Our friends over at The Register are covering the HPC conference ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/hardware/hpc_blog/ ) going on in New Orleansl. The Nvida Fermi/Tesla GPU products seem to be taking a bigger and bigger chunk of the old high end market. Companies like IBM and Cray are using them in their own products since the cost per flop ratio is so favorable. Anyone can play around with parallel processing now thanks to the Nvidia CUDA api. If you have a GeForce chip then you pretty much have everyting you need.

Now if I could just talk my wife into letting me buy one of these. http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/hpcc/cray-cx1iws-dell.aspx

Not sure why, but when I finally upgraded to a 32 bit system it stopped working. Strange.

This is just an attempt to codify something that may or may not already be possible. Laws like this are useless in the context of day to day life and would only come into play in some type of emergency situation. There is a subset of the population that have a hard time with freedom and need the boundaries that laws and rules give them. This caters to them. They feel more secure because the law/rule is in place despite the fact that it will (or could) never be used. Whenever they feel threatened by the Internet they can rest assured that their friends in Washington can shut it down with the big red switch.

Then again, it may turn out to be the RIAA/MPAA 's nuclear option.

Perl is for coders, not web designers. As the former, I can pull together and correlate data from all over the place. The only problem is my output is ugly as hell. Since I don't do commercial work viewed by the general public that isn't a problem but it would be nice. Whenever I right click and look at the source for a fairly complicated webpage I get depressed. Seems way, way too complex and you are not seeing everything being brought in via CSS and JS libs.

I keep looking for a way to bridge the gap between WYSIWYG page designers and plain text perl backends. Any and all suggestions are welcome.

-Xanthos

Finally a decent OS to run on the SuperDomes!

Having had a Nokia N800 for several years, I have firsthand experience with the limitations of a WIFI tablet. It works great for around the house but that is about it. There are many times I have wanted to pull it out and check something on the net, but no WIFI no connection. It works great as a portable media player, but the lack of universal connectivity really holds it back. My advice to anyone thinking about an iPad would be to wait until the 3G version is out and compare the two. The added functionality may be worth the added cost.

(Personally I want Nokia to build a 3G iPod killer, but I ain't holding my breath waiting for it to happen.)

-Xanthos

That is until the pharm and insurance companies decide it would be beneficial for their businesses if the government collected this information, processed the full sequence and then shared it with them for free.

A few well placed political donations (thanks supreme court for dropping the caps!) and it is a done deal.

It's been almost 40 freakin years since someone has been on the moon! I remember it because I am an old guy but most of the planet wasn't born yet when it happened. There is so much we don't know yet and 40 years of questions to be answered yet. We have spent more time on the surface of Mars, thanks to Spirit and Opportunity than we have the moon. If only we could find a way to ensure it would be profitable! Then we could make the dim witted people without enough brains to get a real job that we elect to government take notice.

(yes I feel better now, thank you.)

Good for you. I recently left a large enterprise after 20+ years that had gone from being a fantastic creative place to a loathsome hole governed by policy nazis. Where I work now is still large but truly empowered and I no longer hate going into work each day. I grieve for my former co-workers who are managed by MBA's who think that aligning with the business will move them upstairs. It hasn't happened to anyone yet but they still hold on to their deluded dream.

Well it was a nice run while it lasted. Current cortporate management thinking is that IT positions are now considered clerical, not professional like they used to be.

Don't think so? Then ask yourself this question, "Who do I report to?"

If the answer is a Director or an Officer, then congratulations you are still considered a professional, for now.
If it is a Manager, then you might still be considered a professional, but watch your back.
If it is a Project Manager or a Team Lead, sorry you are clerical.

By lowering your status management can lower your pay, benefits and advancement opportunities.

They also are shooting themselves in the foot since they are probably also sacrificing creativity for slavish adherence to standardized processes.

You will not get rich by working for someone else, but you may be able to live comfortably.

-Xanthos