JHU writes "When the hard drive was first introduced on September 13, 1956, it required a humongous housing and 50 24-inch platters to store 1/2400 as much data as can be fit on today's largest capacity 1-inch hard drives. Back then, the small team at IBM's San Jose-based lab was seeking a way to replace tape with a storage mechanism that allowed for more-efficient random access to data. The question was, how to bring random-access storage to business computing?"

BrentRJones writes "I signed up for the Do Not Call registry the first day I heard of it, and I have to say that I have gotten very few telemarketers calling over the past couple of years. However, there now seems to be more calls that start, 'This is a survey...' or some other such excuse. I do not mind getting a few charity appeals or calls from those I have done business with in the past, but I do wish that I could avoid the political phone calls. I am curious what other Slashdot folks are experiencing, and I am also wondering if I say, 'Please remove from any list that you have.' when I am called, will this do any good?"

KnightMB writes "Students at NCSU have the option of purchasing the lectures of a professor online. The Professor did this as a way to help those that missed class, didn't take good notes, or from another country and have trouble understanding an English speaking Professor. The reactions on campus were mixed among the students as some saw it as a great way to keep up with things should real life interfere and others see it as something to pay for on top of the tuition cost at the university. Each one cost $2.50 for the entire lecture. Some students feel it should be free or cost less. The professor brings up a point that doing this takes extra effort and it's only fair that they should have to pay for that extra time and effort needed to put the lectures online for sale such as editing, recording equipment, etc. No one is forced to purchase the lectures, they are only an additional option that students will have. Quote Dr. Schrag "Your tuition buys you access to the lectures in the classroom. If you want to hear one again, you can buy it. I guess you could see the service as a safety net designed to help the students get the content when life gets in the way of their getting to class."

uniquebydegrees writes "InfoWorld reports that the Department of Homeland Security has released the findings of Operation Cyber Storm, a large-scale simulation of combined cyber-physical attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure. From the article: 'According to DHS, "observers noted that players had difficulty ascertaining what organizations and whom within those organizations to contact when there was no previously established relationship or pre-determined plans for response coordination and risk assessments/mitigation. There was a general recognition of the difficulties organizations faced when attempting to establish trust with unfamiliar organizations during time of crisis."'"

androidtopp asks: "My company, an IT and business consulting firm of around 150 people, is looking for a Password Vault/Manager/Database solution to manage the numerous passwords we've developed in the course of a major internal network and server upgrade. Our must haves are multiple privilege levels (I don't need to see network passwords, and the network guys don't need to see database passwords, and so on) and it would be nice if we could view when people last retrieved each password. Does anyone manage passwords in this fashion at their work/home? A lot of the free password managers are one user, full access, which is a little less secure than we need. How do other companies (small or large) manage the hundreds of server, network, database, and application passwords that must crop up?"

mytrip writes to tell us News.com is reporting that Microsoft has won a record $87,177 against spammer Paul Fox who used a hotmail account to direct users to his pornographic download site. From the article: "But while Microsoft has clearly won, the case highlights a failure in the British legal system to tackle spam. Despite efforts by the Information Commissioner's Office to gain power from the Department of Trade & Industry to deal with spam, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas remains hamstrung."

TechFreep writes to tell us that IBM has released a new line of QS20 Blade Servers based on the processor they developed for the Playstation 3. From the article: "Today IBM announced a new line of high-powered QS20 Blade Servers intended for use in seismic research, encryption, digital image rendering and military surveillance applications. Each QS20 will include two nine-cored Cell Processors clocked at 3.2Ghz apiece, which were developed along with Sony and Toshiba for Sony's upcoming Playstation 3 console. As Playstation 3 isn't scheduled for release until November, the QS20 will mark the first application in which the highly-touted Cell will be available to consumers."

narramissic writes to tell us that Sean McGrath has an interesting look at a general mistrust of today's technology and draws a comparison to the proofreading of photocopies. From the article: "The constant availability of web services out there in the cloud is one such idea. Today, we do not trust the cloud and the services on it to be always available. Few of us can remember any incidences in recent time when, say google.com or amazon.com or live.com was offline but we still do not trust them to be always there and available. I predict that this day will pass. The day will come when outages of big commercial services on the cloud are as unusual as outages in the phone system or the electricity supply system. Sure, losing power will also lose you the services on the cloud but your business most likely has bigger problems to worry about when the power goes."

Mr. Miyamoto, in an interview with Nintendo's .jp site, explains some of the logic behind the Wii-mote. From the Gamespot article: "In the process of contemplating how to make a controller that was not intimidating but still allowed for traditional game play, Miyamoto had this realization: 'There's no need to use both hands.' He added that the idea was to break the existing conventions a little, but not too much. 'If you go too far off the deep end, the product will be eccentric for the sake of being eccentric,' Miyamoto said."

GayBliss writes to tell us CNN.com has an article about how the US Air Force secretary proposes testing new 'non-lethal' weapons on American citizens before deploying them to the battlefield. New weapons like a high-power microwave device are designed to incapacitate people or sometimes even electronic devices. From the article: "The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne."

Gamasutra reports that the first 360 to hit a million copies sold is, unsurprisingly, Call of Duty 2. From the article: "The World War II themed first person shoot 'em-up was already the best selling title available at launch in the U.S. and is now officially the best selling title of all time on the format, as well as being the most popular Xbox 360 game on Xbox Live. Although console launches have traditionally been dominated by first party releases this convention has proven less true in recent years with LucasArts' Star Wars: Rogue Leader - Rogue Squadron II (also published by Activision in Europe) proving to be the best selling title at the launch of the GameCube. Sony meanwhile, has rarely relied heavily on first party titles for any of its console launches."

Simon P. Chappell writes "Classics are funny things, especially in the world of books. There are books that people say "should' be classics (I'll refrain from mentioning names to protect the pretentious) and then there are books that people are too busy actually using to get around to listing as classics. Mastering Regular Expressions, now in it's third edition, is in the second group. It's one of those books that you see on desks in computer departments the world over. This is a real "doers" book." Read the rest of Simon's review.

Grooves writes "The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has announced the first voter registration drive aimed at gamers, called 'Play for Real: Gamer Voter Drive'. The drive is being managed by the ESA's Video Game Voters Network, an attempt at growing a grassroots community around the issue of games legislation. From the article, 'Lowenstein would like to boost these figures by convincing younger voters that their voice will have an influence over issues they care about, particularly efforts to create new laws restricting video games.'"

Via Joystiq, an article on Gaming Horizon defending the PS3 from its detractors. The article looks at a number of the biggest concerns about the system (price, HD, rumble, blu-ray), and attempts to explain why most of these problems are nothing to worry about. From the article: "As Sony is a company that manufactures HD-TVs, it's in their interest to add that compatibility to give consumers another reason to upgrade. There's various numbers about how long it'll take for HD to 'replace' standard-feed televisions (just as broadband has all but eliminated dial-up), but it's conceivable that HD televisions will become affordable during the PS3's lifecycle, and for those of us that have been blessed by the high-def gods, it's another reason to take advantage of the highest-quality visual equipment available."

bb writes to tell us that recent comments made by the FCC could be cause for concern for proponents of internet video. Being considered under the guise of a push against child pornography on the internet, VoN founder Jeff Pulver stated that this is just a warning shot. From the article: "He drew a parallel between this potential regulation and an attempt to ban or restrict Internet voice in 1996, and predicted a long battle and offered to help advocates of rights of IP video innovators. 'The VoN coalition will take people through the stages of what's going to happen,' he said."