Google Turns 10 (7)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 day, 5 hours
ago
permalink
Ian Lamont writes "It was on September 7, 1998 that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc., aiming to provide a better search engine. You can see what it looked like here. Google had a relatively good search engine technology that succeeded in burying many late 1990s competitors, and it eventually developed a successful advertising model and pledged to "do no evil." The company now has nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market ...
Seinfeld-Windows TV Ad Anything But 'Delicious' (2)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 day, 10 hours
ago
permalink
CWmike writes "Microsoft's $300-million ad campaign for Windows starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld launched Thursday with a long TV commercial almost entirely devoid of any talk of Windows, Microsoft or anything, really. With co-star Bill Gates, the scene is set in a shopping mall. Seinfeld, who did most of the talking, helps Gates buy a pair of shoes called the Conquistador. The commercial ends with Seinfeld asking Gates if Microsoft will "come out with something that ...
MySQL Founder Monty Quits Sun (4)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 day, 11 hours
ago
permalink
Paul Boutin writes "A reliable source tells Valleywag that MySQL inventor Michael Widenius, better known as Monty, has resigned from Sun. Sun bought Monty's MySQL company in a billion-dollar deal last January. Brian Aker, who forked the Web 2.0-friendly Drizzle SQL database (and former Slashdot engineer!), remains at Sun." Kaj Arnö and Sheeri Cabral share their thoughts.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Oldest Skeleton In New World Discovered (9)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, Slashdot mashup (172)
2 days, 12 hours
ago
permalink
Death Metal Maniac writes "Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton along with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula could provide new clues to how the Americas were first populated. The skeletons' skulls hint that the people may not be of northern Asian descent, which would contradict the dominant ...
Privacy Policies Are Great -- For PhDs (4)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
2 days, 13 hours
ago
permalink
An anonymous reader writes "Major Internet companies say that they inform their customers about privacy issues through specially written policies. What they don't say is that more often than not consumers would need college undergraduate educations or higher to easily wade through the verbiage. BNET looked at 20-some-odd privacy policies from Internet companies that received letters from the House about privacy practices. The easiest to read policy came from Yahoo, at a roughly 12th grade ...
-
harry chen said:
If you think privacy policy is difficult to read, try EULA (end-user license agreements).
Insects May Have Had a Hand In Dinosaur Extinction (5)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
2 days, 14 hours
ago
permalink
eldavojohn writes "Everyone's got their favorite theories of Dinosaur extinction, but new speculation is rampant in a book that gives cause to believe it may have been disease-carrying insects. Due to the length of their slow and eventual extinction (the 'K-T Boundary'), it is argued that this would more likely be attributed to the spread of disease and the rise of parasitic insects like ticks or biting flies. Are our immune systems the only reason ...
Should IT Unionize? (11)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
2 days, 15 hours
ago
permalink
snydeq writes "Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do — all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan asks. To some, the odds against IT unions are long, in large part because the 'lone gunman' ...
-
BillDeys said:
Unionizing is not the answer, IMO the nature of most of the IT guys I know is why they are working the long hours and the like. They just don't want to give up any control and that means they have to work more! A union atmosphere isn't the type I think is conducive to an IT department!
-
CKL said:
Is that a rhetorical question?
-
cody said:
If they're smart they won't go the ABA route. The ABA does absolutely nothing to meet the needs of the majority of lawyers, outside of interests of BigLaw. The ABA is doing nothing to help public interest and contract attorneys.
Physicists Discover "Doubly Strange" Particle (6)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
2 days, 16 hours
ago
permalink
Tsalg writes "Physicists have discovered a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b. The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and weighs about six times the proton mass. This is probably one of the last noticeable sub-atomic discoveries made somewhere else than at CERN since LHC is about to start the hunt for the Higgs particle that remains elusive ...
-
Nicole said:
I forever thank physicists for naming the quarks the way they did.
A Chinese Challenge To Intel (2)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
3 days, 8 hours
ago
permalink
motang writes "Chinese government funded Godson-3 a CPU that is developed to bring personal computing to majority of Chinese people by the year 2010. Will this pose any threat to Intel?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Chrome, Day 2 (4)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
3 days, 16 hours
ago
permalink
Seems that almost every story submitted to Slashdot last night in some way involved Google's Chrome that we started talking about yesterday. Dotan Cohen noted that according to Clicky Chrome has hit 3% browser share. Since Google has decided to release Chrome only for Windows, I now share for you 3 reviews written by others: the first comes from alexy2k, the second from mildsiete, and the third from oli4uk. They all seem to feature various ...
Thai Government To Close 400 Anti-government Sites (1)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
3 days, 17 hours
ago
permalink
Will Lord writes "The Guardian is reporting that the Thai government plans to close down 400 anti-government websites and is asking ISPs to block 1,200 more. The response follows a declaration of a state of emergency which has seen troops take to the streets of Bangkok to police anti-government protests. With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent, do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European ...
Zombie Network Explosion (1)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
3 days, 18 hours
ago
permalink
anti-globalism writes "The number of compromised zombie PCs in botnet networks has quadrupled over the last three months. Shadowserver tracks botnet activity and the number of command and control servers. It uses a variety of metrics to slice and dice its figures based in part on the entropy of botnet infections. The clear trend within these figures is upwards, with a rise in botnet numbers of 100,000 to 400,000 (if 30 day entropy is factored ...
China Launches Antitrust Probe Vs. Microsoft (1)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 week, 2 days
ago
permalink
snydeq writes "China has launched an investigation into whether Microsoft unfairly dominates its software market, according to a state media report. A working committee of China's State Intellectual Property Office is investigating whether Microsoft engaged in discriminatory pricing and will will also look at Microsoft's practice of bundling other software programs within its Windows operating system, according to the report. The probe is part of a greater sweep of operating systems and other software developed ...
OpenSUSE 11.0 Released (1)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 week, 2 days
ago
permalink
Nate D writes "It's here: a new major release of Novell's community-supported distro is now available, and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Linux Format has a hands-on look at the new installer, SLAB menu and Compiz Fusion, and weighs up whether the distro can fight competition from Ubuntu and Fedora. Is this the start of a new era for SUSE?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
East Coast Broadband Fastest In USA (3)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 week, 5 days
ago
permalink
Death Metal Maniac writes "The study, which was conducted by affordable-broadband advocacy group Speed Matters, found that the nine states with the fastest median download connections are all located on the East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps)."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The 1-Petabyte Barrier Is Crumbling (3)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 week, 5 days
ago
permalink
CurtMonash writes "I had been a database industry analyst for a decade before I found 1-gigabyte databases to write about. Now it is 15 years later, and the 1-petabyte barrier is crumbling. Specifically, we are about to see data warehouses — running on commercial database management systems — that contain over 1 petabyte of actual user data. For example, Greenplum is slated to have two of them within 60 days. Given how close it was ...
-
Allen said:
When I was managing the systems at the Digital Library at Indiana University in the early 90's we were really proud of ourselves for having a 1-terabyte database. Now I have 4 on my desk, at home.
IRiffs Takes MST3k Open Source (10)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
Slashdot (2916)
1 week, 5 days
ago
permalink
An anonymous reader writes "Michael J. Nelson started up Rifftrax as a 2nd act to his stint as host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and now they're making their website open to anyone and everyone who thinks they're funny with iRiffs — allowing people to upload their own comedy commentary tracks and charge whatever they want. They've already got a few would-be groups online, including one who takes the open source a step further — ...
-
Will said:
I LOVE MST3K. I was so sad when it went off the air.
30 Years of the Lego Minifig (5)
share
digg
by
CmdrTaco (409)
on
DarthMolen's Tech Pipe (0)
1 week, 5 days
ago
permalink
clikit writes "Today, the Lego Minifig turns 30 years old. Gizmodo is running a video contest with Lego, giving away Galaxy Explorer or the Yellow Castle sets and other unopened vintage sets. They also have an exclusive video from the factory, showing how the minifig is built. Check it out ... finding out how the little guys are made will make you smile." Scientists estimate that 98% of the minifigs created in the last three ...
