kingsquab - Slashdot User

Submission + - VMS Operating System Turns 30

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 02, 2007 @12:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: Digital Equipment's venerable VMS operating system has just turned 30 years old, and it's living on well past what VAX minicomputer users of the late-1970s would have expected. Today it lives on as HP's OpenVMS, and one version or other of the OS is in surprisingly widespread usage. The InfoWeek story reports that the Deutsche Borse stock exchange in Frankfurt runs on VMS, and the Australian Stock Exchange runs on it. And Open VMS controls the system Amazon uses to manage shipments of 112,000 packages of books and DVDs each day.

Submission + - BSD community mourns for the loss of IPv6 Samurai (kerneltrap.org)

Submitted by

Mr. kamprettos

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @10:43AM

Mr. kamprettos writes: "Today is a sad day for *BSD community, as Jun-ichiro "itojun" Itoh Hagino passed away on October 29, 2007 at the age of 37. To those in the BSD communities he was simply Itojun, best known in his role as IPv6 KAME project core researcher. Itojun did the vast majority of the work to get IPv6 into the BSD network stacks. He was also instrumental in moving IPv6 forward in all aspects through his participation in IETF protocol design meetings. Itojun was helpful to everyone around him, and dedicated to his work. He believed and worked toward making technology available to everyone. He will be missed, and always remembered. News about Itojun's death : undeadly , kerneltrap and openbsd-misc"

Submission + - Nanotube Vests Could Deflect Bullets (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by

Invisible Pink Unicorn

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @10:19AM

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Conventional kevlar vests and body armor stop bullets by spreading out the bullet's force over a larger area. While this does stop the bullet from penetrating the skin, blunt force trauma can still lead to incapacitation and damage to critical organs. Researchers at the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology, University of Sydney, say that the elasticity of carbon nanotubes may put an end to this by using the energy of the initial impact to rebound the bullets, essentially canceling out the force normally felt by the wearer. From the Telegraph: 'The team tested carbon nanotubes ... by bombarding them with diamond bullets travelling at speeds varying between 1000 and 3500 metres per second, revealing the conditions when the bullet could bounce back. Based on their findings, they calculate that six layers of woven nanotube yarn — about 600 millionths of a metre thick — may protect the wearer from a revolver bullet, so that it bounces off.'"

Submission + - Interview with Drew Thaler (storiediapple.it)

Submitted by

nezmar

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @10:15AM

nezmar writes: "Best known for a recent series of posts on Sun's ZFS filesystems, Drew Thaler has worked on many projects at Infinite Loop in the last decade. We contacted him to ask some questions and the result is an interview in which provided a lot of interesting and background info and tidbits on Apple and its technologies and inner workings."

Submission + - Examining the (poor) state of Linux on the PS3

Submitted by Steve on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @09:50AM

Steve writes: HEXUS.gaming's Jo Shields has been investigating the usability of several Linux distributions with PS3 compatibility. However, despite the fact Sony has provided (some level of) support for 3rd party Operating Systems on the PS3, it appears that nobody has yet delivered an easy to use, fully functional solution:

Not a single distro maintained a consistent, high-quality experience from installation to prolonged use. None of them are usable by your grandmother, or in most cases, by you [the PS3 owner]. For the experienced Linux hacker, it's probably possible to beat some sense into these distributions (with Xubuntu probably closest to useful, when combined with the Petitboot boot loader used by openSUSE). But it's not a good choice — simply the least bad.

Submission + - Another warning over IPv4 address exhaustion (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

FireFury03

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @05:38AM

FireFury03 writes: "The BBC is running a story on the IPv4 address exhaustion problem. The chairman of ICANN is warning that IPv4 addresses will probably run out in 2-3 years and we really need to roll out IPv6 now. The article notes that he is also Google's chief internet evangelist (Google still don't publish an IPv6 address for their search engine).

We keep getting these warnings, but very few ISPs and domestic router manufacturers seem to act (is it even possible to get a domestic ADSL router that does IPv6 without putting custom firmare on it yet?) Will we see a large scale roll-out of IPv6 soon, or will the industry wait until the sky falls in before acting?"

Submission + - 5.6 Earthquake Hits Silicon Valley And San Jose (nbc11.com)

Submitted by

John Boitnott

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @01:04AM

John Boitnott writes: "A strong earthquake hit the South Bay pretty hard Tuesday night. What's really interesting are the stories of the transplants — those who have only lived around the Bay Area for months or a few years. For many it is their first decent-sized temblor."

Submission + - Muslim constitution bans all "wrong" thoug (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by on Monday October 01, 2007 @12:18PM

An anonymous reader writes: This, unfortunately, is not a joke

The constitution proposed to president Karzai of Afghanistan as part of a "peace initiative" forbids thought and mandates fighting -jihad- as a duty for every muslim, including every last Afghan. Bans all other constitutions and laws as un-islamic.

The Taliban has published a shadow Afghan constitution outlining an alternative hardline government to that of President Hamid Karzai.

On freedom of speech the Taliban charter, which is written in Pashto and Dari, is clear: "Every Afghan has the right to express his feelings through his views, writings or through other means in accordance with the law."

However "un-Islamic thought" is strictly forbidden and "violators will be punished according to sharia" — under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islamic teachings.

The document also stresses the importance of jihad as an obligation for every citizen. It offers the Taliban's support for the United Nations and upholds human rights — "until it is contrary with the teachings of Islam".

Source

Submission + - Tracing IT's Past, Present and Future (cio.com)

Submitted by

Chris Lindquist

on Monday October 01, 2007 @09:59AM

Chris Lindquist writes: "CIO.com has posted a collection of stories looking back on 20 years of IT history and predicting what may happen in the coming decades. In the futurist piece, Larry Niven predicts civil rights for applications and Grady Booch anticipates that building software-intensive systems will always be hard. Author Fred Hapgood has also created a two-decade timeline that connects the dots from the IBM's PS/2 to Apple's iPhone."

Submission + - Sputnik 1: The event that began space exploration (itwire.com)

Submitted by

WaltonNews

on Friday September 28, 2007 @11:04AM

WaltonNews writes: "The Soviet Sputnik program was launched at 19:28:34 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), or 22:28:34 Moscow Time (MSK), on October 4, 1957. Fifty years later, on October 4, 2007, the fifieth anniversary of Sputnik 1 will be celebrated."

Submission + - Are Time Zone wars on the horizon? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Thursday September 20, 2007 @03:18PM

coondoggie writes: "The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) today said five Indiana counties Daviess, Dubois, Knox, Martin and Pike will be moved from the Central to Eastern time zone effective Nov. 4. At the same time, the DOT denied a separate petition from Indiana's Perry County to also move into the Eastern Time zone. Indiana has always been a bit schizophrenic about the time zone thing. Indiana is divided into 92 counties. Under Federal law, 75 counties are in the Eastern Time Zone and 17 are in the Central Time Zone. Time zone battles have taken place all over between states on either side of the time zone lines. On the East Coast towns in eastern Alabama, including Smiths Station, Lanett, and Valley, observe Eastern Time, although they are officially in the Central Time Zone. Counties in Michigan, Wisconsin, Kentucky and others have had issues with the time zone in the past as well. Neighboring states differ as to whether they observe Eastern or Central Time. Illinois and western Kentucky observe Central Time, while eastern Kentucky, Ohio, and the portion of Michigan adjoining Indiana observe Eastern Time. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19764"

Submission + - Spectacular High-Res Mars Images Released (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

Riding with Robots

on Thursday September 20, 2007 @02:44PM

Riding with Robots writes: "NASA has just released some new color images from the sharp-eyed cameras on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Some of the shots show the intriguing gullies that seem to have been carved by liquid water. Gigabytes of all the mission's archived photos are also online."

Submission + - Boeing Dreamliner Concerns are Specious (wired.com)

Submitted by SoyChemist on Wednesday September 19, 2007 @08:59PM

SoyChemist writes: On the most recent edition of his new show, Dan Rather reported that the new 787 Dreamliner aircraft may be unsafe. Since then, dozens of news agencies have jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them are reporting that the carbon fiber frame may not be as sturdy as aluminum. Few have bothered to question Rather's claims that the composite materials are brittle, more likely to shatter on impact, and prone to emit poisonous chemicals when ignited. While there is a lot of weight behind the argument that composite materials are not as well-studied as aircraft aluminum, the reasoning behind the flurry of recent articles may be faulty. The very title of Rather's story, Plastic Planes, indicates a lack of grounding in science. Perhaps the greatest concern should be how well the plane will hold up to water. Because they are vulnerable to slow and steady degradation by moisture, the new materials may not last as long as aluminum. Testing them for wear and tear will be more difficult too.

Submission + - Sun Microsystems quits GSA multiple award contract (govexec.com)

Submitted by

beetle496

on Monday September 17, 2007 @10:26AM

beetle496 writes: "From TFA:

Sun Microsystems Inc. announced Friday that it is canceling its multiple award schedule contract with the General Services Administration amid an ongoing investigation into the contract’s renewal and the company’s pricing for information technology products and services.
The article hints at scandal, but I am betting that the problem is more likely incompetence and prejudicial Windows-centric contract vehicles that make it all but impossible for Sun to compete. How hard is it to believe that Lurita Doan could be one of the rare bureaucrats that understands technology (more so than Brian Miller and the three underlings she vetoed)?"

Submission + - 10 HTML pages your site and everyone else needs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17, 2007 @09:38AM

An anonymous reader writes: This back to the basics article might seem obvious to many, but, you'd be surprised how many websites we visit ignore providing the basic files that users anticipate finding and that tell both humans and machines what your website is all about. Stop doing your site and users wrong and start providing the keys to your kingdom.

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