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Submission + - NNSA Buying Yet More Supercomputers to Model Potential Nuclear Disasters (theplatform.net)

An anonymous reader writes: A supercomputer like the upcoming Trinity machine is the only class of system that could adequately tackle what is known as “The Problem” in the weapons stockpile world. Their multiphysics 3D simulation, which (let your imagination run wild on this horror) factors in complex models that simulate thermonuclear burn, fission, hydrodynamics, and the photonic interactions from radiation.

Although the existing Cielo machine is far from puny, the code could only run on half the machine after a three-to-four day wait for an eight hour run because of so many other projects eating the machine. Aside from that more practical concern, nodes cannot go down during such a simulation and fast interaction between nodes is critical.

Submission + - Six Net Neutrality Lawsuits: What Are the Complaints About? (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: One of the main arguments for the trade groups and ISPs that have filed six — yes, six — lawsuits against the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules is that the agency violated a 69-year-old administrative procedure law in crafting the new regulations. A second argument: the agency violated ISPs’ Fifth Amendment rights by taking their private property for public use without paying 'just compensation.'

Comment Re:Apple to MS Transferable Skills? (Score 1) 375

Well, it certainly seems to apply in a number of areas. To wit:

- Clothing - Of course
- Computer hardware - Apple, Alienware
- Books - "Real Literature"
- Food - French Cuisine
- Music

Actually, there's probably a general market development pattern there that pretty much applies across most, if not all, areas of the economy. I think even financial investment instruments were affected by this (how else can anyone explain how Maddox, among others, did what he did?).

The world would probably appear to be much more sane to me if I hadn't (symbolically speaking) taken the blue pill a long time ago. As human beings, we're far too easily manipulated, and your observation along with my own over the years have demonstrated to me that capitalism needs an upgrade; that it's not the highest possible expression of/for human endeavor. The non-profit and creative commons models come closer, but those models seem to lack intrinsic motivators/reward mechanisms (e.g. greed in capitalism) and I'm assuming a good economic model needs one. Still looking I guess. Of course, there's lots I don't know, so if you know of better, I'm all ears.

Comment Re:Bah (Score 0) 554

FireFox is bloated and crash prone

That's probably your own fault. Uninstall the add-ons, themes, turn down the cache size, etc. and it will speed up significantly. Barring that, enjoy your time with Opera. It's a great browser, but I dumped it once FF3 was out.

Comment Vertical tab tree (Score 1) 554

Install the Tree Style Tab add then switch your tabs to vertical orientation. With that in place on a wide screen monitor (or even not), plus being able to hide tabs by collapsing parts of the tree, my only complaint is the 300+ MBs of RAM Firefox 3 tab takes when I have 50+ tabs open. ;+) (Oh, and Session Restore has to be very solid for this to work well - which is normally is).

Comment Re:Glassfish is a Must-Have for Oracle (Score 1) 234

Oracle's acquisition of BEA probably means that WebLogic is going to rule the Oracle JEE roost for the foreseeable future. Orion/OAS/OC4J is likely dead within 2 years; just as soon as they can incent customers onto WebLogic (which may well be renamed into the OAS brand). I don't know what they'll do with Glassfish; it's clearly redundant. However, as FOSS, it will surely live on perhaps as a fork.

If Applets are dead then so is client-side RIA. And it's not dead; just look at Adobe Flex then AIR. BTW - JavaFX deserves a place at the table no less than Adobe. Client-side RIA is at least as viable as HTML5 going forward; especially since client-side RIA is hand in glove architecturally speaking, which is something HTML can not achieve without a re-design.

Hopefully, someday it will just be common practice to stop abusing document oriented architectures for complex application creation. I saw it done with Lotus Notes, Microsoft Office automation, and on the web with HTML, etc. and I'm sick of these architectural abominations.

Comment Re:What else can you do? (Score 1) 1246

They could.. oh, I don't know, just ignore her? Now, if she were cheating on a test, that would be different, but this is just a school asserting a policy in the most totalitarian way possible. And, at the end of the day, what public good came out of this? Oh goody, so now she REALLY knows they don't want her to use a phone in school. Like she didn't know that already. It certainly isn't going to improve the educational environment.

Communications

How Do You Handle Your Enterprise Documentation? 125

An anonymous reader wonders: "I'm curious as to what tools Slashdot readers use to inventory and document their networks? What got me thinking about this is the part VMWare has been taking in data centers. You've got your SAN, various physical and logical networks, various VMs, and so forth. It just adds a new layer of complexity in terms of documentation. I'm curious as to what people have been using as for doing things like documenting how their backups work, LAN settings, FW settings, where and what runs what services, and so forth. How do you blueprint your entire IT infrastructure so that someone brand new could start and figure out what does what?"
Games

The Many and Varied Games We Play 49

foghorn666 writes "Forbes.com has posted a sprawling special report on games, which tackles the subject from several angles, looking at everything from gambling to playing games in a relationship. There is, naturally, a lot on video games, including an original episode of Red Vs. Blue and a funny piece on the dangers of Warcraft addiction. Particularly cool are the interviews with video game luminaries like Peter Molyneux, Sid Meier, and John Romero. Even Duke Nukem came out of hiding to answer a few questions."
Intel

Xeons, Opterons Compared in Power Efficiency 98

Bender writes "The Tech Report has put Intel's 'Woodcrest' and quad-core 'Clovertown' Xeons up against AMD's Socket F Opterons in a range of applications, including widely multithreaded tests from academic fields like computational fluid dynamics and proteomics. They've also attempted to quantify power efficiency in terms of energy use over over time and energy use per task, with some surprising results." From the article: "On the power efficiency front, we found both Xeons and Opterons to be very good in specific ways. The Opteron 2218 is excellent overall in power efficiency, and I can see why AMD issued its challenge. Yes, we were testing the top speed grade of the Xeon 5100 and 5300 series against the Opteron 2218, but the Opteron ended up drawing much less power at idle than the Xeons ... We've learned that multithreaded execution is another recipe for power-efficient performance, and on that front, the Xeons excel. The eight-core Xeon 5355 system managed to render our multithreaded POV-Ray test scene using the least total energy, even though its peak power consumption was rather high, because it finished the job in about half the time that the four-way systems did. Similarly, the Xeon 5160 used the least energy in completing our multithreaded MyriMatch search, in part because it completed the task so quickly. "
Announcements

Submission + - Canadian scientists reverse Diabetes in mice

AvgGatsby writes: Researchers working on a "breakthrough" discovery that identifies the role of pain nerves in the cells that produce insulin have prevented and reversed diabetes in mice.

Researchers concluded that the pain receptors don't secrete enough neuropeptides — chemical elements found in the brain — to keep the pancreatic islets, which produce insulin, working normally. Without insulin, humans die, and even the current replacement therapies cannot prevent side effects, such as heart attack, blindness, stroke, loss of limbs and kidney failure.

Given the doomsday warnings we have been hearing about this disease over the past few years this could be a major scientific breakthrough.

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