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Sun Microsystems

Submission + - 140 teraflop Sun supercomputer launched (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by oranghutan
oranghutan writes: A joint project in Australia between a couple of universities, the government and CSIRO has unveiled a supercomputer they expect will get into the top 40 worldwide.

The $15 million (aussie) 140 teraflop supercomputer is a Sun Constellation.

“Australia’s now back in business in the high-performance computing league,” the article quotes NCI Director, Professor Lindsay Botten as saying.

“It does everything from computational biology, computational chemistry, nanotechnology, astronomy, physics and photonics, medicine, engineering, and environmental science.”

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/326309/new_supercomputer_boost_aussie_research
XBox (Games)

Submission + - Halo3 Servers go down!

Submitted by Redmond Redneck
Redmond Redneck writes: Seems that MS is using 200+ Dell servers for the Xbox Live Halo3 game. MS upgraded the Dell drivers for the servers (they don't use SMS btw) and this caused the farm to go down.

MS tried to rollback but it failed so the fix was manual across all the boxes in the farm.

All is well. After the fix, a memo went out saying that people can effectively kill each other and all is well again.

Hmmmm. I wonder if "Live Update" is used there.
Space

Submission + - Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier (leapsecond.com)

Submitted by Umbe
Umbe writes: Time-Nut and amateur time researcher Tom Van Baak (www.leapsecond.com) just took his family hiking, and verified Einstein's general theory of relativity along the way. "3 kids, 3 cesium clocks, a family road trip to measure relativistic time dilation".
Spam

Submission + - Germs taken into space come back deadlier

Submitted by
westlake
westlake writes: "It sounds like the plot for a scary B-movie: Germs go into space on a rocket and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened. In a medical experiment, salmonella carried about the space ahuttle in the fall of 2006 proved far more lerhal to lab mice than their earth-bound source. 90% dead vs. 40% dead in twenty-six days, with half the mice dying at 1/3 the oral dose. 167 genes in the strain had changed. The likely casue: In microgravity the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similiar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, and the cells adapted quickly to the new environment. Germs taken to space come back deadlier"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Anti-social site pokes fun at Facebook (mcgilldaily.com)

Submitted by HUADPE
HUADPE writes: As reported by The McGill Daily there is yet another new way to over-connectedly rant against being over connected. The Anti-social site NOSO encourages you to "create NO connections by scheduling NO events with NO friends." When you sign up, you are assigned a random number in place of a name, and are invited to enter such details as "what you are not interested in, what schools you did not attend, what is not your favourite music, and what professions you do not practice."
Programming

Submission + - GCC Compiler will finally gets replace by BSD PCC. (undeadly.org)

Submitted by
Sunnz
Sunnz writes: "A leaner, lighter, faster, and most importantly, BSD Licensed Compiler PCC has been imported into OpenBSD's CVS and NetBSD's pkgsrc.

The compiler is based on the original Portable C Compiler by S. C. Johnson, written in the late 70's. Even though much of the compiler has been rewritten, some of the basics still remain.

It is currently not bug-free, but it compiles on x86 platform, and works being done on it to take on GCC's job."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Barcelona Native Quad-core Architecture Launch (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Vigile
Vigile writes: "Barcelona has been one of most anticipated and debated hardware advancements in the industry for years, but now the hardware is officially unveiled and the real testing can begin. First, PC Perspective has a summary of all the worldwide launch events that will be taking place throughout the day that includes lots of AMD-provided information. They theorize that AMD might actually be in some trouble with the first batch of Barcelona parts, comparing this launch to AMD's failed HD 2900 XT GPU launch. There is already a review of some Barcelona-based servers with a performance preview over at Anandtech as well."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Introduces the Quad-Core Opterons (amd.com)

Submitted by diesel
diesel writes: AMD has finally announced new Barcelona parts. In a statement, they said: "Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based systems from global OEM and system-builder partners begin shipping this month and are expected to increase in number through the remainder of the year. AMD Phenom(TM) processor solutions, which will leverage many of the same benefits of this innovative, next-generation architecture, are expected to be available for the desktop market in December. Due in part to the industry's most stable x86 server platform, more than 50 socket compatible Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-ready system choices are on the market today from tier one OEMs, all of whom are publicly supporting today's introduction."
Databases

Submission + - Advanced PDF management?

Submitted by chrysrobyn
chrysrobyn writes: I find myself in the situation where I must store hundreds or possibly thousands of pieces of paper for later review and classification. I can't spend the time now to properly organize them (that definition may even change later anyway), or even seperate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. I would like to feed it all to a sheet feeding scanner (I see them in Fry's for a few hundred dollars; some even come with free laser scanners), dump to PDF, then be able to reorder pages, drag pages to new PDF files, trash individual pages, etc. Duplicating a page would be a bonus. PDF is appealing because of the storage of the original sheet plus the OCR is generally good enough for searching.

Long story: My father in law passed away a few years ago, and he was the kind of guy who did everything on his own, at his own pace, and to nobody else's rules. Since his passing, my wife and I have wasted hundreds of hours (maybe more), trying to clean up and move on. Lawyers and a CPA have been involved, and without getting into the really long version, there is a whole lot we should really keep for our own purposes in the future (digital copies are okay, originals can be properly disposed of). Papers the professionals didn't require are vastly disorganized, occasionally sorted by year.
I don't do windows. Mac is preferred, but I personally have more experience with Linux. I've looked at DEVONthink, but it doesn't have the ability to trade pages between PDFs. I like Yep's tag feature, and can instantly come up with a dozen uses for that, but again, I can't organize an individual page somewhere. Adobe itself seems very intent on individual documents, not assisting with a database of them, or organizing between them.
Has the Slashdot audience seen anything like this?
Announcements

Submission + - Northwest Passage Now Open

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Guardian is reporting that the Northwest Passage is now navigable due to arctic sea ice melting much faster than previously. This will only continue to get worse next year as the additional open water absorbs more heat and delays the refreezing of the water this winter.
Space

Submission + - most powerful radiotelescope to close b/c needs 4M

Submitted by Khaki_Dockers
Khaki_Dockers writes: The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is operated by Cornell University, and it's funding comes from the US National Science Foundation's 200M astronomy budget. The SETI project is only one of it's many uses. It's budget started at 10.5M, they've reduced it to 8 million, and now the NSF says that they'll only provide 4M for it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/09/08/AR2007090801654_pf.html
Announcements

Submission + - ubuntu-users.org - Social Network Project Announce (ubuntuforums.org)

Submitted by AlexanderHanff
AlexanderHanff writes: A new social networking project was announced today for the Ubuntu Community. It has generated a great deal of excitement both in the official Ubuntu forums and on Digg. The plan is to offer the community a service which will give them personal blog and emails within the ubuntu-users.org domain with all the rich features expected from a modern social networking site; including groups (Loco and custom), rss aggregation, voting system for the site's development and features as well as for the Ubuntu operating system and much more. It will be run by the Ubuntu Community users for the Ubuntu Community users on a totally non-profit basis and with an open design as well as mind. Hopefully the synergy it will create will give this huge community a real sense of belonging and a virtual badge they can wear with pride.

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