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Supercomputing

Submission + - India enters the supercomputing race

fermat writes: India has entered the super computing race with its very own EKA (meaning "One" in Sanskrit).It is ranked 4th fastest in the world and is the fastest in Asia with a peak performance of 170 teraflops. It was built in the Indian city of Pune by Computational Research Laboratories in collaboration with HP. CRL is owned by Tata Sons,a large business conglomerate with over $21 billion in revenue.
Operating Systems

Submission + - VMS operating system turns 30 years old

Stony Stevenson writes: The venerable vms operating system from Digital Equipment Corp. just turned 30 years old and hardly anyone noticed. Well, itnews did and is running a brief history of the hearty operating system that counts the Deutsche Börse in Germany, the Australian Stock Exchange, and Amazon.com amongst its users.

After 30 years, can this operating system go on forever? "We always said we would move away from VMS when something better came along," says Gareth Williams, associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Minor Planet Center since 1990. "There isn't anything better."
Data Storage

Submission + - World's 5 Biggest SANs

An anonymous reader writes: ByteandSwitch is searching the World's Biggest SANs, and has compiled a list of 5 candidate with networks supports 10+ Petabytes of active storage. Leading the list is JPMorgan Chase, which uses a mix of IBM and Sun equipment to deliver 14 Pbytes for 170k employees. Also on the list are the U.S. DoD, which uses 700 Fibre Channel switches, NASA, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (it's got 18 Pbytes of tape! storage), and Lawrence Livermore.
United States

Submission + - Taxing you for getting healthy

An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month you read about "Charging the Unhealthy More For Insurance". Well now the state of Michigan, one of the most obese states, and a state that contains one of the most obese cities in the United States is considering changing residents for getting healthy. In a state ranked with a 60.4% obesity rate, due to the budget shortfall this year, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is considering proposing an expansion of the sales tax to include health club services. The expansion would also likely include other items such as sport, concert and movie tickets, and golfing and bowling fees. Healthclubs.com is taking up the issue and working to try to get people to mail their congressman, to oppose this "proposed expansion" Some more information can be found at http://www.nohealthclubtax.com/
NASA

Submission + - NASA/JPL "unswerving loyalty" background c (hspd12jpl.org)

An anonymous reader writes: NASA administrator Michael Griffin has ordered all JPL employees to be put through intrusive background investigations. The background checks will be conducted for all employees, whether or not they are working on anything sensitive. For example, in addition to the scientists and engineers, they will be performed for landscapers, construction workers, and consulting faculty members. The checks ostensibly will determine "unswerving loyalty" to the United States. Employees must fill out forms ask about drug usage, selective service registration, residences, employment, degrees, and names of at least 5 references (supervisors, neighbors, personal). The listed references are then sent forms which ask for information about the person's financial integrity, mental and emotional stability, and drug usage. Employees must also sign a release allowing any federal agent to request any information about the employee from anyone, for an investigation scope that in their words is "not limited." After the investigation, a determination of suitability for federal employment is made. For this purpose, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has an "issue characterization chart" that categorizes bad deeds which alone or in combination would debar someone. For example, three instances of "attitude" within three years would debar someone. Curiously, "breaking and entering" alone does not debar someone. "Carnal knowledge" is an automatic debarment. I'm perhaps not current with my euphemisms, but that seems to debar anyone who lists children on their investigation forms. Also "sodomy" is an automatic debarment. JPL employees have been notified that they must fill out and sign the release forms and get fingerprinted and photographed by October 27, 2007, or they will be considered to have "voluntarily" resigned (i.e., no severance pay). Employees who agree to participate but whose paperwork does not make it through the bureaucracy by October 27 will be placed on leave without pay. This program is in accordance with George W. Bush's Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12), which asked the Dept. of Commerce to develop an identification standard for federal employees and contractors. DoC came back with a standard, FIPS 201-1, whose literal wording does not exclude the possibility of a colonoscopy as part of the investigation. This rebadging effort is costing JPL $6 million, which it must eat out of its own burden funds which normally pays for operating the lab and funding internal research and development. Overall, NASA is spending $112 million to $160 million to implement the program. The investigations must be repeated every five years. Morale is at an all-time low at JPL, and employees are protesting weekly in front of the entrance gates. A legal challenge is planned, but most people are too scared for their jobs to be part of it. They have created a web site and discussion forum about it at http://hspd12jpl.org/
Software

Submission + - Skype blames Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Outage (skype.com)

brajesh writes: "Skype has blamed its outage over the last week on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. FTA — "The abnormally high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact." Previsously, it was speculated that Skype outage may have been caused by a Russian hack attempt. Further FTA- "The issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype. We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed or that our users' security was not, at any point, at risk." Butterfly effect?"
Announcements

Submission + - Venezuelans Gain 30 Minutes

chirone writes: President Hugo Chavez has announced that Venezuela's official time will be put ahead by half an hour starting January 1. "Its about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight," Chavez said in a rambling, seven hour discussion on his radio show "Alo, Presidente" with Science and Technology Minister Hector Navarro.
GNU is Not Unix

Submission + - "Last Call" Draft of GNU Affero GPLv3 (AGP (fsf.org)

sjsamson86 writes: The Free Software Foundation (FSF) released the second discussion draft of the GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL). This new license is based on, and explicitly compatible with, the recently released GNU GPLv3. It has an additional requirement (section 13) to ensure that users who interact with the software over a network, can also receive the source code for that program. This extends the Free Software movement to the fast growing web applications/services sector in a manner that maintains the ability to link to the ever growing body of GPLv3 licensed work. This is the "Last Call" draft of the AGPL before the final license is published. The FSF will hear feedback on this new draft and asks that comments be primarily focused on section 13, the "Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License" clause.
Security

Submission + - Spyware - the latest weapon in domestic abuse

Stony Stevenson writes: A woman, looking to get out of an abusive relationship, goes online to buy plane tickets for herself and her two small children, and then she e-mails a friend about her plan to leave. As she works to secretly put things in order, she doesn't realize her husband has downloaded spyware onto the computer and will soon know everything she's planning to do.

It's a scenario that security professionals and social workers say is happening more and more frequently. As high-tech tools become increasingly ingrained in our everyday lives, abusers and stalkers are increasingly using them to track and intimidate their victims, said Cindy Southworth, director and founder of the Safety Net Project.
Quickies

Submission + - Massachusetts Makes Health Insurance Mandatory (npr.org)

Iron Condor writes: Massachusetts is the first state to require its residents to secure health insurance, a plan designed to get as close as practically possible to statewide universal health care. Presidential hopeful and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney originally introduced the idea in 2004.

Effective July 1, 2007, the law, which uses federal and state tax dollars, is aimed at making health insurance affordable to all residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including low-income populations. Those who fall below the federal poverty line may be eligible for health care at no cost. A Health Disparities Council has been created to monitor and reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.

Businesses

Submission + - Dell IS offering complete hardware support

somegeekynick writes: According to this DesktopLinux.com article, a Dell spokesperson has stated that, "Due to an ordering system glitch during the weekend, we inadvertently removed extended warranty and CompleteCare options from our 'configurator.' We're working to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible and those options will be reinstated this afternoon [June 5]. If customers ordered systems when extended warranties weren't available, they will have the option of upgrading at the original price. There will be more details on that program soon."
IBM

Submission + - IBM invests $1B for energy efficiency w/Big Green

iktomi writes: IBM just announced it is investing $1B/year across the company to dramatically increase the level of energy efficiency in IT. The plan, Project Big Green, includes products and services to help customers reduce data center energy consumption and reduce CO2 with the objective of turning the world's IT operations into "green" data centers. There's more info at http://www.ibm.com/systems/optimizeit/cost_efficie ncy/energy_efficiency/ and http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/215 24.wss
Privacy

Submission + - Harvard prof: computers need to "forget" m

Jessamine writes: A Harvard professor argues that too much information is being retained by computers, and the machines need to learn how to forget things as humans always have. "If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper. "Afraid how our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly." Will such massive databases make us all act like politicians? Is data retention creating a "panopticon"? These are questions that the good doctor raises.

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