the_lesser_gatsby - Slashdot User

Submission + - Radiohead allows fans to decide on price 2

Submitted by

radicalskeptic

on Sunday September 30, 2007 @09:19PM

radicalskeptic writes: "Radiohead, a band known to be unhappy with other music download services, has decided to release their next album, "In Rainbows", in two formats: a £40 boxed set and a digital download. What's the catch? Customers who purchase the digital download are able to name their own price for the album. This is the first Radiohead release since their contract with EMI expired. As "The Majors" continue to lose relevance, can we expect more of this type of experimentation and flexibility from independent artists?"

Submission + - Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier (leapsecond.com)

Submitted by Umbe on Tuesday September 25, 2007 @12:43AM

Umbe writes: Time-Nut and amateur time researcher Tom Van Baak (www.leapsecond.com) just took his family hiking, and verified Einstein's general theory of relativity along the way. "3 kids, 3 cesium clocks, a family road trip to measure relativistic time dilation".

Submission + - Should You Raise Your Data Center's Temperature? (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by

miller60

on Monday September 24, 2007 @04:39PM

miller60 writes: "With many U.S. corporations trying to lower their data center power bill, some vendors are recommending they raise the temperature in their data centers.. At the recent Data Center World conference, a Sun Microsystems executive recommended a set point of 78 degrees. Nudging the thermostat higher can save money, but some warn that it leaves facilities more susceptible to "hot spots" and may leave less time to recover from a cooling failure. Left to choose between paying a higher power bill or a server meltdown, many data center operators seem inclined to err on the side of applying too much cooling, rather than too little. What's the temperature in your data center?"

Submission + - 100 times faster hard drives use laser

Submitted by

Gary

on Saturday June 30, 2007 @09:07AM

Gary writes: "In the race to make computers more powerful, magnets may be out and lasers may be in. Ultra-rapid pulses of polarized light fired from lasers, new tests show, can outperform conventional magnetic data writers by as much as two orders of magnitude. The researchers managed to transfer data at intervals of about 40 femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second, about 100 times faster than conventional magnetic transfers,"

Submission + - Dell to sell advanced cooling systems for servers

Submitted by Mitechsi on Saturday June 30, 2007 @09:06AM

Mitechsi writes: Dell has struck a deal with Emerson to sell advanced cooling systems and services to data center owners. One type of supplemental cooling technology is called the Liebert XD. The XD consists of refrigerant-filled pipes that snake around the server racks in a data center. When the liquid refrigerant is in the pipes near the servers, it absorbs the heat coming off the computers, turns into a gas, and then gets pumped back to a cooling unit. The cooling unit then turns it back into a liquid for another. The liquid system cuts the cooling power load by about 30 percent to 50 percent as compared with other types of cooling systems.

Submission + - China Zaps Cutting-Edge Magazine

Submitted by

newsblaze

on Saturday May 05, 2007 @01:48PM

newsblaze writes: "Beijing continues to issue regular edicts and daily guidelines limiting news coverage in traditional media and invests billions of yuan in a nationwide Internet surveillance system to block Web sites it considers sensitive. The Propaganda Department is becoming stronger and better at oppressing the media. China Neutralizes Cutting-Edge Magazine. Surprisingly, the outspoken editor is being moved to another publication, not jailed."

Submission + - Rod Brooks predicts Cars will be Robots in 20 year

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Sunday April 29, 2007 @09:31AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The Talking Robots podcast has interviewed Rodney Brooks on behavior based robotics. He talks about how mosquitoes in Thailand led him to develop behavior based robotics, which revolutionized robotics and artificial intelligence. In the second part he comments on the current trends and future developments. 20 years from now, he predicts, our cars will be robots. 50 years from now he predicts crossing paths for robots and humans, with us and them sharing many of our spare parts. Interesting!"

Submission + - What if the mario brothers were schizophrenics?

Submitted by

boyohboy

on Sunday April 29, 2007 @08:40AM

boyohboy writes: "Quite possibly the strangest flash game ever created. Using a combination of odd poetic text, weird hand drawn scribbles, old film clips and strange little creatures, the game/artwork, “game, game, game and again game” is what would happen if the Mario Brothers were schizophrenics. The artwork’s creator suggests that this game is a response to the polished appearance and clean lines of flash web design. But, at the very least, it is one of the most original games I’ve ever seen on the net. Explore the game and its strange rolling type creature."

Submission + - Sony Gets Bad Press from Grusome Publicity Stunt

Submitted by walnutmon on Sunday April 29, 2007 @04:22AM

walnutmon writes: Sony is suffering a backlash from a recent publicity stunt that seems to have been in bad taste.

In a time of increasing public sensitivity to video game violence, Sony has gone to the extreme by publishing pictures from a party featuring topless cocktail waitresses and, get this: a freshly decapitated goat.

From the article:

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centerpiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company's PlayStation 2 console.

Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat's still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach.

Sickening images of the party have appeared in the company's official PlayStation magazine — but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run.

Sony has been no stranger to bad press in recent years, between a rootkit scandal and countless corporate mishaps, this latest debacle just begs the question: When are they going to learn that there is such thing as bad press?

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