mxpengin - Slashdot User

Bank Run in Second Life 336

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @10:48AM from the just-like-in-the-first-one dept.

Jamie found an interesting bit about a bank run in Second Life. The recent ban on gambling combined with a $12k theft from the 2L stock market has caused people to try to get their money back. The article mentions that this could supposedly affect 8.5M players even tho most estimates of actual hard core players in the system are in the 5 to low 6 figure range.

Submission + - Acer CEO Cites Vista as a 'Disappointment' (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Monday July 23, 2007 @12:13PM

eldavojohn writes: "Quite surprisingly the head of Acer, Gianfranco Lanci, has spoken out against Vista saying that the entire PC industry is 'disappointed' with it. He claims not only stability issues but also talks frankly about his number one concern: sales. Is it Microsoft's responsibility to make sure that its operating systems sell computers? I don't think so but Lanci disagrees, while talking about Vista doing nothing for sales: "The entire industry is disappointed by Windows Vista. And that's not going to change in the second half of this year. I really don't think that someone has bought a new PC specifically for Vista." Well, it's clear to me now why PC makers might be shying away from Linux, I've never had to buy a new computer when I upgraded to a new kernel — in fact, my first computer I built in 1999 is still running Linux flawlessly with nothing changed but the hard drive."

Submission + - Barbara Boxer Wants Opinions on Global Warming

Submitted by

fistfullast33l

on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @05:25PM

fistfullast33l writes: "Barbara Boxer(D-CA) wants to know how you would legislate environmental issues in the 110th Congress. She has posted a survey asking you to rank 9 items that Congress can do to limit the effects of Global Warming. The Congresswoman is currently Chair of Environment and Public Works Committee in the United States Senate and plans to put your input to good use."

Fedora Metrics Help Whole Linux Community 132

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @04:42PM from the doing-the-numbers dept.

lisah writes "When Fedora released Fedora Core 6 late last year, the team decided to track the number of users with unique IP addresses who connected to yum in search of updates for a new installation of FC6. According to the data they collected, FC6 crossed the one-million user mark in just 74 days. Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack says that while it's great to use metrics to better understand what users want, the real value lies in its ability to encourage hardware vendors to more offer more Linux-oriented goods and services. Spevack told Linux.com: '[W]e always say we wish hardware vendors had more [Linux-capable] drivers. Well, if you can go to them and say, "Hey, there's millions of people using this," then maybe they will listen. In the real world, you need data to prove your case. Well, here it is.'" Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Transistor Made From Bose-Einstein Condensate 80

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @04:20PM from the cold-circuitry dept.

holy_calamity writes "US researchers have made a transistor from a Bose-Einstein condensate. They claim it to be the first step towards 'atomic circuits' that run with atoms instead of electrons. 'A small number of atoms can be used to control the flow of a large number of atoms, in much the same way that an FET uses a gate voltage to control a large electric current,' says lead research Alex Zozulya. The abstract of their paper is freely available."

IBM's Chief Architect Says Software is at Dead End 334

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @12:33PM from the its-da-end-of-da-woild dept.

j2xs writes "In an InformationWeek article entitled 'Where's the Software to Catch Up to Multicore Computing?' the Chief Architect at IBM gives some fairly compelling reasons why your favorite software will soon be rendered deadly slow because of new hardware architectures. Software, she says, just doesn't understand how to do work in parallel to take advantage of 16, 64, 128 cores on new processors. Intel just stated in an SD Times article that 100% of its server processors will be multicore by end of 2007. We will never, ever return to single processor computers. Architect Catherine Crawford goes on to discuss some of the ways developers can harness the 'tiny supercomputers' we'll all have soon, and some of the applications we can apply this brute force to."

SCO Admits They Might Just Not Win - Maybe 126

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @09:53AM from the it-tolls-for-thee-sco-it-tolls-for-thee dept.

inetsee writes "According to Groklaw, SCO has admitted in a 10K filing that if the court grants any or all of IBM's six motions for summary judgement, 'We can not guarantee whether our claims against IBM or Novell will be heard by a jury.' The site goes through a statement by statement run-down of SCO's filing, noting things like the absence of employee numbers (a piece of information they told investors they would disclose). Elsewhere in the document, it is revealed that SCO's stock is in danger of being delisted from NASDAQ, they may come under further litigation from an unrelated legal matter, and SCO is now claiming that OSes like HP-UX and Solaris are derivatives of code that they 'own'. Despite the dire pronouncements throughout the filing, if everything else runs according to plan their 10K indicates they could keep fighting the good fight for another 12 months."

Linux Kernel Devs Offer Free Driver Development 348

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @08:41AM from the Nvidia-this-means-you dept.

schwaang writes "Linux Kernel hacker Greg Kroah-Hartman, author of Linux Kernel in a Nutshell has posted an epic announcement on his blog. This could portend increased device compatibility for Linux users, higher-quality drivers, and fewer non-free binary blobs." From the announcement: "[T]he Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development... All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while. If your company is worried about NDA issues surrounding your device's specifications, we have arranged a program... in order to properly assure that all needed NDA requirements are fulfilled. Now your developers will have more time to work on drivers for all of the other operating systems out there, and you can add 'supported on Linux' to your product's marketing material."

Submission + - Microsoft and Google to fight it out in planes

Submitted by on Monday January 22, 2007 @11:27PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the latest battleground between Microsoft and Google is in the skies
Google, Microsoft take to the skies over Sydney

The tech giants have separately announced they have hired planes to fly over certain parts of Sydney on Australia Day, photographing what lies beneath.

The Microsoft-sponsored campaign, orchestrated by the National Australia Day Council (NADC), is dubbed "Look Up and Smile". It hopes to gather hundreds of Sydneysiders at Centennial Park to create a huge map of Australia.
LookUpAndSmile

Google's plane flyover on the other hand is aimed at drawing more attention to its Google Maps service, by updating it with new, higher resolution images of parts of Sydney.
Google Flyover

Submission + - Fortune: Second Life: It's not a game

Submitted by

nevermore94

on Monday January 22, 2007 @08:41PM

nevermore94 writes: ""Fortune's David Kirkpatrick reports on why IBM's Sam Palmisano and other tech leaders think Second Life could be a gold mine."

I think that this is one of the best written articles that I have read about Second Life. Not only does it talk about why so many companies, such as IBM, are investing heavily in it, but also it gives a good description and history of it and its goals and technology. It praises it where it's due and doesn't pull any punches in discussing its flaws either."

Comment Monopolies in other countries (Score 2, Insightful) 192

by mxpengin on Tuesday January 16, 2007 @05:29PM (#17635940) Attached to: Verizon Sells Off Rural Lines

This is why, sometimes monopolies are something not so bad, it depends on the country where you live. Here in Japan NTT is a virtual monopoly for landlines, but I am in a semi-rural area and I have fiber-to-home.
In Mexico Telmex is also a virtual monopoly, the prices suck and the technology as well, but you can use DSL more less in all simu-rural areas.
Same policies for all the country. In general I hate monopolies but this is one of the few good points on them.

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