torsner - Slashdot User

New Super Mario Bros. Wii Tops 10 Million Sales 164

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 26, 2010 @02:43AM from the it'sa-me-mario dept.

According to a report from Japanese publication Nikkei Net, Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. Wii has now sold 10 million copies worldwide. The game needed only 45 days to pass the already impressive sales numbers of Super Mario Galaxy. Quoting Gamasutra: "NSMB Wii has sold 3 million units in Japan, where it launched on December 3; 3 million copies in Europe, where it launched November 20, and 4.5 million units in North America, where it launched November 15. Super Mario Galaxy has sold 4.1 million units in North America since 2007. The game's design hearkens back to the two-dimensional, side-scrolling style of earlier Mario titles ... The numbers would seem to suggest that these traits successfully generated more mass appeal for NSMB Wii than for the three-dimensional and far less familiar Super Mario Galaxy, which sent the plumber navigating more innovative spherical space environments."

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday December 15, 2009 @01:09PM from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.

iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Submission + - Sun comparing ZFS and EXT3 2

Submitted by RockDoctor on Monday August 13, 2007 @05:03AM

RockDoctor writes: Sun have been sending out links to a whitepaper comparing their ZFS file system with the more widely-distributed EXT3 file system. Bearing in mind the source (Sun), they find that

Solaris ZFS outperforms the ext3 file system in tests that represent the storage and data requests typically made by database, mail server, and Web applications.

The various ext3 file system mount options available require making a trade-off between data integrity and performance — creating implications for environments in which continuous access to data is critical. Such trade-offs are not necessary in Solaris ZFS.

Sun are touting particularly that ZFS can be administered more simply than other filesystems, not requiring significant downtime for operations such as formatting a new volume and integrating it into a storage pool, and automating operations that could threaten data integrity. (I am not a Sun person, and can't vouch one way or the other for the relevance of the results cited.)

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