dougr650 - Slashdot User

Submission + - BlueGene/L ranked 1st in top500 for the 4th time

Submitted by paleshadows on Friday July 20, 2007 @05:42PM

paleshadows writes: The top500 list ranks the top 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. It is published semiannually since 1993. The new list indicates that, for the fourth straight time, IBM's BlueGene/L of LLNL claimed the No. 1 spot at ~281 TerFlops per second. But while the No. 1 is still unchallenged, the list shows a lot of shuffling and the largest turnover among list entries in the history of the top500 project. This graph enumerates the number of systems each vendor has within the list, indicating that IBM is the dominant player, but that HP rapidly closes the gap. Of the top 10, the first 8 are situated in the U.S., while No. 9 and 10 are populated by Spain and Germany, respectively. Japan's first entry is at No. 14 with the EarthSimulator, which ranked first until 2004 when it was knocked off the top by the first blue BlueGene/L system.

Submission + - 55% of the graduate students never get degrees (newsvine.com)

Submitted by

voa1941

on Friday July 20, 2007 @05:35PM

voa1941 writes: "According to a study by the National Science Foundation (nsf.gov) only 45 percent of the students entering doctoral programs successfully finish and receive their degrees. Many of those students fund their graduate journey with enormous student loans — in some cases, well in excess of $100,000. This is a huge amount, especially for those who get nothing in return. Once dropped out, students have to start paying back the loans for their aborted education. Read more here..."

Submission + - AT&T now supports open access for 700Mhz band (rcrnews.com)

Submitted by RalphBNumbers on Friday July 20, 2007 @02:48PM

RalphBNumbers writes: AT&T has reversed it's previous stance, and broken ranks with the other major cellular providers, by endorsing FCC chairman Kevin Martin's plan to require open access to 22Mhz of the 60Mhz to be auctioned by the FCC in the 700Mhz band. This statement prompted Verizon to reiterate their opposition to any open access requirements, and Google to state their wish that the entire 60Mhz be auctioned with open access requirements.
Open access rules would require the auction winner to allow any compatible device to connect to their networks on the effected spectrum.

Submission + - With record retention, it's better to be wrong (computerworld.com)

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Friday July 20, 2007 @02:44PM

Lucas123 writes: "Jerome Wendt, a former storage administrator, writes that even if companies misinterpret existing laws and create the wrong data retention policy that destroys requested data, they won't be held liable by regulators the first time an infraction occurs so long as they change their policies going forward. So 'it's better to be consistently wrong that consistently inconsistent.'"

Submission + - iPhone Development Wiki (scribblewiki.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20, 2007 @01:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: The people over at iPhoneWiki ( http://iphonedevwiki.scribblewiki.com/ ) have worked on a way to help you get your iPhone activated on different providers and to build third party apps.

Submission + - Gigapixel Navigation in Google Maps (prague360.com)

Submitted by

jeffreyMartin

on Friday July 20, 2007 @01:25PM

jeffreyMartin writes: "Google Code has featured us on code.google.com (permalink here- http://google-code-featured.blogspot.com/2007/07/p rague-360.html )

They seem to be very excited about the "Gigapixel Map" that I made with the help of my brother David http://vision.bc.edu/~dmartin/

This Gigapixel Map is, well, just that — instead of a street map which you can move around and zoom, it is a super-high-resolution photo (made from a few hundred photos stitched together). (Taken from the exact same place, it will be seasonal. Currently we have winter and spring.) We then used the map marker system that we are using on the "normal" maps to make this image a pretty nifty way to look at the city. When you click on any of the locations, it opens a fully spherical QTVR panorama. Seemed to me like the most sensible thing to do with these humungous images I made....

We'll be adding more soon, as well as for a couple other cities. Watch out for the summer version in Prague!"

Submission + - Chinook completes checkers game tree (msn.com)

Submitted by garbletext on Thursday July 19, 2007 @04:06PM

garbletext writes: An invincible checkers-playing program named Chinook has solved a game whose origins date back several millennia, scientists reported Thursday on the journal Science's Web site. By playing out every possible move — about 500 billion billion in all — the computer proved it can never be beaten. Even if its opponent also played flawlessly, the outcome would be a draw.

Submission + - Solar Cells Could Be Produced with Inkjet Printers

Submitted by

Late-Eight

on Thursday July 19, 2007 @03:54PM

Late-Eight writes: "From Science Daily: Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. "The process is simple," said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT's Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences. "Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.""

Journal SPAM: EDIT: Al-Qaida's man in Iraq unveiled as fictional character 16

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday July 19, 2007 @03:50PM

Insurgent leader is not real, U.S. military says

Webcasters Call Bunk on SoundExchange DRM Ploy 109

Posted by Zonk on Thursday July 19, 2007 @03:49PM from the that's-the-sound-of-the-other-shoe dept.

RadioFan writes "The settlement between webcasters and SoundExchange is starting to come apart at the seams, because everyone is realizing that SoundExchange wants to force DRM on Net Radio. DiMA, one of the largest Net Radio lobbyists, has fired back at Sound Exchange, calling them out for leveraging high royalty fees to push through DRM requirements that they failed to obtain in Congress via broadcast flag and anti-recording legislation. Was this whole thing a ruse to get DRM on net radio?"

World's Largest Telescope Up and Running 120

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday July 16, 2007 @04:57PM from the ncc-2893 dept.

apdyck writes "ITWire is reporting that the world's largest telescope is now up and running, conducting one-year series of tests. The Great Canary Telescope, located in the Canary Islands, is the largest telescope in the world at 10.4 m (34') in diameter. Not for your average stargazer! 'The reflective telescope, sometimes also called GranTeCan, uses technology called adaptive optics, in which the mirror changes its shape in order to correct distortions of light caused by the Earth's atmosphere. The telescope is part of the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, located on the island of La Palma, Spain, within the Atlantic Ocean.'"

Submission + - Sun did'nt cause recent climate change: U.K. study (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Mikkeles on Wednesday July 11, 2007 @05:18PM

Mikkeles writes: The Royal Society has recently published an article (abstract full article(PDF)) written in response to Channel 4's The Great Global Warming Swindle .

There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth's pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.

Submission + - API: Design matters

Submitted by ChelleChelle on Wednesday July 11, 2007 @05:15PM

ChelleChelle writes: Opening with the question, "Should the authors of lousy APIs be held accountable for their crimes," Michi Henning, of ZeroC, launches into a discussion of the difficulties of designing a good API and the abundance of lousy ones in use today. Warning of the imminent dangers of a poorly designed API, he offers a variety of solutions for the situation, ending with the statement, "API design truly matters — but we had better realize it before events run away with things and remove any choice."

Surgeon General Describes Censorship From Bush Administration 805

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday July 11, 2007 @04:00PM from the flame-magnet dept.

UniversalVM writes "The NY Times is reporting that the former Surgeon General in damaging testimony given to the senate describes how he was repeatedly censored by the Bush administration while speaking out about topics such as global warming, Stem cell research and so on. The effort was to 'water down' or weaken reports on important issues to suit Republican Agenda. He describes how he attended one meeting where Global Warming was being described as a 'Liberal Agenda' and being dismissed. He tried to intervene thinking that the people there did not understand the science so he set about explaining it to them, the result? He was never invited back."

Submission + - Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair (cnn.com)

Submitted by

bradgoodman

on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @04:46PM

bradgoodman writes: "BEND, Oregon (AP) — Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Balloons suspend Kent Couch in a lawn chair as he floats in the skies near Bend, Oregon, on Saturday.

With instruments to measure his altitude and speed, a global positioning system device in his pocket, and about four plastic bags holding five gallons of water each to act as ballast — he could turn a spigot, release water and rise — Couch headed into the Oregon sky."

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