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Wait a minute.

For starters, a lot of "NASA work" is done by contractors. I dunno what the breakdown is, but I'd guess that majority of NASA's funding goes to contractors. Which are private companies.

Microprocessors? What did NASA do for microprocessors aside from adapting them to space travel? What could they possibly sell to a terrestrial company?

Cryogenics? Yeah, that's real feasible and salable.

I don't have a clue about medical telemetry, but I haven't heard of "remote surgeons" existing on the Shuttle, that's for sure. The problem with remote surgery has little to do with technical issues, and more to do with the fact that people don't trust robots to do potentially fatal medical work (thank you Therac-25 programmers). I was at a talk given by someone that was working on robot-assisted medical work -- the best thing that they could hope to have introduced was to have programmed systems with brakes, where the system was incapable of providing any force at all, just preventing the surgeon from accidently moving a scalpel outside of the parameters he inserted.

As for improvements in systems analysis software, it's possible, but I have no idea what you're referring to.

A few years later some students will be able to go to the moon for a few million, if Virginia Tech Terascale Cluster is any harbinger.

Henry. Reference: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Gates.Mirick.html

Yet at the same time, Google has reported an increase in the percentage of Mac users using Google. HP has licensed the iPod for distribution and iTunes for inclusion on HP computers. And furthermore, Apple appears to be making huge headway into the science and technology markets as well as gaining steam again in the higher education environments. Finally, a significant portion of the scientists I work with are switching platforms from Windows to OS X.

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me. This article appears to be another one in the long chain of prognosticators predicting the demise of Apple Computer, but what they always miss is the disproportionate influence the company has had on the personal computer industry. Hey, where would Microsoft get all their R&D from if not for Apple?

Ursula LeGuin's Magical World of Earthsea

But didn't the Big-Mac supercomputer run Linux instead of OS X?

If by "the Big-Mac supercomputer" you mean Virginia Tech's G5 cluster, the answer to your question is "no" - see their slide presentation on it, in particular page 13, "Software" of that PDF.

Slashdot had a discussion about Programming Gone Wrong in the past.

It mentioned, among others, the Ariane 5 Failure, the infamous Therac-25 accidents, loss of Mars Orbiter, Hi-tech toilet swallowing woman, AT&T Switch failure, a bunch of things literally crashing, etc. And here is yet another article on miserable Patriot failure.

For professional assessment of risks, there is a Usenet group for RISKS Digest (Google groups) that describes all kinds of situations where technology has gone wrong.

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/The rac_1.html. I find it funny that the article talks only about the Panamanian's when this happened in Canada and the States.

Ha, ha.

It's a serious topic, even more so since the over-radiation shit in Panama happened so recently.

The infamous Therac-25 incidents happened between 1985 and 1987 and should be required reading... too bad the three Panamanian medical physicists cited in the article hadn't paid attention to it.

Anyone who hasn't read this paper, should.

I'm not so sure....IANAP but like to contemplate these things anyway :) if there is a physicist here and I'm wrong please correct me (us?).

Firstly, the citizens viewing the catastrophe from the roof apparently noted that "it was shining of radiation". I wish I could talk to a few of them to determine exactly what they meant by this but I would tend to think they wouldn't have made that bizzare characterization of what they saw if it was merely burning graphite on the ground.

Cherenkov radiation is not observed in air (you need particles with mass traveling with speed higher than the speed of light in given medium , and the optical density of air is low (close to vacuum), the particles would have to travel at speeds near to c - which are difficult to obtain because of relativistic effects. (You can get that from accelerators, but not from fission)

The beta particles coming from the aerosolized radioactive isotopes should be at least Mev scale which I would think is enough....no? Also the reactor was an RBMK design which when it exploded should have released a huge amount of steam (small water droplets) likely intensifying any cerenkov effect...

There is similar-looking bluish shine/flash around extremely strong sources, like criticality accident with Pu, U, or in nuclear explosion (the mushroom has bluish envelope). This shine is caused by intense ionisation of air molecules by radiation, mostly X-ray.

In the accounts I've read of the observed "purple glow" from a nuclear blast, it is usually attributed to the mushroom cloud, which after a couple of seconds must not emit much at all in the way of x-rays(I think x-rays are only emitted when the initial fission/explosion plasma is still extremely hot[blackbody radiation]). So if the blue glow is there during the mushroom cloud it is either Cerenkov or ionization by particle radiation coming from fast (intense) decaying isotopes in the air.

In the '40's there was a scientist at LosAlamos, Louis Slotin, who was doing a very foolish experiment to measure the criticality of a sphere of plutonium called "tickling the dragons tale" where beryllium hemispheres are slowly closed around a small core of Plutonium. Slotin slipped and the assembly went immediately critical releasing a large flux of beta particles. Slotin died, but not before noting a "blue flash" at the moment of criticality which may have been either Cerenkov radiation in the air or.. more likely in the jelly inside his eye which would have made it look like it was filling the room. So I still think the Cerenkov explanation is possible.....

From reading just what was posted regarding sending code over networks to learn, it sounds like something related to my friend's thesis on Active Networks.

Ah.... The great K-T extinction debate continues....

For those interested in reading about the supporting data and possible causes of the K-T extinction,
here's a good discussion" by Dewey M. McLean of the Department of Geological Sciences,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

See for instance:
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Gates.Mirick.html#bus iness

Figures. I get all smarty-pants about something and get it wrong. Go here instead. These people seem to know what they're talking about.

My haikus. Not perl though, sorry.

I'd take Alan Kay over Strostrup any day.

I had the most incredibly frightening experience in hospital last month, during an xray I heard the "Windows Error Sound" coming from the technicians control booth. Almost jumped out of my skin.

Anyone here remember the Therac 25? An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents

Here's a little quote to from the 1st link about the Therac 25:
"In the end, the massive design flaws resulted in the death or injury to six people receiving treatment for cancer. The costs, it seems, for safeguards independent of the Therac-25 were far too much to be considered for use in the final product."

I had the most incredibly frightening experience in hospital last month, during an xray I heard the "Windows Error Sound" coming from the technicians control booth. Almost jumped out of my skin.

Anyone here remember the Therac 25? An Investigation of the Therac-25 Accidents

Here's a little quote to from the 1st link about the Therac 25:
"In the end, the massive design flaws resulted in the death or injury to six people receiving treatment for cancer. The costs, it seems, for safeguards independent of the Therac-25 were far too much to be considered for use in the final product."

As an undergrad, I went to Virginia Tech. Now I'm a grad student (and a TA) at William & Mary. All of my courses at Tech were taught by full instructors or professors. I had two math classes taught by advanced grad students (they were Ph.D. candidates at that point). Here at W&M, the only course I know of that has been taught by a TA is the intro to CS for non-majors course (again, Ph.D. candidate).

Tech is a big university; W&M is a small one. I would have been shocked to walk into a junior level CS course at Tech and see a grad student teaching it. At that point, in fact, instructors didn't teach the courses anymore, only professors. Here at W&M, it's almost entirely professors from beginning to end.

Where did you go?

BS. Standards of living for the particular area you're living in should determine how much you make. I went to school in Blacksburg, I now live in NoVa. Want to know what the difference in SOL is? My $50k starting equated to $38k down there. It's all relative.

Not to mention, you should take a job you enjoy with work you're interested in and an employer you respect. I would gladly (and did) drop a couple $k off my salary to find a job that I could be happy with as opposed to hating or enduring going to work each day.

--trb

Here's my torrent

Call me a Karma whore, but the parent is right, this is exactly the kind of legitimate use BT was made for. (Plus hey, I'm running my orn tracker and made the torrent, so I should get something for my trouble and Karma is about all I'm likely to get.
Be sure to checksum it against the kernel.org checksum

Thats nothing. Im running Linux on a Nematode!

I graduated college in 1981, and in the preface to one of my freshman textbooks the author wrote " while the reasons for the new edition are more economic than pedagogic .... when the sale of used textbooks starts cutting into the sale of new ...", I decided that textbooks in general were one big racket, and that was over 25 years ago.

Every VT student knows EXACTLY where these things are going. The HELL ON EARTH

As has been pointed out countless times again, the cost was NOT a "mere" $5M. Their total hardware cost was ~$7M ($5.3M for the computers and memory, another $1.7M for the infiniband hardware), there was another $1M to upgrade an existing building.

"The total cost of the asset, including systems, memory, storage, primary and secondary communications fabrics, and cables is $5.2M." (Source: http://don.cc.vt.edu/tcfslides.pdf)

That $5.2M INCLUDED the Infiniband cards, switches, and cabling.

"The total cost of the asset, including systems, memory, storage, primary and secondary communications fabrics and cables is $5.2mil. Facilities upgrade was $2mil. 1mil for the upgrades, 1mil for the UPS and generators." (Source: Interview with Dr. Varadarajan)

There was then an additional $1M for "facilities upgrades", and $1M for power infrastructure.

They also had the benefit of free labour (millions of Mac zealots)

Huh? Millions of "zealots", eh?

Even if we GROSSLY overestimate labor, let's say a MILLION DOLLARS, the total cost is still $8M. So screw the free labor argument: even if they paid a MILLION DOLLARS to put it together (which is a huge, gross exaggeration), they're still much, much cheaper than anything close. Also, ANY academic institution has this same benefit.

and have not factored in the cost of power and cooling (at 2MW total power and cooling, this is a pretty significant expense, about $5,000 a day) or the support costs.

Sorry. Other clusters don't include power in their capital costs. And cooling *is* equipment included in the VT cluster. Ongoing support costs are NOT included in the costs of any of the other Top 500 clusters. The only thing different about the VT cluster was that the $5.2M figure didn't include some of the infrastructure costs other clusters have. But even the ASCI clusters are asset + infrastructure only, and do NOT include buildings, energy, or support costs. So, sorry again. And even at $7M + our imaginary labor, it's still ridiculously cheaper.

Even NCSA's new Tungsten cluster is $12M for the ASSET ALONE. That does not include building, support, infrastructure upgrades, or anything. Just the computer. And Dell installed it for free. So are they "PC zealots", since it was free labor?

I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1999. At that time, there were quite a few labs that used Macintosh systems, most notably the Math Emporium, a 217-computer lab for math classes. I also know that the English department labs used Mac systems when I was there, and I don't expect that has changed, either.

Personally, I don't expect any of the 1,100 G5 desktops will make their way back to Apple or be sold outside of the University. There are plenty of computer labs that could use the upgrades, and if there are any systems left over I'm sure a mini-cluster for testing out new software releases wouldn't be unreasonable use for a few.

Although I do like the idea of engraving the systems, like "This computer was node 243 of 1,100 in Big Mac v1." It would be something that you can show to alumni, because showing stuff like that to alumni results in additional contributions to the University.

If it will be like any other upgrade on campus, a likely candidate for the G5 may be housed in The Math Emporium. Any other freshmen hokies on here going there, or perhaps reading this thread from there right now? :-)

Trust me, the university is not letting anything out of their hands that can't be obsoleted first. It's a state school so they have a pecking order. My first bet is a large majority ends up at the Empo' followed by professors (who are also looking to build a smaller farm), faculty, staff, other state schools, and if we are so fortunate (and this is really a long shot) you can scoop one auctioned[PURCH].

Trust me, the university is not letting anything out of their hands that can't be obsoleted first. It's a state school so they have a pecking order. My first bet is a large majority ends up at the Empo' followed by professors (who are also looking to build a smaller farm), faculty, staff, other state schools, and if we are so fortunate (and this is really a long shot) you can scoop one auctioned[PURCH].

Though water does freeze at different temperatures depending on the atmospheric pressure.

A small icon in the bottom of the start bar (which is what the auto-update gives you using the settings you describe) is a far cry from an e-mail that lets me know from my workstation. I really have no desire to log in to each server to check this. Plus, the small icon doesn't show up when you log in to a Windows Server via RDP connection, and yes I am aware of Timbuktu, VNC, radmin, etc. RDP is how I'm connecting to one of my windows servers right now from home since work is snowed in (bandwith isn't limitless). Big difference between one desktop and a number of servers. Windows Auto-update just doesn't cut it for this. It's fine for my notebook. Just not for my servers.

There is some improvement to this situation thanks to a program written by someone here at Virginia Tech called Daisy that helps to check for updates to more than just the OS, but this is still a far cry from an update notification in one central location (central meaning my e-mail where I get the messages from all my other systems). You can run Daisy scripted. It's a great package.

However, updating an OS is efficiently should be the responsibility of the OS distributor, not the responsibility of third party developers.

(I highly recommend Daisy. Best thing to hit Windows server administration ever.)

I think we can be reasonably certain that VeriSign (a) only runs as much of an OS on their root server as is absolutely necessary, and (b) only patches it when it's thoroughly tested and approved by people who know what they're working on.

I agree that Verisign is extremely careful in exactly the ways that you suggest. But I also remember the MCI Frame Relay outage of 1999 and Therac-25 Accidents. The point is that any regime of tests and analyses will only eliminate a percentage (admittedly a high percentage) of the potential fault conditions. And if you realize that Verisign is up against the combined smarts of intentional and unintentional black hats, then you realize that it is inevitable that someone outside the trusted circle will discover and use an exploit before Verisign and the internet community can find the fault and plug it.

What I meant by avoiding monoculture is that any mission critical system would do well to avoid a single implementation of a protocol, encryption algorithm, or OS. Instead, the system should employ more than one independent approach with discrepancy detection. That way, a foe would need to simultaneously spoof or hack a system in multiple ways to create an undetectable exploit.

Nothing is foolproof, but systems that rely on a single chain of logic, algorithm, or code are especially fool hardy.

[...]and that the type of computing muscle necessary to run more than the meekest fileserver would be either more cheaply purchased in PC components[...]
I would not want to sound redundant here, but have you ever heard of VT? Speaking of "computing muscle", these guys have built the world's third-fastest supercomputer with G5's, for pocket money (as far as supercomputers go). Yeah, Moore's Law and whatever but your statement is definitely arguable nowadays (really arguable, some would claim just false). Please drop this dated misconception.

And no, I will not base my business central storage and computing center off some WalMart cheapo clone, I will buy some brand with their guarantee and support.

more reliably purchased in IBM iron

IMHO, this is also arguable (though not so much as point one). Please take a close look at the little big chip(s) inside an Apple -say G5- server... I you look closely you will see a shiny gasp! IBM logo. Yeah, incredible. I am sure these guys at IBM must know something or two about processor design... and they have Apple share the stuff.

As for reliability... well, I have not hard facts, but given my personal experience, I have had Macs in headless service (and they were not even servers) for years. No shites, no silly bugs, no crashes, none, zip, no HD breakdowns, nada. I can't even remember when I last formatted my G4, when was it? When I ****ing bought and partitioned it, years ago, back in the OS9 era. Not necessarily SPARC-quality, but for that price I can buy a bunch of G5 stuff.

dani++

These copyrights are the last four items listed in attachment E.

Caldera later placed Unix v1-v7 and 32v under a BSD license. You can find it here.

As someone who hopes one day to get a private pilots licence, by reading the ASRS I've found out about loads of common mistakes, many of the "holy crap that was close!" variety. The same thing would be harder to implement for the computing industry, but if done right could prevent Therac-25 or London Ambulance Service CADS style disasters.

Macs are rarely significantly faster for the price at graphics
Largely dependant on graphics card.

which presumably can compile most ANSI C
I assure you it will compile all ANSI C.

Silly psuedonyms. You're referring to Steven P. Jobs

I think you're missing the point of the class.

More than likely, the class is to help people with average or below average computer skills to survive in an institution of higher education. For instance...lot's of people came to my school, majored in Computer Science/Engineering, and had never written a line of code in their lives. Many had never, or very seldom, used a word processor or more commonly they hadn't used presentation (PP) or spreadsheet (Excel) apps. Every paper and most of the homework was required to be typed up or presented in an attractive, business like format. How does someone learn to do this when they're from south western Virginia and their high school is still using outdated Apples? Windows dumbfounded these people, let alone Word.

It was a running joke at Tech that if you didn't come into the CS curriculum with some programming experience, you wouldn't make it out. That's because they completely skip introduction to computers ("101 - This is a mouse") and go straight to programming. Great for some of us, horrible for others.

When the majority of your work is expected to come in some format, that format should be taught to you in your first semester. Since not everyone's first semester is the same, a single class presented when first entering college would be a good idea. Make it a 0 credit survey class or something, but still offer it so you aren't failing people for lame reasons like not knowing Word.

--trb

What a name - it means, roughly, "Giant shapeless phallus". Could this describe Darl, too?

I know this isn't the right place to bring this up, but Caldera has given away the source code for most of the headers specified in the December 18th letters as infringing ABI code under their own license. Even if they do own that code in Linux (which is seriously in doubt), couldn't Linux still be distributed for free if it followed the licese for those files? In the letter they even state those files are part of the BSD settlement, so couldn't the code be used just by following the BSD license?

I know this isn't the right place to bring this up, but Caldera has given away the source code for most of the headers specified in the December 18th letters as infringing ABI code under their own license. Even if they do own that code in Linux (which is seriously in doubt), couldn't Linux still be distributed for free if it followed the licese for those files? In the letter they even state those files are part of the BSD settlement, so couldn't the code be used just by following the BSD license?

It's true. Nobody ever learns anything by experimentation. For example, Rutherford learned the structure of the atom from a standard school physics textbook, as instructed by a qualified teacher.

And this guy might have made something of his life if he hadn't been fooling around with computers all the time and learned something useful.

This Wired article from this Slashdot article talks about cost, performance, and ease of use. There are also links to an O'Reilly article too.

Finally VT has a page up with PDF slides: page 7 talks about, without proof, it being (at the time) the cheapest at $5.2 million for 1,100 nodes and achieving the highest performance/price.

If you believe their assertion, then if the G5 XServe Compute Node were available at the time, they could have shrunk their facility by three quarters, since 3-4 XServes fit in the space of one G5 PowerMac: 1,100 nodes of XServe == 300 nodes of PowerMac, in terms of volume, so you have a much smaller facility.

Oh! This is an article on the price vs performance considerations VT had to face. Essentially Dell, IBM, and Sun were too expensive with Opteron, Opteron, PPC, and Sparc solutions, respectively. As well as not being able to delivery on a timely manner!

Yes, the VT rolmphones ruled in many ways. Though the fact that you couldn't use a traditional analog modem with them sucked. There was no pipe to the outside world, other than telnet. Warez had to be piped in on an analog 14.4k modem that could only be hooked up using an unauthorized device designed and created by engineering students to bring warez on campus, or so I hear. It was also cool getting to check out the VaTech BBS scene before ever stepping foot on campus. I ran one too. Snapshots here.

Didn't he just put the pieces together?

It is argued that the first packet-switching network was operational and in-place at the National Physical Laboratories in the UK. Parallel efforts in France also resulted in an early packet-switching network at Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques in 1968-1970.

Also we should mention John Atanasoff, which together with Clifford Berry built the first electronic digital computer
Here is his biography
And some more info and links here
And of course John Atanasoff is Bulgarian :)

More information about Neumann:

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/VonNeumann.html
http://www.neumann.com/
http://www.mbi.ufl.edu/~vetneumann
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathemati cians/Von_Neumann.html
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~neumann/
http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/vonNeumann.html
http://www.karto.ethz.ch/neumann/
http://www.rit.edu/~drk4633/vonNeumann/
http://www.fsm-a.org/neumann

the man with one of the strongest claims to the title of Father of Modren Computing
There are two people with stronger claims: Alan Turing, who laid the theoretical foundations, and Konrad Zuse, who built the first digital computer.