Slashdot

Dial-Up writes "Two issues with BitTorrent are: stale torrents (they're old, and very few people, if any, are seeding) and slow P2P speeds. Why not use the webserver, which would otherwise be serving HTTP downloads, to seed a torrent? The torrent would be constantly kept fresh (as there would always be the webserver there to seed, and you'd get the same download speed as over HTTP) and bandwidth demands would be shared by those downloading. The only downside to this that I could come up with is BitTorrent throttling by some ISPs. However if torrents become more ubiquitous, these ISPs may come under pressure to stop throttling."

An anonymous reader writes "I am a high school senior entering college this fall. I have two choices: I can take Management Information Systems (at a school with a respected business school), or I can take Computer Science. I've been a computer enthusiast for 10 years (learning more everyday), but I don't have a lot of prior coding experience, and I'm nervous that the Computer Science will be too difficult without a solid base.

I want to be a systems analyst when I leave college. Will the MIS major cripple my ability and desirability, since it is not technically in depth enough? Will the lack of a business education hamper my ability to move out of the tech sector if I choose CS? Does it really matter?"

The computer maker said that Donald J. Carty, hired in 2007 to help lead the company’s turnaround, has resigned. He will be replaced by Brian Gladden.


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Dell-CFO.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

A couple of years ago I released a draft of a science fiction novel under the by-nc-nd CC license. I started accepting edits in the hopes of polishing a manuscript for submission to a publisher. A publisher never materialized, but the draft started getting really solid. So a couple of months ago I decided to buy an ISBN and sell hard copies from Lulu. While doing research for a press release I great difficulty discovering the first CC, community edited, work of fiction. I strongly suspect that this novel is the first. My questions are can anybody point to a prior CC + community edited + fiction + novel? How about under other licenses? Science fiction? If someone has traveled this road before, I'd like to ask them how it went. I would also like to vet this here before making such a claim.
http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/

Psionicist writes "What are good countries to live in for tech/science types, such as programmers, mathematicians, scientists or engineers? I'm looking for a country with libertarian tendencies, low taxes, strong protection of civil liberties and no police state laws. As I'm probably not the only slashdotter thinking of moving somewhere else, a discussion about various countries from a nerd/slashdot perspective should be very interesting. How do you like the country you live currently in? Where would you like to move to and why?"

I'm a high school senior that is trying to pick a college to attend. I've been accepted by two comparably selective schools. One school is a highly regarded tech school, and the other is a highly regarded liberal arts institution. I prefer the liberal arts college, but the computer science program is small, graduating about a dozen students a year. The course load is heavily theory based; programming languages are taught in later years.

Would the tech school vs non tech school matter? Are CS majors from non-tech school considered inferior? What would an HR department think?

DW writes "After Tech ARP broke the stories on the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and the planned RTM schedule of Windows XP SP3 , they have now managed to obtain the confirmed release schedule of Windows XP Service Pack 3 ! This is the news that all loyal Windows XP users have been waiting for. Check out the full details ."

An anonymous reader writes "Captured by the Hubble Space Telescope is an image of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy. The photo was taken way back in March 2004 and if you rotate the photo a bit, the star resembles the Firefox logo very much!"

xs400 writes "I work at a company that has set up a web filter, and like the urban legend, they are turning the heat on the frog very slowly. Yesterday, it was gaming sites, a week later even the local news websites are blocked. Tomorrow Slashdot? Have you had this happen at work? What reasons would you give to get them to behave sensibly?"

Stony Stevenson writes "Researchers in the US have developed a microchip fan with no moving parts that operates silently and generates enough wind to cool a laptop computer. The solid-state fan, developed with support from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), is touted as the most powerful and energy efficient fan of its size. The device produces three times the flow rate of a typical small mechanical fan and is one-fourth the size. The technology has the power to cool a 25W chip with a device smaller than one cubic-cm and can someday be integrated into silicon to make self-cooling chips, according to the researchers."

superglaze writes "What's to say? After much prevaricating and slipping out then pulling back, the first service pack for Windows Vista has actually been released. It's available for download now via Microsoft's sites, with an auto-update rollout scheduled for next month, and it should hit Amazon's virtual shelves on Wednesday."

smooth wombat writes "There is a fairly significant portion of the population which does not go out and grab the newest OS, gadget, web browser or any other technology related product. Why? It's not because they're luddites but rather, they are comfortable with what they know. Take the case of John Uribe, a 56-year old real estate agent who still uses AOL dial-up and only recently switched to Firefox after being prodded for weeks by an AOL message telling him that on March 1st, AOL would no longer support Netscape. Why did it take him so long to stop using Netscape and make the switch? From the article: 'It worked for me, so I stuck with it. Until there is really some reason to totally abandon it, I won't.'"

An anonymous reader writes "According to numerous posts on Apple's discussion forums (several threads of which have been deleted by Apple), as well as a number of popular video editing blogs, Apple's recent QT 7.4 update does more than just enable iTunes video rentals — it also disables Adobe's professional After Effects video editing software. Attempting to render video files after the update results in a DRM permissions error. Unfortunately, it is not possible to roll back to a previous version of QT without doing a full OSX reinstall. Previous QT updates have also been known to have severe issues with pro video editing apps."