Monday, November 27, 2006

Sun/Opteron 4x cheaper than Bluegene

Simon Bullen's Weblog : Weblog
Nice comparison of supercomputing performance. Sun is 4x more cost effective than IBM's bluegene, plus you have ongoing savings in the maintenance. It looks like the difference is driven by the difference in number of processors, which could be attributed to the parallel intensity of the test program. However, it does raise some interesting questions about the economics of grid computing.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

MSFT sticks a fork in OpenOffice

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog : Licensing the 2007 Microsoft Office User Interface: "There's only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license."

I wonder if the DOJ will take issue with this? So much for Office embracing open standards.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Ballmer on Novell, Linux and patents

Ballmer on Novell, Linux and patents: "Linux comes from the community -- the fact that that product uses our patented intellectual property is a problem for our shareholders."

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

EETimes.com - UMC claims silicon frequency record of 192 GHz

EETimes.com - UMC claims silicon frequency record of 192 GHz
Most folks don't appreciate the advances of Moore's Law beyond the increase in their computer's performance. However, this recent achievement of a 192 GHz chip funded by Darpa dollars has the promise of advancing sensing technology at a very fundamental level. The key intuition is that sensors detect electromagnetic radiation--x-rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, and microwaves are all examples. The higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelenght. The shorter the wavelength, the smaller the thing you can resolve, or sense. Thus, faster chips let you see smaller things. At 192 GHZ, this chip should provide a new level of sensing functionality and new applications that were previously impossible to do.

Friday, January 13, 2006

US Troops In Iran Now

Democracy Now! | Seymour Hersh: U.S. Conducting Covert Operations in Iran For Possible Military Strike
I almost lost a bet this year--a bet that I was hoping that I'd loose. In late 2003, I made a bet with a few friends that we'd have US troops in Iran before the end of 2005. When we got back from New Years, It looked like I owed folks lunch. However, given the above link, it looks like I might be in the money....We will have to wait a little while longer for confirmation, but it looks like Pentagon troops are already in Iran scoping out targets.