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Data Storage

Submission + - 161 Billion Gigabytes of Digital Information

Submitted by dthomas731
dthomas731 writes: The New York Times states that 161 billion gigabytes or 161 exabytes of digital information was created last year. Then they do their best to explain what "161 billion gigabytes" represents.

"That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun. Or you might think of it as 3 million times the information in all the books ever written, according to IDC. You'd need more than 2 billion of the most capacious iPods on the market to get 161 exabytes."
Personally, I can't comprehend something that large. How would you describe it?
Spam

Submission + - User/Submitter Under Auction

Submitted by
postasaurus
postasaurus writes: "The money grubbers at User/Submitter are now attempting to auction off their site for bids in the region of $50,000. Current willing bidders : 0. There's some useful information, and some apparent cv rewriting going on at the ebay auction page.

At a glance:

        * Launched in October 2006
        * Profitable I bet it is, moral though?
        * PageRank 6-7 As far as I can see, you have 0.
        * Nearly 4,000 registered users When you take into account the number of users on Digg, not too many.
        * Coded in PHP and MySQL

Winning bid receives:

        * Trademark: User/Submitter
        * Domain name: usersubmitter.com
        * All code and full database export (provided that usernames/transactions remain private)
        * All intellectual property

Opportunities for User/Submitter:

        * Full-scale social media optimization
        * Offerings for users and submitters of other social networks
        * Targeted demotion campaigns ('burying' on Digg, for instance) The rumours are apparently true
        * International crowdsourcing
        * Integration with SEO services
        * Design and user interface

This comes as a bit of a shock really, and though the blurb reads that they're selling because they're unable to keep up with the demand — despite all the money they're making. It's possible that their inability to promote anything to the front page without it being buried quickly due to some smart Diggers within the last week or so has crippled their two bit operation. If you check out my last post you can see how to check up on the latest user/submitter stories with my application. There's a new version already developed — just waiting for them to try and cripple the original before I release.

Happy Digging in the future all."
Slashdot.org

Journal Journal: Moderation System Needs Work

Journal by bronzey214
The best chance of being modded is by posting when the article is fresh with less than 15 or so comments. This needs work. What are your opinions?
Space

NASA Can't Pay for Killer Asteroid Hunt 398

Posted by Hemos from the anyone-raid-the-coffee-fund-money dept.
CGISecurity.com writes "NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn't enough money to pay for the task so it won't get done. 'We know what to do, we just don't have the money,' said Simon 'Pete' Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center." But hey, it's just the potential end of the world, so nothing much to worry about there.
Microsoft

Submission + - U.S. DOT ban on Vista

Submitted by Fozzyuw
Fozzyuw writes: My company has just sent out a memo stating that no computers are allowed to be purchased or upgraded to Windows Vista, Office 2007, or Internet Explorer. While being my companies web developer, I've upgraded to IE7 some time ago, but only after Multiple IE allowed me to easily install IE6.

This policy memo was initialed due to the recent action by the U.S. Department of Transpertation placing a ban on these new Microsoft Products stating...

"there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."


I think it makes sense for my company to do this. As the old saying goes "If it's not broke, don't fix it". So, are there other companies out there that are enacting a similar kind of policy?
Space

Submission + - Black Holes Discovered as Source of Gamma Rays

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A very recent paper has been published that gives a very sound explanation for the source of gamma rays that permeate our galaxy. Objects like the Milky Way's central supermassive object (Sagittarius A*) are now suspected to be the culprit but since these are widely believed to be a black holes, little is known and skepticism is high that even gamma radiation could escape them. All that has been observed is gamma rays seem to coming from black holes. To test this theory, two scientists created a computer model and found that intense gravity near the event horizon caused protons to fling outward at near light speeds where some would randomly make it beyond 10 light years of the black hole after thousands of years. Once they are sufficiently far away, these super high-energy protons would collide with low-energy protons to form pions which decay into gamma radiation emanating in all directions from the collision. If their simulation holds to be accurate and survives the skepticism of the community, the source of some gamma rays that were believed to all be remnants of the big bang could instead be signals from just outside black holes. Not only does a rapidly rotating Wolf-Rayet star collapsing into a black hole cause narrow streams of gamma radiation but apparently they continue to emit them long after their formation."
The Internet

Submission + - France Bans Amateur Videos of Violent Acts

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "On the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King beating, which was filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday, the French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules."

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