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Comment Re:Of course (Score 4, Interesting) 280

by stevesliva (#27871725) Attached to: Oracle Won't Abandon SPARC, Says Ellison

Sure, buy a company and kill off their highest revenue generating, and highest margin products which coincidentally are chosen more than any other platform to deploy your own database product.

Servers were Sun's highest margin stuff? No wonder they plummeted and got bought. But if Oracle doesn't find value in offering servers bundled with software, one would wonder why IBM does. It's pretty clear that servers are now second fiddle to IBM's software business.

Is it just me or was he explicit about maintaining Sparc, but said nothing about x86 servers? I'll have to find the rest of the interview on Reuters.
Java

Submission + - Marc Fleury resigns from Red Hat

Submitted by taxingmonk
taxingmonk writes: Marc Fleury has resigned from Red Hat. At the moment the only reference appears to be at theserverside. As one of the Java communities more colourful characters he's certainly come in for some flak. No doubt people from all corners of the Java world will have a mixture of scorn and praise for a man people either love or hate. Interestingly the author of the story has a few good words for the man who was famously caught astroturfing on the same website as previously covered by Slashdot.
Power

Submission + - A Case Against The Hydrogen Economy

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Robert Zubrin, of The New Atlantis, argues against the idea of basing the US energy policy on hydrogen. His argument, explained through economics and physics, explains why using hydrogen for energy is a bad idea.

An excerpt from the article:

So if we put aside the spectacularly improbable prospect of fueling our planet with extraterrestrial hydrogen imports, the only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.
The article is located here.
Censorship

Submission + - Congress Hears From Muzzled Scientists

Submitted by BendingSpoons
BendingSpoons writes: More than 120 scientists across seven federal agencies have been pressured to remove the phrases "global warming" and "climate change" from various documents. The documents include press releases and, more importantly, communications with congress. Evidence of this sort of political interference has been largely annecdotal to date, but is now detailed in a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held hearings on this issue yesterday; the hearing began by Committee members, including most Republicans, stating that global warming was happening and greenhouse gas emissions from human activity were largely to blame.

The OGR hearings presage a landmark moment in climate change research: the release of the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The IPCC report, drafted by 1,250 scientists and reviewed by an additional 2,500 scientists, is expected to state that "there is a 90% chance humans are responsible for climate change" — up from the 2001 report's 66% chance. It probably won't make for comfortable bedtime reading; "The future is bleak", said scientists.
Education

Submission + - Professors want to ban Wikipedia

Submitted by
Inisheer
Inisheer writes: "History professors at Middlebury College are tired of having all their students submit the same bad information on term papers. The culprit: Wikipedia — the user-created encyclopedia that's full of great stuff, and also full of inaccuracies. Now the the entire History department has voted to ban students from using it. Other professors agree, but note that they're also enthusiastic contributors to Wikipedia. Read the full story here"
Slashback

Submission + - Windows-tax savings for Dell n-series evaporates

Submitted by Alsee
Alsee writes: When the Dell Sells Open Source Computers story ran, a detailed price comparison between the E520 Windows systems and the Windows-free E520n systems appeared to show a nice effective discount for avoiding the Windows tax. No more, Dell's prices have been updated. The base price for the Windows system has dropped by $50 and a $70 anomoly in the E520 monitor options has been fixed. The upshot is that there is approximately $zero effective value in buying a Dell n-series trying to avoid the Windows tax. You are better off buying a Dell with Windows preinstalled and calling in to demand the EULA guaranteed refund for the unused OS.
Security

Submission + - Anger over European medical data-sharing

Submitted by ukhackster
ukhackster writes: A row is brewing in Europe over plans to make medical records available across the EC. The scheme calls for interoperability between health systems in 22 different countries. Experts are predicting that security problems could expose confidential patient records, with one calling the affair "a colossal waste of money and energy". Could this be another huge IT project disaster on the horizon?
Biotech

Submission + - Low cost cure for all cancers?

Submitted by superbrose
superbrose writes: The New Scientist reports that scientists at the University of Alberta have found that the well known, widely available drug DCA kills cancer cells while leaving other cells in tact.

From the article:
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.


According to the Daily Reckoning,
the researchers don't know yet, but they believe that DCA may just kill all cancers. Clinical tests of cancer patients are planned. These will require money from charities, universities and governments, because pharmaceutical companies won't pay for a discovery that cannot be patented.
I do hope that these trials will be funded!
Games

Submission + - Blame Gaming - Is the Blinking PS3 Sony's Fault?

Submitted by mattnyc99
mattnyc99 writes: After discovering a blinking problem associated with the HDCP handshake from an HDMI cable to the PlayStation 3, then solving it, then having Slashdot blow it up, Popular Mechanics has now set off a mini-war between Westinghouse and Sony. The 1080p TV set maker appears to be blaming Sony as the source of the blinking PS3, and the two powerhouse companies have organized a pow-wow for today to settle scores.
Announcements

Submission + - TI exits CMOS process race.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An EETimes article tells of TI's exit from the digital process race.

From the article:
"According to reports TI (Dallas, Texas) development has decided to stop internal development at the 45-nanometer node and use foundry supplied processes at 32-nm, 22-nm and thereafter."
Announcements

Submission + - String Theory Test Proposed

Submitted by Alchemist253
Alchemist253 writes: Theoreticians at a trio of American universities have recently proposed a (non-trivial) experimental test of string theory, often called the "theory of everything." Importantly, it is possible that this test could be carried out in the not-too-distant future when CERN's latest powerful tool, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) comes online. From the article, "If the test does not find what the theory predicts about W boson scattering, it would be evidence that one of string theory's key mathematical assumptions is violated. In other words, string theory — as articulated in its current form — would be proven impossible."
Education

Submission + - Better than a TI?

Submitted by
aaronbeekay
aaronbeekay writes: "Hey guys, I'm a sophomore in high school taking an honors chem course. I'm being forced to buy something handheld for a calculator (I've been using Qalculate! and GraphMonkey on my Thinkpad until now). I see people all around me with TIs and think "there could be something so much better." The low-res, monochrome display just isn't appealing to me for $100-150. Is there something I can use close to the same price range with better screen, more usable, and more powerful? Which calcs do you guys use? I'm hoping for this to last through college."
The Internet

Submission + - 16-year-old girl convicted for child porn

Submitted by
Skiing
Skiing writes: "From Internet Cases: A state appellate court in Florida has affirmed the decision of a trial court that adjudicated a 16-year-old girl a delinquent based on her violation of the state's anti-child pornography statute. The case complicates the analysis as to what kind of privacy rights minors have, and it also raises a fundamental question as to how laws should be enforced to effectuate their purposes. If anti-child pornography statutes are intended to protect minors from exploitation, doesn't it seem at least a bit anomalous to prosecute the very persons who are being exploited?"

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