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Businesses

Which Shipping Company Is Kindest To Your Packages? 480

Posted by samzenpus from the handle-however-you-want dept.
Ant writes "Popular Mechanics mailed a bunch of sensors on an epic journey to find out which American shipping company is the most careful with your packages. From the article: 'One disheartening result was that our package received more abuse when marked "Fragile" or "This Side Up." The carriers flipped the package more, and it registered above-average acceleration spikes during trips for which we requested careful treatment.' Here's what they found."
Technology

What To Load On a 4-Year-Old's Netbook? 742

Posted by samzenpus from the besides-plants-vs.-zombies dept.
nostrodecus writes "I have a nephew who is very young, but who has the techie gene — he found the Gruffalo on YouTube before anyone knew he could spell. Now he's almost 4, and I was thinking of giving him my netbook (Acer running XP), which I hardly use any more. So, of course, I will be deleting all the porn, but what should I load up on it? Are there tools/apps that I can load up on it to protect it and him from things he shouldn't see until college? Also, what apps or games could I load on it that a 4-year-old will get some use out of?"

Comment Re:Much welcomed tech (Score 1) 141

by mnmn (#32685532) Attached to: IEEE Releases 802.3ba Standard
Can you install Windows/Solaris/Linux/AIX on file-level storage, install Oracle/DB2/Exchange/Domino?

Block-level storage can and does completely replace local harddrives. Thats the reason for bladeservers, where blades have everything but harddisks. They're given volumes of fiber channel, iscsi or fcoe to become their local virtual disks. NFS or CIFS would be completely useless to them without first having block level volumes (except for the rare case of Linux/FreeBSD installed on NFS).

Comment Re:Much welcomed tech (Score 2, Informative) 141

by mnmn (#32672434) Attached to: IEEE Releases 802.3ba Standard
I do not believe you've actually used iSCSI, at all.

The performance numbers are very different and so are the technologies, Microsoft filesharing is file-level and iSCSI is block level. It means with an iSCSI card, the machine can treat volumes as local disks and install any OS.

Secondly, you're confusing iSCSI with NFS. NFS has been freely available even back on Windows NT4. However it was not created to counter Microsoft, it was ALREADY there.

iSCSI until recently has been the only technology that provides block-level storage access and as efficiently as possible on a routable ethernet network. The recent FCoE is even more efficient but its not so easily routable.

Comment Much welcomed tech (Score 4, Interesting) 141

by mnmn (#32670472) Attached to: IEEE Releases 802.3ba Standard
It's interesting how this will increase the adoption of iSCSI storage, yet the original reason to go to iSCSI will be lost since fiber cables will have to be laid.

Either way 1Gbit Ethernet is beginning to feel a bit like a bottleneck with storage and other bottlenecks being removed.

It'll take some time between ratification and cheap D-Link switches...
Image

Woman Claims Wii Fit Caused Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome Screenshot-sm 380

Posted by samzenpus from the can't-stop-playing dept.
Amanda Flowers always liked her Wii Fit but now she can't get enough of it. Amanda claims a fall from her balance board damaged a nerve and has left her suffering from persistent sexual arousal syndrome. From the article: "The catering worker said: 'It began as a twinge down below before surging through my body. Sometimes it built up into a trembling orgasm.' A doctor diagnosed her with persistent sexual arousal syndrome due to a damaged nerve."

Comment So happy at first (Score 2, Funny) 34

by mnmn (#31849832) Attached to: AdvancED Flash On Devices
I was so happy about a detailed book (700+ pages) on a 'flash on devices' book. I've been wanting to know more about the intricacies of flash chips before I put them on my dev boards. Embedded development gets far less attention regarding literature than web programming. ... and then I was let down. :) A book on flash chips (NAND, NOR, XIP, various voltages and tricks) will have to wait for a better day.

I hate flash.
GUI

5 Reasons Tablets Suck, and You Won't Buy One 553

Posted by timothy from the for-some-values-of-you dept.
Crazzaper writes "When the iPad was announced, a lot of people who didn't care about tablets came out to bash Apple's new device. These same people said 'I would have bought it if it had a full OS,' but in reality full OS tablets existed before the iPad rumors even started. This article gives an interesting perspective on why this happened, and argues that there's five big reasons why more powerful tablets exists but no one cares."
Caldera

SCO Asked O'Gara To Smear Groklaw 96

Posted by Soulskill from the par-for-the-course dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "PJ of Groklaw has found some really interesting documents coming out of the never-ending SCO trial. Specifically, in SCO v. Novell, SCO doesn't want the jury to find out about the email Blake Stowell (then a PR guy for SCO) sent to Maureen O'Gara that asked her to 'send a jab PJ's way.' For those who don't remember that far back in the SCO saga, the 'jab' was when O'Gara wrote an inaccurate, rambling and irrelevant 'exposé' on PJ which got O'Gara fired for violating journalistic ethics after angry readers complained to the publisher — an act which caused Ms. O'Gara to tell SCO, 'I want war pay.' For those wondering how they can keep going after that final judgment against SCO over a year ago, it's hard to do the saga justice without glossing over everything, but the short version is that SCO ran to bankruptcy after they were mostly dead, but before becoming completely dead. That automatically stopped all the cases against SCO due to standard bankruptcy court rules, then SCO effectively re-litigated a bunch of issues via bankruptcy court rules. Currently, they're accusing Novell of 'slander of title' over copyrights that two different courts have ruled SCO does not own, and we're waiting to see if a jury will reach the same conclusion. They're also trying to use the company's lawsuits as assets and to sell them to various SCO insiders so that the legal wranglings can continue even if nothing is left of SCO. From the very start, SCO has always been the type to fight dirty."
Medicine

Study Shows TV Makes Kids Fat, Computers Don't 276

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-pass-the-cheetos dept.
Xemu writes "Computers don't make children fat, but watching TV for the same length of time does. This is shown by a recent Swedish study of all school children in Lund's county conducted by RN Pernilla Garmy. The results were clear: The child's obesity was directly affected by placing a TV in the child's room, but placing a computer in the room had no effect at all. One theory is that it's common to have a snack in front of the TV, while a computer requires a more active user, for example when chatting or playing games."
Security

Interview With a Convicted 419 Scammer 184

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-am-the-prince-of-your-heart dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Scam awareness website www.scam-detectives.co.uk has published a two part interview with convicted Nigerian 419 scammer, 'John.' 'John' talks about his experiences of scam victims, how he gains their trust and convinces them to part with their money, and how he would go back for another 'bite' after the original scam, posing as a law enforcement official who has apprehended the scammer and recovered the funds ... for a fee, of course."
The Internet

Comcast Plans IPv6 Trials In 2010 173

Posted by timothy from the wait-for-the-cross-examination dept.
Mortimer.CA writes "In a weblog posting, Jason Livingood, Executive Director of Comcast's Internet Systems has stated that they're beginning public trials of IPv6; Comcast hopes 'that these trials will encourage other stakeholders to make plans to continue, or to begin, work on IPv6 in 2010 so that all stakeholders do their part in ensuring the future of the Internet is as bright and innovative as it has been in the past.' Interested guinea pigs can volunteer at Comcast6.net (FAQ). Those who have IPv6 connectivity via other means can check out their IPv6-only web presence."
Space

Uranus and Neptune May Have "Oceans of Diamonds" 347

Posted by kdawson from the went-to-sea-in-a-sieve dept.
Third Position writes "Oceans of liquid diamond topped with solid 'icebergs' of the precious gems could be on Uranus and Neptune. The first-ever detailed research into the melting point of diamond found it behaves like water during melting and freezing — with its solid form floating on the liquid. A large diamond ocean on one or both of the planets could provide an explanation for an oddity they both share: unlike Earth, they do not have magnetic poles that match up with their geographical poles." The article doesn't mention what the pressures might be like in these outer-planets environments, but the researchers found that liquefying diamond requires 40 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level.

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