ccGecko - Slashdot User

3rd-Grader Busted For Jolly Rancher Possession 804

Posted by samzenpus on Monday May 10, 2010 @11:10AM from the step-away-from-the-candy dept.

theodp writes "A third-grader in a small Texas school district received a week's detention for merely possessing a Jolly Rancher. Leighann Adair, 10, was eating lunch Monday when a teacher confiscated the candy. Her parents said she was in tears when she arrived home later that afternoon and handed them the detention notice. But school officials are defending the sentence, saying the school was abiding by a state guideline that banned 'minimal nutrition' foods. 'Whether or not I agree with the guidelines, we have to follow the rules,' said school superintendent Jack Ellis."

New Linux Petabyte-Scale Distributed File System 132

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @08:14PM from the check-it-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A recent addition to Linux's impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data."

Beaver Dam Visible From Space 286

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 05, 2010 @06:41PM from the dam-big-job dept.

ygslash writes "The Hoover Dam no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam. Satellite photos of northern Alberta, Canada, show that several families of beavers have apparently joined forces to build a dam 850 meters wide, more than twice as wide as the Hoover Dam."

StarCraft II Mac Client Beta Available 123

Posted by Soulskill on Friday April 30, 2010 @01:18AM from the just-waiting-on-a-linux-client-right dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Blizzard has released the Mac client of the StarCraft II multiplayer beta. If you already have an invite for the PC beta, the Mac client is available under your Battle.net account." A recent patch also added a map editor to the StarCraft II beta, which has already led to some interesting projects.

An Early Look At Civilization V 286

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:02AM from the new-and-shiny dept.

c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."

Sims 3 Expansion Announced 84

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @06:50AM from the hundreds-of-new-ways-to-torture-your-sim dept.

EA has announced that The Sims 3 will be getting its first expansion pack on November 16th, titled World Adventures. It will be available at first for the PC and Mac clients, and later for mobile platforms. "Players can take their Sims on new journeys to famous real-world inspired destinations around the globe for the first time ever and seek out new adventures. ... From mastering martial arts in Shang Simla, China, discovering rich culture and famous landmarks on a romantic getaway to Champs Les Sims, France or exploring the depths of ancient tombs in Al Simhara, Egypt, players can take their Sims on a journey that will change their Sims' lives." EA's Lyndsay Pearson spoke further about the expansion in an interview with IGN.

Feed Macworld: News: Apple adds iPod touch to revamped iPod line (macworld.com)

From feed by macworldfeed on Wednesday September 05, 2007 @02:52PM

Apple overhauled its iPod offerings, adding video playback to the nano, expanding the capacity on the redubbed iPod classic to 160GB, and introducing the new iPod touch.

Comment I have installed this product multiple times . . . (Score 1) 438

by ccGecko on Thursday April 06, 2006 @10:22AM (#15075815) Attached to: New 25x Data Compression?

. . . so I might be able to clear up some confusion. The word 'compression' is probably not the right choice. 'De-duplication' is probably a better word. Try this: "ProtecTIER can achieve a 25:1 de-duplication ratio." That sounds more accurate to me. Currently it works as a virtual tape engine. Take 10+ TB of disk and attach to a Linux server (x86_64 only). ProtecTIER makes that disk look like a tape library and tape drives filled with tape cartridges for use by an enterprise backup system like Veritas NetBackup, IBM/Tivoli TSM, Legato NetWorker, etc. Most large companies today use a pretty similar backup strategy: Fulls once a week, incrementals the other days; weekly fulls are kept for 2-8 weeks, 'monthly' fulls are kept 2-6 months, daily incrementals are kept for 7-21 days. Depending on the retentions chosen, that's 10-30 or more copies of the same data, plus the maybe 5-10% that actually changed. ProtecTIER gets the 25:1 ratio by eliminating the redundent copies.

The algorithm is pretty elegant, actually. It holds a meta data index in RAM. As data comes in (at rates up to 200MB/s) it looks for a similar data set already stored. It reads the old data in, does a diff against the new data, stores the unique data untouched and uses pointers to refer to the duplicate data. With this method even if the system is completely wrong about which existing data set to match with, the data will be safely stored (with a low de-duplication ratio in this instance).

Yes, the product works as advertised. If you don't have several terabytes of data to protect in an enterprise environment, it's probably not for you. But, if you do have a large environment and are tired of dealing with tape, this product rocks.

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