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Supercomputing

The problem with the Top500 supercomputer list->

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes "Like Hollywood's Academy Awards, the Top500 list of supercomputers is dutifully watched by high-performance computing (HPC) participants and observers, even as they vocally doubt its fidelity to excellence. Many question the use of a single metric — Linpack — to rank the performance of something as mind-bogglingly complex as a supercomputer. During one panel at the SC2010 conference this week in New Orleans, one high-performance-computing vendor executive joked about stringing together 100,000 Android smartphones to get the largest Linpack number, thereby revealing the "stupidity" of Linpack. While grumbling about Linpack is nothing new, the discontent was pronounced this year as more systems, such as the Tianhe-1A, used GPUs (graphics processing units) to boost Linpack ratings, in effect gaming the Top500 list."
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Airports begin to go private, opt-out of TSA-> 4

Submitted by Dthief
Dthief writes "

Orlando Sanford International Airport has decided to opt out from TSA screening. "All of our due diligence shows it's the way to go," said Larry Dale, the director of the Sanford Airport Authority. "You're going to get better service at a better price and more accountability and better customer service."

"
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The Courts

RIAA Hearing Next Week Will Be Televised 291

Posted by kdawson
from the light-of-day dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "One commentator labels it 'another fly in the RIAA's ointment.' In SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, the Boston, Massachusetts, RIAA case in which the defendant is represented by Harvard law professor Charles Nesson and a group of his students, the Judge has ruled that the hearing scheduled for January 22nd will be televised over the Internet. The hearing will relate to Mr. Tenenbaum's counterclaims against the record companies and against the RIAA. In her 11-page opinion (PDF), District Judge Nancy Gertner labeled as 'curious' the record companies' opposition to televising the proceedings, since their professed reason for bringing the cases is deterrence, 'a strategy [which] effectively relies on the publicity arising from this litigation'."
Windows

Antivirus: A waste of 50% of your HD throughput?->

Submitted by dwalsh
dwalsh writes "Are we wasting our (Windows) computers performance on a placebo? Jeff Atwood seems to think so:

"The performance cost of virus scanning (lose 50% of disk performance, plus some percent of CPU speed) does not justify the benefit of a 33% detection rate and marginal protection."

"Ask yourself this: why don't Mac users run anti-virus software? Why don't UNIX users run anti-virus software? Because they don't need to. They don't run as administrators."

The article is a criticism of AV as a blacklist approach, that mostly protects against last months viruses. How many Slashdot Windows users rely solely on a firewall, a decent web browser, and good common sense (like Momma used to make it) when it comes to attachments?"
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PlayStation (Games)

Harmonix: Activision Is Preventing Rock Band Patch-> 1

Submitted by
XueCast
XueCast writes "Many gamers have asked for guitar controller compatibility between Guitar Hero and Rock Band, because of that, Harmonix had developed a patch that can make that happen. The compatibility patch has allegedly been approved by Sony Computer Entertainment, and is ready to be released. But Activision, the publisher of the Guitar Hero series is not very happy with the patch at all, and the patch's release is currently being blocked by the Santa Monica based video game publisher company."
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The Military

Boeing 12,000lb chemical laser set to fry targets->

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "Boeing this week said completed work on and installed a 12,000-pound chemical laser in a C-130H aircraft and will now test the weapon, which will fire through a rotating turret that extends through the aircraft's belly, until an official demonstration set for 2008. Boeing's Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) which is being developed for the Department of Defense, will destroy, damage or disable targets with little to no collateral damage, supporting missions on the battlefield and in urban operations, Boeing said. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22975"
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Long computations which yield zero are probably all for naught.