CestusGW - Slashdot User

Denver Airport Overrun by Car-Eating Rabbits 278

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 14, 2010 @12:14PM from the night-of-the-lepus dept.

It turns out the soy-based wire covering on cars built after 2002 is irresistible to rodents. Nobody knows this better than those unlucky enough to park at DIA's Pikes Peak lot. The rabbits surrounding the area have been using the lot as an all-you-can-eat wiring buffet. Looks like it's time to break out The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

Microsoft Claims 'We Love Open Source' 464

Posted by Soulskill on Monday August 23, 2010 @05:16PM from the admiral-ackbar-unavailable-for-comment dept.

jbrodkin writes "Everyone in the Linux world remembers Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's famous comment in 2001 that Linux is a 'cancer' that threatened Microsoft's intellectual property. While Microsoft hasn't formally rescinded its declaration that Linux violates its patents, at least one Microsoft executive admits that the company's earlier battle stance was a mistake. Microsoft wants the world to understand, whatever its issues with Linux, it no longer has any gripe toward open source."

How To Get a Job At a Mega-Corp 373

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 15, 2010 @05:43PM from the name-rank-and-serial-number dept.

Barence writes "'With the economic hangover starting to wear off, the technology giants are once again recruiting in earnest. Apple, Google, and Microsoft all have vacancies on their websites, and now could be the perfect time to land a job at one of computing's biggest hitters.' PC Pro talked to people inside Microsoft, Apple, and Google to discover how to track down the best jobs, and what it takes to get through the arduous selection and interview processes." With lots of experience both within and without, what other words of wisdom can be offered to those wishing to break into a mega-corp?

New Data Center Will Heat Homes In London 204

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday April 16, 2009 @12:03AM from the one-click-heating dept.

1sockchuck writes "The heat generated by thousands of servers at the new Telehouse West data center in London will soon be used to heat nearby houses and businesses. The Greater London Authority has approved a plan in which waste heat from the colocation facility will be used in a district heat network for the local Docklands community. The project is expected to produce up to nine megawatts of power for the local community."

What If Oracle Bought Sun Microsystems? 237

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 09, 2009 @02:40PM from the ask-the-oracle dept.

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister believes Oracle is next in line to make a play for Sun now that IBM has withdrawn its offer. Dismissing server market arguments in favor of Cisco or Dell as suitors, McAllister suggests that MySQL, ZFS, DTrace, and Java make Sun an even better asset to Oracle than to IBM. MySQL as a complement to Oracle's existing database business would make sense, given Oracle's 2005 purchase of Innobase, and with 'the long history of Oracle databases on Solaris servers, it might actually see owning Solaris as an asset,' McAllister writes. But the 'crown jewel' of the deal would be Java. 'It's almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Java to Oracle. Java has become the backbone of Oracle's middleware strategy,' McAllister contends."

Comment This is just really cool (Score 4, Interesting) 425

by CestusGW on Sunday April 05, 2009 @06:51PM (#27469245) Attached to: Debian Gets FreeBSD Kernel Support

It's one thing to sit and think about a beautiful system. To daydream wistfully about interfaces so well-thought that you can swap kernels and userland implementations without the world coming to an end. It's another thing entirely to see it happen with a full featured OS like Debian! Congrats are in order for the Debian team for tackling this and (apparently) going all the way.

Comment C'mon Battlemechs! (Score 1) 88

by CestusGW on Tuesday March 31, 2009 @02:13PM (#27404967) Attached to: Honda Develops Brain Interface For Robot Control

Sweet! Ars was just covering a story about using carbon nanotubes for artificial muscles, and now we have the neural interface controls we need too. If only ITER would hurry up and get us to the point of developing compact fusion reactors, we'd be all set to go.

NASA Tests Heaviest Chute Drop Ever 226

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @02:48AM from the not-so-fast dept.

Iddo Genuth writes "NASA and the US Air Force have successfully tested a new super-chute system aimed at reclaiming reusable Ares booster rockets. On February 28, 2009 a 50,000-pound dummy rocket booster was dropped in the Arizona desert and slowed by a system of five parachutes before it crashed to the ground. The booster landed softly without any damage. This was possibly the heaviest parachute drop ever, and NASA is planning to perform even heavier drops of up to 90,000 pounds in the next few months."

Dell's Adamo Goes After MacBook Air 337

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @06:45PM from the what-would-michael-do dept.

MojoKid writes "Adamo, pronounced 'A-dahm-o,' means 'to fall in love with' in Latin. Dell is certainly hoping you'll fall in love with this notebook's looks as well as its functionality. The Adamo's chassis is milled from a single piece of aluminum and features precision detailing with a scalloped backlit keyboard. Even the fan holes, which are punched out squares, have an attractive modern design. The Adamo features a thin 0.65-inch profile and weighs four pounds. The new ultra-portable will also offer Intel Core 2 Duo processors and DDR3 memory (up to 4GB), a 13.4-inch 16:9 HD display and a 128GB SSD hard drive. Pricing starts at $1,999 with Vista Ultimate 64." The Dell infomercial spokesmodel (video at the bottom of the link) concludes, "Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure for the style-conscious individualist." OK, so he's no Steve Jobs.

Why Windows Must (and Will) Go Open Source 555

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 04, 2009 @07:00PM from the lacks-the-ring-of-inevitability dept.

Attila Dimedici writes "Charles Babcock of Information Week published an interesting article suggesting that Microsoft will have to at least to some degree take Windows open source if they want to stay in business. He suggests that the money to be made from the things MS builds on top of Windows (Office, Server, SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.) is so much greater than what can be made from Windows itself that MS will have to give up the revenue stream from Windows in order to maintain these other, more valuable, revenue streams."

Scientists "Teleport" Quantum Information One Meter 107

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 29, 2009 @06:12PM from the teleport-a-child-and-we'll-be-impressed dept.

the4thdimension writes "While we may not be beaming up to the Enterprise anytime soon, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan have managed to teleport information between two atoms up to a meter apart. Until this point, only very tiny distances were able to be traveled. However, using a complicated system of photons, ions, lasers, and electromagnetics, scientists have managed to 'teleport' information contained on one atom to another atom that is in a separate sealed container. This can lead to a wide range of developments in computing and communications." Update: 01/29 22:29 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe, but today's article in Time is better reading than the abstract anyhow.

Microsoft Donates Code To Apache's "Stonehenge" Project 184

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @07:30PM from the but-one-dimensional-villains-are-easier-to-comprehend dept.

dp619 writes "Several months after joining the Apache Foundation, Microsoft has made its first code contribution to an Apache project. The project, known as Stonehenge, is made up of companies and developers seeking to test the interoperability of Web standards implementations."Reader Da Massive adds a link to coverage at Computer World.

Beginning iPhone Development 216

Posted by samzenpus on Monday January 19, 2009 @03:35PM from the read-all-about-it dept.

Cory Foy writes "When my wife got a Touch several months back, the first thing I wanted to do was build some applications for it. Who wouldn't want to play with a device that has accelerometers, position sensors and multi-touch gestures? But being new to the Mac world, I needed something to help guide me along. Beginning iPhone Development aims to be that guide. But does it live up to the challenge of teaching a newbie Mac and iPhone developer?" Read below for the rest of Cory's review.

Best FOSS Active Directory Alternative? 409

Posted by kdawson on Saturday January 17, 2009 @10:39PM from the war-stories dept.

danboid writes "I'm an IT technician at a large school near Manchester, England. We currently have two separate networks (one for pupils, one for staff) each with its own Windows Server 2003 Active Directory box handling authentication and storing users' files. We're planning on restructuring the network soon and we'd like to be able to replace the two aging AD servers with a single, more powerful Linux server running an open source OpenLDAP implementation. The main contenders for this purpose seem to be Fedora Directory Server, OpenDS, and Apache Directory Server; but I've been unable to find meaningful comparisons among the three. I'd like to hear which solution Slashdot readers recommend. What is your experience with ease of implementation / maintenance? Any stories of similar (un)successful migrations? Any other tips for an organization wanting to drop AD for a FOSS equivalent?"

How Does a 9/80 Work Schedule Work Out? 1055

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @08:52PM from the on-the-ground dept.

cellocgw writes "My company is in the process of implementing a version of '9/80,' a work schedule that squeezes 80 hours' labor time into 9 business days and provides every other Friday off. I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies, and how it's worked out for other Slashdot readers. Is your system flexible? Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week? Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep? And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"

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