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+ - Mythbusters to test cockroaches radiation myth->

Submitted by
redwoodtree writes "As the article quotes so perfectly "Contrary to popular belief, not a significant amount of research goes into cockroach radiation" so the Mythbusters are going out to Hanford Site where plutonium was manufactured for the first nuclear bomb. It's the single most polluted nuclear waste site in the U.S. The Mythbusters are going to take cockroaches and other insects and apply successively higher doses of radiation in a controlled setting. One group of insects will not be exposed to any radiation of course. It turns out that the facility is used to test radiation on electronic equipment, power lines and so forth. It's comforting that all the nuclear waste is being put to some good use before it all washes down into the Columbia river."
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+ - Colbert enters the Presidential Race

Submitted by
zstlaw writes "As red, white and blue balloons fell around him, Stephen Colbert announced his candidacy for president on 'The Colbert Report'. He went on to claim he will only run in South Carolina where he has roots. In a typical Colbert fashion he claimed he would run as Democrat and Republican so that he could lose twice.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hFzxF7XLwi7Il2DVEE6la0NVo — gD8SB07VO0

While the candidacy appears to be tongue-in-cheek, with Colbert's sizable audience even a tongue in cheek candidacy could pull a large number of young voters whom are unsatisfied with other candidates. How do you think this may effect the already crowded field?"

+ - Radiohead Made $6-$10 Million on Album->

Submitted by
mytrip writes "Thom Yorke's representative told me that the band have "decided not to give out any figures" for sales of Radiohead's In Rainbows album, but that isn't stopping people from making their best guesses based on what little information is available.

The Seminal estimates that Radiohead sold about $10 million-worth of albums as of 10/12, assuming that their source was correct that approximately 1.2 million people downloaded the album from the site, and that the average price paid per album was $8 (we heard that number too, but also heard that a later, more accurate average was $5, which would result in $6 million in revenue instead)."

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Linux Business

+ - Debating the economics of Windows-Linux migration->

Submitted by
AlexGr writes "Jeff Gould has a post in Interop News about the difficult economics of Windows-to-Linux desktop migrations in big organizations like government agencies. The most interesting point is that while Linux migration may not make much financial sense short term, in the long term — or very long term — the switch can yield cost savings by virtue of the fact that it breaks Microsoft's proprietary lock-in. In other words, you pay through the teeth to move to Linux now, but you get that investment back eventually because you no longer have to pay monopoly rent to Microsoft. This argument makes perfect sense, but economic theory and empirical observation of real-world software industry behavior both suggest that it might not work in practice. http://www.interopnews.com/news/debating-the-economics-of-windows-to-linux-migration.html"
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+ - Stolen laptop = free beer (as in beer)

Submitted by
Jivecat writes "CNN reports on a New Zealand brewery that had a laptop stolen containing all the company's financials. The co-owner of Croucher Brewing Co. has offered 'a dozen bottles of beer a month for... life' to whoever recovers the laptop. In a neighbourly gesture, a New Zealand winemaker offered the suggestion that the brewery make its reward terms very specific, to avoid any 'difficult legal wrangle.'"

Standard Web Fonts 'Updated' In Vista 452

Posted by Zonk
from the can't-leave-well-enough-alone dept.

+ - Hosting your own website 1

Submitted by GPTelemann
GPTelemann writes "As an almost-grad-student in computer engineering who's been using cheap webhosting services, I figured that I should be able to use an older computer lying around to run my own Linux webserver. I've used Linux from time to time since before the days of Debian 2.0, and Ubuntu seems to be very popular these days. Unfortunately, I don't really know how to go about setting up a simple, secure webserver on my local internet connection. What things are most important to know, and where should I look to learn how to go about this (and how to get an already-registered domain to link to my computer)?"
The Internet

+ - Small Developers->

Submitted by jbiesi
jbiesi writes "An independent developer that I've worked with in the past created a little app using the new facebook API's, but he never saw that the response could be so huge. Now in addition to the all the questions about how he can maintain and improve his work, he is also facing questions to buy his app and offer him jobs. Can anyone in the slashdot community offer him advice/moral support?"
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SPAM: No Boom today

Journal by stoolpigeon

Shuttle had to land in CA due to weather. Too bad. What's a couple more million and a few days though? It's just government money.


+ - Data Center Disaster and Recovery-> 1

Submitted by
John -- on behalf of HP
John -- on behalf of HP writes "Nothing is indestructible — but that doesn't mean you have to loose what's important when disaster strikes. To prove this very important point, HP recently simulated a gas leak and used explosives to blow up a datacenter, which included the entire spectrum of HP products, including StorageWorks, servers, software and Procurve solutions. What resulted was the flawless fail-over of every system with full IT services up and running in 13 seconds to less than 2 minutes. Take a look at the destruction here: http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/523434- 0-0-0-121.html"
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