Slashback: Courseware, Warranties, Subscraption

Slashback brings you word on open courseware, The Big Switch as seen by Tim O'Reilly, another update on the man-made "moon," more on the in-progress clampdown on Chinese Internet searchers, and a disheartening note about hard drive warranties. Get 'em before they disappear completely ;) Read on for the details.

But will they distribute diploma blanks as PDF files? perlmunger writes "Linux Journal highlighted this in the 'up front' section of the June 2001 issue (I knew I keep these old issues around for a reason). Apparently, MIT will (finally) be opening their Open Course Ware initiative on September 30th to the public. Looks like a great start from many departments."

Answer: it's a strong possibility. skinfitz writes "Following on from Google returning to China, New Scientist is reporting in this article that Chinese surfers searching Google are finding their Internet connection dropped for five minutes if they enter "politically sensitive" keywords, such as the Chinese president's name! Will this new technology find uses elsewhere? Is this the future of the web?"

My human transporter is still a station wagon. An anonymous reader writes with the text which by now many people have seen regarding the status of the world's most famous unavailable scooter; apparently it's not necessarily as far from available as an automated message from Amazon implied.

"Greetings from Amazon.com.

You recently received an e-mail from us regarding the Segway Human Transporter (also known as "Ginger" or "IT"). This e-mail was sent accidentally by an automated system and the information in it is incorrect.

In fact, there is no new information on Segway's availability. Consumer versions of Segway Human Transporters are currently being piloted in various communities throughout the U.S. The Segway HT is expected to be released to the general consumer market in 2003.

We apologize for the confusion. We will keep your e-mail address on our list of customers who wish to be notified about this item.

Sincerely,
Amazon.com Customer Service

Strong Opinions softsign writes "Apparently, Tim O'Reilly's recent article addressing the topic of Switchers was so popular and generated so much response that he felt compelled to respond to reader comments in his MacDevCenter column this week. It reads almost like the Apple Switch website, but there are some really insightful emails peppered with Tim's comments. Worth a read."

The moon's been asking for this for years. cscx writes "The mysterious space junk, or apparent "other moon" reported a few weeks ago, now is more likely to be an old Saturn V (from the Apollo program) rocket booster. Bad thing is, there is a 20% chance it could strike the moon sometime next year. More details at MSNBC."

We'll let you you borrow it for a while, sign here. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has scrapped plans for subscription-based licensing of consumer products following the end of a 12-month trial in several countries including New Zealand. The Story says people were getting confused as to why they had to pay after the 12 months had gone by."

I find your lack of confidence disturbing. Longinus writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Western Digital is going to follow Maxtor's recent decision to cut their warranty of future drives from three years to one, with an extended warranty being offered at an additional price. The article goes on to mention that Seagate is rumored to also be considering such a cut, but nothing official has been confirmed. One can only wonder if this increase in price is to due to corporate cost saving measures or the fact that hard drives are becoming less stable magnetically as they increase in storage space."

Comments

teh futare of starkon slashdot PHIRST POASTR

[Anonymous Coward]

The Future of SLASHDOT.

2002. Slashdot publishes 1,000,000th rumor passed off as actual story. The story generates 480 comments, 263 of which agree with the article, and 107 of which point out it's a rumor and are modded down as redundant. The remaining comments are all "first posts." or posts that contain any rational insight are modded "troll."

2002. CmdrTaco married to a human female, reports are that she does not have 46 chromosomes, however. Fent does display tendency to retardation.

2002. Slashdot parent corporation VA Research^W Linux^W Software stock worth 35 cents. Rumors that AOL, Microsoft, or even Jimmy the hobo who lives under the Longfellow Bridge may buy it.

2003. VA Software bought by Microsoft for a cup of coffee and a donut. All Microsoft-critical articles mysteriously disappear from Slashdot. Bill Gates as Borg logo replaced with Bill Gates as God. (Taco suggested that in order to be "God," or his vision of God, Gates would have to be seen in a NAMBLA T-shirt. Luckily good taste prevails in favor of the old man image in glowing aura)

2004. CmdrTaco loses virginity, well, not sex with men virginity, that's long since gone, and not sex with anime blow up dolls, this time, real sex.

2004. The WIPO Troll returns again, showering Slashdot in 45,000 copies of the same post: "Lick my crotch hairs." Slashdot, despite
running on 18 redundant IIS/8.0Beta6 servers, buckles under the load. The term "Slashdotted" is replaced with "WIPO-Trolled."

2004. Slashdot officially shut down. Millions of screaming, unwashed geeks invade Redmond campus and lynch Bill Gates.

2005. Linus Torvalds and Anal Cox found dead along with six penguins, a tub of crisco and several used condoms. FreeBSD users are glad the insanity is dying.

2005. CmdrTaco rumored to have had sex again, even with constant Viagra therapy, it took this long. He complains, I can be ready to go again in five minutes if I was looking at a nude man, to the dyslexic Fent.

2006. CowboiKneel found dead in hotel room with 56 pizza boxes covering his bloated corpse. Three suffocated gay prostitutes are extracted from beneath his body as police remove it with a backhoe.

2007. CmdrTaco actually has sex again, this time plugging Fent in the ass for a more manlike feel.

2007. BSD is still officially "dying." No word on when its demise will take place. FreeBSD 9 is delivered in perfect working order in a coherent superior, commercially viable and useable fashion with real documentation, the same practice followed since inception. Linux lunatics, after the death of Cox, are still trying to perfect the Trident driver while ignoring the existence of the GeForce 9. Netcraft dies along with all the surveys they held on Microsoft and Linux servers are lost as well.

2007. CmdrTaco starts new weblog to replace Slashdot, creatively named Dotslash. Remainder of Linux users flock to the site and immediate WIPO-Troll it out of existence.

2007. Box running FreeBSD for 6 years sets world record for Unix uptime on consumer hardware.

2008. CmdrTaco has sex with his wife for the first time without thinking of men. He has dawned on the extra sexual pick me up for his twisted mind, small children.

Re:Hard drives are comodities

[Jucius Maximus]

"Honestly, when I can buy a 40G Seagate for $64, so what if it only has a one year warranty. You made backups, right? Toss it and get a new one."

Tell that to the people in China who are drowning under our computer garbage.

Sadly, North American culture (and I can say this because I am from that continent) is beyond exceedingly wasteful (not just in relation to computers) in ways that most people don't even notice. It's hard to see the real picture when you're a part of it. I am guilty of it too, but I'm a little more sensitive to it than most folks because my parents are immigrants who grew up in a very different culture where you didn't throw out the mango peels because you can boil them to make a tasty drink.

HDD's using current technology that are $64 are simply not a sustainable way of operating in general and it is worth it now to pay more for better hard drives that will last a long time. Fortunately, there will always be a high-reliability segment of the market for servers. I have never thrown out a HDD. I even had a clock that was formerly a 40 MB drive on my shelf. I sell the ancient 100 MB scsi drives from 10+ years which all still work to collectors. Too bad most current drives will crap out by then.