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OK, here's the scoop; I may, through my own stupidity, have fried the motherboard in my desktop PC at home, and am facing the prospect of getting a new one, and I'd like to get some input on which direction I should take, since it's been almost 5 years since I last did this.

The PC that may be dead has a P4 3Ghz processor on an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard, 1GB RAM (DDR400) and some peripherals worth salvaging (hard drives, DVD drive, etc.). I was trying to plug in some additional memory, decided to take it back out and check a few things online before proceeding, and closed up the box. When I fired it up, a rather nasty smell starting coming out of the case, and when I powered back down, I realized I hadn't taken the memory card out after all, and worse yet, it was sitting halfway into the slot. Now when I try to boot I get one long beep followed by two short ones, and endlessly repeating cycle that I haven't been able to get definitive info on as to what it means (some say main memory failure, others the video adapter).

I'm trying to figure out if perhaps the existing memory got fried and putting different DIMMs in might resolve the issue, but I'd rather not pay for that only to find out that's not the problem, and the mobo is indeed toast. So I've started browsing online for a new rig...

What I Do: A little gaming (NHL08), but mostly intensive database and spreadsheet work. I have a blog where I dig into statistical analysis of the NHL, and I'm in the process of designing a database that would be updated after each night's games.

Since it's been so long since I've had a box built, I don't even know where to start. AMD? Intel? 2 or 4 CPU? 2GB RAM? 4GB? 32-bit or 64? I assume, based on everything I've read, that XP is the way to go over Vista (Windows only, please). I'm not looking to blow huge sums of money here, so I like to find sweet spots where the diminishing returns for that extra $ start to tail off.

TopShelf writes "The New York Times is now reporting that Microsoft has yielded in the long battle over European Antitrust claims. Quoth the Times: 'Microsoft has given up its nine-year fight against antitrust regulators in Europe, saying today that it would not challenge a court judgment there and would share technical information with rivals on terms the software giant had long resisted.'"

At the risk of starting a classic flame war, I have a pressing request for assistance.

As a hobby, I blog about NHL hockey, in particular the extension of statistical analysis which until recent years has been about as sophisticated as ancient cave drawings. For the last year or so, I've pursued this by compiling data in spreadsheets for a series of ad-hoc analytical pursuits, but the time has come to formalize my data structures into a database with tables fed by scripts that parse game data as posted at NHL.com. But which free database should I use?

Some operational parameters to consider: I'm envisioning some basic data import tables (I'm developing scripts in Excel to pull the web data down and parse into columns), followed by a series of tables fed by programs which pull data together from a variety of sources (stored in table form for ease of reporting). Most of these tables would only run in the 1,000 - 100,000 range, while one in particular could run as high as 5,000,000 or so. There aren't many instances where multiple indexes over a given table would be required, but the reporting built off these tables could be computationally intense (i.e. exponential moving averages built off of subtotals).

So which DB should I choose? MySQL, PostgreSQL, Open Office's Base? I'm at a bit of a loss as to which direction to go in, and I'd rather not head down a particular path only to find it's not going to pan out.

I've recently been tasked with leading the integration effort for a large systems implementation here at work, and am facing a challenge more daunting than any mere technical obstacle; how does one best get hardcore old-school programmers to embrace a new way of integrating our applications?

We're replacing a large, homegrown COBOL application on a mainframe with a more modular, Java-based ERP on a midrange platform. The kicker is that we need to replace over 100 interface points between other internal systems and the legacy app, and the direction we're headed in is to leverage a GUI-based middleware product to accomplish that task, and take initial steps towards establishing a more loosely coupled, flexible systems architecture. I'm convinced this is technically feasible and will reap many benefits going forward (particularly as other major projects come along), but our developers have a hard time letting go of their point-to-point, custom programs with lots of embedded information directing processing for specific customers or situations.

This group is throwing every conceivable objection to the middleware approach, and most of them are failing to make much headway as we develop some pilot projects to build expertise, despite having had ample training and the services of a consultant to provide mentorship as they work their way up the learning curve.

The bottom line is that they are resisting this new method by any means available: submitting lots of trouble tickets for minor issues, not digging through the documentation and throwing up their hands in futility, etc. Has anybody else here in the /. community dealt with such a generational change in development technique with existing IT staff? We're all sympathetic for experienced workers getting pushed aside for younger talent, but if the old dog can't learn new tricks, perhaps it's time to head to the pet store...

Just when you thought managerial spying was the exclusive field for tech-savvy firms like HP, the details are now coming out about an electronic spying scandal that brought down the head of the National Hockey League Players Association, Ted Saskin. Over the course of fifteen months, Saskin and an associate regularly accessed the email accounts of NHL player reps who wanted to have Saskin's hiring investigated. In addition, the results of a secret ballot ratifying the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement were provided to Saskin by members of the NHLPA's IT group - so watch out for any resumes listing NHLPA Network Security as a working experience!

DigitalDame2 writes "Intel's latest Centrino Duo chipset, released today, gives you GMA X3100 graphics, support for Draft-n Wi-Fi, better battery life, and front-side bus speeds of up to 800 MHz. Along with the release, of course, comes a host of new laptops sporting the chipset, including offerings from Dell, Fujitsu, HP, and Lenovo. PC Mag has complete coverage of this new technology with reviews, news, and more."

This morning's Indianapolis Star profiles a local programmer who is raising funds to put Tux on a race car for the Indianapolis 500, which runs in later this month. His website has already raised over $11,000 for the cause, which hopes to promote Linux during one of the world's most-watched sporting events. If he can raise $350,000, a primary sponsorship would be available, which would mean a larger logo featured on the side of the car.

zhang1983 writes "Last week there was a slashdot discussion about the potentials of Microsoft acquiring DoubleClick .
Now it appears that Google is also a contender to acquire this web advertisement placement firm.
If Google indeed does buys out DoubleClick, does that mean more chair-throwing? Whatever happened to "Do No Evil"?"

An anonymous reader writes "The Space Review has an article exposing an email by a retired NASA manager that attacks NASA's astronaut program and the very concept of human life in space. Dr. Giulio Varsi, a former high-level manager at JPL and NASA Headquarters, wrote that astronauts 'sit themselves on top of a bomb or, as we have learned recently, stuff themselves into oversized diapers'. He also wrote that humans in space had a 'menial job' that could be outsourced to robots or 'less developed countries'. Finally, Varsi compared astronaut deaths to the 'late Evel Knievel', except that Knievel is alive and well. The Space Review article takes some time to denigrate Varsi's email, but also expresses hope that most people at NASA support both humans and robots in space."

YonathanY writes "Timothy Swager began developing bomb-sniffing technology a decade ago under a Pentagon-funded research project to help explosives disposal teams clear land mines — but it hasn't been used for that purpose."

Anonymous Developer writes "We have a small, and young dev team. Currently, we have operated from a whiteboard and text files and plan for the coming 1 — 2 weeks (does this methodology even have a name?). Now we thought it is probably a good time to introduce governance and formality to the dev process before we expand further, or one of us is hit by a bus, but at the same time we don't want to introduce too much overhead or adversely affect the current dynamic of our team. We are also wanting to introduce some form of governance to our dev process and to preempt something (detrimental to productivity and morale) being forced upon us.

We would be interested to hear experiences of others who have been in through similar experiences. What works, what doesn't, etc."

Google announced today a partnership with the National Basketball Association to provide a new "NBA Channel" on YouTube, featuring game highlights and videos featuring NBA players. The new arrangement isn't as extensive as that between Google and the National Hockey League, which provides full games for online viewing, but marks a significant new addition to YouTube's partnership-driven content.

The NHL repeatedly gets blasted for perceived marketing failures, so it's interesting to see the media-darling NBA following in their footsteps in this case.

thefickler writes "Norad is using our tax dollars to track Santa. Haven't we got anything more evil to shoot down?"

El Lobo writes "Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse and AIG Technologies today became some of the first customers to tap the benefits of the recently announced collaboration between Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. on interoperability between Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Linux.

Deutsche Bank, already a significant user of Novell and Microsoft products, was pleased that the collaboration would improve interoperability among various systems. "Microsoft and Novell*s agreement gives us the benefit of choice of platforms and tremendous flexibility that will help make our company more competitive and efficient." said Clemens Jochum, chief technology officer of Deutsche Bank AG.

http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/17037.html"

Law Nun writes "As per the usual policy of publishing applications 18 months after their receipt, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published Microsoft's patent application for a "Content syndication platform," which sounds a whole lot like RSS:

From the abstract:

"A content syndication platform, such as a web content syndication platform, manages, organizes and makes available for consumption content that is acquired from the Internet. In at least some embodiments, the platform can acquire and organize web content, and make such content available for consumption by many different types of applications. These applications may or may not necessarily understand the particular syndication format. An application program interface (API) exposes an object model which allows applications and users to easily accomplish many different tasks such as creating, reading, updating, deleting feeds and the like."

The application, No. 11/158,936, was filed June 21, 2005 by Amar S. Gandhi, et. al. No word on the buckets of prior art which likely exist.

The application can be found here: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2F srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220060288329%22.PGN R.&OS=DN/20060288329&RS=DN/20060288329"