Comment Re:Who cares? (Score 1) 173
No one uses Linux for anything important.
Other than every supercomputer on the planet worth talking about, that is...
Microsoft Unveils "Elevate America" 325
nandemoari writes "In response to the current economic crisis, Microsoft Corp. has come out with a stimulus plan of their own. Their goal is to help a large group of individuals use their computers to land employment in ways other than to generate a compelling resume. The new online initiative, Elevate America, is set to equip close to 2 million people (over the next three years) with the skills needed to succeed in the field of technology."
Walter Bright Ports D To the Mac 404
jonniee writes "D is a programming language created by Walter Bright of C++ fame. D's focus is on combining the power and high performance of C/C++ with the programmer productivity of modern languages like Ruby and Python. And now he's ported it to the Macintosh. Quoting: '[Building a runtime library] exposed a lot of conditional compilation issues that had no case for OS X. I found that Linux has a bunch of API functions that are missing in OS X, like getline and getdelim, so some of the library functionality had to revert to more generic code for OS X. I had to be careful, because although many system macros had the same functionality and spelling, they had different expansions. Getting these wrong would cause some mysterious behavior, indeed.'"
Comment Re:Why always nuclear simulation? (Score 1) 248
Why always nuclear explosions simulation is the primary use for this type of computer?
Uh, because it's paid for out of the NNSA budget?
More Brains Needed
232
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. 'For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful,' said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. 'We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction.' Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. 'It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important,' says Esin. 'But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self.' Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of 'healthy' brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. 'Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't,' says Breen. 'Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.'"
Comment Er, hasn't xCAT been open source for years? (Score 1) 77
I mean, it has a SourceForge page whose mailing list archives go back to 2001, fer cryin' out loud.
Now some of the "OpenHPC" stuff appears to be new, but not all of it appears to originate from IBM. For instance, part of it appears to be a repackaging of the SLURM batch system from LLNL. The one thing that looks like a genuine contribution from IBM is the "Advance Toolchain" stuff, but even that appears to draw heavily from existing open source code bases like valgrind.
Microsoft Blesses LGPL, Joins Apache Foundation 425
Penguinisto writes "According to a somewhat jaw-dropping story in The Register, it appears that Microsoft has performed a trifecta of geek-scaring feats: They have joined the Apache Software Foundation as a Platinum member(at $100K USD a year), submitted LGPL-licensed patches for ADOdb, and have pledged to expand their Open Specifications Promise by adding to the list more than 100 protocols for interoperability between its Windows Server and the Windows client. While I sincerely doubt they'll release Vista under a GPL license anytime soon, this is certainly an unexpected series of moves on their part, and could possibly lead to more OSS (as opposed to 'Shared Source') interactivity between what is arguably Linux' greatest adversary and the Open Source community." (We mentioned the announced support for the Apache Foundation earlier today, as well.)
Sun Exec Backs GPLv3 94
Hyperbeth writes "Sun's chief open-source officer Simon Phipps said that existing work towards GPLv3 had been 'extraordinary and effective' and he said he is 'frankly amazed by the criticisms'. The article notes that Mr. Phipps' comments are somewhat surprising, given that the recent open-sourcing of Java went forward with GPLv2." From the article: "I am frankly amazed by the criticisms that have [been] levelled at the GPLv3 process. They seem to ignore the incredible and positive way it is evolving and just find fault with things that are already the subject of work... I would be very surprised if the final GPLv3 was not an effective tool for some of the communities Sun sustains or will initiate in the future."
Submission + - Google helping DoD track certain searchers
jcaruso writes: "Blogger Mark Gibbs says he was searching on Google for "binary explosives," and Firefox popped up a warning that a Web site certificate involved in the transaction couldn't be verified — the certificate was issued to the Department of Defense. Writes Gibbs: "So, it looks like the Department of Defense with Google's help is tracking me because I used a suspicious search term. It also looks like either the DoD aren't really good at stealth or they want me to know that they are watching. Definitely lame either way.""
German Minister Seeks Jail Time For FPS Players 383
GamePolitics has the somewhat unbelievable news that German Minister of the Interior Gunther Beckstein is seeking jail time for violent game developers, publishers, and players. MSNBC has further coverage of the issue, which has pro gamers in Germany quite worried. From the article: "The draft law, a reaction to a school shooting that shook German public opinion last month, will come before the upper house of parliament next year. But it is already sending shockwaves through the 2m-strong German online gaming community. 'We have among the most drastic censorship rules for games,' said Frank Sliwka, head of the Deutsche E-Sport Bund, an umbrella federation for German online gaming teams. 'Now we are being labelled as a breeding ground for unstable, dysfunctional and violent youngsters.'"
Submission + - JSF and Ajax: Web 2.0 Made Easy with RAD V7
IdaAshley writes: Creating and integrating an Ajax application is not an easy task, but the release of IBM Rational Application Developer (RAD) V7 provides Ajax functionality for the JSF components to make the task much easier. This article explains how to use Ajax and JSF together in RAD V7 and walks you through an example of adding Ajax support to an existing application.
Journal Journal: Yet another trip to the synchrotron 1
The first week at a synchrotron facility is always the worst, especially if things aren't going that well with the end station where the experiments are carried out.
Fortunately we've managed to fix all the problems and are getting some good data, but I've been working 12-16 hours per day since Monday and it is starting to take its toll.
Feed Hewlett Expected to Announce Deal on Spying (nytimes.com)
The case examines the use of private detectives to obtain the phone records of board members and journalists.
Submission + - Ecma Approves OOXML - What Does it All Mean?
Andy Updegrove writes: "As expected, Ecma, the European-based standards body chosen by Microsoft to fast-track its Office Open XML standard to ISO, voted today to adopt OOXML. The vote was 20 to 1, with IBM casting the only negative vote. Is this vote a big deal or not? The answer is yes and no. No, in that everyone knew that Ecma was going to approve OOXML. After you write up a working group charter that says, and I quote, "The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats," you haven't left much to chance. But yes, in the sense that there were other members of the working group (e.g., Intel, the British Museum, Apple, and so on), so there was a group effort in packaging the standard. still, that would have provided impact mostly at the process level rathan than an opportunity to assert any real technical influence. The biggest significance of today's vote will be that Microsoft can now say that OOXML has been "approved by a standards organization." Most people have no reason to know the details, so a statement that "OOXML has been approved as a standard" will go a long way in the marketplace, for PR purposes. As a result, you can expect that Microsoft will make the most of today's event. http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/articl e.php?story=20061207053332191"
