Slashdot Mirror
RHIC Computing Facility Crosses the 1 PB Mark
Martin writes "Brookhaven National Lab's RHIC
Computing Facility (RCF) announced yesterday that the amount of data from the physics experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion
Collider (RHIC) crossed the 1 PetaByte mark. A mail
that was sent around to the RCF users contained a GUI screen shot (which is removed from the mail archive) that showed the number of MegaBytes transferred as 1,000,400,143. The RCF web pages have some pictures of the tape silos that hold the data.
RHIC and the experiments have been discussed on ./ a few times, look here,
here,
and here."
Well, if they have more than a PB, then they should easily handling a slashdotting!
Thanks to the definitions page:
A petabyte is a measure of memory or storage capacity and is 2 to the 50th power bytes or, in decimal, approximately a thousand terabytes.
A terabyte is a measure of computer storage capacity and is 2 to the 40th power or approximately a thousand billion bytes (that is, a thousand gigabytes).
A gigabyte is a measure of computer data storage capacity and is "roughly" a billion bytes. A gigabyte is two to the 30th power, or 1,073,741,824 in decimal notation.
What's bigger?
An exabyte (EB) is a large unit of computer data storage, two to the sixtieth power bytes. The prefix exa means one billion billion, or one quintillion, which is a decimal term. Two to the sixtieth power is actually 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes in decimal, or somewhat over a quintillion (or ten to the eighteenth power) bytes. It is common to say that an exabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes. In decimal terms, an exabyte is a billion gigabytes.
and we have more of those silo's then they do :)
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
By Declan McCullagh -- CNET News.com -- January 26, 2004, 5:18 AM PT
Dean's current stand on privacy appears to leave little wiggle room: His campaign platform pledges unwavering support for "the constitutional principles of equality, liberty and privacy."
Fifteen months before Dean said he would seek the presidency, however, the former Vermont governor spoke at a conference in Pittsburgh co-sponsored by smart-card firm Wave Systems where he called for state drivers' licenses to be transformed into a kind of standardized national ID card for Americans. Embedding smart cards into uniform IDs was necessary to thwart "cyberterrorism" and identity theft, Dean claimed. "We must move to smarter license cards that carry secure digital information that can be universally read at vital checkpoints," Dean said in March 2002, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. "Issuing such a card would have little effect on the privacy of Americans."
Dean also suggested that computer makers such as Apple Computer, Dell, Gateway and Sony should be required to include an ID card reader in PCs--and Americans would have to insert their uniform IDs into the reader before they could log on. "One state's smart-card driver's license must be identifiable by another state's card reader," Dean said. "It must also be easily commercialized by the private sector and included in all PCs over time--making the Internet safer and more secure."
The presidential hopeful offered few details about his radical proposal. "On the Internet, this card will confirm all the information required to gain access to a state (government) network--while also barring anyone who isn't legal age from entering an adult chat room, making the Internet safer for our children, or prevent adults from entering a children's chat room and preying on our kids...Many new computer systems are being created with card reader technology. Older computers can add this feature for very little money," Dean said.
There's probably a good reason why Dean spoke so vaguely: It's unclear how such a system would work in practice. Must Internet cafes include uniform ID card readers on public computers? Would existing computers have to be retrofitted? Would tourists be prohibited from bringing laptops unless they sported uniform ID readers? What about Unix shell accounts? How did a politician who is said to be Internet-savvy concoct this scheme?
Perhaps most importantly, does Dean still want to forcibly implant all of our computers with uniform ID readers?
Unfortunately, Dean's presidential campaign won't answer any of those questions. I've tried six times since Jan. 16 to get a response, and all the press office will say is they've "forwarded it on to our policy folks." And the policy shop isn't talking.
Then there are the privacy questions. To curry favor among the progressive types who form the backbone of his campaign, Dean has positioned himself as a left-of-center civil libertarian. He's guest-blogged for progressive doyen Larry Lessig, embraced the Brady Bill and affirmative action, told audiences on the campaign trail that the Bush administration has "compromised our freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism," and pledged to repeal parts of the USA Patriot Act.
It's difficult to reconcile Dean's current statements with his recent support--less than two years ago--for what amounts to a national ID card and a likely reduction in Americans' privacy. "Privacy is the new urban myth," Dean said in that March 2002 speech.
"I know of no other Democratic candidate who has this view on national ID," said Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "I hope that he'd reconsider his policy on national ID because it has significant affects on individuals' right to privacy and does not make the country more secure. If you think about it, the implication is that children would have to be issued cards as well. Are we talking about ID cards from birth?"
Dean's March 2002 speech to a work
"RHIC Computing Facility Crosses the 1 PB Mark"
Tomorrow's story:
"RHIC Computing Facility Slashdotted, Crosses the 2 PB Mark." Some will complain of dupes, others will say RTFA.
"Derp de derp."
showed the number of MegaBytes transferred as 1,000,400,143
That's a lot of copies of MyDoom!!!!!!
With apologies....I'll STFU now.
We are but a few miles from BNL, so I thought I'd mention this interresting fact to my co-workers, one of them said "I thought a 'peda-bite' had something to do with Michael Jackson" :)
We all must FIGHT Wal-mart and the other proponents of RHIC! This 1 PB milestone is yet another erosion of our privacy and will not.. what? Oh, never mind.
Free, legal music for iTunes users.
Some nouns can be counted, like "two sticks". Others cannot, like "rice".
"A mail was sent around" is just as grammatically incorrect as "She ate a rice" or "That boy has a courage". The poster should have written "Mail was sent around" or "A message was sent around".
If I had a petabyte me in a silo, I woulda shoota it in the head!
Best Windows Freeware
here come a rash of "a pb! think of all the pr0n that would hold!" jokes :-\
Here's a direct link to the image, if you're feeling lazy.
that that is is that that is not is not
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider??
It's nothing compared to the Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve.
But I really think it's justified:
./ a few times
the experiments have been discussed on
Maybe we're supposed to read it backwards to reveal a secret message, like "Taco is Dead" or something?
The screenshot attached to the email message is available here.
Mmmmm, rack-mounted.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Someone needs to introduce them to a little company called PKWare...
No one needs that many MP3's and that much porn!
Were they transfering an RMS speech about GNU/Linux?
They'd only stand a chance if they had a petabit network connection with a petahertz Pentium 4 on the other end. The petabytes of storage is for the log files.
That's still only half the porn on the internet.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
What the f*ck are these old B/W TV screens standing on their side in the middle of the table? Do they have some "legacy" apps running on an ENIAC?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/RCF/GuidedTour/HPSS/
;)
If you look at the third picture...isnt that an orgasmatron?