] You Searched For: itanium
]
] Your search has been rewritten from: "itanium" to "titanium"

Dell - Search - All Dell.com

] While Intel prepared to deliver thousands of Itanium 2
] processors, SGI's manufacturing facility in Chippewa
] Falls, Wis. braced itself for a hectic summer and fall.
] "The thought of building a 10,240-processor system in a
] little over three months was something, especially since
] we still had to meet our normal manufacturing pace," said
] Dick Harkness, vice president of Manufacturing
] Operations, SGI. "While quite the challenge, we had every
] confidence that we could meet it."

One more -- this represents 10% of the Itanium2 processors Intel expects to sell this year. One computer.

NASA, SGI and Intel Build and Deploy 'Columbia' in Record Time: New Supercomputer World's Most Powerful

] Varadarajan predicted IBM's new partially built Blue
] Gene/L prototype will come out on top (at about 36
] teraflops), followed by Japan's Earth Simulator (35.8
] teraflops), NASA's new Columbia (about 19.5 teraflops),
] Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Thunder (about
] 19 teraflops) and Los Alamos National Laboratory's Asci Q
] (13.8 teraflops).

Except that Columbia just clocked in at 42.7 teraflops.

Same poor situation for System X though.

Wired News: System X Faster, but Falls Behind

] MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --
] Silicon Graphics (NYSE: SGI - News) with NASA today
] confirmed that NASA's new Intel® Itanium® 2
] processor-based Columbia supercomputer is the most
] powerful computer in the world. Only days after NASA
] completed installation of Columbia -- and using just 16
] of Columbia's 20 installed systems -- the new
] supercomputer achieved sustained performance of 42.7
] trillion calculations per second (teraflops), eclipsing
] the performance of every supercomputer operating today.

So this was the October suprise of supercomputing; the expectations were much lower for this. Wow. SGI at #1? Itanium2? Huh.

NASA's Columbia Supercomputer Is World's Fastest

] Doghouse: Merced County
]
] Merced County is in California, and they explained why
] they chose electronic voting machines Election Systems &
] Software (ES&S). There are a bunch of vague selection
] criteria, but this one is quite explicit: "Uses 1,064 bit
] encryption, not 128 which is less secure."
]
] I am simply too appalled to comment further.

This kind of material is almost certainly better for a blog.

Schneier on Security: Doghouse: Merced County

] A devil-worshipping sailor in the Royal Navy has become
] the first registered Satanist in the British Armed
] Forces.

Good for England.

CNN.com - Royal Navy to allow devil worship - Oct 24, 2004

] Total Undergraduate Students: 5,347
] Computer/Student Ratio: 9:100

Wow is this off. The checklist is wrong on at least 7 items. The ratio is wrong by, oh, 91:100 or more. Weird. Someone at CMU drop the ball on giving them timely answers? Do they just not know what is here?

(ex: Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? NO)

On the other hand, maybe the computer club should talk to the administration about how many of these services /they/ "can" provide.

Forbes.com: Most Connected Campuses 2004

] BOSTON (AP) -- A 21-year-old college student died
] Thursday of a head injury after a clash between police
] and a crowd of Red Sox fans who poured into the streets
] outside Fenway Park to celebrate their team's victory
] over the New York Yankees.
]
] Victoria Snelgrove, a journalism major at Emerson College
] in Boston, was shot in the eye by a projectile fired by
] an officer on crowd-control duty. The nature of the
] projectile was not immediately identified but officers
] were armed with weapons meant to be non-lethal.

SI.com - MLB - Student dies celebrating Red Sox's ALCS victory - Thursday October 21, 2004 4:35PM

] Diplomats and State Department employees will be issued
] the new passports as early as January, while other
] citizens applying for new passports will get the new
] version starting in the spring.

So if you're going to get a new passport and don't feel comfortable with this... act now.

Wired News: American Passports to Get Chipped

] It has happened many times in history that new systems
] will come along and, instead of obliterating the old,
] will surround and encapsulate them and work in symbiosis
] with them but otherwise pretty much leave them alone
] (think mitochondria) and sometimes I get the feeling that
] something similar is happening with these two literary
] worlds. The fact that we are having a discussion like
] this one on a forum such as Slashdot is Exhibit A.

Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor