Slashdot

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."

An anonymous reader writes "For the first time, the Army has set up a project office, just for building videogames. The military has been training troops with games for decades, of course. But this is the first wing of the armed forces dedicated exclusively for gaming. One of the first projects: a tool kit that would let soldiers "build and customize their own training scenarios — just like the Marines' did, adapting Armed Assault for military purposes."

mplex writes "How vulnerable is the internet to terrorist attack? Is it robust enough to handle an outage on a massive scale? Should the commercial infrastructure that powers the internet be kept secret? These are the sorts of questions raised by Mark Gibbs in his latest column in Network World. 'There is an alternate route available for nearly all services through Las Vegas or Northern California serving all facilities-based carriers in Los Angeles -- all interconnected at numerous L.A. and L.A.-area fiber-optic terminals supporting both metro and long-distance cable.' Given that the internet thrives on open networks, it's hard to imagine keeping them a secret. At best, we must be prepared to deal with the worst."

twasserman writes "Mellon Investor Services sent a letter to HP Share Ownership Plan members reporting that they "discovered that the rounding logic" they "had been using resulted in miscalculated dividends and proceeds amounts during the period of April 2001 through September 2004." Mellon changed their rounding logic and re-calculated every transaction for this period, then issued checks to reflect the difference. My check, sent by first class mail, was for $0.02, and arrived just in time for last minute holiday shopping. A set of FAQs, which accompanied the check, noted that bank charges may make it infeasible for recipients to deposit or cash the check."

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Representing himself, without an attorney, an Alabama man has defeated a summary judgment motion by the RIAA. In Motown v. Liggins the judge ruled that "there is a genuine issue of material fact that precludes granting summary judgment: whether Defendant copied or distributed any of Plaintiffs' recordings. In his responses to the requests for admissions, Plaintiff did not admit that he copied or distributed any of Plaintiffs' recordings. Plaintiffs have not demonstrated the absence of a genuine issue of material fact, and their motion is therefore due to be denied". The case is published in Westlaw at 2006 WL 3257792."

writermike writes "I haven't worked exclusively at a command-line since DOS-days. ('tis sad, I know) Earlier today while listening to a podcast that explained in good detail how to install Slackware Linux and how it only comes up to the command-line by default, it got me to wondering: What can't you do at the command-line today? Some things are obvious, like You Tube, but what about other things? If you were sent into an O/S with a command-line, what would you be unable to do?"

An anonymous reader writes "It is now incredibly easy to setup a software raid on GNU/Linux. Distributions shipping with recent kernels offer many RAID level options: 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 with many per level options. Even though the installers makes it easy to setup the RAID, it is not so easy to decide what level to pick. Especially with 5, 6 and 10, there doesn't seem to be a clear winner. How do slashdotters decide which level to choose? Do you run benchmarks on each level? Is there a set of "official" benchmarks? How about disaster recovery?"

Brad Lucier writes "The Financial Times (through MSN Money) reports that "Citigroup is rolling out a network of biometric automatic cash machines aimed at illiterate Indian slum dwellers. ... The machines will recognise account holders' thumbprints, eliminating the need for a personal identification number, and will have colour-coded screen instructions and voiceovers to help guide them through transactions." Citigroup recognizes that it can make money bringing banking to more people; from the article:

"Though India's population exceeds 1bn, Citigroup estimates that there are only about 300m bank accounts in the country. ... "It's not a philanthropic exercise," [PS Jayakumar, a Citigroup business manager in India] said. "For it to be sustainable, we should break even and make a little bit of money."

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Cathal O'Brien writes "Yes everyone knew it was coming, but its nice to finally hear and see that the ISO (International Standards Organization) has yesterday officially made the ODF format into a real ISO standard. Read More"

An anonymous reader writes "This top 10 rounds up what it calls 'the best, worst and craziest' uses of RFID out there — including chipped kids at Legoland, smart pub tables that let you order drinks, smartcards for sports fans, and chipped airline passengers. The craziest use of the tech surely has to be RFID chips for Marks & Spencer suits — you couldn't pay most people to wear one of them."

mofomojo writes, "Democracy Now! reports that a new study by the Center for Media and Democracy says Americans are still being shown corporate public relations videos disguised as news reports on newscasts across the country. In April, the Center identified 77 stations using Video News Releases in their newscasts; the findings led to an investigation by the Federal Communications Commission. A followup study has found that 10 of those stations are still airing VNRs today, for a new total of 46 stations in 22 states." From the article: "Most of the VNRs have aired on stations owned by large media conglomerates such as News Corp., Tribune, and Disney. They've also been sponsored by some of the country's biggest corporations including General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline, and Allstate Insurance."

c_forq writes, "According to APC magazine, every new Windows Vista computer will be given its own domain name to access files remotely. There is a catch though: to use it one must be using IPv6. Is the push for Vista also going to be the push finally to switch everything from IPv4 to IPv6?" Microsoft, meanwhile, is trying to convince businesses to adopt both Vista and Office 2007 at once. An analyst is quoted: 'In all likelihood, enterprises will tie deployment of both Vista and Office 2007 with a hardware upgrade cycle.' His reasoning is that it will be easier for companies to handle one disruption to its IT systems than two. Or three.

An anonymous reader writes to tell us about an extremely helpful user who is answering questions from all comers about the new MacBook Pro. "A few days ago, a user by the name 'bcavanau' posted on the macrumors.com forums that he had just picked up a new MacBook Pro. Forum members started asking him about features, specifications, and benchmarks. He was happy to oblige, posting responses to everyone's questions. Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated. Thanks 'bcavanau', you get two thumbs up." The link to the site is cached via the Coral Content Distribution Network.