yacoutamia - Slashdot User

Submission + - New supercomputer boosts Aussie SKA telescope bid (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by

angry tapir

on Tuesday September 27, 2011 @10:20PM

angry tapir writes: "Australian academic supercomputing consortium iVEC has acquired another major supercomputer, Fornax, to be based at the University of Western Australia, to further the country’s ability to conduct data-intensive research. The SGI GPU-based system, also known as iVEC@UWA, is made up of 96 nodes, each containing two 6-core Intel Xeon X5650 CPUs, an NVIDIA Tesla C2050 GPU, 48 GB RAM and 7TB of storage. All up, the system has 1152 cores, 96 GPUs and an additional dedicated 500TB fabric attached storage- (FAS) based global filesystem. The system is a boost to the Australian-NZ bid to host the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope."

Comment Re:Tape (Score 1) 941

by yacoutamia on Thursday February 18, 2010 @11:16PM (#31195184) Attached to: PA School Spied On Students Via School-Issued Laptop Webcams

From what I understand, there was no capability to remotely record a video. It was an anti-theft measure that could be used to snap photos (same as some of those iphone apps, or http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/ for macs, or one of the million programs that can be used to take a picture with a webcam on your stolen laptop) and that was supposed to only be activated after a theft was reported.

So obviously someone made use of that capability when they shouldn't have. The question is, was that person following policy or acting on their own? The software and capability isn't unjustified, it seems like a good thing to have on a school-given laptop. My guess is that there was one or a few people who were taking these snapshots when they weren't supposed to, saw a kid doing something bad, decided it was their job to do something about, and are now going to get the school district in a whole shitload of trouble.

See the school district's response here: http://www.lmsd.org/sections/schools/default.php?m=&t=hhs&p=hhs_today_anno&id=1138

A Robotic Cyberknife To Fight Cancer 80

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 31, 2008 @10:50PM from the how-is-it-at-starting-a-fire dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Cyberknife is not a real knife. This is a robot radiotherapy machine which works with great accuracy during treatment, thanks to its robotic arm which moves around a patient when he breathes. According to BBC News, the first Cyberknife will be operational in February 2009 in London, UK. But other machines have been installed in more than 15 countries, and have permitted doctors to treat 50,000 patients in the first semester of 2008. And the Cyberknife is more efficient than conventional radiotherapy devices. The current systems require twenty or more short sessions with low-dose radiation. On the contrary, and because it's extremely precise, a Cyberknife can deliver powerful radiation in just three sessions."

MySpace Verdict a Danger To Depressed Kids 502

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 16, 2008 @02:50PM from the don't-need-no-more-reasons dept.

Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton summarizes his essay this way: "Debate over the Lori Drew verdict has focused overwhelmingly on whether the ruling was technically correct, but there is another serious issue: the perverse incentives that this ruling creates for victims of online harassment." Read on for his essay.

DIY Live Photos From ISS 42

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 13, 2008 @07:19PM from the snaps-populi dept.

leighklotz writes "The international amateur satellite organization AMSAT is reporting live reception of TV images directly from the orbiting ISS via the ARISS-SSTV project. The images are said to be preparations for the upcoming visit to the ISS by Richard Garriot (W5KWQ), which will provide images from space as part of the Windows on Earth project."

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