rugfrog - Slashdot User

Submission + - New processor handles trillions of calculations

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @03:26PM

coondoggie writes: "The prototype of a revolutionary general-purpose computer processor, which has the potential of reaching trillions of calculations per second and handling massive applications, was unveiled by a team of computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin today.The new processor, known as TRIPS (Tera-op, Reliable, Intelligently adaptive Processing System), could be used to accelerate industrial, consumer and scientific computing, the group said in a statement. Each TRIPS chip contains two processing cores, each of which can issue 16 operations per cycle with up to 1,024 instructions in flight simultaneously. Current high-performance processors are typically designed to sustain a maximum execution rate of four operations per cycle. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1445 8"

Submission + - Did NASA Accidentally "Nuke" Jupiter?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @12:03PM

An anonymous reader writes: Title: Did NASA Accidentally "Nuke" Jupiter? Source: Enterprise URL Source: http://www.enterprisemission.com//NukingJupiter.ht ml Published: Apr 11, 2007 NASA's decision to finally terminate Galileo in September 2003 via a fiery plunge into Jupiter, was designed to prevent any possible biological contamination of Europa from a future random collision with the spacecraft, once its fuel was exhausted. An engineer named Jacco van der Worp claimed that, plunging into Jupiter's deep and increasingly dense atmosphere, the on-board Galileo electrical power supply — a set of 144 plutonium-238 fuel pellets — would ultimately "implode"; that the plutonium Galileo carried would ultimately collapse in upon itself under the enormous pressures of Jupiter's overwhelming atmosphere and go critical. Noone listened. One month later ... October 19, 2003 — an amateur astronomer in Belgium, Olivier Meeckers, secured a remarkable image, a dark black "splotch" showing up on the southern edge of Jupiter's well-known "North Equatorial Belt," trailing a fainter "tail" southwest (image center). Richard Hoagland http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?Art Num=183496 has now calculated that, given the slow fall through a highly pressurised atmosphere, it is possible that the splotch is the result of about 50lb of plutonium going critical 700 miles below. Way to go, NASA!

Submission + - Explosion on the CERN due to mathematical mistakes

Submitted by

javipas

on Monday April 09, 2007 @07:42AM

javipas writes: "The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN has suffered a big explosion deep inside that has caused a leak of hellium gas and the quick evacuation of everyone working there. The reason: a mathematical mistake that affected the design of the giant superconductive magnets made by Fermilab. Now the company will have to repair and upgrade the 24 magnets that are installed on the 27 km. circunference of one of the most important research centers on Earth."

Submission + - Daylight Saving Change: No savings, No point

Submitted by Giolon on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @02:58PM

Giolon writes: Ars Technica is reporting that the plan to enter daylight savings early in order to save power has been largely a bust:

"As it turns out, the US Department of Energy (and almost everyone else except members of Congress) was correct when they predicted that there would be little energy savings. This echoed concerns voiced after a similar experiment was attempted in Australia. Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened."

Submission + - Daylight Saving change: no power savings

Submitted by Brett on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @02:40PM

Brett writes: Results from energy companies are coming in, and the word is that moving Daylight Saving Time forward three weeks had "no measurable impact" on power consumption. The attempt by the US Congress to make it look like they were doing something about the US energy crisis has been exposed as the waste it is, but the new DST is probably here to stay. Letting the bill expire would mean re-patching a lot of systems again next year. So much for saving energy.

Submission + - Breaking 104 bit WEP in less then 60 Seconds

Submitted by

collin.m

on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @02:04PM

collin.m writes: "Erik Tews with the help of two others published a new attack on WEP called: Breaking 104 bit WEP in less then 60 Seconds.

Like the older attacks on WEP this attack uses sniffed IVs in order to break/compute/crack the WEP key. The nice thing about this attack is that it only needs between 40.000 and 85.000 unique IVs (older attacks needed between 250.000 and 1.000.000 in order to succeed). This all ready reduces the overall attack time since one needs to capture less packages. But the attack also uses a new/other attack on RC4 that further improves the speed. The paper gives an average of 3 seconds (crack time) on 1.7Ghz Pentium-M. The attack even works with 5000 keys so it should be usable on a PDA or SmartPhone.

Paper
The Tool and more Information"

Submission + - Picture series about CERN`s Large Hadron Collider

Submitted by nachtkap on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @08:57AM

nachtkap writes: The German newspaper Die Zeit has a picture series about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). There is some information (in German) on what the LHC is supposed do and how certain parts works. A few sentences go with each picture to tell you what you are looking at. Babelfish works well enough to get general meaning across.
Fun fact from the article:
The brass of one of the detectors is originating from old Russian shell casings.

Feed Net Effect Of Energy-Saving Early Switch To Daylight Savings Time: Nothing (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Tuesday April 03, 2007 @07:52AM

While the early switch to daylight savings didn't cause many real problems, it was something of a nuisance. Part of the supposed rationale for the early switch -- in addition to reduced crime, less traffic accidents and increased economic activity was to save energy, because there will be more light in the evening and people will use less lighting. Of course, there's less light in the morning, so people's power needs then will increase. So what was the end effect of this early shift? Essentially nothing, as several large utilities say they haven't seen any noticeable change in their customers' power consumption. But don't let that detract from the warm, fuzzy feeling you get knowing American politicians are serious in their hunt for ways to conserve energy.

Submission + - Beware of Photo Printing at Walmart Canada

Submitted by dpolak on Monday March 26, 2007 @02:10PM

dpolak writes: I recently discovered that if you use Walmart's Canadian digital photo services you release all rights to your photos. Under their terms of service:

You grant to Wal*Mart Canada Corp. a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, world-wide right and license to access, use, copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform, communicate to the public, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, and otherwise use such Materials (in whole or in part) in connection with the Site and/or the Products, using any form, media or technology now known or later developed, without providing compensation to you or any other person, without any liability to you or any other person, and free from any obligation of confidence or other duties on the part of Wal*Mart, its affiliates and their respective licensees; Uploaders beware!

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