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Comment Use BITS (Score 5, Informative) 536

Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) can be used to transfer files between windows servers. It is the technology behind Windows Update. We use it in our company to transfer files across a low bandwidth sattelite connection. Great thing is that it can automatically resume transfer after rebooting both machines. SharpBits offer a nice .NET API. You can find it here: http://www.codeplex.com/sharpbits

Transportation

Computer-Controlled Cargo Sailing Vessels Go Slow, Frugal 210

An anonymous reader writes "Big container ships are taking it very slow these days, cruising at 10 knots instead of their usual 26 knots, to save fuel. This is actually slower than sailing freighters traveled a hundred years ago. The 1902 German Preussen, the largest sailing ship ever built, traveled between Hamburg (Germany) and Iquique (Chile): the best average speed over a one way trip was 13.7 knots. Sailing boats need a large and costly crew, but they can also be controlled by computers. Automated sail handling was introduced already one century ago. In 2006 it was taken to the extreme by the Maltese Falcon, which can be operated by one man at the touch of a button. We have computer-controlled windmills, why not computer-controlled sailing cargo vessels?"
Earth

Major Cache of Fossils Unearthed In Los Angeles 215

aedmunde sends along news from the LA Times: "A nearly intact mammoth, dubbed Zed, is among the remarkable discoveries near the La Brea Tar Pits. It's the largest known deposit of Pleistocene ice age fossils... in what might seem to be the unlikeliest of places — under an old May Co. parking lot in L.A.'s tony Miracle Mile shopping district. ...huge chunks of soil from the site have been removed intact and now sit in large wooden crates on the back lot... The 23 crates range... from the size of a desk to that of a small delivery truck... There were, in fact, 16 separate deposits on the site, an amount that, by her estimate, would have taken 20 years to excavate conventionally. ... Carefully identifying the edges of each deposit, her team dug trenches around them and underneath, isolating the deposits on dirt pedestals. After wrapping heavy plastic around the deposits, workers built wooden crates similar to tree boxes and lifted them out individually with a heavy crane. The biggest one weighed 123,000 pounds."
Google

New Google Favicon Deja Vu All Over Again? 227

theodp writes "Last June, Google rolled out a new favicon, the small branding icon that graces your URL bar when you visit Google. Which, as it turned out, bore a striking similarity to Garth Brooks' Circle-G logo. Well, Google went back to the drawing board and has come back with a new favicon, which it says was inspired by — not copied from, mind you — its users' submitted ideas. Some are also seeing inspiration elsewhere for the new favicon, which consists of white 'g' on a background of four color swatches. Take the AVG antivirus icon, for instance. Or everybody's favorite memory toy, Simon. Or — in perhaps the unkindest cut of all — the four-color Microsoft Windows logo, shown here with a superimposed white '7'. Anything else come to mind?" What comes to mind for me is just how obsessed many people are with the Google favicon.

Comment Asta La Vista AltaVista (Score 2, Informative) 209

After my geek friend told me of google in autumn of 1998 I quickly abandoned AltaVista for Google. For a few weeks I would do dual searches with both to compare results and to check how Google was stacking up and it quickly became apparent that they were much much better and they had a nicer cleaner search interface. When I did my CS project I remember occasionally using both google and yahoo because they did put different search items near the top 10-20. Occationally Yahoo would throw up something Google hadn't found. But Google always overall had much better hits.

Comment Re:Lust leads to love, love leads to? (Score 1) 585

hang on to it. personally im not a big believer in fate but if it's going to work out it will. If you have means to communicate often and can visit sometimes then that will obviously help alot and sometimes there just isnt any other option except having hope (ok excuse the romantic stuff) Ive been in a long distance relationship for 1.5 years and we're finally going to be on the same continent again :-)

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