auroran - Slashdot User

Sperm power could drive nano-scale robots 0

Submitted by auroran on Saturday December 29 2007, @01:48AM

auroran writes "Here is a story that's difficult to get a grip on. The CBC is reporting that Cornell researchers are looking at using sperm power to propel nano robots. http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/12/27/sperm-power.html?ref=rss"

Lack of input validation kills

Submitted by ushering05401 on Wednesday May 09 2007, @12:53PM

ushering05401 writes "Multiple news sources are reporting at least eight deaths across North America due to failures in the calibration and use of pumps designed to deliver cancer medications. The medications being administered are so powerful that once an overdose has occured there is not a way to save the victims life. The case reviewed in this article http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.h tml?id=d296990e-fc05-4b5d-86b4-32d3c2e4be9b&k=6732 3
describes a woman who recieved an overdose living for twenty two days after the overdose knowing she was going to die.

In addition to the human element, regulators reviewing the cases cite the lack of sanity checks embedded into the pump as an issue that needs to be addressed. Yet another example of technology designed without proper validation testing to account for human error.

The nurses involved in most of these cases are not being disciplined. Regulators cite systematic failures that should have been addressed when the procedures and technology were implemented."

Astronaut Wally Schirra Dies at 84

Submitted by

Billosaur

on Thursday May 03 2007, @01:10PM

Billosaur writes "The original Mercury 7 astronauts are now down to 2, with the passing of Wally Schirra. The 5th American to fly into space and the third to orbit the Earth, Schirra joined NASA in April 1959. He was the only Mercury 7 veteran to fly all three of the pioneering NASA space series (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo). He died of natural causes, according to his family; he had been suffering from cancer but it was not immediately clear if this was a contributing factor in his death."

How often do you rebuild your main desktop machine

Submitted by

roelbj

on Wednesday May 02 2007, @01:56PM

roelbj writes "How often do you reload your OS and software?

Options:
1. Monthly
2. Every 2 months
3. Every 6 months
4. Every year
5. Every 2 years
6. I'm still using Windows 3.1"

Virginia Tech Shootings

Submitted by

mudetroit

on Monday April 16 2007, @12:15PM

mudetroit writes "I am sure that this is already being reported by a number of sources, but there are 22 confirmed dead on the campus of Virginia Tech University. The details of the whole incident are still unfolding. Virginia Tech is asking parents or family wishing to reunite with students on campus to go to the Inn at Virginia Tech."

Journal: April Fool's Submissions Overboard and Underfunny 2

Journal by evought on Sunday April 01 2007, @07:08PM

I agree with some of the comments and submissions I have seen today that the yearly stupidity on Slashdot is just plain dumb. Unfortunately, these comments are drowned out. One or two good hoaxes would have made my day. ("Google Paper" was actually quite good). A score of idiotic and unbelievable posts just ruins the site and real news is buried. Having looked through the Firehose at several points today, there have been several serious submissions that have been voted up but have never made

SANs and Excessive Disk Utilization? 83

Posted by Cliff on Thursday March 22 2007, @07:25AM
from the tweaks-and-performance-improvements dept.

pnutjam asks: "I work for a small to medium mental health company as the Network Administrator. While I think a SAN is a bit of overkill for our dozen servers, it was here when I got here. We currently boot 7 servers from our SAN, which houses all of their disks. Several of them have started to show excessive disk load, notably our SQL server, and our old domain controller (which is also the file/print server). I am in the process of separating our file/print server from our domain controller, but right now I get excessive disk load during the morning when people log on (we use roaming profiles). I think the disks need to be defragged, but should this be done on the servers, or on the SAN itself? When it comes to improving performance, I get conflicting answers when I inquire whether I would get better throughput from newer fibre-channel cards (ours are PCI-x, PCI-e is significantly faster), or mixing in some local disks, or using multiple fibre channel cards. Has anyone dealt with a similar situation or has some expertise in this area?"