Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Think you know what you are talking about? (Score 1) 607

by MichaelJE2 (#25117443) Attached to: Tech Vs. Business?
I intern for the head computer tech at a school, and every teacher assumes every problem is with "The Server" which seems to be a magical entity that controls all. Firefox being slow? It's the server's fault. Can't print to a TCP/IP printer? It has to be the server. It would be nice if they didn't think they knew what they were talking about, because then I wouldn't get a headache whenever I talk to them.
Networking

Why BitTorrent Causes Latency and How To Fix It 315

Posted by kdawson from the first-mile-downstream-would-still-hurt dept.
Sivar recommends an article by George Ou examining why BitTorrent affects performance so much more than other types of file transfer and a recommendation on how to fix it. The suggestion is to modify P2P clients so that, at least on upload, they space their traffic evenly in time so that other applications have a chance to fit into the interstices. "[Any] VoIP [user] or online gamer who has a roommate or a family member who uses BitTorrent (or any P2P application) knows what a nightmare it is when BitTorrent is in use. The ping (round trip latency) goes through the roof and it stays there making VoIP packets drop out and game play impossible."
The Internet

Explosion At ThePlanet Datacenter Drops 9,000 Servers 431

Posted by kdawson from the could-happen-to-anyone dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Customers hosting with ThePlanet, a major Texas hosting provider, are going through some tough times. Yesterday evening at 5:45 pm local time an electrical short caused a fire and explosion in the power room, knocking out walls and taking the entire facility offline. No one was hurt and no servers were damaged. Estimates suggest 9,000 servers are offline, affecting 7,500 customers, with ETAs for repair of at least 24 hours from onset. While they claim redundant power, because of the nature of the problem they had to go completely dark. This goes to show that no matter how much planning you do, Murphy's Law still applies." Here's a Coral CDN link to ThePlanet's forum where staff are posting updates on the outage. At this writing almost 2,400 people are trying to read it.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - 'Sidejacking ' On WiFi

Submitted by ancientribe
ancientribe writes: As if you need another reason not to use WiFi unprotected, here's one: a researcher has released a tool that lets hackers "sidejack" your machine and access your Web accounts. Called Hamster, the tool basically clones the victim's cookies by sniffing their session IDs and controlling their Website accounts.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=130 692&WT.svl=news1_2
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Will Bush Cancel The 2008 Election? 10

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius
Published on Tuesday, July 31, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Will Bush Cancel The 2008 Election?

by Harvey Wasserman & Bob Fitrakis

It is time to think about the unthinkable.

The Bush Administration has both the inclination and the power to cancel the 2008 election.
Google

Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290

Posted by Zonk from the gotta-love-freebies dept.
taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Mac users' Internet experience to remain seamless 2

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended, thanks to the renewal of a font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. At TypeCon2007 Microsoft and Apple announced they have renewed their font licensing agreement, giving Apple users ongoing use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.

Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts", and are therefore widely used by Internet developers.

Slashdot Top Deals

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson

Close