Lish - Slashdot User

A New Concept in Supercomputers 113

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday March 15, 2008 @11:33AM

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."

Google Street a Slice of Dystopian Future? 325

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday March 04, 2008 @01:39PM from the they-see-you-man dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to a recent CNET article, Google Street View 'is just wrong'. The short piece which makes up part of a larger feature about 'technology that's just wrong' goes on to explain that Google Street View is like a scene from George Orwell's terrifying dystopian vision of 1984 and that it could ultimately change our behaviour because we'll never know when we're being watched. 'Google? Aren't they the friendly folk who help me find Web sites, cheat at pub quizzes, and look at porn? Yes, but since 2006 they're also photographing the streets of selected world cities and posting the results online for all to see. It was Jeremy Bentham who developed the idea of the Panopticon, a system of prison design whereby everybody could be seen from one central point, with the upshot being that prisoners learnt to modulate their behaviour — because they never knew if they were being watched. And that doesn't sound like much fun, does it?'"

SGI Acquires Linux Networx Assets, LNXI Dead? 96

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 15, 2008 @10:03AM from the tags-involving-cluster-not-welcome dept.

anzha writes "It seems that that Linux Networx, the pioneering Linux supercomputing company, has gone belly up. SGI announced that it has bought the core assets of LNXI. Furthermore, the rumors are that the doors were locked and employees were just given their paychecks. This analysis, on the other hand, claims that SGI has 'made employment offers to many LNXI engineers.' It's unclear what kind of support will be extended to customers of LNXI's Clusterworx Advanced products. What does this mean for the future of Linux supercomputing?"

New Project To End Stupidity Online 336

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday November 12, 2007 @05:12PM from the then-they-make-a-better-idiot dept.

mrneutron2003 writes to tell us that StupidFilter, a new Open Source project started by Gabriel Ortiz and Paul Starr, plans to provide an intellectual prophylactic for memetically transmitted diseases. "Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point. It's time to fight back."

Comment Free Willzyx! (Score 1) 131

by acordes on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @10:08PM (#20473445) Attached to: First Look At New Mexico's Space Terminal

I initially read the headline as "First Look at Mexico's New Space Terminal" and I immediately thought of the South Park episode where they send the whale to the moon. God, what a great episode. /Si, fly.

Comment Re:Cars or Monorail-trains? Why not combine? (Score 1) 644

by madPatter on Thursday November 21, 2002 @09:18PM (#4728193) Attached to: Seattle Monorail & California High Speed Rail Move Forward

Interesting concept, but if the speed is 20 mph at the junctions, won't traffic bottleneck at the junctions and reduce the whole system to 20 mph.

I'm also having a hard time visualizing how there wouldn't be massive traffic jams at the junctions (from vehicles getting on and off).

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