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they build a vacuum chamber, pump out Earth's atmosphere, and pump in the equivalent Martian atmosphere and pressure.

So you want to fly in a Mars-like atmosphere with Terran gravity?

Please see here: http://www.mste.uiuc.edu/davea/aviation/bernoulliP rinciple.html

The actual url is http://www.rehab.uiuc.edu/accessx, though they actually go to the same place. I rewrote and have been maintaining what another group started for a while. It's sort of a hack, but it gives a user access to the underlying features.

I haven't worked on it for a few months, as it has all the features I think it needs right now, and the brand-spanking-newest release from the X Consortium (x.org) is supposed to have the Sun/DEC control panel included by default.

I can be reached at accessx@rehab.uiuc.edu.

- Dan

Under Win9x, how would a virus scanner stop a virus from killing its process? Programs in Win9x have full control of the system; there really isn't much a determined program can't do. Think kill -9 from a root program in Unix; there's nothing you can do to stop it. I guess a Robin Hood and Friar Tuck arrangement might be able to put up some sort of warning, but I suspect there's a way to work around even that.

In case motor skills handcaps make using a mouse too difficult:

• MouseKeys allows the numeric keypad to be used instead.
• SlowKeys prevents accidental input.
• BounceKeys prevents double keyboard bounces.
• StickyKeys makes the Shift key like a one-shot CAPSlock in case you can't hold down two keys at once.

Here's the location of the client software and documentation:
http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/accessx/

http://cmos-eng.rehab.uiuc.edu/accessx/

...there really doesn't seem to be that much (at least in the research I've done, I haven't found much)

There is, as others have pointed out, the GNOME Accessibility Project

However, I haven't seen anyone point out Linux AccessX, which was a project at the University of Illinois, and as should be obvious, is for Linux only. It however, hasn't been updated for 2 years, so I don't think there's much hope there...

Pity... accessibility is the topic of my honours thesis, and from the looks of it, it's probably going to concentrate on Windows... (Not that I really expected anything else though)

I thought about this after my digital design class. I'd built a "single board" computer before with a whopping 2K of RAM and another 2K of EEPROM, so I wanted to make an expanded version with real I/O. Character LCD displays are really cheap, as in $7-$15 for small ones. Graphics displays might cost you $50-$100 for a small monochrome one. Check out Marlin P Jones for okay deals on surplus stuff.

For my own project, I decided that the display portion alone was difficult enough to merit an A in my lab, so I built a PIC microcontroller-based NTSC video game (Breakout -- check out the links at the bottom of the page for PIC Tetris!). Looking at Altera's UP1 FPGA evaluation board, displaying VGA at 640x480x60Hz with 16 colors isn't even very difficult (Altera UP1 at GA Tech). Try using a standard method of output like this, and you'll have a lot more fun and be able to do a lot more than with a $7 20x2 LCD module.

Input is pretty much the same. Sure, you could use a custom keypad, but why bother when you can interface with a PS/2 mouse or keyboard? Specs are widely available, and this will impress people much more than a row of DIP switches. This can be done on a relatively small FPGA (~20K gates) which Altera's university program sells on full development boards for $150.

For even more fun, try interfacing with compact flash for storage (Circuit Cellar Article). Then realize that you've just implemented a basic IDE interface, and expand it to do hard drives. Design a character generator for your NTSC or VGA output, write a simple filesystem, and have a whole computer with standard parts that you built yourself!

If that's still too intimidating, just look at company Application notes for ideas. You can find some strange ideas and take them all the way.

In other words, the matter that was formally the Earth woould not take up any space at all (it would crush down to zero size) but its horizon (the area of space that it caused all light/matter/etc to be pulled in) would be about the diameter of a basketball. Or a marble. Depending on whom you ask.

A nice little presentation on black holes can be found here.

http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/Blac kH oleFormation.html if you are paranoid.

• One "Fahrenheit 451" prediction was the technological evolution, and moral devolution, of television news. In the novel, a fireman protagonist accused of hiding illegal books is pursued by a carnivorous news media seeking to satiate the blood lust of home viewers. As the fireman flees down the street, chased by helicopters, he sees himself through his neighbors' windows, running on their television screens.
• 
  
  The day after news helicopters pursued O.J. Simpson fleeing in a Ford Bronco, a New York Times columnist noted that the chase was the "real-life fulfillment" of "Fahrenheit 451."
  

• Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one"s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month.
• 
  
  To most of these questions she replied with irritation - a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music.
  
  The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and primæval as were the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.

Anyone have any documention as to when the system was developed?

Nowadays, if the face of so much consistent evidence, you'd have to have some really spectacular counter-evidence to be taken seriously. There are still scientists out there trying to debunk the idea, of course, but mostly they just keep turning up more evidence in favor of the impact.

Unfortunately, the evidence is consistent with a lot of things, including a strong episode of vulcanism, most of what Immanuel Velikovsky's had to say, and the idea of rapid worldwide flooding which so neatly explains many other things (-: a theory so popular on bone-dry Mars, but anathema here on our own soggy globe :-).

What seems to be happening is the same thing, over and over, as when geologist Harlan Bretz fought tooth and nail for four decades before geology accepted his theory for the Spokane badlands. A theory becomes dogma (generally without much real proof) and then all new evidence is seen as conforming to the dogma until finally the explanations become so stretched as to become indefensible, then everyone hurries to been seen as having allowed for the new idea in their old prognostications.

There are a couple of big showstoppers for the meteor-strike-kills-dinosaur idea, including the observation that a lot of dinosaurs did not perish at the end of the Cretaceous, and a lot of creatures which should logically have perished as readily, didn't. Perhaps the most damning is the occasional multiple or conspicuously absent Ir layer, features which are often masked, overlooked or rationalised away during reporting. [pro multi strike] [ con vulcanism] [con flood, many references esp in the linked PDF] [con egg-stinction, but he's wrong, eg non-stealthy birds survived]

Has anyone found strata anywhere that is well-dated and continuous across the 65-million-year age that doesn't show a thin anomalous layer and a radical change of fossils?

I recommend using names, rather than specific ages, or you'll see still more debate about the length of the periods involved, rather than a focus on more ``core'' ideas like seqences of events. And yes, many such have been found; there are less than 200 sites worldwide that do show Ir anomalies, and many of those either show multiple anomalies, or anomalies at depths other than the top of the Cretaceous. Do your own searching. (-:

• Encap
• Stow

I use a tool that does most of those things. Check out encap and the package manager epkg.

I install most things from source. What I do is specify some prefix during ./configure and have the package installed to say /usr/local/encap/foo-1.2. Then use epkg to sym link everything into the /usr/local/ directories. This makes package upgrades easy and a simple ls shows what is installed. Very handy.

I use a tool that does most of those things. Check out encap and the package manager epkg.

I install most things from source. What I do is specify some prefix during ./configure and have the package installed to say /usr/local/encap/foo-1.2. Then use epkg to sym link everything into the /usr/local/ directories. This makes package upgrades easy and a simple ls shows what is installed. Very handy.

You want the Encap package management system. From the FAQ:

When you install an Encap package, the files are placed in their own subdirectory, usually under /usr/local/encap. For example, if you install GNU sed version 3.02, the following files will be included:

• /usr/local/encap/sed-3.02/bin/sed
• /usr/local/encap/sed-3.02/man/man1/sed.1

Once these files have been installed, the Encap package manager will create the following symlinks:

• /usr/local/bin/sed -> ../encap/sed-3.02/bin/sed
• /usr/local/man/man1/sed.1 -> ../../encap/sed-3.02/man/man1/sed.1

The normal user will have /usr/local/bin in his PATH and /usr/local/man in his MANPATH, so he will not even know that the Encap system is being used.

You want the Encap package management system. From the FAQ:

When you install an Encap package, the files are placed in their own subdirectory, usually under /usr/local/encap. For example, if you install GNU sed version 3.02, the following files will be included:

• /usr/local/encap/sed-3.02/bin/sed
• /usr/local/encap/sed-3.02/man/man1/sed.1

Once these files have been installed, the Encap package manager will create the following symlinks:

• /usr/local/bin/sed -> ../encap/sed-3.02/bin/sed
• /usr/local/man/man1/sed.1 -> ../../encap/sed-3.02/man/man1/sed.1

The normal user will have /usr/local/bin in his PATH and /usr/local/man in his MANPATH, so he will not even know that the Encap system is being used.

Wow. That should be an amazing sight from the mountains. Unfortunately I go to the University of Illinois, and IL is an extremely flat state. What my friends and I do for star gazing is we drive out to the boonies, park anywhere and the sky is so much more brilliant! Beautiful was the Milky Way, the Orion belt, and the Pleiades. The Pleiades is supposed to the center of the Leonids meteor streak. It looks like a big question mark when you view it with your binoculars (or telescopes, which may be more a hassle.)

The reason, why Itanium is considered as niche product by AMD is not because it's 64-bit (as AMD upcoming Hammer is too), but it's new instruction-set and architecture (in contrast to AMDs Hammer)

The Itanium-architecture currently seem to have some problems.
A group surounding Professor Wen-mei Hwu from the University Illinois is developing a compiler called IMPACT which should take advantage of the EPIC architecture. He made some observations concerning the Itanium.
Theoretically, the Itanium is capable of issuing 6 instructions simultanously. But on a SPEC benchmark, called mcf, the processor achieves only 0.15 IPC. Throughout the SPECint2000 benchmark the CPU calculates only 10% of the time. Most of the time the CPU idles because of memory accesses or pipeline-flushs.

Currently, the Itanium leads in certain benchmarks (Floating Point, IRC), but lags in other areas.

> the Itanium is a niche product now. in a few years i expect its time will come

You're probably right, but only time will tell.
Maybe EPIC is the wrong way, maybe not.

• In June we got the news from the Sudbury Neutrino Oscilloscope that from the detection rates of muon-type and electron-type neutrino's coming from the Sun we should conclude that neutrinos oscillate (change type) and are therefore massive, which is in full contradiction with the SM.
• In March this year the results of the 1999 data of the muon g-2 measurement at Brookhaven National Laboratory showed that the (anomalous) magnetic moment of the muon is not described correctly by the SM. This 'magnetic moment' indicates how much the spin of a muon is affected by a magnetic field (a bit like how quickly a compass needle reacts to a new orientation of the compass). This measurement generated lots of theoretical ideas for mods of the SM and/or signs of supersymmetry and what not.
• The Standard Model is ugly.

This article makes it clear that, although the first tests of packet switching were done in Great Britain, the idea was initially kicked around by the dudes at the RAND Institute. I also have heard speculation that Bell Labs had explored this as a possibility as early as the early '60's, but had rejected it as a way to gain reliability in their network due to cost considerations (A-D converters and computers being a bit more expensive at the time).

All computers should sound like the Voice of World Control. Audio clips from Colossus: The Forbin Project are here for your enjoyment.

If Stephen Hawking sounded like this, he would have taken over the world long ago.

Problem? No air holes.

(OK - they are working on it, but they don't like the idea of drilling holes in the walls. For now, they just leave the door ajar)

Info about the new 6-Walled CUBE:

http://www.isl.uiuc.edu/Virtual%20Tour/TourPages/I SLtour.htm

Article about CAVEQuake:

www.gamespot.com/features/cave_quake2

Elazro

Reading through that I noticed one important thing. This will only run under Windows and not under IRIX as a lot of the CAVE systems have SGI's hooked to them. The system is "BNAVE a PC-based CAVE-like display". I got all excited when I saw this posting. I'll have to stick to CaveQuake for the moment I guess. Still though it is very nice to see.

bbh

Removed: jpedward@uiuc.edu.

I am also doing the same type of report at UIUC, so thank you for asking this question for me.

I found Free For All by Peter Wayner helpful on both sides-- 99% of the book is pro open-source, but on page 169 it has a tidbit of anti-open source-- what about the programs that have little to do with the community, like air-traffic control programs.

Second is something my teacher put me onto, using the microsoft stance on intellectual property/making the leap yourself, use anti-fileshaing/copyright protection examples of how loss of intellectual property will cause the loss of variety (no more pop artists that are only in it for the $$, although some people would gladly perform out of the joy of it, most wouldn't) and people wouldn't create software for free(*COUGH*)

You could also do the lack of support for open-source software. Hope this helps you with your paper

Why you'd better try harder!

PostgreSQL has CygWin Support for NT.

I take serious offense at this notion that advanced conceptual computer science can only be taught in a commercially-backwater language like Scheme or LISP. It is the same ivory tower elitism at work here as that which so often causes types like Harvard anthropology majors or Berkeley political science majors to view the rest of modern, industrialized society with disdain.

I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make (which is as much my fault as yours, as I only mentioned it once, in passing). That major point was that scheme/lisp makes for a very good introductory language. You know, your first one or two CS classes, where you start learning the core concepts, but before you could even dream about being able to apply your new-found knowledge to real world tasks. It's extremely important in those early stages to be able to level the playing field. It's great if a student comes into the curriculum already knowing C++, Java, or whatever else (as long as s/he hasn't formed any bad habits, anyway, which is unlikely). However, there are always going to be neophytes that are interested in computer science but have never had the time or opportunity to learn a language on their own. Choosing a language such as scheme (for example. You could pick any easy-to-learn-but-obscure language, if you really want) makes it so that those with prior language knowledge aren't at too much of an advantage, and those that have no prior knowledge are not at too much of a disadvantage. There's always the oddball that comes into such a class already konwing scheme, but that's much rarer than if said class were taught in Java (for example). Also, as a vehicle for teaching early CS concepts (the major types of paradigms, for example), scheme excels. With C++, you can't write functional code ("functional" meaning "functions are first-class objects, a la scheme, lisp, sml, etc" not "working"). With Java, it's hard to write anything but OO code. With scheme, you can introduce all through concepts within the bounds of a single language. This is perfect for presenting the concepts without relying overly much on syntax.

I went to MIT over ten years ago and I was taught Scheme by Hal Abelson and Gerald Sussman. I also worked in Common LISP on Symbolics LISP machines and Texas Instruments Explorers. These things I learned were supposedly the pinacle of computer science education of the day. I mention this not to brag, but rather due to the specific topical relevance of my past experience. In short, I feel qualified to say that -- in my experience -- Scheme and LISP offered nothing that I could not have also learned through the use of a more commercially-relevant language. In fact, in my personal opinion, I would almost go so far as to say that some of the vaunted abstract concepts that they go through pains to indoctrinate their students with verge on being counter-productive in the real world.

Just to fill in a little bit of my own background, I graduated from the University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign a little over a year and a half ago. When I began my education there, the initial CS course for CS majors was taught in scheme, so perhaps I'm a little biased. However, roughly two years into my education, the school began moving classes over to java, beginning with that class. Having younger friends who took this class in java, I saw a noticeable deficiency of various core concepts that they should've been taught in that class. I'm not blaming java 100% for that, but it surely owns some of the guilt. As far as later classes go, I have no problem with them using whatever language is appropriate (typically prolog and lisp for AI work, C++ or java for data structures, and so on), but to teach an introductory course in an infelxible language is doing a disservice to the students.

The article says this about filetype associations...

Then, you're basically at Microsoft's mercy. Because Windows makes you go on a mad hunt through menus and folders and options to find the dialogue box that lets you make any such change.

It's not in the "add/remove programs" control panel, where you'd expect it. It's not under "properties" when you right-click on a file. It's not in any obvious or easily accessible location.

This quote describes almost every operation of every kind in Windows. The only reason anyone calls it user-friendly is because of their perception of the crushing effects of group psychology steered by a monopoly. It's like living in a technological ghetto -- some people whose course is altered under this influence are weak minded, but many of them have no reasonable alternative without radically and permanently altering their lifestyles with no help or prior evidence for success. Like nationalistic propaganda, it's heavily reinforced at just about every level of society. Having a monopoly that pervasively influences every aspect of society is like having narcotics in the water supply.

Here is an interesting tutorial on writing your own OS

Just to wind up with lenigan@astro.uiuc.edu.

Please name one bit of functionality that IIS had that apache does not. The only thing I can think of is .asp, and that's because Microsoft wanted a proprietary way to do the things that Apache users were already doing with perl and php.

The second bit is just insane. IIS was microsoft's late entry into the webserver wars, long after Apache was created. Apache, in turn, was "a patch-y" version of the old NCSA web server. I was going to get dates, but the NCSA httpd web pages haven't been updated since '96. There's some history here, though. The IIS code base is convoluted mostly because they were rushing to catch up so that people didn't give money to Netscape for their Windows-based web servers.

It sounds like you like to think that everyone is out to get you, so I'm sorry to burst your bubble.

I have no problem with your argument. In fact, I quite agree. I am not the person you replied to nor have I any connection with you or the thread.

As you sarcastically pointed out, it's quite easy to find that information. Very easy in fact. So easy that armed only with your name and the fact that you go to UIUC, I was able to find your home address and phone number in seconds. You gave me this ability, just like you gave every other Slashdotter this ability. I merely bridged the gap.

If you're not comfortable with that sort of exposure, I'd recommend removing your information from UIUC's database. The procedure is described here. As this story gets archived, the zero score post will be removed.

Yet it seems you are indeed comfortable revealing such information. The problem you have is not with the public display of your personal information and possible exposure to spam. Instead, you feel slighted by an invisible enemy, someone who is out to get you. I am sorry to inform you that this is not the case.

Who am I? Does it matter? I'm anyone with a computer and access to uiuc.edu.

http://www.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/ph/ns.uiuc.edu?Query=K evin+Christie

alias: kwchrist
name: christie kevin william
pretty_name: kevin william christie
first_name: kevin
middle_name: william
last_name: christie
email: kwchrist@students.uiuc.edu
curriculum: grad2
phone: (217) 244-2888
office_phone: (217) 244-2888
address: 320 morrill hall, mc 118
: 505 s goodwin
: urbana, il 61801
office_address: 320 morrill hall, mc 118
: 505 s goodwin
: urbana, il 61801
title: predoc fellow, fellowships
: predoc fellow, school of molecular and cellular biology admin ofc
department: fellowships
type: person phone student

There's always Epkg. No more dependancy hell, but everything is still nicely organized for easy upgrading.

This requires big metal because it needs big power! Nobody said the hardware was free.

If you spend megabucks on hardware, not having to pay for the software softens the blow.

On the other hand, requiring a bunch of machines running Windows to do the exact same task can be expensive too.

Linux is more cost effective because you aren't shelling out several billion in software.

The EE Times article mentioned that a lot of the work is coming from Bruce Wheeler's research group. This is the home page:

http://soma.npa.uiuc.edu/labs/wheeler/home.html

And click on "featured work."

Also, if you're an electrical engineer you might be interested in "neuromorphic engineering," in which circuitry is designed with biological inspiration. A few places to check out are:

Caltech Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering

Telluride Workshop on Neuromorphic Engineering

And this Introduction to Computational Neuroscience

- Gregg Favalora -

I'd like to point out Netscape's rather interesting history of GUI browsers. It starts of showing how some of the founders of Mosaic went on to found Mosaic Communications Corporation which was later renamed to Netscape. It then covers Microsoft IE and the decision to start the Mozilla project which is producing the next generation of Netscape browsers as well as others.

• Opera
• Konqueror
• Mozilla
• Galeon
• Skipstone
• Netscape

The article did not review a number of browsers. Here are a some more that you may want to try:

• Arena
• Amaya
• Chimera
• MMM
• Emacs/W3
• Lynx (text based)
• Links (text based)
• Debris (text based)
• w3m (text based)
• Libwww (text/line based)
• HowJava
• Express
• Armadillo (was Gzilla)
• Mnemonic
• Kde (file manager with builtin browser)
• mMosaic
• QtMozilla
• QWeb
• Mosaic
• Arachne
• Beest
• Beonex
• BrowseX
• Grail
• Dillo
• NetRaider

And how the disclaimers: The list above by no means complete. The browers above were listed in j-random order. Some browsers are in early alpha stage, some in Beta and others are in full release. Some of the browsers may suck, some are OK and some are good. Your mileage may vary. Sorry If I left out your favorite browser. IE was left off the list for obvious reasons. Good while supply lasts or until Bill Gates takes over. I'm not a member of the FCIA. Void where cast as (void).

Currently I am trying to develop some software for it. It runs on machine costing $1,000,000 with 20 CPUs. (you may check this page)

Give OpenGL some credit here. In some ways, it's D3D that has to catch up. Here's how it was discribed to be by a Very Smart Person who works with nVidia a lot. nVidia comes to Microsoft saying "we want these features", Microsoft says "Okay, do it this way". The engineers at nVidia get frustrated about being limited by Microsoft's model and implement new features anyway and put them in OpenGL extensions. So, D3D has a better spec (arguably), but OpenGL has access to all the features.

Absolutely. This is the way I use my Slackware 8.0 system.

In fact, to make it even easier, take a look at Encap. It's a very simple concept. Instead of installing programs that you compile to /usr/local or /usr or whereever you normally install to, you install to /usr/local/encap. You can then use a program called "epkg" to automatically set symlinks to the proper files in the right directories.

For example, if you wanted to compile program foo version x.y and install using Encap, you'd do something like this:

configure --prefix=/usr/local/encap
make
make install
cd /usr/local/encap
epkg foo-x.y

This way, you'd have /usr/local/encap/foo-x.y/bin/foo symlinked to /usr/local/bin/foo, /usr/local/encap/foo-x.y/share/foo/ to /usr/local/share/foo/, etcetera.

A very simple concept, encap just makes the symlinking painless. One could do the symlinking manually, but it would be annoying and time-consuming for something like the Gimp.

The whole point to all this is to make it easy to get rid of old programs without having to figure out what file belongs to what program. You can "epkg -r" the directory, delete it, then install foo-x.z the same way.

I ran across a few more... too bad the thing is so goofy looking (though, I have to admit, the old cube logo and Origin name is much cooler than the new "sgi 2800" name and logo).


(Two *big* Origin 2000s)
http://w3.physics.uiuc.edu/~wilkens/Images/NCSA/Or igin2000.JPG

(The neat O2K LCD... too bad O3K doesn't have that)
http://w3.physics.uiuc.edu/~wilkens/Images/NCSA/Or igin2000Moniter.JPG

(The O2K "boxes")
http://www.unite.nl/nieuws/algemeen/levering.html

I ran across a few more... too bad the thing is so goofy looking (though, I have to admit, the old cube logo and Origin name is much cooler than the new "sgi 2800" name and logo).


(Two *big* Origin 2000s)
http://w3.physics.uiuc.edu/~wilkens/Images/NCSA/Or igin2000.JPG

(The neat O2K LCD... too bad O3K doesn't have that)
http://w3.physics.uiuc.edu/~wilkens/Images/NCSA/Or igin2000Moniter.JPG

(The O2K "boxes")
http://www.unite.nl/nieuws/algemeen/levering.html

Most sexy belongs to the Thinking Machines CM-5 "Blinking Machines":

(Nice big CM5)
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/MetaComp/Imag es/CM5_lg.jpg


Makes the SGI Origins (see below) look like freakshows:

(128 CPU Origin 2000)
http://gepard.cyf-kr.edu.pl/GRIZZLY/or2.jpg

(A cluster of [many] 128 CPU O2K's)
http://www.ccic.gov/pubs/blue00/local_images/blue_ mountain.jpg

(A 256 CPU O3K, a 16 CPU O2K, and some RAIDs)
http://www.cines.fr/images/IRISetMINERVE2.jpg

NCSA is certainly an important part of this partnership, but they're neither the only part nor the lead site.

Most people can visualize a hundred or so boxen a lot easier than a thousand or so. It gets a little unreal. So the Brit site with pretty pictures of the system is a good site for those not familiar with the larger systems.

They have other pretty pictures from their work as well.

If you want to compare, a better match is what NCSA is already running. 1024 processors, over half a TFLOP sustained, a full TFLOP at peak.

IBM has a story about this, the second cluster "to be installed this summer" already exists.
Also read The story at NCSA if that's not enough for you.

Doh...that one has a space between newpi and cs.html try this one