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Australians Look To SkyNet For SKA Telescope
angry tapir writes "Key players behind the Australian-New Zealand joint bid to host the $2.1 billion Square Kilometre Array radio telescope will launch a grid Cloud computing initiative by September with the aim of harvesting the computing and storage power of desktops worldwide."
I, for one, welcome our new telescopic overlords.
Slashdot used to be the premier place for trolling before newfag sites like 4chan and reddit showed up. If you don't know what Hot Grits are or why BSD is dead, you are not a real troll.
Also Gnome 3 and Unity has made Linux users commit suicide.
Can we quit the Skynet references? Please?
We've had distributed computer networks for decades now. We've used them for scientific research for as long as we have had them. "Cloud" computing is just marketing nonsense. Not every distributed network is some global monster that's going to go sentient and send our killer robots. When so many stories mention the Terminator series, we all sound like pathetic geeky children with too much time on our hands and no sense of originality. Doubly so when it's in the title. Is there a new Terminator film or series just out or something?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
"harvesting the computing and storage power of desktops worldwide." Oh cool, you mean like BOINC has been doing for ages......
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You are a wannabe troll
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what's that make me? i'm australian and a /.er
i think one reverses the other, i'm not sure what the modifier is for being actually gay though.
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
i say we stop this space watching crap and get down to whats really important. WHERE THE HELL ARE THE PERSONAL JET PACKS???
fondling@home is already available to a wide, wide population... it's what the internet is for, after all.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Come on, get your buzzwords right. Cloud computing is when much of the processing is done on remote servers (the "cloud"). Distributed computing is when the processing is done by ordinary desktops worldwide. That's what this is. The article makes this mistake several times, but it's not entirely their fault. The system is called the "Nereus V Cloud" despite clearly being a distributed computing program.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I guess I won't be able to earn some bitcoin [1] from this? Oh well! Worth finding aliens, but to be honest, quantum communication is probably the best way to communicate with advanced civilizations. Our best chance of finding alien life at the moment is probably bacterial on Enceladus [2].
In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft performed several close flybys of Enceladus, revealing the moon's surface and environment in greater detail. In particular, the probe discovered a water-rich plume venting from the moon's south polar region. This discovery, along with the presence of escaping internal heat and very few (if any) impact craters in the south polar region, shows that Enceladus is geologically active today. Moons in the extensive satellite systems of gas giants often become trapped in orbital resonances that lead to forced libration or orbital eccentricity; proximity to the planet can then lead to tidal heating of the satellite's interior, offering a possible explanation for the activity.
Enceladus is one of only three outer solar system bodies (along with Jupiter's moon Io and Neptune's moon Triton) where active eruptions have been observed. Analysis of the outgassing suggests that it originates from a body of sub-surface liquid water, which along with the unique chemistry found in the plume, has fueled speculations that Enceladus may be important in the study of astrobiology
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enceladus_(moon)
$2.1 billion for Ska? That's just Madness.
The other county in the bid is South Africa. I wonder whether the cloud computing service would still be available if Australia/NZ win the bid? Or is this the nail in the coffin of the South African bid? In terms of astronomy and vast empty spaces, SA's on top of the game, but in terms of computing and bandwidth, they just can't compete. Well played!
thank you.
The telescope was originally going to be called "Save Ferris", but they couldn't work out the acronym.
4096R/EF7BAFA6 79E1 DF98 D09D 898F 9A11 F6F0 DDDC 23FA EF7B AFA6
Since the SKA was going to be built close to my town of Geraldton(300kms is close in aussie terms) we got non-monopoly controlled backhaul fibre at our exchange quicker. Its also going to be part of the FTTH network eventually so two birds with 1 cable.. Not that last mile is going in the ground anytime soon but hey, progress.
What complete and utter madness....
Sigh
As someone who goes to the ever-so underfunded school of CS at UWA, it's not fun to see this stuff at all. ICRAR, iVEC and WASP (to a lesser extent) are the trifecta of magic-budget cosmic supercomputer circlejerking who have bought and never used some very nice pieces of supercomputing equipment. There's a GPU cluster of tesla rackmounts that was installed recently which is left depreciating since nobody's using them.
Flights of fancy in terms of ideas, a budget that appears out of thin air and it's a minute walk away from where I have to study in adversity. It's like watching that douche who hypes himself up and somehow actually gets rich from doing nothing.
Thanks, ICRAR.. it's not like I could have had the lecturers who were let go a few years ago with that money instead of watching you plunder it.
...is going (sunglasses) one step beyond.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Bah, worry tomorrow. Today Lets Go Bowling.
Am i getting paid for being harvested? if not, screw you!!!
Supposedly it has the only truly intuitive interface.
I am so proud. I want to post it on slashdot so others can see what a wonderful country Australia is.
could buy a lot of hard drives for 2 billion dollars.
A megalomaniac consortium of robots is going to give Australia a telescope that plays Jamaican music? I'm confused...
No one listens to SKA anymore.