... you'd think he/she/it could keep these simple attacks from a puny unenlightened human at bay.

Linus does rate high recognition, but it should be a better award than the "Peace" prize. Considering some of the previous winners -- Yassar Arafat, Barak "No Accomplishments" Obama and Al "No Controlling Legal Authority" Gore -- Linus deserves a better award than one given by extreme-left Norwegian politicians.

It's a pity that Apple's notorious approval process didn't kill this propaganda.

As it has happened in the past, someone is plotting a rising demand curve against a presumed insufficient supply, and screams "we're doomed!". This kind of thinking ignores new oil finds, and new recovery techniques which extract more oil from existing finds.

Also ignored are two known Saudi Arabia-sized oil sources -- the tar sands of Alberta and oil shale in the US. At current prices, using these sources isn't economically feasible, but if the price of oil moves up and stays up, we'll see these sources come on line.

Can you name one thing the world has run out of? New technologies, close substitution, and ingenuity driven by economic need have always bolstered and increased the supply of a needed commodity.

Remember that this 1.1TF is single-precision; double-precision is around 240GF. Let's hope they fix this in the next version.

Also, there is 240 cores per C1060, for 720 cores total of Tesla power. The additional 240 cores come from the Quadro in the system; those cores may occasionally be busy with graphics work and unavailable for computation.

... and we have shut down several scams. One of the companies we closed owes you money. Please send your name, address, SSN, and banking account information to me.

The EU regulators are dragging their feet -- any idiot can look around and note the significant market share of IBM's DB2 and Microsoft's SQL Server and come to the simple conclusion that competition does exist in the database market.

A grand, unfounded assertion. When flying a small aircraft under Instrument Flight Rules, I routinely speak with someone I can't see (the controller), listen to other conversations to visualize the traffic around me; and at the same time fly on course, on speed, and on altitude; and navigate and anticipate what coming down the road.

Communication with "someone you can't see" can be done, and done well -- even in the face of high traffic, turbulence, and a difficult approach. Compared to hard IFR flying, driving is a joke. Those who can't drive and talk at the same time probably shouldn't have a license.

True enough, and I apologize -- I was mislead by this release from the Free Software Foundation Europe that called Opera "a European Company" (http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/press-release/2009q1/000231.html).

Um, no. According to several postings on airliners.net, several companies have thrust reversers on their Minimum Equipment List for icy runways (e.g. Fedex and UPS going through Anchorage, Alaska, both possible customers for the A380F). Additionally, it seems that the JAA (the European equivalent of the FAA) had the same concerns.

Irrelevant? Each instance I quoted had an EU company that benefited from the obstruction of the EU Government and the penalties imposed on the US company. This is classic rent-seeking by EU companies.

Perhaps you believe that politicians are altruistic saints, making judgments worthy of Solomon. I'm not that naive.

Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioner_for_Competition states that the Commissioner is appointed by the EU Parliament. Politicians tend to make sure that their appointees share their views, which makes it a rather political position.

Until, of course, the next EU Parliament is seated.

Forced? Did Microsoft "force" their TCP/IP stack on customers? Does Microsoft preclude other browsers from being installed? The 30% of the market held by Firefox shows that there is good competition in the browser market, and further demonstrates that Opera, with its minuscule percentage of the market, sucks badly on the desktop.

I'm no fan of Microsoft (100% Mac and iPhone at home), but is it really harmful for MS to add features to the O/S (e.g., browsers, IP stacks, mouse drivers) over time?

My bad -- this was the French government, not the EU.

Really. Name one merger of EU companies that has been blocked by the US Department of Justice. Name one time that the US Government loaned billions to Boeing to build a new passenger aircraft that didn't have to be repaid if the aircraft wasn't successful.

The EU antitrust body is a beast, but I'd hesitate to put it on a white horse. It is, first and foremost, a political body, and as such responds to EU companies that seek rents for their advantage. In the browser case, Opera (a purveyor of second-tier browsers) managed to get what it couldn't earn in the market. In essence, the EU forced Microsoft to distribute browsers built by their competitors, regardless of merit or customer desire.

The EU has played this game in the past, favoring EU companies by penalizing US companies -- Boeing (during the merger with McDonnell Douglas, favoring Airbus), GE/Honeywell (merger blocked), and Amazon (free shipping declared illegal at the behest of French bookstores) are just a few. These actions are nothing more than thinly-veiled protectionism.

And, of course, the EU has no problems with huge Airbus subsidies, now declared illegal by the WTO. I hope that the US Government will find its gonads and slap EADS with huge tariffs and penalties. Then, maybe, the EU will be a little less eager to meddle with US companies.

I won't hold my breath.

Well, SGI's business didn't get magically better just because they were acquired for a song. Rackable really doesn't understand HPC, so I think it will be a difficult integration. I'd further expect some gyrations on their future direction, as Rackable management figures out how to play the game. In any case, we're all in interesting times.

Simple -- the Teraflop number for the Tesla is single precision. Tesla using double precision is only good for ~100GF. Given SGI's horrid financial history and ongoing issues, I'd go with another machine -- the Cray CX-1, or an IBM BladeCenter.