Economist - Slashdot User

Homebrew Cray-1 140

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday August 31 2010, @01:00PM
from the when-i-was-a-child dept.

egil writes "Chris Fenton built his own fully functional 1/10 scale Cray-1 supercomputer. True to the original, it includes the couch-seat, but is also binary compatible with the original. Instead of the power-hungry ECL technology, however, the scale model is built around a Xilinx Spartan-3E 1600 development board. All software is available if you want to build one for your own living room. The largest obstacle in the project is to find original software."

Can a Computer Finally Pass the Turing Test?-> 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2010, @10:01PM

An anonymous reader writes ""Why not develop music in ways unknown...? If beauty is present, it is present." That's Emily Howell talking — a music-composing computer program written in Lisp by a Santa Cruz professor. Classical musicians refuse to perform Emily's musical compositions, and the professor says they believe "the creation of music is innately human, and somehow this computer program was a threat...to that unique human aspect of creation." But Emily raises a disturbing question. With the ability to write music even classical purists can't distinguish from the compositions of humans, have we already reached the moment where a computer can pass for human? (The article includes a sample of her music, plus her intriguing haiku-like responses to queries. "I am not sad. I am not happy. I am Emily... Life and un-life exist. We coexist.")"
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Google not losing $1.65M/day on YouTube after all -> 0

Submitted by

secmartin

on Friday June 19 2009, @04:22AM

secmartin writes "A report by Credit Suisse released earlier this year claimed that Google was losing up to $1.65M per day on YouTube. This was widely considered to be a huge overestimate; now a new report by research firm RampRate provides a better estimate that takes into account that 73% of Google's traffic flows via peering agreements, leading to a more realistic figure of $477k/day.

What both analysts appear to be missing it the fact that Google is working hard to create a completely transit-free IPv6 network; as Google puts it in their IPv6 FAQ:

To qualify for Google over IPv6, your network must have good IPv6 connectivity to Google. Multiple direct interconnections are preferred, but a direct peering with multiple backup routes through transit or multiple reliable transit connections may be acceptable.

What do you think? Do these new figures sound more realistic, and would it be a good or a bad thing if Google didn't have to pay for their internet bandwidth at all?"
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Comment: What Linux needs to hit mainstream is (Score 1) 710

by Economist on Tuesday May 05 2009, @06:55PM (#27839339) Attached to: Shuttleworth Says Ubuntu Can't Just Be Windows

... a good powerpoint viewer. One that supports all powerpoint slideshows perfectly, no matter how much multimedia is embedded. A lot of home users receive annoying powerpoint presentations with some stupid joke or something, and they LIKE it.

They aren't supported very well in linux. Some are, many are not. Especially when sound is embedded. And Average Joe will open a presentation, notice it isn't what it is on Windows, and then believes Linux is no good.

MD5 proven ineffective for app signatures-> 0

Submitted by

prostoalex

on Sunday December 02 2007, @12:22AM

prostoalex writes "Marc Stevens, Arjen K. Lenstra, and Benne de Weger have released their paper 'Vulnerability of software integrity and code signing applications to chosen-prefix collisions for MD5', which describes a reproducible attack on MD5 algorithm to fake software signatures. Researchers start off with two simplistic Windows applications — HelloWorld.exe and GoodbyeWorld.exe, and apply a known prefix attack that makes md5() signatures for both of the applications identical. Is it the end of signed software? Not quite, researchers point out: "For abusing a chosen-prefix collision on a software integrity protection or a code signing scheme, the attacker should be able to manipulate the files before they are being hashed and/or signed. This may mean that the attacker needs insider access to the party operating the trusted software integrity protection or code signing process. An attacker with such access can most probably do more harm anyway, without the need for chosen-prefix collisions, to get official digital signatures on malware.""
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