zentechno writes "While cleaning out some very old boxes in a long-untouched closet, I discovered my first supply of PC games, some of which came out when 386s were new. While there's almost zero use for these, I still think the cover art is quite cool. I found the original Zork, its sequels, Enchanter, and Sorcerer from InfoCom, Star Trek: 'The Kobayashi Alternative' from Simon & Schuster, Pool of Radiance and Eye of the Beholder from SSI, Loom by Lucas Games, Nuclear War from New World, Annals of Rome and FireZone from PSS, Sidewinder from EA, and Defender of the Crown from Mindscape, to name many. I loved these games, and wonder if there's any sort of serious collector's market out there as exists for vinyl album art — or is it just a personal thing?" I know I'll always hang on to my copies of Star Control II and Think Quick! from when I was a wee PC gamer. What's still rattling around in your closet?

pacopico writes "The Register has a report on an intriguing Las Vegas-based company which is building one of the world's largest data centers called the SuperNAP. The company — Switch Communications — claims it will be the most densely packed and power efficient data center ever built. The report notes, 'Legend has it that the company managed to acquire what was once meant to be Enron's broadband trading hub for a song. This gave Switch access to more than twenty of the primary carrier backbones in a single location. Switch tied this vast network to existing data center hosting facilities and attracted military clients, among others, to its Las Vegas shop.'"

Dekortage writes "As previously discussed here, the health-products giant Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over use of the ubiquitous 'red cross' logo. J&J has now lost. The presiding judge said Johnson & Johnson's claim against the organization was doubtful because the manufacturer entered into a brand-sharing promotional agreement with the American Red Cross in 1986 — not to mention that the two organizations agreed to share the logo way back in 1895. Sounds like J&J may need to crack open some Tylenol and Band-Aids."

tjstork recommends a blog post up at Openmarket.org on the passage by a Senate committee of a fingerprinting provision in a foreclosure assistance bill. The provision would require thousands of people connected with the mortgage industry, even tangentially — possibly including part-time and seasonal real estate agents — to send fingerprints to the feds for storage in a database. No explanation is in evidence as to how this would help the problem of loan fraud. The measure passed the Senate Banking Committee by a bipartisan majority of 19 to 2. "The measure the committee passed states that 'an individual may not engage in the business of a loan originator without first... obtaining a unique identifier.' To obtain this 'identifier,' an individual is required to 'furnish to the newly created Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry 'information concerning the applicant's identity, including fingerprints for submission' to the FBI and other government agencies."

kgagne writes "EMC executives were heavily pitching the virtues of solid state disk drives at their annual users conference in Las Vegas, saying that SSD will not only be on price parity with high-end Fibre Channel disk drives by the end of 2010 or early 2011, but that NAND memory will solve all sorts of read/write issues created by spinning disk technology. EMC's CEO and its storage platforms chief said the company will do everything it can to drive SSD prices down, and adoption up, by deploying them in their products. One issue might be that EMC is using SSD from STEC, which is being sued by Seagate for patent infringement." The article also mentions some of the work EMC has been doing to make sure SSD is enterprise-class reliable, such as developing "wear leveling" software.

Kwirl writes "Lets say that I wanted to start a small business endeavor, namely reselling my server space and offering pre-built websites. What resources would I need to start something like this on my own? What hosting service would best suit those needs? What would be the best way to manage a subdomain-level service that provided a basic forum, registration, a web site and some controlled administrative access for my friends so they couldn't easily terrorize each other? I'm curious to know if I could start something like this on my own, and without much more than just my own server space, time, and creativity. I'm not looking to make a living out of this, its mostly just a way for me to more efficiently manage having several friends each wanting me to built or run a web site for them, and perhaps make some small residual income if a market exists. The Slashdot community represents such a broad swath of experience and expertise that I'd like to know how you would approach a project of this nature."

HikingStick writes "I've been in the tech field for over 15 years. After more than nine years with the same company, I've been asked to step in and establish an IT department for a regional manufacturing firm. I approached my company early, providing four weeks notice (including a week of pre-scheduled [and pre-approved] vacation time). I have a number of projects to complete, and had planned to document some of the obscure bits of knowledge I've gleaned over the past nine years for the benefit of my peers, so I figured that would give me plenty of time. That was on a Friday. The following Monday, word came down from above that all of my privileged access was to be removed — immediately. So, here I sit, stripped of power with weeks ahead of me. From discussions with my peers in other companies, I know that cutting off high-privilege users is common, but usually in conjunction with a severance offer (to keep their hands off the network during those final weeks, especially if there is any ill-will). Should I argue for restored access, highlight the fact that I am currently a human paperweight, request a severance package, or simply become the most prolific Slashdot poster over the next few weeks? Does your company have a policy/process for dealing with high-privilege users who give notice? What is it, and do you make exceptions?"

jasonmanley writes "I currently use DesktopBSD. The other day I gave some thought to donating money to the project, but then I got to thinking — to whom would I donate the money? DesktopBSD benefits from FreeBSD and KDE among other projects. What about software with a smaller focus, such as OpenSSH? In fact, there are heaps of other projects' software embedded in FOSS packages, and I would like to know who the community thinks should get the donations."

SpectreBlofeld writes "According to EngadgetMobile, a line has formed in front of Apple's flagship Cube store in Manhattan. From the article: 'So word on the street (literally) is that a large number of people are queuing in line outside of Apple's flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York City — keep in mind the Cube is open 24 hours a day. Our intrepid girl-on-the-scene reports that the group is more than 60-deep, though most people seem confused about what they're waiting for, but some believe they're actually camping out for a 3G iPhone.' Prank, or mass hysteria?" I wonder if the crowd already has its own Flickr group set up -- if not, what are they waiting for on that front?

GonnaBRichYeahYeah! writes "My dad lives down a dirt road 500 meters off the main road. The cable company will not put cable down his lane for any less than the ridiculous sum of $10,000. And he cannot get phone line DSL since he is so far away from the central terminal, so he relied on painful 22k/sec dial-up for access to the Internet. He got sick of it and relies on Hughes satellite Internet, at $60/month, but he still has to be connected to a phone line to upload to the Internet. It's not a good solution, but better than dial-up. His friend lives on the corner of the main drag with his lane and has cable, thus hi-speed Internet. I suggested that he get a wireless access point, and put it at his friend's house and then get a wireless card for access. The problem is that no wireless routers go that far (max range of -N is 200 feet) and WiMax is too complex for a 70-year old man. Any suggestions from Slashdot crowd would be helpful." Plenty of people make wireless links over longer distances, but often they're not suited for people who want simplicity and reliability. What's the best out there right now?

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon and Comcast announced they will not 'block or throttle Internet traffic delivered via peer-to-peer networks' — essentially proclaiming that they are now P2P friendly. The decision came as a result of a test conducted with Verizon and Pando Networks, testing the benefits of a P2P/ISP partnership. During the test, the amount of P2P content delivered to Verizon subscribers from inside its network grew from 2 percent to 50 percent. This shows ISPs need to work with P2P companies to improve content delivery and manage traffic. Verizon also announced it will be looking at ways to use P2P technology to deploy new features on FiOS TV." Just the same, read on for one approach to mitigating likely tightening restrictions on P2P network use.

sdougal writes "This site is showing a Pico-ITX board running Ubuntu with no cooling whatsoever. They even let the public guess how long it would last: 'Last week thousands of you placed bets on how long the new Pico-ITX board from VIA, the VIA EPIA PX5000EG, can last without any cooling whatsoever. An ARTiGO Builder Kit was offered as the grand prize. Yesterday afternoon the voting stopped and the Naked Pico Challenge started in earnest. We simply loaded up Ubuntu 8.04, set it to work playing an mpeg-4 video and then removed the heatsink, leaving the CPU and VX700 chipset bare to the world. We recorded the event here in this video and set up a live video stream so you punters can keep a watchful eye on the PX5000EG as it works away.'"