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Space

Pluto — a Complex and Changing World 191

astroengine writes "After 4 years of processing the highest resolution photographs the Hubble Space Telescope could muster, we now have the highest resolution view of Pluto's surface ever produced. Most excitingly, these new observations show an active world with seasonal changes altering the dwarf planet's surface. It turns out that this far-flung world has more in common with Earth than we would have ever imagined."
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Comment Re:great news (Score 1) 333

"better options already exists for servers where I am guessing CFS is used." Well, that depends on your workload (which is the thrust of the debate). With one of the HPC products I regularly work with, we have a best-practice of using the noop scheduler instead of cfs - this tiny tweak alone will see at least a 30% improvement in our I/O performance (which is nothing to be sneezed at when we're moving ~700MB/s). Being able to have pluggable schedulers is great because Linux can be all things to all people and it does make sense to have options (lets not go crazy here - too much choice can also be a bad thing). People talk about the difference between Linux on netbooks and servers for example but even in the "server" space there is VAST difference between small business file & print, clustered Oracle or scientific data acquisition workloads. I too hope that this debate doesn't go away and also hope that it doesn't become as heated and personal as in the past so that we can all benefit from a selection of good ideas.

Comment Re:Checks (Score 1) 293

Nope but I can pay them via my cellphone http://www.pago.co.nz/, or the over the web (or via the web, from my cellphone). Usually transfers to another bank happen with 24 hours, to an account within the same bank, sometimes within 12. That's back home, but here in the UK (where I reside), I can pay anybody in the UK or EU via their SWIFT code or IBAN. I can transfer funds to accounts overseas to unrelated banks within 24 hours via Internet banking. I got my first debit card & PIN 22 years ago and haven't looked back. Don't even have a chequebook here in the UK, and the last one I wrote back home must have been like 10 years ago.

Comment Re:Stop it! (Score 1) 179

I was a fiercely loyal Telewest customer - I always had great speeds and great service.
Ever since they got bought out everything's turned to crap. Tech-support on cheap VOIP lines from India that are so bad I can barely hear them - if the call doesn't drop in under a minute.
Link speeds a fraction of what I'm paying for - without downloading anything! Forget about watching iPlayer or YouTube. Downloads of any type (http, ftp, torrent all suck equally - I now download my Linux iso's in the office.
I am seriously thinking of ditching cable and going back to dial-up because the current performance of Virgin in our street is about the same.
United States

Submission + - Bush Administration Muzzled Surgeon General (scienceblogs.com)

rnws writes: "The Scientific Activist blog is carrying comment on a New York times article on political pressure applied to the former US Surgeon General:

Yesterday, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona testified before congress that he was subjected to extensive and systematic political interference in his work by the Bush Administration. From Gardiner Harris of The New York Times:

"The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues."
"Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.
And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization's longtime ties to a "prominent family" that he refused to name.
"I was specifically told by a senior person, 'Why would you want to help those people?'""

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