Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes Are the days of Microsoft's proprietary compiler over? Microsoft has announced they've started work on a new .NET compiler using LLVM and targets their CoreCLR — any C# program written for the .NET core class libraries can now run on any OS where CoreCLR and LLVM are supported. Right now the compiler only supports JIT compilation but AOT is being worked on along with other features. The new Microsoft LLVM compiler is called LLILC and is MIT-licensed.

When Linus Torvalds first announced his new operating system project ("just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu"), he aimed the announcement at users of Minix for a good reason: Minix (you can download the latest from the Minix home page) was the kind of OS that tinkerers could afford to look at, and it was intended as an educational tool. Minix's creator, Professor Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum, described his academic-oriented microkernel OS as a hobby, too, in the now-famous online discussion with Linus and others. New submitter Thijssss (655388) writes with word that Tanenbaum, whose educational endeavors led indirectly to the birth of Linux, is finally retiring. "He has been at the Vrije Universiteit for 43 years, but everything must eventually end."

An anonymous reader writes "NVIDIA has announced they have 'open-sourced' their new CUDA compiler so that their GPGPU platform can be brought to new architectures. NVIDIA's CUDA compiler is based upon LLVM. At the moment though they seem to be restricting the source code's access to 'qualified' individuals.' The official press release implies wider access to the source will happen later. It so happens that a few days ago AMD opened their OpenCL backend and added initial support to the Free Software r600 driver.

theodp writes "When every student has a laptop, why run computer labs? That's a question schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90%. After only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, the school decided that it's no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs. Student computer labs have been a staple of campus life since the '60s. So what are the benefits that will be missed as other schools follow UVa's lead?" The university's report notes understanding that "that students need collaborative space where they can bring their laptops and mobile devices to conduct group work, especially as the curriculum becomes increasingly team- and project-based." One of the spaces formerly occupied by computer labs "has been transformed into a technology-rich collaboration area."

kpesler writes "Today, the Khronos Group released the OpenCL API specification (which we discussed earlier this year). It provides an open API for executing general-purpose code kernels on GPUs — so-called GPGPU functionality. Initially bolstered by Apple, the API garnered the support of major players including NVIDIA, AMD/ATI, and Intel. Motivated by inclusion in OS X Snow Leopard, the spec was completed in record time — about half a year from the formation of the group to the ratified spec."

eldavojohn writes "IBM has announced at the LinuxWorld conference that they are now hosting all their supercomputing stack software as open source from the University of Illinois. From the article: 'The software will initially support Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 and IBM Power6 processors. IBM is planning to add support for Power 575 supercomputing servers and IBM x86 platforms such as System x 3450 servers, BladeCenter servers and System x iDataPlex servers. The stack includes several distinct software tools that have been tested and integrated by IBM. These include the Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit (xCAT), originally developed for large clusters based on Intel's commodity x86 architecture but now modified for clusters based on IBM's own Power architecture. xCAT is used in the National Nuclear Security Administration's Roadrunner Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico — a hybrid cluster currently ranked by the official Top 500 list as the world's most powerful supercomputer.' For several years, Linux has been a strong tool for supercomputing."

theodp writes "You probably saw media coverage of Bill Gates showing off touch-screen technology to his CEO play group last week. With the introduction of the iPhone and iPod Touch, touch (and multi-touch) technology — which folks like Ray Ozzie enjoyed as undergrads way back in the early '70s — has finally gone mainstream. The only question is: Why did it take four decades for its overnight success? Some suggest the expiration of significant patents filed during '70s and '80s may have had something to do with it — anything else?"

performance geek writes "LLVM 2.2 was released yesterday! This is the thirteenth public release of the open-source compiler that started as a GCC fork. LLVM supports several aggressive optimizations, in compile-, link- and run-time, and often produces faster (1.5-3x) code than GCC. It is also much faster than GCC at compiling (despite the slow link-time optimizations). Gentoo users are already trying to build the whole system with the LLVM toolchain to get the extra performance bit."

StCredZero writes with word of a research team from the University of Illinois who have developed a way to manufacture nanowires of any length from various materials. Not, unfortunately, carbon nanotubes, or we would be looking for news on space elevators soon. The process is analogous to drawing with a fountain pen — as liquid is drawn from a reservoir, a solvent (water or an organic) evaporates and the solute precipitates onto a substrate. The researchers have demonstrated a way to spin and wind a nanowire onto a spool; they have produced a coil of microfiber 850 nm in diameter and 40 cm long. Here's the abstract from the journal Advanced Materials.

paleshadows writes "A year and a half has passed since SubVirt, the first VMM (virtual machine monitor) based rootkit, was introduced (PDF), covered in the tech press, and discussed here. Later Joanna Rutkowska made news by claiming she had a VMM-based attack on Vista that was undetectable — a claim that was roundly challenged. Now in this year's HotOS workshop, researchers from Stanford, CMU, VMware, and XenSource have published a paper titled Compatibility Is Not Transparency: VMM Detection Myths and Realities (PDF) showing that VMM-based rootkits are actually easily detectable."

Ryan Brown writes "As of September 1, the free XML TV guide service at zap2it labs has shut its doors due to misuse issues, as well as internal business issues. Now that Linux users, and most PVR users for that matter, are nearing the end of their last fetched TV guide, what free alternatives exist that can replace this much-needed service?"

leighklotz writes "The CalPoly CubeSat Program announced a launch date for its 13 amateur satellites: June 28, 2006 at 19:39:11Z, from the Kazakstan Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Russian DNEPR-1LV rocket. The satellites are made from a kit, and are 10cm cubes." Read on for more info, including links to many of the individual satellite projects.

leighklotz continues: "There are also pictures of 14 satellites and info about some of them:

• ION, University of Illinois
• RINCON, University of Arizona
• ICE Cube 1, Cornell University
• KUTESat [also] University of Kansas
• nCube nCube Norweigian University of Science and Technology
• HAUSAT-1 Hankuk Aviation University
• SEEDS Nihon University
• CP1 and CP2 Cal Poly
• AeroCube 1 The Aerospace Corporation
• Voyager University of Hawaii
• ICE Cube 2 Cornell University

These folks have a list of ongoing CubeSat projects. And as always AMSAT is a good organization to join if you have any interest in using or building your own satellites."

Jean Veronis writes "NCSA has issued a strong disclaimer on the study announced recently on Slashdot that seemed to contradicted the fact that Yahoo's index size would be bigger than Google's: ' Staff at the NCSA noted several issues with the study'. This study conducted by students is 'not an NCSA publication and was not conducted as part of any NCSA project or under the supervision of NCSA'. "

ubermiester writes "The Washington Post is reporting on a newly released study by the American Psychological Association, claiming that 'exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.' This partly contradicts another study released a week before by a University of Illinois Professor claiming that 'game violence does not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life.'"

chrisd (former Slashdot editor and now Google employee) writes "Recently, Yahoo claimed an increase of index size to "over 20 billion items", compared to Google's 8.16 billion pages. Now, researchers at NCSA have done their own, independent, comparison of the two engines. "

Lifehack writes "There is a good online book available for reverse engineering software: 'This book is an attempt to provide an introduction to reverse engineering software under both Linux and Microsoft Windows. Since reverse engineering is under legal fire, the authors figure the best response is to make the knowledge widespread...'"

frostyboy writes "At the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computational Science and Engineering , a new high-performance computing cluster comprising 640 Dual G5 Xserves has completed benchmarking runs for the top500 list. The New Turing Cluster is a replacement for an old 208-node linux cluster. Preliminary results have it at about 4.6 teraflops, not too shabby. Slide Presentation and Photo Album"

frostyboy writes "At the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computational Science and Engineering , a new high-performance computing cluster comprising 640 Dual G5 Xserves has completed benchmarking runs for the top500 list. The New Turing Cluster is a replacement for an old 208-node linux cluster. Preliminary results have it at about 4.6 teraflops, not too shabby. Slide Presentation and Photo Album"

frostyboy writes "At the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computational Science and Engineering , a new high-performance computing cluster comprising 640 Dual G5 Xserves has completed benchmarking runs for the top500 list. The New Turing Cluster is a replacement for an old 208-node linux cluster. Preliminary results have it at about 4.6 teraflops, not too shabby. Slide Presentation and Photo Album"

frostyboy writes "At the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computational Science and Engineering , a new high-performance computing cluster comprising 640 Dual G5 Xserves has completed benchmarking runs for the top500 list. The New Turing Cluster is a replacement for an old 208-node linux cluster. Preliminary results have it at about 4.6 teraflops, not too shabby. Slide Presentation and Photo Album"

frostyboy writes "At the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computational Science and Engineering , a new high-performance computing cluster comprising 640 Dual G5 Xserves has completed benchmarking runs for the top500 list. The New Turing Cluster is a replacement for an old 208-node linux cluster. Preliminary results have it at about 4.6 teraflops, not too shabby. Slide Presentation and Photo Album"

James F. Hitchens asks: "I used to run Red-Hat Enterprise vs.3, just recently I switched to fedora core 3. The reason for my change was because I could not get my ATi Radeon 9600 All in Wonder to work. I hoped that Fedora was a little more advanced in the area of 3D acceleration (so I could play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Tux-racer). Yet again it was not to be, ne worke pas. Can anyone tell me what I need to do to make this work? The drivers that ATi supplies on their website are, in short, crap."

Bulldozer2003 writes "'Finally something both nerdy AND sexy engineers can do.' It sounds like an oxymoron but this guy took a cue from The Vos Pad and decked out his own dorm room bed with Light Emitting Diodes. They're even fully adjustable 'allowing me to create every color of the rainbow.' Total cost, according to him in an email: 'Around $25, the LEDs cost me about $0.25 a piece in bulk, and the potentiometers cost about $6 a piece from digikey. I got the LM317 voltage regulators as a free sample from Texas Instruments. Lots of companies will ship you free samples, its a good deal for college students.'"

dkaplan1 writes "ACM@UIUC will be holding their 10th annual Reflections | Projections Midwest computing conference on October 22-24. The 3-day event will feature a job fair and numerous speakers including: Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, Andrea Pessino who worked on Warcraft 3, and many others. And be sure to check out MechMania, an intense C++ AI programming contest. Registration for the conference is $20 for meals and a t-shirt. Please visit www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference for details."

dkaplan1 writes "ACM@UIUC will be holding their 10th annual Reflections | Projections Midwest computing conference on October 22-24. The 3-day event will feature a job fair and numerous speakers including: Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, Andrea Pessino who worked on Warcraft 3, and many others. And be sure to check out MechMania, an intense C++ AI programming contest. Registration for the conference is $20 for meals and a t-shirt. Please visit www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference for details."

dkaplan1 writes "ACM@UIUC will be holding their 10th annual Reflections | Projections Midwest computing conference on October 22-24. The 3-day event will feature a job fair and numerous speakers including: Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, Andrea Pessino who worked on Warcraft 3, and many others. And be sure to check out MechMania, an intense C++ AI programming contest. Registration for the conference is $20 for meals and a t-shirt. Please visit www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference for details."

dkaplan1 writes "ACM@UIUC will be holding their 10th annual Reflections | Projections Midwest computing conference on October 22-24. The 3-day event will feature a job fair and numerous speakers including: Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, Andrea Pessino who worked on Warcraft 3, and many others. And be sure to check out MechMania, an intense C++ AI programming contest. Registration for the conference is $20 for meals and a t-shirt. Please visit www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference for details."

dkaplan1 writes "ACM@UIUC will be holding their 10th annual Reflections | Projections Midwest computing conference on October 22-24. The 3-day event will feature a job fair and numerous speakers including: Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, Andrea Pessino who worked on Warcraft 3, and many others. And be sure to check out MechMania, an intense C++ AI programming contest. Registration for the conference is $20 for meals and a t-shirt. Please visit www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference for details."

dkaplan1 writes "ACM@UIUC will be holding their 10th annual Reflections | Projections Midwest computing conference on October 22-24. The 3-day event will feature a job fair and numerous speakers including: Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP, Andrea Pessino who worked on Warcraft 3, and many others. And be sure to check out MechMania, an intense C++ AI programming contest. Registration for the conference is $20 for meals and a t-shirt. Please visit www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference for details."

RSpencer writes "The Low Level Virtual Machine project has released version 1.3. There are full release notes available. LLVM is a source-language agnostic toolkit for building compilers, optimizers, and jit or interpreted virtual machines. LLVM provides extensive optimization support, three mid-level IR formats (bytecode, assembly, and C++), three backend targets (x86,Sparc,PPC), full documentation, and a very simple and unique design. This new toolkit approach to compiler related tools is quickly attracting new developers who are making significant contributions to the work. Visit the home page where you can learn all the details. LLVM is funded by the National Science Foundation, MARCO/DARPA, and supported by UIUC's Computer Science department and other developers."

RSpencer writes "The Low Level Virtual Machine project has released version 1.3. There are full release notes available. LLVM is a source-language agnostic toolkit for building compilers, optimizers, and jit or interpreted virtual machines. LLVM provides extensive optimization support, three mid-level IR formats (bytecode, assembly, and C++), three backend targets (x86,Sparc,PPC), full documentation, and a very simple and unique design. This new toolkit approach to compiler related tools is quickly attracting new developers who are making significant contributions to the work. Visit the home page where you can learn all the details. LLVM is funded by the National Science Foundation, MARCO/DARPA, and supported by UIUC's Computer Science department and other developers."

RSpencer writes "The Low Level Virtual Machine project has released version 1.3. There are full release notes available. LLVM is a source-language agnostic toolkit for building compilers, optimizers, and jit or interpreted virtual machines. LLVM provides extensive optimization support, three mid-level IR formats (bytecode, assembly, and C++), three backend targets (x86,Sparc,PPC), full documentation, and a very simple and unique design. This new toolkit approach to compiler related tools is quickly attracting new developers who are making significant contributions to the work. Visit the home page where you can learn all the details. LLVM is funded by the National Science Foundation, MARCO/DARPA, and supported by UIUC's Computer Science department and other developers."

RSpencer writes "The Low Level Virtual Machine project has released version 1.3. There are full release notes available. LLVM is a source-language agnostic toolkit for building compilers, optimizers, and jit or interpreted virtual machines. LLVM provides extensive optimization support, three mid-level IR formats (bytecode, assembly, and C++), three backend targets (x86,Sparc,PPC), full documentation, and a very simple and unique design. This new toolkit approach to compiler related tools is quickly attracting new developers who are making significant contributions to the work. Visit the home page where you can learn all the details. LLVM is funded by the National Science Foundation, MARCO/DARPA, and supported by UIUC's Computer Science department and other developers."

RSpencer writes "The Low Level Virtual Machine project has released version 1.3. There are full release notes available. LLVM is a source-language agnostic toolkit for building compilers, optimizers, and jit or interpreted virtual machines. LLVM provides extensive optimization support, three mid-level IR formats (bytecode, assembly, and C++), three backend targets (x86,Sparc,PPC), full documentation, and a very simple and unique design. This new toolkit approach to compiler related tools is quickly attracting new developers who are making significant contributions to the work. Visit the home page where you can learn all the details. LLVM is funded by the National Science Foundation, MARCO/DARPA, and supported by UIUC's Computer Science department and other developers."

RSpencer writes "The Low Level Virtual Machine project has released version 1.3. There are full release notes available. LLVM is a source-language agnostic toolkit for building compilers, optimizers, and jit or interpreted virtual machines. LLVM provides extensive optimization support, three mid-level IR formats (bytecode, assembly, and C++), three backend targets (x86,Sparc,PPC), full documentation, and a very simple and unique design. This new toolkit approach to compiler related tools is quickly attracting new developers who are making significant contributions to the work. Visit the home page where you can learn all the details. LLVM is funded by the National Science Foundation, MARCO/DARPA, and supported by UIUC's Computer Science department and other developers."

theodp writes "Kids at NYU's Intensive Video Game Creation are trading open lakes, green mountains and plentiful daylight for air-conditioned classrooms in the city. Those attending the $5,125, five-week camp - all guys aged 15 to 20 - will use the Center for Advanced Digital Application's facilities to learn the techniques behind Doom, Quake and Madden. It's the first summer camp for game builders on the East Coast. Last year, WA-based Digipen held its first video game creation camp in California, and the University of Illinois hosted one for girls."

orthogonal writes "The Justice Department today denied Freedom of Information Act requests to make public data on foreign lobbyists, claiming that '[i]mplementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating'. The requestor responded that '[t]his was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them,' Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said Tuesday. Maybe we should tell John Ashcroft about open source database and copying solutions?"

beatleadam writes "After seeing Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks pitch a perfect game (coverage here), I searched Slashdot in the hopes of reading more about what the Slashdot readers thought of this feat of athleticism and science and to learn more about the physics of baseball (More information to be found here and here). As nothing was posted, I submit for your viewing pleasure a "course" in the Physics of Baseball and the subtle science that is pitching."

me98411 writes "A study published in April, hinted at possible anamolies/reversal in Earth's magnetic field. This study found that there is an anamoly in a large patch near South Africa where the Earth's magnetic field points in the opposite direction. Now, according to New Scientist, this planet might be safe during reversal of poles due to formation of replacement field created by interaction with solar winds. Phew! I was worried I will not be able to use my compass." Even better than compasses not being obsoleted, we won't be bombarded with dangerous levels of radiation, or so the scientists say.

sirmikester writes "I wrote a term paper for my University of Illinois law class about the enforceability of the GPL. Unlike most of the papers dealing with the GPL, this one was aimed at a primarily non-technical audience. While a little bit rough around the edges, I'm sure it could give all of the non-technical folks out there a look at the GPL, and why its so important to all of us. There is also a powerpoint presentation available of the speech that I gave to the class about the paper. "

sirmikester writes "I wrote a term paper for my University of Illinois law class about the enforceability of the GPL. Unlike most of the papers dealing with the GPL, this one was aimed at a primarily non-technical audience. While a little bit rough around the edges, I'm sure it could give all of the non-technical folks out there a look at the GPL, and why its so important to all of us. There is also a powerpoint presentation available of the speech that I gave to the class about the paper. "

Eagle5596 writes "The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, one of the top Computer Science programs in the world has just officially opened their new $80 million Siebel Center. The department head describes the building as a single computing entity, meant to be programmed and to interact with those in the building via RFID tags in their ID cards. This is probably one of the biggest and most expensive projects in ubiquitous computing ever launched, touching on all the important issues in this field, from privacy to the ultimate question about the usefulness of such a system. Several papers are covering this including the Chicago Sun Times, and the Chicago Business"

Eagle5596 writes "The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, one of the top Computer Science programs in the world has just officially opened their new $80 million Siebel Center. The department head describes the building as a single computing entity, meant to be programmed and to interact with those in the building via RFID tags in their ID cards. This is probably one of the biggest and most expensive projects in ubiquitous computing ever launched, touching on all the important issues in this field, from privacy to the ultimate question about the usefulness of such a system. Several papers are covering this including the Chicago Sun Times, and the Chicago Business"

Eagle5596 writes "The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, one of the top Computer Science programs in the world has just officially opened their new $80 million Siebel Center. The department head describes the building as a single computing entity, meant to be programmed and to interact with those in the building via RFID tags in their ID cards. This is probably one of the biggest and most expensive projects in ubiquitous computing ever launched, touching on all the important issues in this field, from privacy to the ultimate question about the usefulness of such a system. Several papers are covering this including the Chicago Sun Times, and the Chicago Business"

me98411 writes "We have discussed earlier about the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond and about how a direct trip to Mars is the way to go (or way not to). In a BBC article, the division in the astronomers and space geeks community about the use of the Moon as a base to develop ways to travel to Mars is highlighted. Now, Nature is asking: Should we go back to the moon? Is a manned mission to the moon even necessary?"

me98411 writes "New Scientist is running a front page article about the Sony's QRIO bot [QRIO= Quest for Curiosity] successfully conducted an entire orchestra at the Tokyo Philharmonic Society. An impressive footage of the four bots performing a dance routine can be seen here [wmv format]"

jbtule writes "Students at the University of Illinois have released TrailBlazer, a new user interface to represent your web browsing history. It lays out the pages you visit in a simple 2D map with thumbnails and summaries. The project took 2nd place at the university's annual Engineering Open House and a three minute video is available that demonstrates TrailBlazer for those who don't have Mac OS X Panther. TrailBlazer is implemented with Apple's WebKit on a bare bones browser, but this interface would probably be more useful if it were added to a real browser. This is a much better history than chronological lists of web page titles or crazy cubes floating around a 3D space. Hopefully Safari or /insert favorite web browser/ will do something similar in the future."

jbtule writes "Students at the University of Illinois have released TrailBlazer, a new user interface to represent your web browsing history. It lays out the pages you visit in a simple 2D map with thumbnails and summaries. The project took 2nd place at the university's annual Engineering Open House and a three minute video is available that demonstrates TrailBlazer for those who don't have Mac OS X Panther. TrailBlazer is implemented with Apple's WebKit on a bare bones browser, but this interface would probably be more useful if it were added to a real browser. This is a much better history than chronological lists of web page titles or crazy cubes floating around a 3D space. Hopefully Safari or /insert favorite web browser/ will do something similar in the future."

jnagro writes "A group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have a number of interesting projects which allow K-12 students remote access to advanced scientific instruments over the web. This particular project, dubbed the 'Bugscope', lets students get a closer look at insects through an electron microscope all via a regular web-browser. The site has some interesting information, as well as some neat photos taken with the scope."

jnagro writes "A group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have a number of interesting projects which allow K-12 students remote access to advanced scientific instruments over the web. This particular project, dubbed the 'Bugscope', lets students get a closer look at insects through an electron microscope all via a regular web-browser. The site has some interesting information, as well as some neat photos taken with the scope."