nate42 - Slashdot User

Why Overheard Cell Phone Chats Are Annoying 344

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 20, 2010 @06:26PM from the they-drown-out-the-bark-of-my-gun dept.

__roo writes "American researchers think they have found the answer to the question of why overhearing cell phone chats are annoying. According to scientists at Cornell University, when only half of the conversation is overheard, it drains more attention and concentration than when overhearing two people talking. According to one researcher, 'We have less control to move away our attention from half a conversation (or halfalogue) than when listening to a dialogue. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can't tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated.' Their study will be published in the journal Psychological Science."

Apple Reverses iPad "No Cash Purchase" Policy 377

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 20, 2010 @03:25PM from the so-it's-free-now dept.

ZipK writes "After a few days of bad publicity, Apple has reversed its no cash purchase policy, explaining that the policy was originally implemented to limit the number of iPads an individual could buy during the introductory period of short supply. Now that supply has caught up with demand — and the story has hit front pages and gained national attention — Apple has reversed its policy, and taken the opportunity to put a bow on the story by giving the formerly scorned Diane Campbell a free iPad."

US Air Force To Suffer From PS3 Update 349

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday May 13, 2010 @06:45AM from the sounds-like-an-act-of-terrorism-to-me dept.

tlhIngan writes "The US Air Force, having purchased PS3s for supercomputing research, is now the latest victim of Sony's removal of the Install Other OS feature. It turns out that while their PS3s don't need the firmware update, it will be impossible to replace PS3s that fail. PS3s with the Other OS feature are no longer produced since the Slim was introduced, so replacements will have to come from the existing stock of used PS3s. However, as most gamers have probably updated their PS3s, that used stock is no longer suitable for the USAF's research. In addition, smaller educational clusters using PS3s will share the same fate — unable to replace machines that die in their clusters." In related news, Sony has been hit with two more lawsuits over this issue.

How the Internet Didn't Fail As Predicted 259

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 08, 2010 @12:22PM from the series-of-popular-tubes dept.

Lord Byron Eee PC writes "Newsweek is carrying a navel-gazing piece on how wrong they were when in 1995 they published a story about how the Internet would fail. The original article states, 'Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.' The article continues to say that online shopping will never happen, that airline tickets won't be purchased over the web, and that newspapers have nothing to fear. It's an interesting look back at a time when the Internet was still a novelty and not yet a necessity."

Comment Not OSS but good (Score 1) 177

by nate42 on Monday March 27, 2000 @03:56PM (#1166616) Attached to: Is there An Enterprise-Level Open Source RDBMS?

Evaluating these types of enterprise level databases was my job over the summer, particularly failover capabilities( 5 nines availability that kind of thing). The one that we finally wen with was a norwegian company Clustra, that has long supported linux. Very impressive product, but of course not OSS.

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