Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Microsoft

Microsoft Reportedly Ends Zune Hardware Development 276

ideaz tips this Bloomberg report: "Microsoft Corp. will cease introducing new versions of the Zune music and video-player amid tepid demand, helping the company shift its focus to mobile phones, according to a person familiar with the decision. The company will concentrate on putting Zune software onto mobile phones such as those running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, said the person, who declined to be identified because the decision hasn’t been announced. Zune software lets customers buy songs and movies, as well as pay a monthly fee to stream unlimited music."

Comment Re:ISP's want your money... (Score 1) 547

I pay $120/US a month for 107 megabits down, and 5 megabits of upload in East Texas.
I never have any problems downloading from the "right places" at 12.5 megabytes/sec. Amazon Web Services being one of the few places that can actually saturate my pipe with an HTTP download. Use your imagination for the other places I'm able to max it out :)

Comment Re:Tell Your Wireless ... (Score 1) 559

Also I believe they are only gathering the MAC (and maybe SSID) of the wireless in order to increase the accuracy of your android device's location abilities when you have the GPS radio off, and the WiFi radio on.

Or I'm just crazy. It's not like they are trying to hack WEP enabled APs and listen in on the traffic. Google hasn't fallen that far. Yet.

Comment Gamestop caused this. (Score 4, Insightful) 358

People *used* to primarily treat good games like books, after you read it, on the shelf it goes. Sure you might not read it again anytime soon, but knowing you have the option is comforting.

With more and more "casual" gamers buying more and more "awful but severely marketed" titles that offer no lasting replay value, the idea of a "long-term rental" utilizing GameStop as a middle-man, means EA can sell the downloadable content to 5 or 10 different people per disc instead of just 1! Burn-out Paradise is a prime example of this. Sure you can snag the disc for $15-$20 at your local used disc dealer, but after you install and update the game, you'll discover huge sections of the world closed to you (and cars unattainable) until you fork over $20 here and there for download-able expansions!

Even better, if you buy all these trinkets and ever lose the disc/sell the game then EA still has a bunch of your money for bits you can no longer use, and the chance to sell them all over again to someone else!
Education

US Colleges Say Hiring US Students a Bad Deal 490

theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."

Comment Re:How does the home user back this up? (Score 4, Insightful) 227

Build an identical one and keep it far enough away that you need to feel safe? Ideally at least a few blocks away, sync them over a short-haul wireless link. (encrypted of course!) and take the same precautions as you would with anything else?

Oh yeah don't do a flat fire store, make it a SVN repository of course.

Comment Re:And even cheaper (Score 1) 227

I did someting some years ago with 200GB (and later 500GB) drives:

10 drives in a chieftec Big tower. 6 drives go into the two internal drive cases, 4 go into a 4-for-3 mounting with a 120mm fan. Controller: 2 SATA on board and 2 x Promise 4 port SATA conroller 300 TX4 (a lot cheaper than Arcea and kernel native support). Put Linux software RAID 6 on the drives, spare 1 GB or so per drive for RAID1 (n-way) system. Done.

I say you've got it close, except use ZFS instead. Solaris on x86 isn't that bad, especially if you don't plan on doing anything else with the hardware beyond file-serving duties!

Networking

DHCP Management Across a Diversified Network? 100

ET Admin writes "I work for a small Wireless ISP, where we are deploying new network hardware to allow for growth and contain broadcast traffic. All routing/switching equipment is Cisco. We use Linux stand-alone boxes and VMs (running on Win 2003 boxes). We have decided on a hybrid VLAN layout where we have certain VLANs limited by location, and other VLANs that are global across the network. And I want DHCP served across it all. Does anyone have experience with IPAM software that handles multiple DHCP servers? Our network is small so spending a couple grand is overkill at this point. Any recomendations to help me decide between serving DHCP from the Nix boxes, or from the Cisco gear? Knowing that a single DHCP server will handle from 100-500 hosts."

Slashdot Top Deals

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. - Alan Turing

Working...