Of interest in the "players set the rules" topic is LambdaMOO, where players actually sent in petitions which became ballots which were voted on and implemented. Frequently, a ballot to permanently shut down the game was submitted; luckily, they never passed. Other ballots would include changes in quota policy, new user policy, etc.

Compare the FAH systems to BlueGene/P. BlueGene is made up of System-on-Chip PowerPC computers, stuck on DIMM-like cards and then put into arrays, which go into racks, etc. Hugely power efficient, in part because each system doesn't maintain a disk and other crap.

On the other hand, your home computer is inefficient in terms of both heat, power, and space, because it has to run all the other hardware stuff you don't have in a proper supercomputer.

Replying for truth--every (mostly CS or supercomputing) conference I can think of wants PDF, with some accepting LaTeX or troff.

Real computer science students (and the computer engineering students who end up taking the classes too) are smart enough to pick up Unix as they work through the CS courses. It's a good idea to have one or two class sessions to talk about Unix, but having actual Unix courses seems rather silly.

So yeah, if they're teaching a full course on just using Unix, it's probably IT.

I spent a longer-than-is-healthy period of time trying to figure out to build a mostly safe EMP device to fry cars at stoplights with stereos that do that.

HERF gun.

Synthesizing FPGA designs (the given example) is not graphics-intensive.