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OTOH, it will generate 30TB per day.

According to http://www.lsst.org/About/Tour/software.shtml
"Current projects show that approximately 5000 mathematical operations are required per pixel of the image to process and classify survey data. Scaling this to the size of the LSST data stream shows that approximately a thousand of today's high-end processors will be required a feasible proposition. Advances in processor power over the next five years will reduce this number to a few hundred, by which time the required LSST computer system will seem quite pedestrian. Storing this data is also well within even today's technology. At current prices, a one-petabyte disk storage system costs less than $1 million; in five years this price should drop to well below $100,000. Keeping all of the LSST data online will certainly be affordable."

Windows may not play a central data reduction role, unless Microsoft can support 100 CPUs within the next six years. Of course six calendar years is a long time in techo-years. By then, perhaps the data analysis would be done on game consoles.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2007/10/ps3_supercomputer
http://www.physorg.com/news92674403.html

I'd guess that much will depend upon how much can run on a cluster, vice how how much must run on a SMP machine.

Imagine Diebold going to NASA/Air Force and trying to peddle their sub-standard hardware for mission-critical situations. I'm sure they would be given the boot faster than they can cry in pain.

You might be interested in reading up about the use of Microsoft Windows by the US Navy, which you can read about at http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/07/13987.

Also of interest is the NewsHour's report on body armor, in which it turned out that the colonel in charge of approving the armor retired from the military and went to work for the company that he'd just signed a huge contract with: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec07/armor_09-21.html

No politician will die if body armor is poor, and the old men at the Pentagon won't die, and the owners of body armor companies won't die either. What makes you think they care about the people who will die?

These flaws were discovered at least 4 years ago http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2003/10/60713. Like I said, nothing was done!

After that, we go to those same 3rd world countries "teaching" them about how to serve the common man through democracy, accountability and the rule of law. Very sad indeed.

Nintendo couldn't keep up with demand for the Wii... and it was like that for more than 9 months! Take a look at this article from Wired, but still there are few answers as to why it was so bad for so long. I'd like to vote for better supply chain management in 2008.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

This: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/01/drm-free-future.html Someone buy the guy who decided to do this a beer!

DRM doesn't work. We know it, and now they know it too.

I do see a problem with the OLPC process apparently not working out

It could not be working out for the same reasons, these guys failed — they are/were trying to work against a fundamental law of nature.

Steorn tried to violate the laws of Thermodynamics. OLPC is trying to compete for talent with the vibrant economy, that offers enormous rewards to hardworking smart people...

Yes, a project can capture such people's time and attention by appealing to their charitable side. And they will work for non-monetary rewards such as fame and/or pleasure derived from doing a (seemingly, at least) good deed.

But such interest can not be sustained for very long. The novelty wears off, and the internal conflicts cool people's enthusiasm and make them ask questions like: "Do I need this shit?"

The group of wild-eyed and bushy-tailed enthusiasts begins loosing members — including (possibly — beginning with) the brightest ones... And "cadres decide everything" — even more so today, than when the quote was uttered.

Nor is the stated goal of OLPC entirely convincing. Surely, the connectivity and the instant access to the vast amount of information are very appealing and should be very helpful. But wanting to learn, and knowing how to learn are even more important for a child (and an adult) than the actual knowledge of anything in particular. Plenty of kids, who already have computers, use them to exchange pictures/music, and chat with friends — not to learn anything...

At the same time plenty of people, who grew up without a computer (much less Internet), are happy and active users of them now.

If you wish to help the poor, take care of yourself first — and gain the life experience to understand, what kind of help helps, and what kind spoils. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Muhammad Yunus can be your examples...

Ah yes, the "nothing to hide" argument.

The Eternal Value of Privacy

Former attorney general John Ashcroft's declassified redemption narrative was the WTF revelation of aught-seven. It turns out the Patriot Act champion took a heroic stand against a version of president Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program in 2004, resisting White House pressure even while lying in an intensive care unit bed. Bush, you'll recall, later assured America that he'd consulted with his AG before authorizing the program; technically that wasn't a lie -- he just left out the part where Ashcroft said "no," and Bush did it anyway.

It is a measure of how far we've fallen that, by 2007, Ashcroft has turned out to be (relatively speaking) one of the good guys.

• After another round of acquisitions, including MySpace, Flickr, Yelp and Barry's Totally Awesome Whitesnake Tribute Page, Google runs out of websites to buy. It decides accordingly to acquire itself for an unprecedented $10.4 billion in stock. "Google is the leader in search and a strong competitor in several other online venues," says a Google spokesman. "It's only natural that Google would want to partner with such an internet powerhouse. That's why we're proud to announce Google Google, which will be in beta for the next 15 years."

Yes, this was discussed in an earlier Slashdot story, " RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized", and in a bunch of other places:

* Boing Boing p2pnet reddit Heise Online (German) Truemors BlogRunner/Digital Rights Hugh Casey IDG (Polish) Geek News Central CE Pro Gizmodo TechDirt Read/Write Web Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection TDPRI WhatReallyHappened.com Slyck Root.cz (Czech) Craigslist Forums Hard OCP Wired.com Uneasy Silence Overclock.net Wake World SpaceBattles.com Hydrogen Audio BrickFilms.com Hockey Zombie iLounge Zune Scene AllmanBrothersBand.com Golem (German) PC Magazin (German) Tweakers (Dutch) Mackauf (German) Wake Space Kino-eye.com Digital Copyright Canada Northwest Progressive Institute Louisville Music News Frant

Leander! Is that you? http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/commentary/cultofmac/2002/02/50688

Here's the original Wired article, and here's the Slashdot article.

Not that it really matters or anything ;-)

It would be interesting to compare the punishments of male and female child molesters.

Your wording there just highlighted on of the prime problems with our current "sex offender" laws,definitions, and perceptions. The is a huge world of difference between a child molester (has physical sexual contact with a child that has not yet reached puberty) and Ephebophilia (sexual attraction to adolescents). There is an even greater difference between actual child molesters and someone who streaks a football game, and is seen by minors. Or a minor who takes naked pictures of themselves. Or how about failing to have a good pop-up blocker.

I'm all for stopping the who will lure or grab a child off a playground, but why is this the one class of criminals that has to "register" for a lifetime of rejection and fear. Why don't drunk drivers have to register and why are they allowed near bars again? Why don't those convicted of libel have to identify themselves as such when posting online? If someone rapes a child perhaps they should be locked away for life, but if a lesser crime doesn't call for lifetime incarceration, then it shouldn't call for lifetime tracking.

Not compensating artists/creators for their works = immorality.

Complain to the movie and television studios and record labels then. They are by far the biggest pirates of all. Hell, their entire industries were founded on piracy to begin with!

We will just destroy them just like our brothers are destroying the machine overseas.

http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/12/burning-british.html

I doubt one of these billboards can survive a homebrew thermite charge.

Why was my post marked as flamebait and troll? http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/07/think-of-the-ch.html talks about the olpc's used for porn.

'...because after all 640KB should be enough for everyone.'

Nope, that isn't played out.

At all.

And of course...:
"Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."

Silly quotations do have a way of floating like rumors.

Well, the truth starts here.

He never said it.

Are you sure you're talking about the right project? According to this article, the "leaked project" that provoked Apple's lawsuit was the Mac Mini, which was presented two weeks later at MacWorld Expo, and needless to say, has most definitely not been canned...

I'm not sure if Asteroid "started this whole mess," but the Asteroid lawsuit was apparently filed a month earlier than the Mac mini lawsuit.

And you base this opinion on what, precisely?

It's recreatable on earth as well with high quality atomic clocks. this guy took gained 22 nanoseconds of time by spending the weekend at 5,000 ft above sea level.

It's not directly related, but this reminded me of a story I heard about the "Black Mac", a tempest shielded Macintosh SE 30 1891 T that some guy found at a second hand shop. Nobody is sure where it came from, or why it was built, but it seems to have been made by Apple (as opposed to being some weird aftermarket mod). Presumably it was built for the military, or some intelligence agency...

At the risk of speaking in absolutes, no computer hardware warranty can be voided by any software you install, even unauthorized hacked OSX. HP claims an 'unwritten rule' where linux voids your warranty, but they likely mean that they won't support the software, which is completely understandable. UK retailer PC World got kicked around in the press, then relented for refusing to fix a broken hinge on a laptop with gentoo installed. Even if anyone did give you shit, you can always just install windows then try again.

Unless you mean installing on a PC voids your OSX warranty/license, which is almost certainly the case.

I guess they need to make sure not to fly these planes in Boston.

"As it stands now, the "leaked" project that started this whole mess has been to most peoples knowledge, canned."

Are you sure you're talking about the right project? According to this article, the "leaked project" that provoked Apple's lawsuit was the Mac Mini, which was presented two weeks later at MacWorld Expo, and needless to say, has most definitely not been canned...

Anybody notice the amount of weight on the bench behind Duke? I think Duke and Barry Bonds hang out. Obviously Duke slaps Barry around for fun, calling him 'Fairy Bonds'.

picture here

Why you dissing Wired??
Why, just the other day, they had a funny and well-written piece on alternative santas: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2007/12/alttext_1219

...but not stem cell research?

Because recent advances have eliminated the necessity of an ethically-controversial method of acquiring them?

Pretty widely-carried news recently.

I can't really picture the most conservative of conservatives being against it on this basis. So, maybe the people choosing the issues for the grid saw it as a nonissue at this point as well.

"Expert testimony from an RIAA witness also showed that a wireless router was not used, casting doubt on her defense that a hacker lurking outside her apartment window with a laptop might have framed her, he said."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/riaa-juror-we-w.html

You really should pay attention more. In fact, here's a little primer from someone who should know the music business: David Byrne talks record companies and the current forms of control and distribution. It's a fascinating read.

Please pay special attention to how much the artist cut is in traditional CD sales compared to the new digital distribution. You will find a huge disparity in what record companies are claiming and what is actually happening.

I don't think TorrentSpy will get much sympathy from /. at all, however your current thoughts of how the business of music is run is, I fear, off base. A great many artists have few rights to their own songs which instead are owned, by and large, by the record companies who are looking for new ways to squeeze blood from a stone.

I don't need to say much other than, this is the company we employee to make these machines and we expect fair and working products? http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0211/S00081.htm http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2004/04/63298 /case

Granted, the latter point creates a problem, in that a negative response to one's meta-surveillance inquiry, if one were a criminal, would be a tip-off. Thus, there would always be some "loose play" in the system, but systems might actually be worked out that could adapt to these exceptions.

Either we open up to meta-surveillance, or we risk losing rights down the road.

I believe that most societies will ultimately introduce surveillance; it's the ones that won't let their citizens have access on-demand access to surveillance data that will be the most repressive.

btw, I'm not a surveillance fan, but plainly see the handwriting on the wall. We are approaching an era when just a few people with easy access to certain technologies will be capable of doing irreversible harm to the planet and our species. As this scenario intensifies, I think we will see surveillance used far more heavily than we ever imagined.

Some of what I'm suggesting was prompted by a read of Bill Joy's essay in Wired, some years ago. Here's the URL for that essay http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

The assignment was to write a resume in a word processor. The kid was given a detention for ignoring the assignment and randomly surfing the web, then mouthing off to the teacher that told him to stop. I don't think that's unreasonable. Now, if he was writing his resume in say... Google docs instead of Word, then all these authority arguments would be relevant. However, he was simply ignoring the assignment and web surfing instead, so there really isn't a whole lot to discuss. He was given an assignment, he chose to ignore it completely, he was warned to stop, and then finally given a detention. I'd say that's both pretty standard and perfectly reasonable (unless he had already finished the assignment and that's why he was surfing... but I doubt that's the case.)
Here's the article explaining this.

I do remember that period. Dug up a link out of my 10 year old personal webpage I had at the time, and found out where the article lives now: Paramount Locks Phasers on Trek Fan Sites from 1996-12-18. Wow, that has been awhile.

What about if they saw the demand a year ago and made plans to bump production by 80%? But what if that additional production came nowhere near meeting demand? Because that's what happened: http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/11/wii_shortage When they started a year ago they had 1M per month capacity, now they're cranking out 1.8M per month and still running way behind demand.

One of my favourite examples of "transformative" fair use ever.

So we're going from wanting to see girl on girl to robot on robot action?

He is not talking about normal use, he is talking about working round a bug in the installer. A comparable situation is were the recent bugs with the upgrade to MacOS X Tiger, some of which did require going to the command line to fix.

I'm sure the electric universe guys will have a field day with this...

Hey 2006! It's great to meet you. I'm so happy you didn't notice the price drops this year. Yes, they sold the console for $600 one year ago. But I think you'd have to be a moron or live in Europe to pay that much at this point. And based on the fact that you cite dollars and not euros/pounds/yen/canadian, I doubt the latter applies to you.

I think Radiohead has proven that the artists can live without the RIAA. With the release of their recent album, they did a "name your own price" to download it, no record label or DRM attached. It is estimated that they made upwards to $10M in doing so!

Although I don't know if the "name your own price" concept would work long term, bands with who already have a name for themselves can profit greatly at this model. It is the new "no name" bands that would struggle IMO.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/10/estimates-radio.html

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/secret-document.html

It is STILL left to the viewer to decide.

No, it isn't. Read the interview here: Scott seems to think it should be pretty obvious.

But I gotta tell you, I still prefer the voiceover.

Of course you do.

How do you know it's not the case?

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/SLAUGHTERHOUSE_ILLNESS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-12-07-20-38-21

Do you know how big solar towers have to be to make usable amounts of electricity? A 200 megawatt plant will have a 25,000 acre "farm" with a tower twice as tall as any man made structure today! Sure, you can grow stuff in your solar farm since you essentially making a huge greenhouse, but that is a huge amount of land required.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/02/66694

One of my favorite articles ever, and the one that immediately popped into my mind when reading the headline: Chiat Day in Wired, Feb '99. Some of the problems came from a shortage of supplies and other eccentricities, but mostly it came down to, people just want have their own space.

Plus there are some practical considerations: "Auslander became exasperated with wandering round and round the 30,000-foot New York office, and came up with the 'three-time around' rule: 'If I walked around the entire office three times and still couldn't find the person I was looking for, that was it,' he says. 'At that point, I was going home.' "

This is only a beginning: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/fftransparent.html?topic=&topic_set= (article written 10 years ago)

Stuart Brand and Dr. Patrick Moore, both long-time anti-nuclear environmental activists, have, in recent years, declared for nuclear power:

Stuart Brand:

"There were legitimate reasons to worry about nuclear power, but now that we know about the threat of climate change, we have to put the risks in perspective. Sure, nuclear waste is a problem, but the great thing about it is you know where it is and you can guard it. The bad thing about coal waste is that you don't know where it is and you don't know what it's doing. The carbon dioxide is in everybody's atmosphere."
Link

Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of GreenPeace:

"We'd like to see 50 percent by the end of the century, maybe even more. But for now, the objective should be doubling the number of nuclear plants in operation."
Link

-kgj