dansmith01 - Slashdot User

Movable Clouds Migrate To Chase Tax Breaks 151

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday August 08, 2009 @12:40PM from the overcast-overcost dept.

1sockchuck writes "State legislators have been offering huge tax incentives to attract data center projects from cloud-builders. But what happens if the political climate changes and the tax break disappears? If you're Microsoft, you can just take your cloud and move it someplace else. The infrastructure for the Windows Azure platform is being migrated out of a facility in central Washington after the state ruled that data centers no longer qualify for a tax exemption on equipment. Mike Manos, a key player in site selection for many major data centers, predicts that future cloud platforms will move often to chase lower taxes or cheaper power."

Comment Re:Example: Scripting Languages (Score 5, Interesting) 626

by dansmith01 on Sunday March 22, 2009 @04:24PM (#27290695) Attached to: Windows and Linux Not Well Prepared For Multicore Chips

Perl has excellent support for building threaded applications. See http://perldoc.perl.org/threads.html . I code multi-threaded apps in perl all the time and they utilize my quad-code very efficiently - in fact, my biggest hassle with multithreading is keeping the CPU cooled! There's also a threads::shared module (http://perldoc.perl.org/threads/shared.html) for handling locks, etc. I'd be hard pressed to imagine better language support for threading. Hardware, operating systems, and a lot of languages support threading. Granted, it isn't always easy/possible/worth it, but as things currently stand, the only bottleneck is programmers who are too lazy to design their algorithms for parallel execution.

Submission + - Open-Source 3D Printer Lets Users Make Anything (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by on Thursday November 01, 2007 @02:04AM

An anonymous reader writes: Picture a 3D inkjet printer that deposits droplets of plastic, layer by layer, gradually building up an object of any shape. Fabbers have been around for two decades, but they've always been the pricey playthings of high-tech labs — and could only use a single material. A Fab at Home kit costs around $2400 and allows users to print anything from Hors d'Oeuvres to flashlights.

Submission + - BBC tech head: "BBC not in bed with Bill Gates (tech.co.uk) 1

Submitted by whoever57 on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @05:36PM

whoever57 writes: According to the BBC's head of technology, there are only a small number of Linux visitors to the BBC's website and this is the reason that the BBC's iPlayer only supports Windows XP Why he expects a large number of Linux based visitors to his site when the media downloads are Windows XP only is not clear. He also thinks that "Launching a software service to every platform simultaneously would have been launch suicide", despite the example of many major sites that support Linux (even if this is through the closed source flash player). How the small number of Linux visitors could cause "suicide" is not explained. Most software processes envisage launching to a select group first, then working out the bugs, then making it available to the largest group.

Submission + - U.S. Voting Machines Standards Open To Public (eac.gov)

Submitted by

Online Voting

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @03:35PM

Online Voting writes: "The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has published new voting systems testing and certification standards for 190 days of public comment. For all the critics of electronic voting, this is your opportunity to improve the process. This will be the second version of the federal voting system standards (the first version is the VVSG 05). To learn more about these Voluntary Voting System Standards see this FAQ."

Submission + - ODF group drops ODF? (commandprompt.com)

Submitted by

poet

on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:41PM

poet writes: "According to this article over at Computer World, the Open Document Foundation has dropped support for Open Document Format, in favor of the Compound Documents Format put out by the W3C?"

Submission + - BD+ Cracked (theinquirer.net)

Submitted by Google85 on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:20PM

Google85 writes: Slysoft has announced they cracked BD+, the extra copy-protection layer in Blu-ray. The Inquirer has an English translation of the report

Submission + - Recycle Waste CPU Wafers into Solar Panels (statesman.com)

Submitted by

Luyseyal

on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @12:16PM

Luyseyal writes: "IBM has developed a process for scrubbing the data clean from waste silicon wafers, allowing the otherwise highly secret waste to be sold. The silicon quality usually necessary for solar production is very high and the cost of solar panels reflects it. Recycling this waste should help bring down the cost in the long run and add a new profit vector for chip manufacturers."

Submission + - How to silence free speech silently (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by

quizzicus

on Wednesday August 22, 2007 @08:56PM

quizzicus writes: "The Washington Post writes today about a sensitive White House document detailing how to screen for, silence, and remove protesters who show up at the President's public appearances. Obtained by an ACLU subpoena in the Rank v. Jenkins case, the Presidential Advance Manual (pdf) lays out strategies such as searching audience members at the door for hidden protest material, strategically placing "rally squads" throughout the crowd to intercept and shout down hecklers, and forcefully removing dissenters who cannot be squelched. The manual advises, however, that staff should "decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.""

Submission + - Point and click Gmail hacking at Black Hat (tgdaily.com)

Submitted by

not5150

on Thursday August 02, 2007 @04:51PM

not5150 writes: "Using Gmail or most other webmail programs over an unsecured access points just got a bit more dangerous. At Black Hat, Robert Graham, CEO of errata security, showed how to capture and clone session cookies. He even hijacked a shocked attendee's Gmail account in the middle of his Black Hat speech."

Submission + - Forensics Expert says Al-Qaeda Images Altered

Submitted by WerewolfOfVulcan on Thursday August 02, 2007 @04:33PM

WerewolfOfVulcan writes: Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.

Submission + - Apple fanboys send death threat to Mac worm author

Submitted by StonyandCher on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @09:37PM

StonyandCher writes: The beef over news of a worm targeting Macs, and the identity of the researcher who claimed to have created the malware, took an even stranger turn Wednesday as death threats were allegedly posted to his or her blog, which was then reportedly hacked.

In a posting, InfoSec listed comments he refused to allow to be posted to the blog. Including this gem:

"I dare you to demonstrate this at Defcon you ***** Microsoftie. We will drag you out, put a bullet in you, and bury your body so deep it will take a nuclear blast to find your body." — Anonymous

Submission + - Web-based Anonymizer Discontinued

Submitted by

RobertB-DC

on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @06:21PM

RobertB-DC writes: "With no fanfare, and apparently no outcry from the privacy community, Anonymizer Inc. discontinued its web-based Private Surfing service effective June 20, 2007. No reason was given, either on the Anonymizer web site or on founder Lance Cottrell's privacy blog. Private Surfing customers are now required to download a anonymizing client that handles all TCP traffic, but the program is Windows-only (with Vista support still a work-in-progress). And of course it's closed-source, which means it has few advantages over several other alternatives."

Submission + - New $298 Wal-Mart PC with OO.org, no crapware (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by cristarol on Wednesday July 18, 2007 @06:09PM

cristarol writes: Wal-Mart has begun selling a $298 Everex IMPACT GC3502 PC. It comes with Windows Vista Home Basic and OpenOffice.org 2.2, as well as a complete lack of crapware: 'Users accustomed to being bombarded with trialware offers and seeing their would-be pristine Windows desktops littered with shortcuts to AOL and other applications will likely be pleased at their absence from the GC3502. "In creating the eco-friendly GC3602, our main focus was to build a no-compromise, back-to-school PC with all the software applications a typical student would require, without resorting to bundling frivolous trial versions or increasing prices 30 percent," said Everex product manager Eugene Chang.' The hardware is nothing to write home about: a 1.5GHz Via C7 with 1GB of RAM and integrated graphics, but as Ars points out, it should be more than capable of performing basic tasks.

Submission + - MIT team designs a new, sleek, skintight spacesuit (mit.edu)

Submitted by

iamdrscience

on Monday July 16, 2007 @03:27PM

iamdrscience writes: "MIT aeronatuics professor Dava Newman has designed a new spacesuit along with her colleague, Jeff Hoffman and a group of students. This is far sleeker and lighter weight than the suits used by astronauts today, promising greater mobility than the traditional bulky suits of today which can weigh 300lbs or more. Instead of gas pressurization, the new prototype BioSuit employs "mechanical counter-pressure" in the form of skin-tight layers wrapped around the body."

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