Slashdot Mirror

Thomas Hines writes "NVIDIA just launched a new SLI Physics technology. It offloads the physics processing from the CPU to the graphics card. According to the benchmark, it improves the frame rate by more than 10x. Certainly worth investing in SLI if it works."

MikeDawg asks: "With so much uncertainty in the current job market for tech workers, and with varying financial situations; are you required (or want) to work a second job? I'm in one of those situations. I work as a bartender during the days and weekends, and I work as a mainframe operator during the night. Often browsing classified ads for positions, I see ads for jobs that pay a minimal amount more than my current tech job, and a possibility for less stability (see this Slashdot Article). Do you think it would be a better idea for someone to work two somewhat secure jobs, getting paid a little bit less, or going for a higher paying somewhat insecure job? I also run into varying conflicts such as scheduling if I would like to try and maintain two jobs, which is never fun (Don't even ask about how happy my girlfriend is). So my question to you out there, would you rather work 2 secure jobs, that pay a little bit less than what you could be making, or would you rather get paid a touch more, and work for 1 less secure employer?"

MikeDawg writes "After dealing with the headache of never having enough electrical outlets, not having a cable TV coaxial, not having a telephone hookup in the right places of my apartment, I found this article at CNN. It is nice to see that college dorm rooms are getting filled with outlets to provide students with enough hook-ups with for all their electronics. My question to you (renters/dorm-room dwellers) is does your dorm room or apartment have enough outlets, whether it be electrical, cable, telephone, or anything else you may need? What do you do in a situation like this? Do you load up each socket with a 10+ port power strip (or battery backup as it may be) and pray that you don't knock-out the circuit everytime you start burning a CD?"

FIGJAM writes: "Actelis, based in Fremont, California, have raised $26 million to enable speeds up to 155Mbs over copper lines by overcoming crosstalk interference with error-correction." The article is unfortunately short on technical details, long on current telecom market financial conditions. There's a bit more information on their website, but be warned, it's nearly as buzzword centric and glib. The speed of fiber over existing copper is still too tantalizing to ignore, though, even if it's not as sexy as actual fiber to the home.

dewboy asks: "We're trying to set up a rack of SBC's (Single Board Computers) that will allow us to plug a certain number of SBC's into a backplane which will provide power. All interfaces (mouse, keyboard, VGA, Enet, etc) are on the faceplates of the cards, so all they really need is power. All we've been able to find so far are chasses that support a single SBC and a (4-20 slot) backplane. What we'd like is a chassis that supports 20 SBC's. Has anyone found anything like this?"

VinceV sent us a link to a new site he's started up called Control-Escape.com which aims to be a help site for novice linux users making the migration from those less known alternative OSs from Redmond. jedgar wrote in to announce the Feb. Edition of DaemonNews and FreeBSD 'zine, and Squeezer wrote in to say that the feb. issue of Ext2 is out. (Mention one, ya gotta mention 9 more. Sheesh *grin*) Several other folks wrote in to note that The GNOME Project has released 0.99.5. Justin Clarke wrote in to show us Rioport.com which is Diamond's new site to connect Rio owners with legal MP3s. danmil noted another Slashdot reference in the mainstream- this one is in a NY times story. Now we have a few funny bits not for the Moral and Pure: the_gimp sent us a link to what is probably the most amusing patent in recent memory. Glad that's patented. Don't want that technology uncontrolled. Somewhat related, behhl sent us a site that was bound to happen- AdultLinux. You can guess what it's for. And lastly, for the strangest bit of the day, Hans sent us a link to Furniture Porn. Fear. And hide your children.

Stradivarius wrote in to say "New developments in computing theory suggest that analog computing may be more powerful than its digital counter part. The latest thesis claims that some computational problems can only be solved by analog neural networks. Since neural networks are essentially analog computers, the work suggests, on a theoretical level, that analog operations are inherently more powerful than digital."