Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Feed Sirius, XM: Radios Not Obsolete (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Sirius and XM issued statements that their existing radios would work with the new service they would create by merging, but will the number of channels available increase? In Listening Post.


Feed Scientists Call Carmakers' Bluff (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
The UCS unveils a minivan design that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions more than 40 percent, keep safety and performance intact, be cheaper to buy -- and it's not a hybrid. What's up automakers? In Autopia.


Data Storage

Disk Drive Failures 15 Times What Vendors Say 284

Posted by Zonk from the cough-sputter-wheeze-choke dept.
jcatcw writes "A Carnegie Mellon University study indicates that customers are replacing disk drives more frequently than vendor estimates of mean time to failure (MTTF) would require.. The study examined large production systems, including high-performance computing sites and Internet services sites running SCSI, FC and SATA drives. The data sheets for the drives indicated MTTF between 1 and 1.5 million hours. That should mean annual failure rates of 0.88%, annual replacement rates were between 2% and 4%. The study also shows no evidence that Fibre Channel drives are any more reliable than SATA drives."
Mars

Submission + - Scientist: Sun is Warming Both Earth and Mars

Submitted by
MCraigW
MCraigW writes: "Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural — and not a human-induced — cause. Earth is currently experiencing warming, which climate scientists say is due to humans pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun."
Book Reviews

MySQL Cookbook 64

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-get-cooking dept.
Michael J. Ross writes "Of all the technical challenges faced by the typical experienced computer programmer, questions about syntax form a relatively small portion. This is especially true now that current coding editors and IDEs offer statement expansion and syntax checking. Rather, the most common type of technical challenge is understanding how to solve a specific data access or manipulation problem. Hence the growing popularity of programming "cookbooks," which are filled with "recipes," each comprising a concise statement of a focused problem, followed by a solution, with plenty of sample code to show how to implement it. For developers using the MySQL database system, the gold standard of such books is MySQL Cookbook, by Paul DuBois." Read below for the rest of Michael's review
Microsoft

Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT 410

Posted by Zonk from the that-is-a-serious-buzz-harsher dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to a memo being reported on by Information week, the US Department of Transportation has issued a moratorium on upgrading Microsoft products. Concerns over costs and compatability issues has lead the federal agency to prevent upgrades from XP to Vista, as well as to stop users from moving to IE 7 and Office 2007. As the article says, 'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."'"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Pet Peeve #3: The Cubicle 3

Journal by Billosaur

If you work in IT, Marketing, Sales, just about any industry today, you work in a cubicle. I won't go into my usual harangue about them, because they are now ubiquitous and not liable to be replaced anytime soon. They allow employers to pack larger numbers of workers into smaller areas, and thereby save a little money on office space. And if you believe the economists, productivity has gone up, though I hardly believe that has anything to do with the fact that we sit only three feet from our

Slashdot Top Deals

Many people write memos to tell you they have nothing to say.

Close