Darth Cow - Slashdot User

WD's Monster 2TB Caviar Green Drive, Preview Test 454

Posted by timothy on Tuesday January 27, 2009 @01:17PM from the what-would-this've-cost-in-1999? dept.

MojoKid writes "Today Western Digital is announcing their WD20WEADS drive, otherwise known as the WD Caviar Green 2.0TB. With 32MB of onboard cache and special power management algorithms that balance spindle speed and transfer rates, the WD Caviar Green 2TB not only breaks the 2 terabyte barrier but also offers an extremely low-power profile in its standard 3.5" SATA footprint. Early testing shows it keeps pace with similar capacity drives from Seagate and Samsung."

NYTimes.com Hand-Codes HTML & CSS 496

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 29, 2008 @10:43PM from the all-the-finest-sites dept.

eldavojohn writes "The design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, recently answered readers' questions in the Times's occasional feature 'Ask the Times.' He was asked how the Web site looks so consistently nice and polished no matter which browser or resolution is used to access it. His answer begins: 'It's our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to "hand code" everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.'"

Perpetual Energy Machine Getting Lots of Attention 965

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday July 04, 2007 @02:46PM from the swimming-in-snake-oil dept.

Many users have written to tell us about a magnetic machine promising "infinite clean energy". Engadget has the first picture of the device and is reporting that the announcement (along with a short video) of this supposed device will be released later tonight. "CEO Sean McCarthy tells SilconRepublic how it works. Namely, the time variance in magnetic fields allows the Orbo platform to 'consistently produce power, going against the law of conservation of energy which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.' He goes on to say 'It's too good to be true but it is true. It will have such an impact on everything we do. The only analogy I can give is if you had absolute proof that God wasn't real.'" In my experience if something seems too good to be true it generally is. I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt 1142

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:26PM from the toothpaste-back-in-the-tube dept.

fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."

Earthlike Planet Orbiting Nearby Star 617

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @09:27PM from the 13-days-a-year dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "Astronomers in Europe have announced the discovery of a planet with only 5 times the Earth's mass, orbiting a red dwarf star 20 light years away. It orbits the star so closely that it only takes 13 days to go around... but the star is so cool that the temperature of the planet is between 0 and 40 Celsius. At this temperature there could be liquid water. Models indicate the planet is either rocky like the Earth or covered in an ocean. While it's not known if there actually is liquid water on the planet, this is a really big discovery, and indicates that we are getting ever closer to finding another Earth orbiting an alien star."

Comment Re:Who decides who is an expert? (Score 1) 382

by Darth Cow on Saturday September 16, 2006 @02:56PM (#16121094) Attached to: Co-Founder Forks Wikipedia

Einstein made huge contributions to physics, but Wikipedia is not the place for revolutionary or new knowledge. Hotly contested new theories and cutting edge research are excluded from Wikipedia precisely because they're impossible to judge. There's no reason why experts could not also observe the limitations of writing appropriately fpr an encyclopedia, especially considering they have a better sense of controversy than most.

Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe 270

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 15, 2006 @07:38AM from the working-for-the-man dept.

prostoalex writes "A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there,' News.com reports. Europe will see a total of 1.2 mln paychecks thanks to the new operating system: 'In the six countries studied, more than 150,000 IT companies will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista in 2007 and will employ 400,000 people, IDC said. Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista.'"

AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo 277

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 14, 2006 @02:42PM from the back-and-forth dept.

DigitalDame2 writes to mention a PC Magazine article about the AMD 4x4 enthusiast platform, which is meant to counter Core 2 Duo. The article observes that AMD is now facing many of the same business practices it used in its war against Intel. From the article: "While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, improvement can often be a slap in the face. Intel's C2D was designed with both low power and performance per watt in mind, two key design metrics that helped AMD cut into Intel's market share with the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2. And, as preliminary numbers have indicated and final performance reviews now show, the C2D has learned its lesson well: its performance now tops AMD's Athlon 64 architecture by a substantial margin."

AOL To Be Free For Broadband Users? 159

Posted by Zonk on Thursday July 06, 2006 @05:58PM from the already-have-the-intertron-thanks dept.

mikesd81 writes "AOL may give away more services including its AOL.com accounts reserved for paying customers. They have a proposal under consideration which calls for Time Warner's online unit to stop charging subscription fees to users who have high-speed Internet access or even dial-up service from a rival provider. Under the plan the company would continue to charge the fees for those needing dial-up access through AOL. The AOL software also would allow subscribers to continue using instant messaging, Web journals and other services without having to download separate software or figure out Web-based options. That would ease the transition and encourage them to keep using AOL services, the person familiar with the matter said."

The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A 181

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday June 22, 2006 @08:36PM from the just-getting-started dept.

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review of Pioneer's BDR-101A-- the first Blu-ray burner available. The drive can do anything with CDs, is kind of slow with DVDs, and doesn't support double-density Blu-ray media, but hey, it's a start, and can burn 25GB in 42 minutes. Check out its burn speed benchmark performance at the link above."

Flying Faster Without ID 528

Posted by Zonk on Friday June 09, 2006 @03:41PM from the i-feel-so-safe dept.

jjh37997 writes "A Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee member finds that flying without a photo ID is actually faster than traveling with proper identification. According to Wired the committee member, Jim Harper, accepted a bet from civil liberties rabble-rouser John Gilmore to test whether he could actually fly without showing identification. He found that traveling without ID allowed him to bypass the long security lines at San Francisco's International Airport, and get in faster than if he had provided his driver's license."

NASA Hopes Discovery's Move Is Not The Last 81

Posted by Zonk on Saturday May 20, 2006 @05:32AM from the go-go-rocketship dept.

An anonymous reader wrote to mention the movement of the space shuttle Discovery. The upcoming mission, if it launches, is crucial to the future of American manned space flight. From the Washington Post article: "A successful flight will allow NASA to resume construction of the half-built International Space Station and possibly extend the life of the beloved Hubble Space Telescope, which has allowed humans to peer into far galaxies. But with the shuttle fleet due to retire in 2010, any serious problems during July's mission likely would bring a premature end to the shuttle program and disrupt NASA's plans to keep its skilled work force intact while a replacement spacecraft is being developed."

What Happened to Blue Security 293

Posted by Hemos on Monday May 08, 2006 @10:51AM from the bad-news-for-anti-spam dept.

shadowknot writes "Blue Security has published a detailed account of the attack on their servers perpetrated by spammer "PharmaMaster". The attack included a DDoS attack on the Blue Security operational system and a Black Hole filtering attack on the Blue Security website. From the article: "The first attack was to block worldwide access to Blue Security's corporate website (www.bluesecurity.com) by tampering with the Internet backbone using a technique called "Blackhole Filtering". The Second attack was a DDoS attack on Blue Security's operational system."

El Reg Says Google Choking on Spam Sites 234

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 05, 2006 @04:18PM from the don't-believe-everything-you-read dept.

Grubby Games writes "The Register is reporting that Google is full, and in trouble." From the article: "Recently, we featured a software tool that can create 100 Blogger weblogs in 24 minutes, called Blog Mass Installer. A subterranean industry of sites providing 'private label articles,' or PLAs exists to flesh out 'content' for these freshly minted sites. And as a result, legitimate sites are often caught in the cross fire. But the new algorithms may not be solely to blame. Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt has hinted at another reason for the recent chaos. In Google's earnings conference call last month, Schmidt was frank about the extent of the problem. 'Those machines are full,' he said. 'We have a huge machine crisis.'" James Robertson points out that's a fairly selective bit of quoting.

One Big Bang, Or Many? 492

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 05, 2006 @02:42PM from the boggles-the-mind dept.

butterwise writes "From the Guardian Unlimited: 'The universe is at least 986 billion years older than physicists thought and is probably much older still, according to a radical new theory. The revolutionary study suggests that time did not begin with the big bang 14 billion years ago. This mammoth explosion which created all the matter we see around us, was just the most recent of many.'"

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