Comment On the other hand... (Score 1) 171
Here in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the local newspaper publishes plain death notes for free. If you want it adorned or specially formated you have to pay.
Comment Re:2010 (Score 1) 233
A major bank (Banco Real of Santander Group) in Brazil had a problem on New Years Day: its ATMs would not accept 2010-01-04 (Monday) as a working day. But accept current day (on 2010-01-01) as valid and then send a message stating the transaction would be schedule for 2010-01-04!
Bookmark tools for remote computer support (slashdot.org)
Bookmark Low power home servers (slashdot.org)
Bookmark Sheeva Plug (slashdot.org)
Bookmark Nospill valves and other modern water cooling tech (slashdot.org)
Comment Re:Use a homemade book scanner. (Score 1) 172
Not a great idea. You will have to lift the book to change pages.
Comment Re:Finally (Score 1) 575
An interesting alternative is "Molten salt reactor" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor). There are, at least, two videos from google tech talks about them: Liquid Fluoride Reactors: A New Beginning for an Old Idea (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F0tUDJ35So) and The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor: What Fusion Wanted To Be (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHs2Ugxo7-8&feature=channel_page).
Submission + - Rackable To Acquire Silicon Graphics For $25M
An anonymous reader writes: In the deal, Rackable will acquire Silicon Graphics' servers and software for building x86 clusters for high-performance computing, cloud computing, and large-scale data storage. From http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/data_centers/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216402311&subSection=News
Submission + - AMD claims the Barcelona = 170% faster than Xeon! (techarp.com)
crazyeyes writes: "Less than two weeks before Barcelona is launched, we had the opportunity to talk to the guy who's supposed to make it a big financial success — John Freude, AMD's Worldwide Business Development Manager for Server/Workstation Products.
John sure had some interesting numbers to tell us, as well as some updates on Phenom and even Budapest. Check out these updates from AMD. There will be more to come. Here's a quote from the editorial :-
John sure had some interesting numbers to tell us, as well as some updates on Phenom and even Budapest. Check out these updates from AMD. There will be more to come. Here's a quote from the editorial
""Because they are under NDA, he cannot reveal the actual results, but he gave us some interesting indications of how the Barcelona will eventually fare against an equivalent Intel processor.
— 20-30% better performance overall
— 170% better performance in some benchmarks
More importantly, he says, the Quad-Core Opteron (Barcelona) will offer 45-85% better performance than current dual-core Opteron processors at the same power consumption and thermal dissipation. Intel quad-core processors, on the other hand, only offer 30-35% better performance (11% in floating point) than their dual-core processors with a 23-25% increase in power consumption and thermal dissipation."
Submission + - Linux device development
An anonymous reader writes: Linux developer Greg Kroah-Hartman, who leads the development of several kernel subsystems including USB and PCI, admits that his January offer of free Linux device driver development was "marketing hype" — but says it has brought companies and developers together anyway.
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;58590129 ;fp;16;fpid;0
Submission + - New Cable Modem to Triple Internet Speed
BlueMorpho writes: "That's right-optical fiber-to-the-home service had previously offered the fastest available connection for residential Internet. The best-known example is the FiOS service from Verizon Communications, which peaks at 50 megabits per second.
But the cable industry has recently taken the wraps off new cable modem technology that exceeds the FiOS speed by a factor of more than three. Called the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 3.0, it allows data throughput of as much as 160 megabits.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/070522_cable _modem.html"
But the cable industry has recently taken the wraps off new cable modem technology that exceeds the FiOS speed by a factor of more than three. Called the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 3.0, it allows data throughput of as much as 160 megabits.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/070522_cabl
Submission + - Energy efficiency in the data center
jcatcw writes: In Computerworld's Grill, Rocky Mountain Insitute's Amory B. Lovins claims that a watt of energy saved is worth $20 to $27 to a business and that U.S. data centers are missing comprehensive integration of efficiency technologies that are available.
The next big step will be when one or more major operators puts all these parts together to realize the ninefold or greater savings that we outlined. In fact, I now think we can do even better, because both the IT and the support equipment are proving to be more efficient than we thought possible.
Submission + - Google loses cache-copyright lawsuit in Belgium
acroyear writes: "A court in Belgium found that Google's website caching policies are a violation of that nation's copyright laws, claiming that Google's cache offers effectively "free" access to articles that, while free initially, are archived charged for via subscriptions. Google claims that they only store "short extracts, but the court determined that's still a violation. The court found, "We confirm that the activities of Google News, the reproduction and publication of headlines as well as short extracts, and the use of Google's cache, the publicly available data storage of articles and documents, violate the law on authors' rights.""
Submission + - Breaking into the C++ programming field
An anonymous reader writes: Does anyone have any advice for breaking into the C++ programming field? I graduated college with a bachelors in CS in 2002, but after being unemployed for a year I took whatever job I could get (SQL Server/Some VB.NET). About a year ago I changed jobs at last, but the only people who looked at me seriously were for SQL Server skills, no one looked at me as a developer at all. Now, deciding that DBA is not really what I want to do, I am unable to even get the time of day for anyone recruiting for Software Engineering jobs.
To be honest, I agree that there is a certain skillset I am missing and that is the skills of working on a gigantic project in one of these procedural languages. At my current job database work and development is completely separate, so I can't even touch any source code (mostly in C# anyway). In my previous job there were some web front ends coded in .NET but it was a start up and emphasis was on getting the job done...not proper software engineering. Also, all the .NET code was relatively small. Unfortunately, I cannot find a company to let me start doing real development where I can be introduced to a gigantic project in an imperative (C/C++/Java/C#) language. I would really like to do C++, but even just learning C++ is not enough. Most of the C++ jobs I see also require Java or Java Web Services, or Oracle. As much as I would like to learn all these things, I can't go around learning everything I see in job ads just to get a job, because by the time I do, the next job ad might have something different. Also, at home I just don't have a need for much power, even C++ is usually overkill for the typical home project.
I just want to know how I can break into the programming field and without taking a huge paycut (since I have to support a family). Even in my current job as a DBA I am exposed to the software development process, and stored procedures are similar to developing for a procedural language (loops, variables, etc.). So surely somehow my experience must translate into real programming? C++ is my favorite language because of its raw power, but most jobs I see with C++ require 5+ years of work experience with "C/C++", which unfortunately I will never get since no one will hire me to do either.
