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The Internet

Asia Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses 321

Posted by timothy
from the perhaps-you'd-like-to-try-the-duck dept.
ZerXes writes "It seems that APNIC has just released the last block of IPv4 addresses and are now completely out, a lot faster then expected. Even though APNIC received 3 /8 blocks in February the high growth of mobile devices made the addresses run out even before the summer. 'From this day onwards, IPv6 is mandatory for building new Internet networks and services,' says APNIC Director General Paul Wilson."
Google

Bing Becomes No.2 Search Engine at 4.37% 366

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the now-that's-a-gap dept.
suraj.sun writes "Bing overtook Yahoo for the first time worldwide in January, and increased its lead in February, according to web analytics company, StatCounter. Its research arm StatCounter Global Stats finds that globally Bing reached 4.37%, in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both trail far behind Google's 89.94% of the global search engine market." Just a little more plagiarizing to go!

Comment: Re:I generate my power with solar (Score 1) 507

by ottffssent (#34473208) Attached to: Annual power consumption at your residence?

Actually, yes. I can tell you exactly how much (electrical) energy I've been billed for every month for the past several years. In theory this tracks closely with actual energy consumption. I can further tell you that my energy consumption from gas for heating slightly exceeds my electrical energy consumption, but they're quite close (within 1% for the past 12 billed months). My condo association dues include hot water, so my true energy consumption is somewhat higher, and specifically underestimates gas.

I also burn on average 1.4gal/day of gasoline, or about 18.7MWh/yr, which exceeds the combined gas and electric usage for my home by a comfortable margin. There are further energy expenditures at work and of course in the production and transportation costs of the food and other materials I consume on an annual basis. Plus miscellaneous other expenditures of smaller magnitude.

Comment: Use your local computer store (Score 1) 606

by ottffssent (#33929394) Attached to: Generic PCs For Corporate Use?

If you're saving money by building machines yourself, you're paying too much for your computers. Which you knew, having asked the question in the first place.

Find a local computer store that builds whitebox machines. My workplace is lucky enough to be next door to such an outfit, and they build our machines for us. Basically, for the Newegg price of the components, we get an assembled, tested (they have a burn-in suite that runs for a day) machine with a 1-yr system warranty and our custom drive image installed. Customer support is great - walk over there and talk to a real person who isn't following a script and knows what he's talking about.

Your local computer store may be crap, but it's easy to tell, and if you have a good one it beats the hell out of buying from Dell.

The Courts

Author Drops Copyright Case Against Scribd Filter 81

Posted by timothy
from the damned-if-you-don't dept.
natehoy writes "Apparently, monitoring for copyright violations is not in itself a copyright violation, lawyers for Elaine Scott decided. As a result, they have dropped the lawsuit against Scribd, who was being simultaneously sued for allowing copies of Scott's work to be published, and retaining an unlicensed copy of the work in their filtering software to try and prevent future copyright violations."
Hardware

SeaMicro Unveils 512 Atom-Based Server 183

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the why-stop-there dept.
1sockchuck writes "Stealthy startup SeaMicro has unveiled its new low-power server, which incorporates 512 Intel Atom CPUs, a load balancer and interconnection fabric into a 10u server. SeaMicro, which received a $9.3 million government grant from DOE to develop its technology, says its server uses less than 2 kilowatts of energy — suggesting that a single rack with four SeaMicro units and 2,048 CPUs could draw just 8 kilowatts of power. Check out the technical overview, plus additional coverage from Wired, GigaOm and VentureBeat."

Comment: No shipping IE results (Score 4, Insightful) 203

by ottffssent (#32452390) Attached to: Clashing Scores In the HTML5 Compatibility Test Wars

TFA: "The first table is a summary of the test results with the May 2010 IE Platform Preview and each of the major shipping browsers running on Windows."

So...IE8 isn't a "major shipping browser" that runs on Windows?

If IE8 scores so terribly that Microsoft is embarrassed to post its scores, that's fine, but it would be less dishonest and more informative then to include recent betas of their competitors' browsers in addition to the latest shipping version.

Crime

US Supreme Court Upholds Indefinite Confinement 745

Posted by kdawson
from the going-somewhere? dept.
An anonymous reader points out the news that the US Supreme Court today upheld a law that allows the federal government to keep prison inmates behind bars beyond the end of their sentences, if officials determine they may be "sexually dangerous" in the future. The case involves one Graydon Comstock, who was certified as "dangerous" six days before his 37-month federal prison term for processing child pornography was to end. The vote was 7 to 2. Three of the justices who concurred with the decision raised an objection to the broadness of the language used in the majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy.
Businesses

Apple To Buy ARM? 695

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the rumor-mill-working-overtime dept.
gyrogeerloose writes "An article in the London Evening Standard claims that Apple has made an $8 billion offer to acquire ARM Holdings. For those few Slashdotters who don't already know, ARM makes the processor chips that power Apple's iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. However, ARM processors are also used by other manufacturers, including Palm and, perhaps most significantly, companies building Android phones. This explains why Apple might be willing to spend so much on the deal — almost 20% of its cash reserves. Being able to control who gets to use the processors (and, more importantly, who doesn't) would give Apple a huge advantage over its competitors."
Communications

Initial Reviews of Google Wave; Neat, But Noisy 336

Posted by timothy
from the here's-yer-firehose dept.
bonch writes "Reviews of Google Wave are out, and opinions are that it has potential as a development platform but is noisy to use for real-time communication. Robert Scoble calls it overhyped, claiming it's useful for little more than personal IM or small-scale project collaboration. He complains about the noisiness of tracking dozens of people chatting him at once in real-time and calls trying to use it a 'productivity killer' compared to simpler mediums like email and Twitter."
Medicine

Swine Flu Kills Obese People Disproportionately 661

Posted by timothy
from the super-size-someone-else-please dept.
Philip K Dickhead writes "Bloomberg is reporting that the World Health Organization discovered a single, surprising characteristic that's emerged among swine flu victims who become severely ill: They are all fat. Infected people with a body mass index greater than 40 suffer respiratory complications that are harder to treat and can be fatal. The virus appears to be on a collision course with the obesity epidemic. WHO officials are gathering statistics to confirm and understand this development. 'It's very likely that if we went back retrospectively and looked at people who did poorly during seasonal flu, what would shake out is that obesity would be one of the risks.' Fat cells secrete chemicals that cause chronic, low-level inflammation that can hamper the body's immune response and narrow the airways, says Tim Armstrong, a doctor working in the WHO's chronic diseases department in Geneva."

Nanopillar Solar May Cost 10x Less Than Silicon 199

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the hot-off-the-presses dept.
Al writes "A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new kind of flexible solar cell that could be far cheaper to make than conventional silicon photovoltaics. The cells consist of an array of 500-nanometer-high cadmium sulfide pillars printed on top of an aluminum foil — the material surrounding the pillars absorbs light and releases electrons, while the pillars themselves transport the electrons to an electrical circuit. The closely packed pillars trap light between them, helping the surrounding material absorb more. This means the electrons also have a very short distance to travel through the pillars, so there are fewer chances of their getting trapped at defects and its possible to use low-quality, less expensive materials. '"You won't know the cost until you do this using a roll-to-roll process," says lead researchers Ali Javey. "But if you can do it, the cost could be 10 times less than what's used to make [crystalline] silicon panels."'"

Comment: Re:Isn't this a little overkill? (Score 1) 436

by ottffssent (#28538413) Attached to: Firefox 3.5 Reviewed; Draws Praise For HTML5, Speed

Sure I leave my browser running all the time. FF runs from a few minutes after I log in until Windows gets flaky and slow weeks-to-months later. Browser tabs are a great to-do list, with context and history. Why would I ever close my browser? 5 seconds to load it up (or 3 minutes, if it's restoring my ~100 tabs) is a waste of time, and RAM is cheap.

Biotech

Device Reads Messages From Surface of the Brain 156

Posted by samzenpus
from the I-want-to-know-what-you're-thinking dept.
Al writes "Technology Review has a story about a start-up company that has developed a more-accurate and less-invasive way to read a patient's thoughts. Neurolutions, based in St Louis, has developed a small implanted device that translates signals recorded from the surface of the brain into computer commands. The device, which is less invasive than implants and more accurate than scalp electrodes, uses a grid of electrodes placed directly on the surface of the brain to monitor electrical activity. This technology is currently used to find the origin of seizures in patients with uncontrolled epilepsy before surgery. But the company says it could also help paralyzed patients control a computer and perhaps prosthetic limbs using their thoughts. Tests involving more than 20 patients have shown that people can quickly learn to move a cursor on a computer screen using their brain activity."
Mars

Spirit Stuck In Soft Soil On Mars 160

Posted by timothy
from the it's-covered-in-jam dept.
cheros writes "NASA reports that the Spirit Mars lander is presently stuck in soft soil. The lander's wheels are halfway sunk into the soil and they are planning simulation tests to see if they can get it out again. I hope they can get it out of there because it's picking up enough new energy to operate; however, it only has 5 wheels left to get around on — one of the wheels hasn't been working for years. Fingers crossed."

All generalizations are false, including this one. -- Mark Twain

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