackbox the World domination tour.

Submitted by

D10MR

on Saturday March 03, 2007 @11:36AM

D10MR writes: "It looks like Sun's Project Blackbox is alive and well and on tour across the US. I was able to get a guided tour of the container. Sun's rolling it around the country on the back of a flatbed trailer equiped with generator and chiller unit. There's only 2 1/2 racks worth of real running Sun gear in it, but it's pretty cool to see/hear/feel this thing running while it's riding piggyback on an we've-got-ourselves-a-convoy-18-wheeler, good-buddy. (Scary visions of Burt, Dom, Sally). They even stuck a couple of blade chassis and storage arrays in it.

Ok, so they had the usual marketing and sales droids, but they also had one of their project architects on hand to honestly answer real questions, everything from how do you move the container around, to how the Sunspots work...very cool. It looks like Sun eats their own sausage by using their hardware(sunspots) to realtime monitor their hardware(shake, vibration, temperature and gps position) Lots of stainless steel in the thing, too.

NOTE: If you take the tour, you get a neat Project Blackbox long-sleeve shirt molded into the shape of the truck/container OR you can get a toy trailer/container matching the tour unit. It was pretty cool and totally worth the time to listen and walk through the container. ciao — D10"

Submission + - Microsoft Charging Businesses $4K for DST Fix

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Saturday March 03, 2007 @11:06AM

eldavojohn writes: "Microsoft has slashed the price it's going to charge users on the day light savings time fixes. As you know, the federal law that moves the date for DST goes into effect this month. Although this is 1/10 of the original estimate Microsoft made, it seems a bit pricey for a patch to a product you've already paid for. From the article, "Among the titles in that extended support category are Windows 2000, Exchange Server 2000 and Outlook 2000, the e-mail and calendar client included with Office 2000. For users running that software, Microsoft charges $4,000 per product for DST fixes. For that amount, customers can apply the patches to all systems in their organizations, including branch offices and affiliates, said Sweatt. "All they can't do is redistribute them," he said.""

Total Lunar Eclipse This Weekend 133

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday March 03, 2007 @11:04AM from the umbra-and-penumbra dept.

SeaDour writes "This Saturday night, March 3rd, a total lunar eclipse will be visible from nearly all inhabited parts of the world. A great shadow will stretch across the surface of the moon, eventually casting it in an eerie red glow as sunlight filters through our atmosphere onto the lunar surface. Viewers in Europe and Africa will have the best vantage point, able to watch the entire eclipse in action, while observers in most of the western hemisphere can see it eclipsed as it rises just after sunset."

Submission + - Book Publishers Agree to Online Browsing

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Saturday March 03, 2007 @10:27AM

eldavojohn writes: "Random House & HarperCollins have agreed to allow book browsing and searching on all their books. From the article, "Book publishers are to trying to update their businesses as more young readers consume media via the Web, a trend that already has affected the music, movie and newspaper industries." Although this is a good step forward, I still have no way of searching the thomes of Robert Jordan (Tor) or any of the many standards of Penguin Classics. I am definitely looking forward to more publishers following suit. It's not that far of a stretch to imagine a person searching for a book, finding something else and then buying both books."

Submission + - US Army Urges Dead to Re-enlist

Submitted by

theodp

on Sunday January 07, 2007 @02:20PM

theodp writes: "If you've ever worked with mass-mailing systems, you know that embarrassing mistakes happen. Still, that's little consolation for those who received letters from the U.S. Army urging their killed-in-the-line-of-duty family members to re-enlist."

Slashdot Top Deals