Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Ideal, and Actual, IT Performance Metrics? 321

Posted by timothy from the spin-the-dial-shake-the-8-ball dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Recently it was revealed that our company measures IT performance by the time it takes to close trouble tickets. I consider IT's primary goal to be as transparent to the user as possible, thus this metric was rather troubling to me. Shouldn't we be focused on reducing calls, rather than simply closing them quickly? My question is: How is your IT performance measured, and how do you think it should be measured?"
Space

Junior-Sized Supernova Discovered By New York Teen 154

Posted by CmdrTaco from the so-many-prodigies dept.
Matt_dk writes "In November 2008, Caroline Moore, a 14-year-old student from upstate New York, discovered a supernova in a nearby galaxy, making her the youngest person ever to do so. Additional observations determined that the object, called SN 2008ha, is a new type of stellar explosion, 1000 times more powerful than a nova but 1000 times less powerful than a supernova. Astronomers say that it may be the weakest supernova ever seen."
The Almighty Buck

$33 Million In Poker Winnings Seized By US Govt 465

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A New York Times story reports that, 'Opening a new front in the government's battle against Internet gambling, federal prosecutors have asked four American banks to freeze tens of millions of dollars in payments owed to people who play poker online. ... "It's very aggressive, and I think it's a gamble on the part of the prosecutors," Mr. Rose said. He added that it was not clear what law would cover the seizure of money belonging to poker players, as opposed to the money of the companies involved.' Many players are reporting that their cashout checks have bounced."
Space

One Fifth of World's Population Can't See Milky Way At Night 612

Posted by timothy from the 80-20-rule dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Cosmos Magazine: "Light pollution has caused one-fifth of the world's population — mostly in Europe, Britain and the US — to lose their ability to see the Milky Way in the night sky. 'The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage,' said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet 'more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the US population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way.'"
PC Games (Games)

The Rise of Originality In MMOs 118

Posted by Soulskill from the there-go-my-chances-for-a-starcon-mmo dept.
Karen Hertzberg writes "Over the last half decade, gamers have been forced to wander through familiar worlds and universes. Studios have been licensing IPs left and right, grabbing everything from the Wheel of Time to Star Trek. Originality seemed to be a lost art, and although these worlds were fun to adventure in, many didn't hold the same sort of magical spell that original titles like EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot once enjoyed. But change is coming. Blizzard Entertainment revealed that their next MMO would be an original IP, and this year's E3 lineup featured more brand new games than titles derived from existing worlds. So, why the sudden shift? To answer that question, Ten Ton Hammer's Cody 'Micajah' Bye sent a number of questions to original IP development teams across the world."

Comment Re:Three options (Score 1) 1032

by Zebano (#26842865) Attached to: How To Keep Rats From Eating My Cables?
Not quite, but I had $9,500 in available credit on one card when I left college (with a balance of $3,200 that took awhile to pay off, ugg). I must say that I wish I only had $500 or so in credit at that time (I was young and stupid) so I couldn't have made the choices I made but that's blaming someone else for my failings.
United States

Submission + - Iowa seeks to remove electoral college (kcrg.com)

Submitted by Zebano
Zebano writes: Since changing the US constitution is too much work, the Iowa senate is considering a bill that would send all 7 of Iowa's electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election. This would only go into affect after enough states totaling 270 electoral votes (enough to elect a president) adopted similar resolutions.

Comment Re:The list (Score 1) 385

by Zebano (#26439977) Attached to: Tech Companies That Won't Survive 2009
Actually I find a decent solution is to just emulate winXP in VMWare and replace my backup image weekly. I also keep an image of a clean install available if there's something I miss that corrupted my backup. I only use the emulator for my web browsing, but due to the speed of my current hardware, considering moving all my activities into it (alternatively I could just start ghosting my install weekly and avoid the performance hit of the virtual machine).

Comment Re:Seems extreme to me (Score 1) 133

by Zebano (#26133231) Attached to: In Japan, a Billboard That Watches You
2 things

Re: wanting Stuff
1. I don't want less, but I want fewer material goods. Services such as chess/tennis tournaments or related services I still pay for and the material goods are made up for by Grandma and Mom buying my kids tons of toys (more than we can clean up at night).

Re: billboards
2. There is a billboard on I380 that alternates advertising with a daily joke. I pay attention to that one every time I drive past. I think mixing your ad in with desired content is a great way to get people to pay attention.

Slashdot Top Deals

And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones

Close