Topic: COMPUTER - on January 29, 2005 at 9:33:00 PM CET
Simulating the Universe with a zBox
Our in-house designed (Joachim Stadel & Ben Moore 2003), massively parallel supercomputer for running our cosmological N-body simulations. This machine consists of 288 AMD Athlon-MP 2200+ (1.8 GHz) CPUs within a few cubic meters. Under load it produces about 45 kW of heat, about equivalent to 45 electric hair dryers operating continuously! This amount of heat, combined with the extremely high density necessitated a new design for efficient cooling. The 144 nodes (2 CPUs per node) are connected using an SCI fast interconnect supplied by Dolphin in a 12x12 2-dimensional torus. The layout of the machine is ring-like, thereby allowing very short "ribbon" cables to be used between the nodes. This fast interconnect network attains a peak bisection bandwidth of 96 Gbits/sec, with a node-node write/read latency as low as 1.5/3.5 microseconds. Additionally the zBox has 11.5 TBytes of disk (80 GBytes/node) and 3 Gbits/s I/O bandwidth to a frontend server with 7 TB of RAID-5 storage. This is among the fastest parallel computers in the world! At "first light" it ranked in the top 100, but the technology advances quickly.
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Topic: GOOGLE - on January 29, 2005 at 2:21:00 PM CET
Google and Mozilla’s Love Child - GOOGZILLA
There was a partnership made this week that is probably scaring the pants off of Bill Gates and the people behind Internet Explorer - Google is shacking up with Mozilla to form Googzilla! Well, not exactly, but close enough. Just as Mozilla makes Internet news of securing almost 6% of the web browser market with FireFox - which has been downloaded an estimated 19 million times, Google starts offering positions, free lunch, and in-house dental benefits to the top Mozilla developers Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher.
searchenginejournal.com Google Hires Second Firefox Coder What is Google cooking with Firefox?
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Topic: NATURE - on January 29, 2005 at 2:05:00 PM CET
Vent et glace sur Genève
Mercredi 26 janvier 2005. L'avis de grand froid annoncé par la météo est au rendez-vous. Spectacle de glace garanti au bord du lac Léman où des rafales de vent sont annoncées à 110 km/h.... Je vous laisse deviner la température.
Attention, certaines images peuvent choquer les personnes sensibles au froid !
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Topic: COMPUTER - on January 29, 2005 at 2:01:00 PM CET
HOW-TO: Turn your Mac mini into a media center
Yep, everyone’s talking about using the Mac mini as a home media center, and there’s a reason why: its diminutive form factor makes it a good candidate to fit unobtrusively into an existing audio/video or home theater setup. It looks more like a consumer electronics device than a computer, so it won’t look out of place in your living room. We think of it as the central brain of our system; the glue that holds all the devices together. It can serve the role of scheduler, controller, audio/video recorder, audio/video playback, audio/video download, and it even makes a decent audio/video production unit, as well. You might not win the next Sundance with your iMovie, but you sure can impress everyone at the next family reunion.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on January 29, 2005 at 1:52:00 PM CET
Ultimate Boot CD
You need the Ultimate Boot CD if you want to:
* Run floppy-based diagnostic tools from CDROM drives. More and more PCs are shipped without floppy drives these days, and it is such a royal pain when you need to run diagnostic tools on them.
* Free yourself from the slow loading speed of the floppy drive. Even if you do have a floppy drive, it is still much much faster to run your diagnostic tools from the CDROM drive, rather than wait for the tool to load from the floppy drive.
* Consolidate as many diagnostic tools as possible into one bootable CD. Wouldn't you like to avoid digging into the dusty box to look for the right floppy disk, but simply run them all from a single CD? Then the Ultimate Boot CD is for you!
When you boot up from the CD, a text-based menu will be displayed, and you will be able to select the tool you want to run. The selected tool actually boots off a virtual floppy disk created in memory.
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Topic: VIDEO - on January 29, 2005 at 1:31:00 PM CET
Tiny Linux camcorder runs ARM-no-MMU Linux
Samsung has used uClinux and an ARM9-based SoC to build a tiny multi-function device that serves as a high-quality diskless camcorder, SVGA digital camera, mp3 player, voice recorder, data storage device, and web cam. The Miniket runs a 2.6-series "ARM-no-MMU" uClinux kernel that can boot to a shell in 80msec.
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Topic: HOLLYWALD - on January 29, 2005 at 1:25:00 PM CET
VOGONS! GUNS! AND A ONE-HEADED ZAPHOD?
The first full body images of Vogons are here, from the Diamond Previews catalog, which has stuff that should be shipping to your local store in about two to three months. They have a big ad for toys from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and it includes a look at the Vogons, Marvin's gun, and a one-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on January 29, 2005 at 12:57:00 PM CET
Microsoft in 2008
Bill Gates hires open source icon Linus Torvalds? That was just the beginning of Redmond's hybrid strategy to face the free software age.
From the office of Linus Torvald DATE: 10.31.2008 TO: BILL FROM: LINUS RE: Will Steve kill WinX?
When you hired me three years ago, you had to realize that I was going to speak my mind, no matter what the consequences. You told me that if I ever hit a wall with Steve or his people, I should let you know. Well, here goes. (Yes, again.)
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Topic: CARS - on January 29, 2005 at 12:23:00 PM CET
Tiroler Kühe dürfen Autos demolieren
Wer im schönen Land Tirol wandern geht und sein Auto neben der Straße abstellt, muss aufpassen. In manchen Gegenden dürfen Kühe frei herumlaufen. Beschädigen sie dabei ein Fahrzeug, so hat der Besitzer Pech gehabt.
Für den Schaden brauchen weder der Tierhalter noch dessen Haftpflichtversicherung aufzukommen.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on January 29, 2005 at 2:19:00 AM CET
Neues Buch zur Beziehung von "Katze und Mensch"
Das Verhältnis von Katzen zu Menschen war im Lauf der Geschichte durchaus wechselhaft: Im Alten Ägypten wurden Katzen als Gottheiten verehrt, im Mittelalter wegen vermeintlicher Teufeleien verfolgt und heute werden sie in großer Zahl als Haustiere gehalten. Der Wissenschaftshistoriker Erhard Oeser von der Uni Wien zeichnet in einem neuen Buch diese abwechslungsreiche Geschichte nach.
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Topic: COPYRIGHT - on January 29, 2005 at 1:14:00 AM CET
Musikindustrie mahnt heise online wegen Bericht über Kopiersoftware ab
Im Auftrag diverser Großunternehmen der Musikindustrie (BMG, edel, EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music und Warner Music) hat die Münchener Anwaltskanzlei Waldorf am heutigen Freitag dem Heise Zeitschriften Verlag eine Abmahnung zugestellt. Darin wird dem Verlag unter anderem vorgeworfen, durch einen Artikel im Newsticker von heise online (AnyDVD überwindet Kopierschutz von "Un-DVDs") gegen § 95a des Urheberrechtsgesetzes (UrhG) zu verstoßen und illegal "Vorrichtungen zur Umgehung von Kopierschutzmaßnahmen" zu verbreiten. Diese Vorschrift verbietet unter anderem Herstellung, Einfuhr, Verbreitung, Verkauf, Vermietung und Bewerbung derartiger Soft- und Hardware. Nach Ansicht der Musikindustrie liegt ein Verstoß gegen diese Vorschrift bereits in dem Setzen eines Links auf die Eingangsseite der Online-Präsenz eines Herstellers von Kopiersoftware.
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Topic: BOARD NEWS - on January 29, 2005 at 1:11:00 AM CET
Strafanzeige wegen Internetvideo
In einem im Internet kursierenden Video zündet ein Selbstmordattentäter in seinem VW Polo vor einem belebten Cafe einen Sprengsatz, der Wagen bekommt allerdings keinen Kratzer ab - "Small but tough", so die von VW-Werbespots abgekupferte Botschaft. Der Autokonzern will mit dem als professionell eingestuften Film nichts zu tun haben und leitete umgehend ein Strafverfahren gegen unbekannt ein. Einer der mutmaßlichen Produzenten erklärte unterdessen, den Spot für VW produziert zu haben. Allerdings sei dieser nicht für die Öffentlichkeit bestimmt gewesen.
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