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It is quite the fashion statement :)

(Excuse the blurriness and poor lighting - crappy cam and crappy dorm lighting)

Though those of you who aren't at VT can't see this image, it's still quite hilarious.

Apparently Tech ordered the G5s through iTunes: http://computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terasca le/images/g5ordering/IMG_0099.JPG

1. " Perceptrons: An Associative Learning Network".
2. "Single and Multi-Layer Perceptrons"
3. Perceptron.

To briefly summarize the tale of woe, Frank Rosenblatt invented the perceptron in 1957. It had one layer of artificial neurons and sparked an entire field of research in artificial learning. In 1969, Marvin Minsky at MIT wrote a book called "Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry"; in it, he mathematically proved that the perceptron could not solve certain classes of problems. This book essentially decimated funding for neural-network research for about 15 years.

In 1982, John Hopfield at Caltech revived the field with the invention of the Hopfield Networks. Further, several researchers invented backpropagation as a way to train neural networks with 2 or more layers or artificial neurons and overcame the limitations that Minsky indicated. Now, the field of neural networks has plenty of money to do research.

So, there is a possibility that research into cold fusion will grow hot again.

... from the desk of the reporter

#1) Java was NOT originally developed for embedded systems. It wasn't until the past couple of years that Sun has moved it into that direction. (There is a difference between embedded systems and a cross platform VM)

BUzzzzzzzz... sorry, wrong. Java, originally named oak, was intended to be a language to develop for consumer electronics gear, set top boxes, etc. I refer you to this article as evidence.

Or so they claim here. It seems they have all their bases covered and don't give a damn about ECC for a reason.

[Srinidhi Varadarajan, an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, and Jason Lockhart, director of the College of Engineering's High Performance Computing and Technology Innovation, initiated the venture at Virginia Tech. Varadarajan is an expert in reliability, a key issue in successfully exploiting terascale computing.]

They keep on going:

[Component failures are endemic to any large-scale computational resource. While previous generations of supercomputers engineered reliability into systems hardware, today's high performance computing environments are based on inexpensive clusters of commodity components, with no systemic solution for the reliability of total machine.]

And now for the solution for your reliability problem.

[Virginia Tech has the first comprehensive solution to the problem of transparent fault tolerance, which enables large-scale supercomputers to mask hardware, operating system and software failures - a decades old problem. It's a software program called Deja vu, designed by Varadarajan. He also integrated the software with Apple's G5s. This work will enable the terascale computing facility to operate as the first reliable supercomputing facility, according to Varadarajan, a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award recipient.]

So maybe, just maybe, you and other people could:

1. READ before posting.

2. Then READ a little more.

3. Did I say READ already.

Why don't you zip it and please read the facts from the horse's mouth:

["Virginia Tech will have one of the top ranked supercomputing facilities in the world, supporting significant "big science" research. It is anticipated that Virginia Tech will realize at least a five to one return on this investment in terms of annual research grant and contract activity," says Glenda Scales, assistant dean of computing and distance learning at Virginia Tech.]

Let me say that again: Five to one return of investment projected. At least. If they are saying this outloud, I can assure you Ms. Scales knows what the hell she's talking about.

You can find it here

It was a random, inane, and completely useless comment. This, coming from someone with a joke for a website. If VT's website needs beefing up, pudge's website is the cow that died 5 years ago and has since been picked clean.

Seems to me the design for Virginia Tech is just fine. They could stand to get rid of their table-based layout, but it's not a horrible site. Pudge is just being an asshole.

I just graduated from there and that website, while not ugly, is non-sensically arranged and the search comes up with some of the most ridiculous links. The department does have some nice clusters already set up though as well as a sweet 3d visualization studio!

Can someone explain the " Maybe VT can use the new computers to beef up their web site" comment? It loads perfectly fast for me. It looks pretty good. It even runs PHP, so it couldn't be a "They shouldn't use ColdFusion" type remark.

Am I missing something, or was that just a completely random comment?

Here's the article from which the Collegiate Times article has paraphrased: http://www.technews.vt.edu/Archives/2003/Sept/0356 6.html

Editor: just for your reference: Apostrophe Grammar Guide.

Obviously you haven't looked at VT recently. Tuition and fees is only $7,500, out of state. I can only wish that my tuition were that low. Hell, for in-state students, the room and board is the same price as tuition (around $2,000). But of course, you're modded up insightful, because you pulled a random idea out of your ass and presented it as fact.

For the ones who are questioning this existence, the order is shipping, the racks (a ton of them) are there in the main Computing Center server room. First they required all servers to be moved innto racks. Then they started moving servers around, including removing the Petaplex. The power has been upgraded in the server room (the UPS backup generator actually). This caused a morning of basically all the important servers on campus having to go down for one day in the summer - I hated waking up to go switch off machines for that one. The AC has been upgraded to accomidate the huge amount of heat to be put out. It was't until I heard about the cluster that all the chages in the Machine Room made sense. Now they're recruiting help to do the grunt work of putting all the machines in the racks.

The stated objective was to be on the next 500 list. Dell and HP were considered, but they couldn't fill the order in time (possibly as they have made announcements of other large clusters recently) and Apple promised delivery after someone leaked the story of the cluster meetign with Dell and HP to Apple and Apple jumped at the chance.

Basically, the story is not a rumor from the point of view of the geeks on campus who have been effected by the preperations. I'll probably post the /. link to the campus geek list (If someone hasn't beaten me to it).

I'm disapointed about this being only on the Apple section of /. since a cluster this size is noteworthy of the frontpage. (Rumor - and this is rumor sice I haven't goe to direct sources on this - is that it will not be running OS X, and probably BlackLab or YellowDog or SuSE.)

For those unbelievers, here's a little proof and maybe a bit more

Here's an official word (search for Teraflop).

Also, here's the original e-mail that went out (a month ago) They never mentioned Apple though:

> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:36:46 -0400
> From: Jason Lockhart <multimedia@vt.edu>
> Subject: Terascale Assembly Assistance
>
> Hello all,
>
> As you may know the College of Engineering in conjunction with the
> university Information Systems and Computing organization are
> building
> a 10 TeraOp, 1100 node supercomputing cluster. We are in need of
> volunteers to assist in three areas of assembly; cabling, RAM and PCI
> card install, and machine racking. We would like to get as many
> volunteers as possible.
>
> Some logistical things, there is not adequate parking for every
> volunteer to drive and park at the Computing Center. We
> would ask that
> volunteers either carpool (4 or more to a vehicle) or take the BT.
> Initial cabling will be done with the power cables beginning this
> coming Friday, August 1st. We have yet to set a start time,
> but I want
> to get an idea of who is available to assist on that day as well as
> availability for the weekend and early next week. I will forward the
> time to arrive as soon as I nail it down...should be tomorrow. The
> power cabling represents one third of the overall cabling that will
> need to be done.
>
> I need to get a list of those who will be assisting to the facilities
> people at the ISB as soon as possible. This list will be
> used to allow
> volunteers access to the building and the machine room. If
> you're not
> on the list you will not be allowed in! We want to have at
> least 30 to
> 40 people working at any one time on the project. If you know others
> that will be interested in assisting, please have them email me so I
> can get them on the roster.
>
> Thank you for your willingness to participate, and please respond and
> have others respond with "Terascale" in the subject so I can
> filter the
> volunteers properly.
>
> Thanks.
(E-mail signature removed)

For those unbelievers, here's a little proof and maybe a bit more

Here's an official word (search for Teraflop).

Also, here's the original e-mail that went out (a month ago) They never mentioned Apple though:

> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:36:46 -0400
> From: Jason Lockhart <multimedia@vt.edu>
> Subject: Terascale Assembly Assistance
>
> Hello all,
>
> As you may know the College of Engineering in conjunction with the
> university Information Systems and Computing organization are
> building
> a 10 TeraOp, 1100 node supercomputing cluster. We are in need of
> volunteers to assist in three areas of assembly; cabling, RAM and PCI
> card install, and machine racking. We would like to get as many
> volunteers as possible.
>
> Some logistical things, there is not adequate parking for every
> volunteer to drive and park at the Computing Center. We
> would ask that
> volunteers either carpool (4 or more to a vehicle) or take the BT.
> Initial cabling will be done with the power cables beginning this
> coming Friday, August 1st. We have yet to set a start time,
> but I want
> to get an idea of who is available to assist on that day as well as
> availability for the weekend and early next week. I will forward the
> time to arrive as soon as I nail it down...should be tomorrow. The
> power cabling represents one third of the overall cabling that will
> need to be done.
>
> I need to get a list of those who will be assisting to the facilities
> people at the ISB as soon as possible. This list will be
> used to allow
> volunteers access to the building and the machine room. If
> you're not
> on the list you will not be allowed in! We want to have at
> least 30 to
> 40 people working at any one time on the project. If you know others
> that will be interested in assisting, please have them email me so I
> can get them on the roster.
>
> Thank you for your willingness to participate, and please respond and
> have others respond with "Terascale" in the subject so I can
> filter the
> volunteers properly.
>
> Thanks.
(E-mail signature removed)

For those unbelievers, here's a little proof and maybe a bit more

Here's an official word (search for Teraflop).

Also, here's the original e-mail that went out (a month ago) They never mentioned Apple though:

> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:36:46 -0400
> From: Jason Lockhart <multimedia@vt.edu>
> Subject: Terascale Assembly Assistance
>
> Hello all,
>
> As you may know the College of Engineering in conjunction with the
> university Information Systems and Computing organization are
> building
> a 10 TeraOp, 1100 node supercomputing cluster. We are in need of
> volunteers to assist in three areas of assembly; cabling, RAM and PCI
> card install, and machine racking. We would like to get as many
> volunteers as possible.
>
> Some logistical things, there is not adequate parking for every
> volunteer to drive and park at the Computing Center. We
> would ask that
> volunteers either carpool (4 or more to a vehicle) or take the BT.
> Initial cabling will be done with the power cables beginning this
> coming Friday, August 1st. We have yet to set a start time,
> but I want
> to get an idea of who is available to assist on that day as well as
> availability for the weekend and early next week. I will forward the
> time to arrive as soon as I nail it down...should be tomorrow. The
> power cabling represents one third of the overall cabling that will
> need to be done.
>
> I need to get a list of those who will be assisting to the facilities
> people at the ISB as soon as possible. This list will be
> used to allow
> volunteers access to the building and the machine room. If
> you're not
> on the list you will not be allowed in! We want to have at
> least 30 to
> 40 people working at any one time on the project. If you know others
> that will be interested in assisting, please have them email me so I
> can get them on the roster.
>
> Thank you for your willingness to participate, and please respond and
> have others respond with "Terascale" in the subject so I can
> filter the
> volunteers properly.
>
> Thanks.
(E-mail signature removed)

Well, maybe 2. The chairs are pretty comfortable.

Kinda curious why the Empo needs them, especially in the budget crunch. But I shouldn't complain (especially since I'm now an alumnus), I'll just watch University Surplus and score a used G4 from there for cheap once they retire them in favor of the G5s. (WOOHOO!)

However, you ask a really good question that has been asked since the beginning of copyrighting software and the CONTU panel. Here is one reference to it:

"By 1974, Congress saw a need for investigation into the effects of technology on copyright issues. The National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright Works (CONTU) was created and given the task to study problems that were arising. CONTU presented their findings and recommendations in 1978. Their suggestion was for the enactment of an amendment that would clarify the scope of copyright protection on computer software. This recommendation resulted in the Computer Software Copyright Act of 1980. This amendment added the definition of a computer program and a new section 117 concerning an owner's exclusive rights of computer programs."

Certain assignments or software in some classes may require the use of Windows which is available in the Computer Science undergraduate labs. If you do not run Windows on your computer, you will miss an educational opportunity to learn Windows administration, which is a marketable skill. The Department will not check that you are, in fact, using Windows XP Professional. However, if you choose to run Windows 95 or 98, you will almost certainly experience increased difficulty in the programming classes.

Certain assignments or software in some classes may require the use of Windows which is available in the Computer Science undergraduate labs. If you do not run Windows on your computer, you will miss an educational opportunity to learn Windows administration, which is a marketable skill. The Department will not check that you are, in fact, using Windows XP Professional. However, if you choose to run Windows 95 or 98, you will almost certainly experience increased difficulty in the programming classes.

I can't get windows update to install fixes on my machine either. However, as long as it's downloading things correctly, you can still install things manually from the download location (a hidden folder which is, AFAIK, c:\WUTEMP by default). If it's not downloading them correctly, check out Daisy, which basically just parses lists of updates available, determines which ones you don't have installed, and wget's the installers directly.

Actually, humans are more likely to die from old age than from "other" causes. This is indicated by a "Type 1 Survivorship Curve".

Other species, such as those with predators, don't tend to die as much from old age.

Of course, there are other "natural factors" besides aging that kill us off.

This is probably having to do with "blackboard" software, i.e. learn.vt.edu.

This software tries to be everything to everyone, and all most teachers use it for is posting grades.

It doesn't surprise me that there are bugs in it, though. There have been several show up on astalavista.box.sk, and those were fixed, but the design of the program doesn't strike me as being particularlly sound.

~Will

One thing I found interesting was that the Federal Trade Commission did an investigation and dropped the case, then the Justice Department picked it back up. There's an interesting Playboy interview with Bill Gates that gives some insight into how that guy thinks.

However, Dvorak is absolutely dreadful where the alternating left-right hands is concerned, which accounts for an awful lot of QWERTY's speed.

shouldn't he have sensed that guilt that should have come from his being a former roadie, and his current position as (supposedly moral) senator?

File sharing is moral

For those interested, the actual bug report is here

It was not long before the young hackers started causing problems. They caused the system to crash several times and broke the computers security system. They even altered the files that recorded the amount of computer time they were using. They were caught and the Computer Center Corporation banned them from the system for several weeks.

Bill Gates, Paul Allen and, two other hackers from Lakeside formed the Lakeside Programmers Group in late 1968. .. The first opportunity to do this was a direct result of their mischievous activity with the school's computer time. The Computer Center Corporation's business was beginning to suffer due to the systems weak security and the frequency that it crashed. Impressed with Gates and the other Lakeside computer addicts' previous assaults on their computer, the Computer Center Corporation decided to hire the students to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the computer system. In return for the Lakeside Programming Group's help, the Computer Center Corporation would give them unlimited computer time [Wallace, 1992, p. 27]. The boys could not refuse. Gates is quoted as saying "It was when we got free time at C-cubed ..."

Was the degraded perfromance was a direct result of Gate's activity? Was this really the model Gates grew up on? It surely matches his company's means of using bugs as a means of extorting money out of their users. Microsoft's time is every bit as over as $1,000/hour charges to run a 16 bit PDP-11. Hopefully, the extortion will end with it.

At Virginia Tech, we have a 802.11b wireless network that includes several buildings and the coverage is growing. Only certain degree programs such as Architecture and Engineering require laptop computers. These programs offer courses that require students to interact and use their computers in the classroom. The number of courses is small at the moment but is expected to grow exponentially in the future.

At Virginia Tech, we have a 802.11b wireless network that includes several buildings and the coverage is growing. Only certain degree programs such as Architecture and Engineering require laptop computers. These programs offer courses that require students to interact and use their computers in the classroom. The number of courses is small at the moment but is expected to grow exponentially in the future.

The patent for waterbeds was turned down because of one of his books.

It's mmmalone@vt.edu.

Ya, but acording to this screenshot... It may be a even WORSE user interface.

Looking at these screen shots, Ximian has opted for a toolbar-driven approach. This seems like a reasonable way to go, considering that it's a methodology familiar to the majority of computer users.

I think any frequent user of Outlook learned to despise the side navbar. I'm glad that both Evolution and Outlook 2003 will be abandoning it.

BTW: although many of my girlfriends have been of the dark skin variety (an aesthetic which I prefer), and when I lived in Jackson (that's as in Mississippi) I prefered to live and play down in the Farish street district a very long time before people used words like "historic" to describe it, I am, myself, as white and fleshy as farm raised catfish.

Here's some real sharecropper history for you, my brother; read and learn the bigotry of which you speak has nothing at all to do with color. If you still have doubts, feel free to pay us a visit and experience it all firsthand...

Blah. Adobe distiller is acting up. If anyone has it and can convert it for me that'd be great. For now I just saved it as text... formatting sucks but if you really want to read it here ya go. Sorry.

I thought a big part of the RIAA's argument is that the labels have to underwrite the promotion and some of the costs for the tours...

From what I have read this is not true. Most record contracts state that all/most costs related to marketing and distribution will be recouped from the artists cut of the CD sales, not the record companie's. Of course this means if the record doesn't sell well the record company doesn't get all that money back through the artist's cut... But it also means the artist will get nearly nothing.

I wrote a paper for school on how I morally justify downloading mp3s which outlines the way most record contracts work.

Dvorak users consistently report less effort in typing and that it just "feels" better, but they must be wrong since QWERTY is better. QED. Even though the fastest typer uses dvorak and other dvorak typers cleaned house in competitions, these results are all faked or "suspect". Even though all reason points to markets acheiving local maxima, just like theory says they should, Liebo insists that if one just defines the value of technology based on what the market has chosen then it proves that the market always right.

And oh yeah, therefore Microsoft never had an OS monopoly.

I don't think you could pull that one off, honestly... The original poster was trying to say that since the bitrate is low it will have a low economic impact on the industry, I think. Although this is an important factor in determining fair use, it is NOT the only factor. I wrote a paper on copyright law re:mp3, as well as a paper re:how I morally justify downloading mp3s but both were for school so don't expect anything too spectacular :)

I don't think you could pull that one off, honestly... The original poster was trying to say that since the bitrate is low it will have a low economic impact on the industry, I think. Although this is an important factor in determining fair use, it is NOT the only factor. I wrote a paper on copyright law re:mp3, as well as a paper re:how I morally justify downloading mp3s but both were for school so don't expect anything too spectacular :)

Elonka

More Kryptos with Cipher Table

That depends on what sort of software you write. You might want to read the story of the Therac 25. The first time I read it, it gave me nightmares.

I believe you can get these fresnel lenses that sit a distance from your monitor and enlarge the image. Also seeing how they have narrow frames that would help reduce the gap.

Also you could try a cave like the one at unversity of illinois or at virginia tech the VT cave with four projected walls to make a 10 x 10 cube with stereo imaging and a motion platform. However you couldn't really run the popular sims anymore. :)

Get the freakin' thing upset, and BOOOM.... bits of insect/fish dripping down your walls....

Reading the /. blurb (and not the full article), doesn't that mean no one in Sweeden can then download my (freely available), yet copyrighted dissertation without asking my permission first? That's nuts.

First off, it's tied to the web, and unless I specify, anyone can download the PDF we deliver to the ETD project. I don't care who dowloads this crap.

Secondly, I don't want emails asking for my permission to download this, or anything else I work on, yet copyright.

Ugh, this RIAA/DRM/patent nonsense really makes me loathe working with computers now.

Sure, I trust testing. After all, if an OS seems to work right most of the time, it's fine. If my copy of mozilla doesn't crash within an hour, it will never crash. Since the Therac-25 underwent stringent testing, it was perfectly safe, right?

BZZZZZT! Wrong answer. Evidence shows that testing cannot be trusted to reveal all defects. No matter how much you test a system, there is still a very significant risk that it will contain a defect. That's why practically all critical systems use a PROCESS to prevent errors from getting in. That's why the military forces Ada for all systems, why off-the-shelf components aren't used for life-support systems, and why MIL specs are not just based on reliability tests. Since neither Linux nor WinCE underwent any type of certification, code audit, or specialized quality-control processes, they cannot be trusted despite what tests might indicate.

I think letting "I hate Microsoft" or "I hate open source" sway your decision is unprofessional

http://www.cs.vt.edu/~rosson/papers/paradox.pdf

What is the theoretical speed of 0 latency for computations?

(a) The theoretical "speed" of 0 latency is just that: theoretical (or maybe fictitious is a better word). Nothing in the real physical world happens with 0 latency.

(b) So let's talk about when we have a "perceived 0" latency . . . which would mean, umm, operations conducted in units asymptotically approaching Planck time? Or something. Anyway, ridiculously fast. Point is, it stil matters what you're going to calculate. And if you decide to calculate the factorial of googolplex, well, that'll probably still hurt.

(c) But let's posit a machine that does the factorial of googolplex in perceived-0-latency. What's it do with the factorial of googolplex raised to the googolplex power? The point is that you can always describe, in an instant, a computation that is any arbitrary order of magnitude more complex than the fast computation.

(d) so the real question you're asking, what's the speed at which computers become perceived-instantaneous for all interesting problems.

And, of course, the answer depends on what the interesting problems are. I think recent history shows that our appetite for computation actually grows faster than the supply. In other words, the minute someone hands us an "Earth Simulator", we can immediately think of all the cool things we could do if it could simulate at higher fidelity (i.e., do more computation faster). And that'll always happen, because we'll always want to model more complex phenomena with greater fidelity. And, as has also been pointed out on this thread, there are inherent limitations around things like light-speed and the parallelism of a problem (i.e., how many pieces can a problem be subdivided into and how fast do they need to talk to each other drives how far apart they can be and still function). Grace Murray Hopper used to hold up a piece of wire, about a foot long, to show how far apart things could be at 1ns-latency at lightspeed. Some limits are fundamental.

[Becoming an inveterate geek]

Of course, in Star Trek the computers run immersed in subspace fields that make them superluminal, so . . .