Slashdot Mirror

Of course Dell tried to outdo them by about 26,000 a few years later:

Dell Battery Recall

Andrew

Theres a rather cool animation of atoms whizzing around the cyclotron at their web site. Naughty submitter forgot it. Bad submitter, go sit in the corner!

The best bit: (Please wait a moment while the 18 MB movie loads.)

In the HFS filesystem, a file has two forks, a data fork, that corresponds to the file data in Windows or Unix file-system, and a resource fork, that contained structured data, basically bits of data that had an attached id, name and type.

Resources were used to store all kinds of stuff. This was very convenient, as you could for instance store the window shape of a text document in the resource fork without affecting the content of the file (data fork). This was also used to store custom icons, text styling without actually affecting the data. You could even use it to embed fonts into word documents.

The trick is, the OS used resources extensively, an application typically had an empty data fork and lots of resources (icons, pictures, sounds, windows, dialogs), including 68K code segments.

One Macintosh virus, WDEF, used this mechanism to propagate. What the virus did, was add resource of type WDEF to the database file describing all the icons on the desktop. WDEF resources were window definition code. So when the Finder (file explorer) opened this database file for a given volume, the resource would get loaded and overloaded the default window drawing code, thus enabling the virus to execute and spread.

What I never understood is why someone like IBM didn't come along and cluster 10,000 dual P4 nodes together for fun to get on the top spot. I'm sure they have the inventory to write that off.

That would be ASCI White, which is currently #8 on the top 500. It's an 8192-cpu Power3 machine, and they didn't do it just for fun. It was #1 on the top 500 in Nov 2000.

Also, #10 on the top 500 is a 1920-node IBM Xeon 2.4Ghz cluster, but why should IBM use Intel processors when they make their own?

This is definitley intriguing, but I can't gather frmo the article if there are any uses

Pixar didn't take lightly to this. They launched a lawsuit against Exluna saying they were violating certain patents they held regarding some antialiasing algorithms. Never mind that the renderer was far more advanced and was a complete drop in replacement for Pixar's competing product. This was a straight up ploy to get rid of the competition.

This oversimplifies the dispute between Pixar and Exluna as I understand it. Antialiasing algorithms are NOT TRIVIAL. This stuff is used in nuclear engineering (Efficient Light Propagation for Multiple Anisotropic Volume Scattering for details). Building efficient systems to solve these sampling problems is quite a large task. When some in-the-know folks passed between Pixar and Exluna (BMRT), and antialiasing subsequently improved at Exluna, Pixar said "hey wait a second..."

Apart from that, renderers are not a huge business, but GPU's are-- I bet the Exluna/BMRT folks will end up doing fine.

Yes, the "fusion power will be workable in N years" mantra that's been heard from many sources for the past 40 years is frustrating, and considering that here it is 2003 and we still havent even reached ignition in any laboratory reactor is dissapointing to say the least. However, it is important to note that during this time fusion research hase come a VERY long way. I don't see how this progress can continue forever with no results.

is that Mac os 9 was completly safe to the outside world. AFIK there were no remote holes - now it did crash every ten to fifteen minutes on me, but I've never seen remote vulnerablitly.

You can see one anytime you want by just checking this test site. It works in a similar way as the infamous autostart worm that plagued MacOS Classic machines. The vulnerability works as follows:

1. You click on a link on a website like the above. It starts to download a stuffit-packed disk image to your desktop [without asking; that's the default configuration]
2. Stuffit unpacks and mounts the image [without asking; that's the default configuration]
3. Classic QuickTime sees a newly mounted image and initiates Autostart procedure [DEFAULT CONFIGURATION!]
4. Bingo - you allowed a remote source to execute arbitrary code on your system; and even under MacOS X, it started as a Classic layer process so it runs actually as root

The test site "attacks" you only with a very simple AppleScript applet that only opens your trashcan and that's it. But just think of the possibilites for a really malicious use. It was a very severe vulnerability for all vanilla-configured MacOS 9 (and earlier) machines; but unfortunately, also MacOS X machines with their Classic layer configured as the vanilla MacOS 9 were affected. THIS INCLUDES the MacOS X 10.3 "Panther". In fact, Classic layer always was and still is the biggest security hole in MacOS X, but that's another story. Anyway, Apple was crazy to provide Autostart option in QuickTime (who needs it, anyway?) but it was even more crazy to provide it as the DEFAULT configuration.

As it descends into denser air, the aircraft would be pushed up by the increased aerodynamic lift. The engines would fire briefly, propelling the plane back into space. Outside the atmosphere, the engines shut off and the process repeats. In this way, HyperSoar would skip off the top layer of the atmosphere every two or so minutes, like a flat rock skittering in slow motion across the surface of a pond.

One alternative I've seen to this is a passive maglev system which uses passive copper coils on the track and "hallbach" magnets on the train. The hallbach magnets create a sinusoidal magnetic field, and as the train moves over the passive coils, the coils produce a repulsive field. As long as the train is moving fast enough, it will rise up off the tracks. If the propulsion fails, the train will just slow down until it lands back on the tracks. No complex control system needed. Also, the hallbach magnets have the unusual property that the magnetic field is only on one side of the magnet, so you need less shielding for the passenger compartment.

There is a real system based on this. It is called Inductrak. It was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The article I linked to was kind of old, so I don't know if they've made any progress lately.

"HyperSoar's trajectory follows a skipping pattern. Passengers would feel 1.5 times the force of gravity at the bottom of each skip, and weightlessness out in space. The experience would be comparable to being on a swing, although HyperSoar's motion would be 100 times slower."

Anyone else thinking about investing their life savings into sick bag companies?

I suppose then it should also come as no surprise to you that France is building a new megajoule class laser (right on par with the US's NIF project) to test its nuclear weapon simulations.

This set of sldes compares some of the architecture of the BlueGene/L to other ASCI machines.

You can find most of what you want to know on IBM Research or US Department of Energy (search for bluegene). I think both can survive slashdotting.

Not if it flies 4 times higher than Concorde did. Not a lot of drag at 210,000 feet. Hypersoar was supposed to periodically ignite its engines to climb to the peak and coast for most of a cycle - sort of like a roller coaster. Only problem is, the designer works at Lawrence Livermore Lab. The lab has an unfortunate history of over promising and under delivering.

Not if it flies 4 times higher than Concorde did. Not a lot of drag at 210,000 feet. Hypersoar was supposed to periodically ignite its engines to climb to the peak and coast for most of a cycle - sort of like a roller coaster. Only problem is, the designer works at Lawrence Livermore Lab. The lab has an unfortunate history of over promising and under delivering.

Cost of this 1 teraflop Mellanox machine is less than US$1e6 according to this brochure.

That's considerably less than the US$50e6 that the first teraflop machine cost (Sandia's ASCI Red see this SC1996 flier) 7 years ago.

I don't have a spare million, either, but that kind of 98% price reduction is still fairly impressive.

Solid hydrogen?? Do you mean that stuff at the center of jupiter??

Actually, Blue Gene is being built to simulate protein folding if I remember correctly. Sure, it could be used for other purposes, but so could any computer. The project you may be thinking of is called ASCI White . Here's the ASCI project (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative).

Actually, Blue Gene is being built to simulate protein folding if I remember correctly. Sure, it could be used for other purposes, but so could any computer. The project you may be thinking of is called ASCI White . Here's the ASCI project (Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative).

Their Table 1 lists a volume of 28 gallons for the LH2 tank, or 62 gallons for the compressed H2 tank. Comparing against current Li-ion cells, I note that you'd be able to squeeze 50 of the 100 AH cells into the volume of the LH2 tank for an energy capacity of roughly 18 KWH; that's 90 miles for most electric vehicles. But the battery doesn't evaporate its stored energy, so it's more equivalent to the CH2 tank. 235 liters of cells would be roughly 112 cells, for energy storage of 40.3 KWH and a range of about 200 miles. The latter pack would weigh about 740 pounds, and unless you were going on long trips you would never have to stop to charge except at home.

At first blush hydrogen has a range advantage, but batteries can go into odd nooks and crannies where you can't stick hydrogen tanks. (Natural-gas vehicles have the same problem.) The best system might be a hybrid FCV, where run on batteries for most driving and only fill the liquid-hydrogen tank when you are going on a long trip. If you ran the tank dry on every leg (or burned off the hydrogen to recharge the batteries rather than letting it go to waste), you could take advantage of the strong points of both systems.

Unfortunately for hydrogen, that gallon-equivalent (119,000 BTU) of energy per kilogram comes at a density of 0.07 even for LH2; that's about 14 liters of volume for 3.8 gasoline-liters-equivalent of energy. A diesel sustainer engine running on biodiesel at 121,000 BTU/gallon and 40% thermal efficiency would get the same gallon-gasoline-equivalent of useful energy out of a mere 1.13 gallons of volume (compensating for 40% efficiency vs. 46%), so the 28 gallon LH2 tank could be replaced by an 8.5 gallon biodiesel tank. You'd have no evaporation problems to contend with or requirements to engineer a new fuel system, either; everything is off the shelf. Hydrogen just isn't very attractive as a motor fuel, which is why I think it is a distraction from the issues we should be addressing here and now.

Their Table 1 lists a volume of 28 gallons for the LH2 tank, or 62 gallons for the compressed H2 tank. Comparing against current Li-ion cells, I note that you'd be able to squeeze 50 of the 100 AH cells into the volume of the LH2 tank for an energy capacity of roughly 18 KWH; that's 90 miles for most electric vehicles. But the battery doesn't evaporate its stored energy, so it's more equivalent to the CH2 tank. 235 liters of cells would be roughly 112 cells, for energy storage of 40.3 KWH and a range of about 200 miles. The latter pack would weigh about 740 pounds, and unless you were going on long trips you would never have to stop to charge except at home.

At first blush hydrogen has a range advantage, but batteries can go into odd nooks and crannies where you can't stick hydrogen tanks. (Natural-gas vehicles have the same problem.) The best system might be a hybrid FCV, where run on batteries for most driving and only fill the liquid-hydrogen tank when you are going on a long trip. If you ran the tank dry on every leg (or burned off the hydrogen to recharge the batteries rather than letting it go to waste), you could take advantage of the strong points of both systems.

Unfortunately for hydrogen, that gallon-equivalent (119,000 BTU) of energy per kilogram comes at a density of 0.07 even for LH2; that's about 14 liters of volume for 3.8 gasoline-liters-equivalent of energy. A diesel sustainer engine running on biodiesel at 121,000 BTU/gallon and 40% thermal efficiency would get the same gallon-gasoline-equivalent of useful energy out of a mere 1.13 gallons of volume (compensating for 40% efficiency vs. 46%), so the 28 gallon LH2 tank could be replaced by an 8.5 gallon biodiesel tank. You'd have no evaporation problems to contend with or requirements to engineer a new fuel system, either; everything is off the shelf. Hydrogen just isn't very attractive as a motor fuel, which is why I think it is a distraction from the issues we should be addressing here and now.

My car has a 12.5 gallon tank and gets about 28 mpg highway, so it has a range of 350 miles. Granted, they aren't there yet. As fo rthe batteries, I just meant that as they get lighter, they will be more expensive. As in a 52kg battery will cost more than a 10kg battery that holds the same charge.

Back in the mid-90's, I was an education student at a mid-size university, and I worked at the education lab (which was, of course, all Macs). I got a friend of mine a job there, and he ended up getting the job I wanted (tech support for the school of education), while I sat there in the lab and helped people print out their papers or work on their Hypercard projects. I was often very bored, so one night I decided to install Radiation & Trigger, a Mac app/extension combo that allowed you to display any error message on a target computer that had the Radiation extension, on every machine in the lab. I was really bored that night.

Anyway, my friend was working early one morning before the lab was open, so I fired up Trigger and sent the default error message to all the Macs in the lab:

"The radiation shield on your monitor has failed. Please step back 5 feet."

Figuring that would crack my friend up, I called a couple minutes later to check out the damage. Unfortunately, he wasn't even there - he was off fixing some professor's computer, and my boss answered the phone instead. I asked where Andy was, and she asked me if I knew anything about a radiation shield, because she had opened the lab early that day so the graduate students could work on their theses.

I quit less than a week later to avoid being fired.

This isn't the first laser powered flight, this was done a little while ago at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. They shot a laser straight up at a metal object covered with parabolic dimples, the laser light focused on a small spot and heated the air so much it caused small explosions that propelled the craft. I don't think NASA's airplane should be considered "laser powered" when it uses photovoltiac cells to convert the laser energy into electricity. I couldn't find a good link but just so you know im not full of $h17 Click Here.

By contrast, magnetic fields have a very measurable effect on the body. Your blood is composed of about 7-28 umol/L, or if I did the math right, about 1 mg/L. Take a magnet and rub it near a vein sometime. If the field is strong enough, you get reorientation of the red blood cells, and eventually clumping of those cells. In sufficiently concentrated doses, the health effects could be significant.

That's false. Red blood cells do not clump in the presense of magnetic fields.

There have been studies on the phosphene effect, where strong magnetic pulses cause subjects to percieve brief visual images.

Lawrence Livermore National Labs has a page on the harmful effects of very strong magnetic fields, upwards of 40,000 Gauss -- but such fields are rarely encountered. Typical MRI magnetic fields, by comparison, are typically between 5,000 and 20,000 guass. But even in very high static magnetic fields, the effects are temporary.

The big danger is for people with implanted metal, like pace makers or surgical clips.

Now, I did find a study on red blood cells in very strong magnetic fields that does suggest that they reorient, even in fields as low as 10,000 Gauss. No mention of clumping.

Your typical hand-held magnet, even a strong one, produces a field on the order of 4,000 Gauss. Not harmful.

The fields produced by any kind of transmitters mentioned in the article would be tens or hundreds of Gauss -- too weak to move a paperclip.

(The earth's magnetic field is about 0.5 Gauss, for comparison)

On the other hand, the LLNL page mentions that magnetic fields equal to the strength of the Earth's can disrupt circadian rhythm! And it has been proven that birds are sensitive to the Earth's field... so even small magnetic fields can have a measurable biological effect.

But FEAR FEAR FEAR is not warranted.

- Peter

When I first read the article I thought I smelled BS too. The number of "you can't have a varying magnetic field without a varying electric field!!" post's below also indicate a frustration with the marketroid speek that pervades the article and a general lack of scientific cluelessness of the writer.

The key to understanding how this thing works (and yes the technique is old) is getting to understand the difference between NEARFIELDS and FARFIELDS. The nearfield is the zone CLOSE to the antenna less than .5 pi wavelengths away while the transition zone to the farfield is from .5 pi to 1 wavelength away. Since the magnetic field is decaying with the inverse CUBE of the distance away from the antenna (along its axis anyway) and the electromagnetic field is only decaying with the suare of the distance, eventually the EM field dominates at a certain distance from the emitter (the FARFIELD). These sites helped me understand this much better than I did a few minutes ago :-]. http://www.caves.org/section/commelect/mm/mm06.htm l and http://www-training.llnl.gov/wbt/hc/NonIonizing/Ne arFields.html. again nothing new here just a rehash of a discovery made by Faraday et. al.

I work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the laboratory that Teller and E. O. Lawrence founded back in the 50s. Teller still came into the lab every few days or so up the point of his death. Periodically, he would give Q/A sessions with summer students and other interested parties.

On July 24 of this year, I attended one of these. I can write a lot about what he had to say, but what has come to the fore of my mind since the news of his death was one question in particular. Someone asked him what he most wanted to be remembered for. He responded that his discovery of the "Jahn-Teller effect" was the work that he was most proud of. It involes crystal symmetry arising from interactions between elecrons and nuclei, and turned out to be very important for material science.

This was work that he did to help unravel certain energy configurations of the benzene molecule. I'm not a chemist, so I only have the vaguest notion of what the Jahn-Teller effect entails. But it involves calculating the electron distribution of a molecule, coupled with its vibrational energy. If I am understanding it correctly, Jahn and Teller first demonstrated that the two energy states can be coupled, allowing for a lower, most stable energy state than if each were considered separately. It's still studied to this day.

Teller got very animated while he was talking about his work on this. I find it a shame that none of the writeups and obituaries I've read have mentioned this work. This is my small contribution.

Letters of condolence: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is accepting letters of condolence on behalf of Teller's family. Letters may be sent to Teller Family, c/o Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-1, Livermore, CA 94551. Faxes can be sent to 925-422-8554 or e-mail to houghton3@llnl.gov

Memorial gifts: Edward Teller's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations be made to the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. Further information on the foundation is available by contacting Barbara Nichols at 925-373-1642 or barb@hertzfoundation.org or John Holzrichter at jfh@hertzfoundation.org.

Memorial services: Plans are not yet finalized.

For more information: visit Edward Teller Memorial Information.

Letters of condolence: Lawrence Livermore Laboratory is accepting letters of condolence on behalf of Teller's family. Letters may be sent to Teller Family, c/o Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-1, Livermore, CA 94551. Faxes can be sent to 925-422-8554 or e-mail to houghton3@llnl.gov

Memorial gifts: Edward Teller's family has asked that in lieu of flowers, tax-deductible donations be made to the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation. Further information on the foundation is available by contacting Barbara Nichols at 925-373-1642 or barb@hertzfoundation.org or John Holzrichter at jfh@hertzfoundation.org.

Memorial services: Plans are not yet finalized.

For more information: visit Edward Teller Memorial Information.

• Solar powered planes: First flown in 1983 for a classified program. (Program was cancelled, and NASA ended up with the aircraft.)
• Ultralights: First commercially available ultralight: 1974.
• High altitude planes: The SR-71 still holds the altitude record for level flight, 85,069 feet, set in 1976.
• Remote controlled drones: first used in WWII.
• Automatic landing: First achieved in 1937. First commercial aircraft landing with passengers in 1965.
• Incredibly cheap domestic flights: SJC to LAX, 1974: $14 (PSA).
• Space travel: von Braun started as a hobbyist. The winner of the X-prize need only do what Gagarin and Shepard did back in 1963 - a suborbital ballistic hop. Big deal.
• Nuclear power: Pebblized-bed reactors are mostly vaporware. One was built in Germany, but had an accident in the 1980s, leaked some radiation, and was shut down. No production pebbleized-bed reactor exists today.

As I recall it wasn't cold fusion in that movie. It was some form of sonoluminescence that was energetic enough to cause fusion.

If you look at the top500 list, you see Lawrence Livermore's Linux cluster is at 3rd place. It's an 1100 node cluster of 2.4 GHZ P4's. Looks like Apple is a bit late to the party if they're only shooting for #5.

Not really. The top500 list lists LANL's ASCI Q at 20.48 Peak TFLOPS and LLNL's ASCI White at 12.29 Peak TFLOPS.

IBM's Asci White exceeded 12.3 TFlops 3 years ago!

Like maybe looking into securing their own software first?

Here, let's look through a quick timeline:

1994: People laugh at the GoodTimes virus, because everyone knows viruses can't spread through email!
1995: Word macro viruses first created, and now viruses are easier to write than ever before. Meanwhile, Microsoft has plenty of time to figure out how to prevent them, especially since their users hardly ever use macros in the first place, and especially not to, say, destroy the Windows registry or something.
1996: Macro viruses spread to the extent that Microsoft distributes them as well--unwittingly, we hope.
1997: Word '97 released; the dawn of VBA viruses.
1998: With over 1,000 word macro viruses out there, it's worth making virus scanners for them!
1999: Melissa word macro virus spreads over email and infects Word thanks to Microsoft; as they mention, if you don't use Outlook, you're safe. If you do use Outlook, you might get infected without ever looking at the attachment yourself; previewing it may be enough.
2000: The love bug virus spreads over email thanks to Microsoft Outlook, and causes an estimated $8.7 billion in damage.
2001: Code Red spreads, attacking Windows NT and 2K. Sircam emails itself absolutely everywhere, again thanks to Microsoft.
2002: Klez and Nimda spread.
2003: You guessed it, even still yet more viruses spreading faster than ever, thanks to Windows, Outlook, Word, blah, blah, blah.

So what has Microsoft done? Well maybe by securing their MSN network that'll stop e-mail viruses from... ahh, nevermind, they don't give a fuck about their customers. Otherwise, they could have stopped most of this back in 1996 at the latest. And remember, security is top priority over there now. Ha.

I'm just glad that I don't pay to get infected, like so many of their other customers. Instead, I just have to deal with the spam and network traffic that they're responsible for. But at least the files on my Linux desktop are safe!

http://www.llnl.gov/str/JulAug03/gifs/Murphyopen.j pg *shudder* *goatse flashback*

the cartoon art museum
slac(stanford linear accelerator)
lawrence livermore labs
also a webhost here in town ( laughing sqhid) maintains the squidlist for non-conventional and geeky events.

LANL and LLNL have actually done research on cancer, unlike SETI@HOME which has done no work at all on cancer.

The University of California is currently a 'Key Sponsor' of SETI@HOME and its Berkeley campus is home to the SETI researchers who set up and use SETI@HOME. The University of California also currently operates both LANL and LLNL.

I'm not familiar with Evil Linux, is it anything like Red Hat?

1. The World's Fastest Computer is trying to figure out this planet,
2. The World's Second-Fastest Computer is a volunteer effort to figure out if anybody's on other planets, cure cancer, and do other good things on this planet, and
3. The Next Fastest Four Computers are trying to figure out how to blow up this planet.

Interesting to note is that #3, #6, and #8 are all linux clusters. All three of which are at Livermore.

Cray's X1 also debuted, but it was much lower @112. However, it ought to be noted, that the examples out so far are only 60 processors at tops. As soon as the money gets ponied up, prolly at ORNL, they'll be waaaay up towards the top. My guess is, if all goes as planned, they'll be at #15 by year's end.

What I find exciting these days is actually the High Productivity Computing Systems Effort, the Blue Planet or Blue Gene. These are a little ways off from being on the Top500 list yet though. :D

I do wish there were more SC companies doing hardware development in the US. I love Cray, but a single vendor smacks of eggs in one backet syndrome...So, geeks, if ya wanna start a startup with a design, go for it...Betcha the NSA (aka Cthuhlu of HPC) would be happy to sponsor ya...;)

PDSH works pretty well in my experience. It's pretty good to run commands on the nodes and pdcp can copy files out.

The parent poster is quite correct. The program doing these nuclear simulations is run by the Department of Energy and is called ASCI (Advanced Simulation and Computing Initiative). This has fueled quite a bit of research, both in developing new supercomputers, and in developing high-performance algorithms to run on them. ASCI also has the tightest quality-assurance requirements I've ever seen. Also, I can't speak for the hardware, but the software packages I work on are (eventually) released under the LGPL, as is most/all federally-funded research.

• set up a network of very cheap boxes with old software you know to be vulnerable, and try using exploits against them.
• Try hardening and patching those boxes so the exploits don't work anymore. (You'll frequently be patching/protecting obsolete boxes in the real world, so this is actually realistic.)
• Try adding tripwire and snort to stop/detect attacks. Configure snort with database logging, with syslog/swatch, etc. Clients will want it done in a variety of ways, so it is good to be able to do it in different ways.
• Familiarize yourself with as many of the tools in Fyodor's list as possible. Using them will be the bread an butter of your work. That includes scanners like nessus.
• Read an ultra paranoid book that will give you an overall view of the field (e.g. John M. Caroll's "Computer Security, Third Edition").
• Practice security. As you install and register software, watch what is happening to the box.
• Pick an area of security that you want to specialize in...there are too many bugs and holes each week to know all of them...just the PHP code injection stuff will keep you swamped.
• Don't be afraid to ask more advanced people security questions, but do your homework first, and make sure that they know you have. They will take your more seriously if you say "I've already read the FAQ and the man page, but I'm not clear on...." than if you say, "Dude, how do I do...". This can make your learning experience far less painful

• set up a network of very cheap boxes with old software you know to be vulnerable, and try using exploits against them.
• Try hardening and patching those boxes so the exploits don't work anymore. (You'll frequently be patching/protecting obsolete boxes in the real world, so this is actually realistic.)
• Try adding tripwire and snort to stop/detect attacks. Configure snort with database logging, with syslog/swatch, etc. Clients will want it done in a variety of ways, so it is good to be able to do it in different ways.
• Familiarize yourself with as many of the tools in Fyodor's list as possible. Using them will be the bread an butter of your work. That includes scanners like nessus.
• Read an ultra paranoid book that will give you an overall view of the field (e.g. John M. Caroll's "Computer Security, Third Edition").
• Practice security. As you install and register software, watch what is happening to the box.
• Pick an area of security that you want to specialize in...there are too many bugs and holes each week to know all of them...just the PHP code injection stuff will keep you swamped.
• Don't be afraid to ask more advanced people security questions, but do your homework first, and make sure that they know you have. They will take your more seriously if you say "I've already read the FAQ and the man page, but I'm not clear on...." than if you say, "Dude, how do I do...". This can make your learning experience far less painful

(I'll point you to my previous post first, which may clear some things up) Actually the Omega Laser dosen't use Nd:YLF it uses Nd:glass which is much MUCH cheaper to make. Other than than the only real difference is going to be that the new laser uses the "NIF style" beam amplification which makes use of a "PEPC" or plasma electrode pockles cell to reflect the beam back through the same Nd:glass slabs more than once, squeezing more energy out of them with each pass. Also the diffraction gratings for the re-compression of the chirped pulse will have to be HUGE and endure extremely high electric fields at the surface; this has never been done before on such a scale and will be a challenge to make for the laser.

Try making those links clickable next time moron.

Lawrence Livermore's laser facility

how it works

Now that wasn't too difficult was it?

Try making those links clickable next time moron.

Lawrence Livermore's laser facility

how it works

Now that wasn't too difficult was it?

Check out this article over at LLNL for a bit more info. Apparently their 1.25 petawatt laser only takes 600 joules to fire for half of a picosecond.