Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment What about keyword searches? (Score 3, Interesting) 266

by tomp (#34582942) Attached to: 'Reading Level' Filter Added To Google Search

That's great and all, but what would be *really* cool, is if Google provided some way to search for pages that contain a specific word or phrase. Yeah, that would be cool. Some kind of search engine where I type in words and the search engine returns only pages that contain those words. Can Google work on that next?

Comment reliability != availability (Score 1) 248

by tomp (#31294180) Attached to: Secret Service Runs At "Six Sixes" Availability

Availability often comes at the cost of reliability.

If you put 2 drives in a RAID-1 mirror, the odds of a drive failure goes up. After all, you now have twice as many drives that might fail. However, a single drive failure no longer makes the data unavailable.

RAID-1 lowers reliability with the goal of raising availability. Paying sysadmins to swap drives is way cheaper than paying people to sit around waiting for their critical data to be restored from tape.

Low reliability is probably just a sign that their systems are highly redundant. Not really surprising.
Space

Excluding Intelligent Design Principles From the Search For Alien Life 308

Posted by Soulskill from the irreducible-simplicity dept.
KIdPanda writes "Prompted by pictures of man-made structures in the Utah desert, a SETI astronomer explains the sometimes-ambiguous difference between seeing the hand of God, alien intelligence, or nature. 'In my photographs, Shostak's SETI-trained eye — standing in for a pattern-crunching computer program — searched for an unexpected increase in visual order (or, in thermodynamic terms, a decrease in entropy caused by the rebellion of life against universal decay). A road or a tended field is mathematically simpler than a mountainous jumble or naturally varied vegetation. ... But there's an obvious problem: nothing is simpler than a sweep of blue sky, or the inky blackness of space. If simplicity is the benchmark, space itself is evidence of design."
Toys

10 Cool Gadgets You Can't Get Here 232

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-i-want-it-now dept.
molex333 writes "PC World has an article about 10 gadgets that are available in Asia but not here. It is a review of some quirky toys that the Japanese have and we don't!" Unfortunately it's one of those obnoxious stories that you have to click like 30x to read the whole thing, but there's some neat stuff.
Caldera

SCO Loses 643

Posted by Zonk from the finish-him dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The one summary judgement that puts a stick into SCO's spokes has just come down. The judge in the epic SCO case has ruled that SCO doesn't own the Unix copyrights. With that one decision, a whole bunch of other decisions will fall like dominoes. As PJ says, 'That's Aaaaall, Folks! ... All right, all you Doubting Thomases. I double dog dare you to complain about the US court system now. I told you if you would just be patient, I had confidence in the system's ability to sort this out in the end. But we must say thank you to Novell and especially to its legal team for the incredible work they have done. I know it's not technically over and there will be more to slog through, but they won what matters most, and it's been a plum pleasin' pleasure watching you work. The entire FOSS community thanks you for your skill and all the hard work and thanks go to Novell for being willing to see this through."
Security

FBI Data Mining For More Than Just Terrorists 130

Posted by Zonk from the my-secret-health-and-auto-insurance-fraud-ring-is-doomed dept.
jcatcw writes "Computerworld reports that the FBI is using data mining programs to track more than just terrorists. The program's original focus was to identify potential terrorists, but additional patterns have been developed for identity theft rings, fraudulent housing transactions, Internet pharmacy fraud, automobile insurance fraud, and health-care-related fraud. From the article: 'In a statement, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the report [on the data mining] was four months late and raised more questions than it answered. The report "demonstrates just how dramatically the Bush administration has expanded the use of [data mining] technology, often in secret, to collect and sift through Americans' most sensitive personal information," he said. At the same time, the report provides an "important and all-too-rare ray of sunshine on the department's data mining activities," Leahy said. It would give Congress a way to conduct "meaningful oversight" he said.'"
Microsoft

Microsoft Hires Director of Linux Interoperability 238

Posted by kdawson from the over-to-the-dark-side dept.
AlexGr sends us to Todd Bishop's blog in the Seattle PI for news that Microsoft has brought someone aboard to serve as its Director of Linux Interoperability and head up the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab. "...his name will be familiar to people in the open-source community. In an e-mail late Thursday night, a Microsoft representative said the role will be filled by Tom Hanrahan, who was most recently the director of engineering at the Linux Foundation, the group created through the recent combination of the Free Standards Group and the Open Source Development Labs."
Caldera

SCO Given NASDAQ Delisting Notice 116

Posted by Zonk from the vultures-are-circling dept.
SCO Delenda Est writes "The SEC has given SCO notice that they will be delisted from the NASDAQ if they cannot keep their share price above $1 sometime in the next 180 days. Although they may be able to avoid delisting for a while, their small market capitalization will hinder their efforts. Given their other financials, this just goes to show how desperate their current financial situation is."
XBox (Games)

Submission + - XBox Live! Accounts Hijacked

Submitted by powerlord
powerlord writes: According to an article at Security Focus the XBox Live! system has been the subject of an organized social engineering attack: "Rather than hacking computer servers, the clan's account stealers claim to rely on social engineering to convince support personnel at Microsoft — and its subsidiary Bungie Studios, the creator of the Halo game series — to help the attackers take control of the accounts. To do so, the players spin a story about something going wrong with their account — from a crashed box to a sibling changing the password — and ask for help "recovering" the data."

Microsoft's response: "After initially denying that the service had been hacked, Microsoft said the company is now investigating the issue, but stressed that the problems seem more to do with pretexting than with a security breach of its systems."
Programming

Submission + - Time measuring

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We all know computers can measure time in seconds and milliseconds. But how precise can computers be when measuring time? microseconds? nanoseconds? picoseconds? femtoseconds? attoseconds? zeptoseconds? yoctoseconds? How precise can you measure time on a x86 / home PC? How precise can you measure time on a computer? How do scientists measure time when accuracy and precision is very important?
United States

Submission + - Bush administration again stifles scientists.

Submitted by niloroth
niloroth writes: The Independent Online Reports on a leaked memorandum from the US Department of the Interior instructing members of the US Fish and Wildlife Service to refrain from mentioning climate change, sea ice, or polar bears in their trips to countries the arctic region. Following other such attempts by this administration to control either scientists connected with the government, or the results of those scientists, is there any hope for the next few years? Or is this just how it will be in the future no matter who is in power? Is the mix of science and government funding just too volatile?
Encryption

Submission + - Legal Battle For AACS Begins

Submitted by henrypijames
henrypijames writes: As widely expected, the MPAA has learned nothing from the debacle of its failed prosecution against DVD Jon (of DeCSS) and is now releasing its army of lawyers to fight against the circumvention of AACS (the successor of CSS): Upon the reception of a DMCA takedown notice, SourceForge has immediately terminated its hosting of BackupHDDVD (a tool to backup HD DVD movies, as its suggestes). The project leader is seeking advice on how to proceed.
Media

Submission + - Argentina Storm Chase Expedition, Strongest Storms

Submitted by
Jeff Gammons
Jeff Gammons writes: "A group of storm chasers from the United States are currently on a storm expedition in search of the worlds most intense lightning storms. The group is filming with the BBC for a upcoming documentary on National Geographic about these intense thunderstorm convergence area's in Argentina east of the Andes mountains. A NASA study identified these thunderstorms to be the most intense on earth. The strongest of the storms were found to occur east of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, where warm, humid air often collides with cooler, drier air, similar to storms that form east of the Rockies over the Plains in the United States.
http://www.stormvideographer.com/blog/2007/02/27/a rgentina-storm-chase-expedition-exclusive/"

Slashdot Top Deals

Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays. Embezzlement is another matter.

Close