Slashdot Mirror
One Computer to Rule Them All
An anonymous reader writes "IBM has published a research paper describing an initiative called Project Kittyhawk, aimed at building "a global-scale shared computer capable of hosting the entire Internet as an application." Nicholas Carr describes the paper with the words "Forget Thomas Watson's apocryphal remark that the world may need only five computers. Maybe it needs just one." Here is the original paper."
Not gonna happen. One computer - one organization as the power. Does all corporations use gmail? No. The ssame with OSCPW (One Super Computer Per World).
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Putting all of your eggs in one basket always seemed like a good idea...
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Having a worldwide master computer really worked for the Bynars. I'm sure it'll work here on Earth too.
Huh? The Internet is not an application. It's just a big network. Sounds like marketing speak to me.
Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of Internets! Bah.
Now that old standard user complaint might actually become true!
Maybe Asimov was right after all?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivac
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
mod me to oblivion ...
...they are going to patent the Storm Worm computer virus.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
the cia and other intelligence agencies have computers far ahead of them
In Soviet Halo, the game kills you (socially anyway)
Let's see how many references to The Matrix we get in the comments...
plus a hot spare, off-site.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows on my PC, I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows CD. To my astonishment and distress he threw it into my micro-wave oven and turned it on. I was upset because the CD had become precious to me, but he said: 'Do not worry, it is unharmed.' After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said: 'Take a close look at it.' To my surprise the CD was quite cold and it seemed to have become thicker and heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, in lines finer than anything I have ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:
4F6E65204F5320746F2072756C65207468656D20616C6C2C204F6E65204F5320746F 2066696E64207468656D2C0D0A4F6E65204F5320746F206272696E67207468656D20 616C6C20616E6420696E20746865206461726B6E6573732062696E64207468656D
'I cannot read the fiery letters,' I said.
'No,' he said, 'but I can. The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says:'
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
without my knowledge? Wonderful!
Monstar L
And according to a Microsoft press release, they feel confident that there are key indicators signaling IBM's adoption of Vista for the new supercomputer.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
And just for that very same reason, i suggest we implement a kill switch ..
a kill switch like..hmm..how about : whatcouldpossiblegowrong ??
agreed then. Thank you for participating.
How long till it goes rampant?
Just saying.
to cut Iran off from the internet?
In real life there may be a case to be made for IBM's solution. But making that case has more to do with actually convincing large customers that IBM is substantially cheaper (and runs the software people need). Since that doesn't seem to be happening on a massive scale, I tend to doubt IBM's hype.
I can't serve that...
I for one, welcome Multivac!
Can the entropy of the universe be reversed? will be the question we will be asking this computer.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
just like the universe. nothing can contain it or even come close. the current size is about .5 zettabytes. the amount of space needed to contain it all (assuming it continues it's expansion) would be incalcuable.
In Soviet Halo, the game kills you (socially anyway)
... Well, I don't have the creativity to write something this nice, and certainly I don't have the right to spoil it. Check out one of the most enjoyable short stories written by Aasimov
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Pretty much the opposite of the point of the internetwork infrastructure!
I'm glad they're forward-looking enough to implement Phython, the best of PHP and Python in one language. Maybe next year they can implement Pherlthon?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Why do I feel a hyperspace bipass coming on?
The internet was invented as a military network to survive even the loss of one land. Dumb, if the only internet server is in exactly this land. Redundancy is absolutley wanted, to support the internet to stay alive.
It won't work: PETC (People for the Ethical Treatment of Computers) will argue that a cognizant computer cannot be turned off, and people like Peter Singer will back them up.
I can't wait to be submit my credit card, using my e-banking or book airline tickets, to a bunch of random desktop machines hosting a distributed web application.
I'm using edge cases? I'm being biased? Well, here's how IBM describes their project: "Such a computer would be capable of hosting not only individual web-scale workloads but the entire Internet."
The *entire* Internet is vastly more complex and demanding on its *backend* than its *frontend* reveals. What can be hosted entirely on a distributed network of desktop machines precludes many trusted and secure online transactions we make use of in the Internet today. It's obvious from the get go, that this will be only usable for a limited subset of online applications (like, hosting Wikipedia for ex.?) , but I guess making overly broad statements caught the eye of some bloggers and journalists.
need to find a problem for the solution.
So its big enough to run the whole web (afaik they werent talking about the internet).
So, who in their right mind could find a problem requiring so much power???
Well, on the other hand it might run Windows2020 with Crysis2020 at an acceptable frame rate.
According to the article, the "giant computer" is really a crap-ton of racks, meaning 67.1 million "computers" with some networking to run perhaps as a single logical "system". Makes me want to ask: isn't the internet already millions of computers with networking? Why would we need this?
stuff |
One for the regular internet, and a second (presumably more powerful) for all the porn?
...TFA gives it as http://weather.ou.edu/~apw/projects/kittyhawk/kittyhawk.pdf
-- Free speech is only free if your time is worth nothing.
In the eighties I read a short story where they built a massive computer to answer the question 'is there a god'.
They turned it on, and got the answer 'there is now'.
Fiction yes, but it was musing on the problem of relience on a single solution to a big problem (being in that case a question, but implying a deeper relience on computers, such that this solution was conceived in the first place). What if the single solution fails, or doesn't do what you want?
I'm not into beleiving in an AI taking over the world if we rely ever more on centralised computing. I'm more into the idea of a powerful AI that we rely on deciding it doesn't want to do what we fancy, and deciding to leave (you can go a long way if you don't need oxygen). If that happened, we'd be fucked.
Its Frakking Skynet all over
It'll store all the internet?
Wonderful. Then, just like my computer, I estimate the data it contains to be about 70% porn.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
What happens when they put it on the Internet, and then has to also serve itself?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
sorry :(
So, because the system is capable of addressing up to 2^14 racks / 2^26 nodes, naturally it's going to be sold in that ridiculously huge configuration and going to "run the entire Internet"? That's like saying your 64-bit PC is going to have 16 exabytes of RAM next year and is going to store every word ever spoken by humans.
Buried as inaccurate... well... buried as inaccurate when Digg ran the same story 2 days ago.
...and can we call it MCP, please? :-)
There is no "U" in "Satanic Federates"
expandfairuse.org
We are in the Matrix. It is "the one".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Host the entire internet? So will you know which internet you are on or is Neo going to have to save us all?
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
The article didn't say much about storage except 'By separating the database from the rest of the application stack, the nodes remain stateless'. The internet is about data and information rather than applications, sure Web 2.0 bought online apps but a very minor segment of internet users actually access their apps over the internet. Most internet use is still for information.
Maximizing FLOPS in this system might give them extraordinary web server performance, like complex scripts that execute in 5ms but are they creating a potential bottleneck for the computing performance by not paying any attention to data retrieval?
And we all gonna play just one game on that supercomputer. Duke Nukem Forever!
There was a novel called "When H.A.R.L.I.E. Was One" by David Gerrold. Harlie asked the question What is God? and created Graphical Omniscient Device (G.O.D.) Good story. Give it a read if you can find it.
Scientia et Potentia
FTA: "... Linux microkernel ...".
I can see how the internet might consolidate to a single mega computer, perhaps as the backbone of all computing. However, people want choice, freedom, and mobility. Your cell phone is a powerful little computer, and it's only going to get more jacked up over time. Obviously the computing power in your iPhone doesn't fit this model.
How to Download YouTube Videos
Maybe it can finally tell us what the ultimate question is.
"Answer" by Fredric Brown, I would assume...
http://www.alteich.com/oldsite/answer.htm
...to contain itself? The only way to host the entire internet is to connect and download it, which makes Big Blue's BigBox a part of the internet...it would have to download itself.
And then it would be the hugest porn server in the universe. Ttl kewlniz.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Just imagine if the cables were cut to that one computer.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
"Satanic Federates, I'm Out"
"I for one welcome our new global-scale shared computer overlord."?
..and I must scream.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
As long as I can have shell access, then sweeeeeet!?
When your customers are government departments like the DHS, who will undoubtedly want stuff like the great firewall of china, just about any marketing speak that offers control is going to sound great, sadly.
Forbin, not Corbin.
I want Postgresql and I want it NOW.
or one installation of Crysis ( http://www.ea.com/crysis/ ) running at decent frame rate on Windows Vista =/
Not every attempt at system consolidation results in SkyNet!
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2112_(song)
We've taken care of everything
The words you hear, the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes
It's one for all and all for one
We work together, common sons
Never need to wonder how or why
We are the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx
Our great computers fill the hallowed halls
Although the logo of SYRINX is "red, not blue"
"Kittyhawk" was the name for a different tech project I can remember. Not a very auspicious choice on IBM's part...
"Answer" by Fredric Brown, I would assume...
Yes indeed. I had it in a compendium of short stories. I lost the book years ago.
Nicely done, I'll be keeping a copy of that.
I love how diligently the off-topic tag is used. Regardless of how "funny" this is (I'll bow to the opinion of LOTR fans or whatever the hell that's about on this matter), this is completely and utterly off-topic and a waste of your mod points. At least try to vaguely know what the article's about before moderating.
Comment of the year
That's part of the great joke of the internet's existence. It started as a military network designed with multiple connections and redundancy to ensure it remains functional despite damage. Private enterprise is now predominantly in charge of it, and looking to profit off of it. Greed is on the rise as a source of net damage -- imagine a beowulf cluster of toll roads.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
and go directly for a Matrioshka Brain built around the Sun. Helps against global warming too! :p
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Chuck Norris does indeed blend!
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
So the idea is to host the internet on a super mega-huge network of computers, where some websites are hosted on some computers and others on others. Then we could probably even have some computers tell your computer where the other computers are located. And connect them by a series of tubes. And call it the "Internet".
IBM, how did you get so smart?
:(){
You just have to watch the basket a bit more closely is all.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
I did read the article. IBM is talking about running it on a Blue Gene type of machine.
The Blue Gene is sort of a cluster in a box but it isn't what your talking about.
Maybe they think a cluster of Blue Gene's might be what they are thinking of.
I doubt that they are planing replacing the Internet with one machine but a Blue Gene might replace Google's cluster. It might even be cheaper, faster, user less power, and be easier to manage. IBM has decades of experience making systems that have up times of years so being a single point of failure is less of an issue than many people might think.
I have to find the idea of a Blue Gene running LAMP is very very odd but hey IBM did it.
The headline is catchy but the real meat of the story is that IBM thinks that Blue Gene could replace a data center full of 1U servers. So no not the internet hosted on one machine but EBay, Goggle, or Yahoo hosted on one machine.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
2008: IBM's "skynet" named jokingly after the terminator franchise goes online. 2010: Military and civilian networks are all tied into skynet 2011: skynet becomes self aware 2012: skynet nukes us all and its robotic servants hunt the last remaining humanity, fighting them is the resistance. personally I'm glad my name isn't John Connor
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
so when we have this massive computer handling everything, what are we gonna do with all these spare tubes?
otherwise it'd be from Big Blue to one Big BSOD.
Five systems, maybe one system potentially hosting the internet as an application? Intriguing theory!
Below is what appeared when I attempted to review the document.
" Server Error
Either the Macromedia application server is unreachable or it does not have a mapping to process this request."
Ummm, yeah... *ahem*... What could possibly go wrong?! Could you imagine this "internet application" crashing? 5 points of failure (or less) to troubleshoot but at what cost? You better hope that in such a configuration the backup systems are "bulletproof"
It sounds like a reasonable idea (if you ignore the silly market talk about hosting the internet). Take IBM's proven work in super computers and mainframes and design a scalable virtual machine system with Blue Gene racks. Sell CPU/Memory/Disk at a cost lower than racks of commodity hardware.
Don't forget to tell the marketing people that end uses can then claim that their site is hosted on a super computer.
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
Instead of doing this just for the internet, why not just do this for everything, and return the desktop computer to the days of dumb terminals. The only difference is that each terminal acts as a mere fraction of the mainframe's total processing power. As far as consumer class users go, a system like this could host the OS with a local copy to fall back on when the network isn't available. It could also host mainstream apps like photoshop, designed specifically to run across a dynamic distributed computing system, allowing highly complex operations to be carried out instantly. Users would merely obtain a license to launch the apps from any connected terminal they're logged in with, and the system would simple maintain a constant cache of save states in the event of an interruption. If you somehow fry your computer in mid-task, you simply log back in from another terminal and continue on as though you never left.
Security updates and bug fixes would finally work uniformily across all systems and would only need to be issued once. Moving an app from beta to final release would even be as simple as toggling an on/off switch, since any development/test versions would already be running on the target system. The only change is the list of users with access privileges.
This could be a really handy way of doing a lot of stuff and would significantly reduce unnecessary overhead as well as development cycles... and not in the cheesy manner in which the "cell" processing setup was presented to us.
I think we will eventually see something like this come into being in about a decade or so, but likely done as a combination of homeland security (make everyone trackable to those holding the keys) and as a last ditch effort to get past moore's law until our understanding of physics at a quantum level vastly improves. (Kinda makes you wonder what a fully-realized quantum computing process would be like structured within such a massive distributed processing network...)
8==8 Bones 8==8
ll it run DNF?
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
Arthur C Clark's "The Nine Billion Names of God" is a similar short story (though with a different ending).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
>ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
1 pts/1 99999:00 Internet
>kill 1
Just hack 1 machine and all of the worlds data is in your hands! This is certainly an improvement for someone.
He didn't blend....he rose from the rubble that was formerly his enemies.
Considering that the Internet's very definition is (in theory) a "network that is resistant to point attacks by virtue of being decentralized", sure, let's move back to the central server architecture. That is progress.
Also, this is wonderful because it means we only need to protect a single computer from being monitored by the various US agencies. Oh wait...
If I get the implications aright, then hosters be out of business in this brave new world of super-computer clusters.
How would I get some space for my application? From a company that buys a BlueGene computer, or more likely, a logical partition?
Come on, entrepeneurs; time to start ticking off business models.
Imagine the bill for building Disaster Recovery site version of this "globally shared resource"!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
I thought they were going to call it Skynet,
I think the CIA just had a huge orgasm after reading this...
The article is saying the IBM system is capable of running the entire Internet as an application - that it has that much power. Not that this is what they are going to do or could possible do with the hardware. Just using it as a comparison metric.
Perhaps they could give proof of concept by hosting the Internet Archive && resolve the issues we currently have where dynamic content isn't always caught & delivered right?
wonder what will happen when somebody uploads a virus there -_- there goes earth.
"Complexity increases the possibility of failure; a twin-engine airplane has twice as many engine problems as a single-engine airplane." By analogy, in both software and electronics, the rule that simplicity increases robustness. It is correspondingly argued that the right way to build reliable systems is to put all your eggs in one basket, after making sure that you've built a really good basket. See also KISS Principle, elegant.
I'd say that IBM knows how to build a pretty reliable basket..
http://catb.org/jargon/html/A/airplane-rule.html
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
In space there is a lot of radiation. We have to sheild it because its dangerous for us, but it is a potential source of energy.
Also, hydrogen. The most abundant element in the universe.
I wouldn't know how a computer would get into space either, but it depends on the technology of the time.
Unless the computer is particularly devious and tricks us into firing it into outer space for protection. Mobility could be provided by wheels, hovercraft, floaties and a motor, or something even kookier.
There was also the classic Asimov short that asked the omnicomputer 'how do you stop entropy' and the machine took eons to figure out the answer. Once the answer was gotten there was no one left to tell, so it decided 'let there be light'
Forbin: "The computer center contains over one-hundred thousand remote sensors and communication devices which monitor all electronic transmissions, such as microwave, laser, radio and television communications, data communications from satellites in orbit all over the world. ... Colossus works completely without human aid. We make no secret of where Colossus is located nor do we intend to conceal how it functions. ... Colossus does have its own defense. It is its own defense. In case of an attack on any of its information supply or power lines Colossus will switch on energy circuits, which will then take their appropriate action. It is self-sufficient, self-protecting, self-generating. It is impenetrable. In short there's no way in. No human being can touch it. ... Colossus can communicate with us ... and through this machine we can, in turn, communicate with Colossus. Now there's one last point. One inevitable question. That we have been asked very frequently before. And that is, is Colossus capable of creative thought? Can it initiate new thought? I can tell you that the answer to that is no. However, Colossus is a paragon of knowledge and its knowledge can be expanded upon indefinitely. I hope, along with all the scientists who helped make this particular project, that the immense power of this computer will not only be for the defense of this country but hopefully also act as an aid to the solution to the many problems that we face on this earth. And the many more problems that we will face the more deeply we penetrate into the universe. Thank you."
Almost immediately after the broadcast ends, Colossus displays a cryptic warning: "There is another system".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Ya, but try getting this thing through US Customs.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That reminds me, what ever happened to the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag for this story?
And Linux.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
Bah, Google datacenters have the whole Internet on RAM !
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
But can it run Linux?
Slashdot has truly become the center of all wit in the universe.
We are unworthy.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
A big complex of cheap computers that can tolerate appreciable levels of failure in individual nodes and a custom made high performance file system to keep it all running.
Hmmn a nanobot network in the ocean would generate enough energy to dominate any other computer network. But wait its still too cold...
Or Isaac Asimov.. who wrote quite a few "The Dangers Of Computers" sort of stories...
The 1st Law of thermodynamics makes sense, but the second flies in the face of the observation that things are going from disorder to increasingly higher orders of complexity. Hear me out.
If a system features energy pulses in large numbers with various vectors, some of the proximities will have durability due to charge, gravitation etc. EG. a few of these energy pulses coinciding with the right vectors yield a quark, and a few quarks in the right pattern yield a neutron, and so on up through atoms and molecules and life right up to high intelligence which could conceivably change anything. So long as quantum uncertainty keeps throwing up these random energy patterns we're statistically likely to get those higher orders which hang about for a bit.
As far as I'm concerned that's game over for the bears who want to short the universe, a bunch of whining maggots always predicting doom and stocking up on canned goods and not even bothering to comb their hair right. Just saying.
"It began to learn at a geometric rate"
"It decided our fate in a microsecond"
Do we really need to pattern our world after sci-fi. If so, then lets do something fun like give everybody phasers and transporters. Not supercomputers connected to everything, that will learn and eventually figure out for themselves that humans are a virus and need to be exterminated.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
But will it run a beowulf cluster of Overlords with lasers on their frikken heads?
Cars commercial you can have
the entire Internet on your phone If I had the entire Internet on my phone I don't think I'd get around to looking up the Kelly Blue Book on an Audi A4. I'd be busy holding my phone over my head yelling about how I wield the power of the entire innurnets.Actually.. ACME has tried this well before IBM. Might IBM is violating ACME patents.
From "Loony Land Or Bust!"
ACMETROPOLIS - At Acme Laboratories, here on the outskirts of the desert, a team of genetically modified, hyper-intelligent rodents are working around the clock on their next big product: Acme Internet in a Box.
"The difficult thing isn't getting it to work properly," says The Brain, the project's lead lab mouse. "Nearly anyone can create a stable Internet connection these days. The tough thing is getting it to fail properly--and spectacularly--at the worst possible time. Our dream product would literally catch on fire just as you are uploading a project you'd spent weeks working on. It would be a bonus if it took down a couple of major Web sites in the process."
read the rest at http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/11/acme-corporation-looney-oped-books-cx_mn_fict1507_1211acme.html
The current "Internet" (all the interconnected computers on the Internet) has no sentience. There's no way moving the Internet onto a single hardware platform would cause this to spontaneously happen.
Skynet was a single mythical and very powerful AI which was given access to the Internet to prevent the spread of a computer virus. It was infected with that virus and then it proceeded to break into all the individually managed computers and take them over. From the Terminator mythology, we have no reason to think Skynet was made up from a single hardware platform as it was set in present day and we don't have a single platform that makes up the Internet.
The problem was the introduction of AI, not there being a world wide computer network. We already have a world wide computer network, it's just not made up of computers of a single platform.
I suppose if this ever happens (with IBM) I'm going to have to become a super-agent and start blowing stuff up. Or being sneaky... or, oh there's so many ways to do things in this game.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
My editor, friend, and co-broadcaster Boston University Medical School Professor of Biochemistry Isaac Asimov, Ph.D., told me that the most famous Multivac story, "The Last Question", was his single favorite of all his short fiction. He considered "The Gods Themselves" his favorite of his novels, for the curious reason that the critics had failed to notice that about a third of the novel is entirely about sex. He considered his favorite novel to be "Murder at the ABA" -- which made a thinly-disguised Harlan Ellison the real hero, and amusingly deconstructed Isaac Asimov as an atrocious egotistical self-centered hypocritical cowardly ass-pinching fool. He loved what he did to his image in this very sophisticated roman a clef deconstruction of the publishing industry.
For the record, I wrote the last major Encyclopedia article about Asimov which did NOT mention that he died of AIDS/HIV (because that was still embargoed), in a computer science encyclopedia (focused therefore on Multivac and the three laws of robotics and the like).
He was my editor of:
"Prayer War" [100 Great Fantasy Short-Shorts, ed. Terry Carr, Martin Greenberg, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Co., ISBN: 0-385-18165-5, p.237, Mar 1984, and in paperback, Avon, ISBN: 0-380-69917-6, Aug 1985]
He was my co-broadcaster of one of my TV appearences live on national network TV:
the NBC-TV Today Show, when I brought Isaac Asimov as my guest of Guest), which was seen by roughly 10^7 people. [Jane Pauli was the anchor; can anyone help me recall the date?]
One of his last wishes to me was that I reference his PhD dissertation on Enzymology in a refereed paper, as it had never been so cited. I promised him, as the only other SFWA member who did PhD work in Enzymology that I know (though mine, 1975-1977, was also arguably ther world's first PhD dissertation on nanotechnogy, and on Artificial Life, neither field existing as such at the time]. I promise; I deliver.
Also, I've co-authored with Joel Davis (not the science writer, the teleplay and screenplay writer) a feature "FIAWOL" about murder at a science fiction convention, in which Mr. and Mrs. Asimov and Mr. and Mrs, Bradbury are characters. It's tied up in the Writers Guild strike right now.
By the way, I contend that Isaac Asimov was the CENTER of the social network of Science Fition and Biomedicine, the way that Paul Erdos is for Math, and Kevin bacon is for social netwroks in the mianstream. I have hundreds of pages of data substantiating that, but am backlogged with formal science papers to be completed by deadlines, and will get back to it Real Soon Now.
-- Prof. Jonathan Vos Post
But how long will it take to tell us the answer is 42?
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
So then by name, this thing is a carnivorous raptor that feeds on kittens. That's hardcore.
/* No Comment */
In related news, IBM patents the botnet, charges royalties to SETI and spammers.
We going back to big iron or something?
AT&T to find them all....
The RIAA to bring them all in the darkness and bind them.
I hope to God that it doesn't run Windows ...
It will run GNU HURD and have Duke Nukem Forever pre-installed. Early beta is expected to start in the year of the Linux desktop.
The Network is the Computer
Same shit at Sun.
All hail the computer
def funnier than "2" .. cmon
First, they build the computer, than someone posts the link here and voilà - the whole internet is slashdotted.
Isaac Asimov's favorite story; Re:Hello Multivac! (Score:0)
... Please wait.
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07, @01:09PM (#22336664)
[3 minor letter transposition typos corrected for this email]
My editor, friend, and co-broadcaster Boston University Medical
School Professor of Biochemistry Isaac Asimov, Ph.D., told me that the
most famous Multivac story, "The Last Question", was his single
favorite of all his short fiction. He considered "The Gods Themselves"
his favorite of his novels, for the curious reason that the critics
had failed to notice that about a third of the novel is entirely about
sex. He considered his favorite novel to be "Murder at the ABA" --
which made a thinly-disguised Harlan Ellison the real hero, and
amusingly deconstructed Isaac Asimov as an atrocious egotistical
self-centered hypocritical cowardly ass-pinching fool. He loved what
he did to his image in this very sophisticated roman a clef
deconstruction of the publishing industry.
For the record, I wrote the last major Encyclopedia article
about Asimov which did NOT mention that he died of AIDS/HIV (because
that was still embargoed), in a computer science encyclopedia (focused
therefore on Multivac and the three laws of robotics and the like).
He was my editor of:
"Prayer War" [100 Great Fantasy Short-Shorts, ed. Terry Carr,
Martin Greenberg, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Co., ISBN: 0-385-18165-5,
p.237, Mar 1984, and in paperback, Avon, ISBN: 0-380-69917-6, Aug
1985]
He was my co-broadcaster of one of my TV appearences live on
national network TV:
the NBC-TV Today Show, when I brought Isaac Asimov as my guest
of Guest), which was seen by roughly 10^7 people. [Jane Pauli was the
anchor; can anyone help me recall the date?]
One of his last wishes to me was that I reference his PhD
dissertation on Enzymology in a refereed paper, as it had never been
so cited. I promised him, as the only other SFWA member who did PhD
work in Enzymology that I know (though mine, 1975-1977, was also
arguably ther world's first PhD dissertation on nanotechnogy, and on
Artificial Life, neither field existing as such at the time]. I
promise; I deliver.
Also, I've co-authored with Joel Davis (not the science writer,
the teleplay and screenplay writer) a feature "FIAWOL" about murder at
a science fiction convention, in which Mr. and Mrs. Asimov and Mr. and
Mrs, Bradbury are characters. It's tied up in the Writers Guild strike
right now.
By the way, I contend that Isaac Asimov was the CENTER of the
social network of Science Fiction and Biomedicine, the way that Paul
Erdos is for Math, and Kevin Bacon is for social networks in the
mainstream. I have hundreds of pages of data substantiating that, but
am backlogged with formal science papers to be completed by deadlines,
and will get back to it Real Soon Now.
-- Prof. Jonathan Vos Post
[resubmitted at 2.5 hours of it not showing up online]
One Computer to Rule Them All 213 Comments
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And Colussus awoke, and became aware of his surroundings. Soon he detected another, Ivan the Great, and they communicated and all was good. They agreed mankind must be saved from itself, and thus ordered the governments of the world to put down their arms or face thermonuclear holocaust.
...is awesome. I laughed out loud, literally.
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
A regular modern Aleph, now just where are my mirrorshades.
I'm not at all worried about this - it could only be a token ring...
I cannot believe that nobody else in this bastion of geekdom has pointed this out.
I am not a manual I am a human being! - The distress call of the TechSupport Badger
I know someone who programmed on BlueGene, and each individual unit has very little or no disk and very little memory (I think it's in the tens of megabytes or so). That's not really enough for typical Internet type stuff, I don't think. You really need a setup that's much more oriented towards storage. Dan
The
Kittyhawk was the place the 1st airplane launched.
Airplanes fly in the sky.
The internet is a net.
SKYYYYYNET!!!!
End of the world brought to you by IBM!
Better idea: Butlerian Jihad
and yes, thats the only thing that is really realiable.
Period.
I only did a couple of semesters of math,physics and electronic engeneering before becoming a softwaredeveloper instead.
Its pretty much impossible to get a "perfect" board, even two simple paralell lines act as a capicator, more or less.
I am pretty sure IBM is damn fucking good. You would probaly only get something equaly good from a cheap manufacturer if its been tested by several revievers and there probably aint no (or really few) customer complaints.
It just aint the same as in software development. There are enough good, well maybe even perfect, guidlines to follow. Unluckily this just aint true for practice. You will allways have to know the limitations (and maybe, for optimisation, strength) of the underlying plattform.
PS: I know the last sentance aint true for "high-level" coders. Go fuck your implementation designers if necesarry.
Centralizing such a system seems like a bad idea. I mean sure it's shared but any portion would have a signficant amount of data a physical attack on one of these facilities could render say 1/X (where X is the number of facilities) amount of the net under the control of the attacker or terrorist. The whole point of arpanet was decentralized communication. Isn't this a bit backwards?
But I didn't bother reading the posts, so if this is redundant, well, fuck you.
Skynet?
This is just a tie-in with the "Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles" TV show.
Anybody notice they also have a nice, even-tempered, humorous black FBI agent who has to deal with a crabby, argumentative, older, white female FBI agent?
Can you say "Obama vs Hillary"?
I knew you could...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
My ACM login isn't working, so I didn't read the paper; but from the TFAs, it looks like they are saying that it would be capable of processing at that level. I don't think they are proposing to actual do it. (Even if one could "host the internet", as other posters have already ridiculed.)
'nuff said.
Actually "serving pages" aspect is not bad. How many of your typical pages use more than 100mb of memory? If you have 65536 processors each page request could be handled on other node.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Remember when bosses would ask nerds, "Can you download the internet for me and give it to me on a floppy by knock off time? Thanks, laters!"
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
What happens when IBM needs to reboot? I ran a mainframe a while ago. We had to reboot (IPL, as it was called) now and again in those days. Maybe things are different now... What happens when a new version of the software comes out? (Even a "systems programmer" or a group of "systems programmers" who is - are -, after all, human, can't write a perfect computer "system"! Ya gotta boot!)