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The Military

Air Force Supercomputer Made From PS3's 212

Posted by samzenpus from the sum-of-its-parts dept.
The Air Force's Research Lab in Rome, NY. has one of the cheapest supercomputers ever made, and best of all over 3,000 of your friends can play Tekken on it. The computer is made from 1,716 PlayStation 3s linked together, and is used to process images from spy planes. From the article: "The Air Force calls the souped-up PlayStations the Condor Supercomputer and says it is among the 40 fastest computers in the world. The Condor went online late last year, and it will likely change the way the Air Force and the Air National Guard watch things on the ground." We covered this story back in December when the Condor first went online.

Comment Don't (Score 1, Insightful) 121

by penguinboy (#27264935) Attached to: Windows Home Directory Encryption?
If you're concerned enough to consider encrypting your home directory, you ought to go all the way and use full disk encryption. There are too many artifacts that can escape your home directory (RAM contents saved to swap file or hibernation file) or are never in your home directory to begin with (system logs, print spool, etc).
Patents

Submission + - China Readies Rival DVD Format Royalty Free

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/12/15/HNchinad vdrivalformat_1.html , 'InfoWorld' online magazine in an article titled "China Readies DVD Rival Format", the Chinese manufacturers of DVD's, players and disks, are preparing to rollout their new format across China and probably elsewhere. To quote the article with due respect to the holder of copyright, the publishers of 'InfoWorld': " The DVD player makers plan to switch to EVD (enhanced versatile disc) in an attempt to avoid paying patent royalties on the DVD format, according to published reports. The world's largest producers of DVD players, Chinese electronics companies would use the format instead of standards such as MPEG-4. Last week, 20 top manufacturers including Haier announced their plans to switch from DVD to EVD entirely by 2008, according to a report in China Economic News." According to the article, the Chinese electronics industry in order to pursue royalty free hardware in an effort to reduce costs. The fact that this would also break the media giants monopoly on the industry, hardware and software is not mentioned. Professional industry skeptics claim that China will fail, as have similar initiatives in 2003. The Chinese appear better organized and prepared this time however, and could easily by governmental edict make fools of these 'skeptics'. It would be a fitting gesture to the world from a power determined to break hegemonies to also make the EVD open source. This would truly break the media hegemony of Sony, MPAA and RIAA. All the major equipment manufacturers have made the choice of using Chinese manufacturers to make their equipment, so very little real independant manufacturing capability is outside China save for maybe a Taiwanese manufacturer or two that might not want to for its own reasons fight the mainland on this. This fact may have not registered on the so called skeptics, as by simple governmental fiat backed up by the largest armed force in the world including nuclear MIRVs, they can order this switch nationwide and make it a standard within China. They could also suddenly stop making the monopolists DVD's as well and confiscate the so called 'intellectual property' contained inherent to their manufacture and distribution. As a check on 'retribution', the Chinese could say simply that we have taken this as is our right as a sovereign nation and it is in our borders...so be quiet and pray that we do not take more! This is the future and the effective end of DRM. It will be taken and coopted by nation states.

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