Ranger—the most powerful computing system in the world for open scientific research—entered full production on 4 February at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin, U.S.

With 62,976 microprocessor cores, Ranger is 50,000 times more powerful than today’s PCs and is now the largest computing resource on the U.S.-wide Teragrid.

Ranger set to fuel new era of scientific discovery

Think you’ve seen it all? Think again.

The vast majority of the universe is missing: invisible matter is predicted to outnumber visible matter by nearly six-to-one, but if that’s true...where is it all?

Physicists working on the Collider Detector at Fermilab are asking themselves the same question, using grid computing to pump new power in to the search for an elusive Bs particle decay.

Think you’ve seen it all? Think again.

ast week the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate announced the creation of a strategic relationship with Google Inc. and IBM.

The Cluster Exploratory (CluE) relationship will enable the academic research community to conduct experiments and test new theories and ideas using a large-scale, massively distributed computing cluster.

“Access to the Google-IBM academic cluster via the CluE program will provide the academic community with the opportunity to do research in data-intensive computing and to explore powerful new applications,” said Jeannette Wing, assistant director at NSF for CISE. “It can also serve as a tool for educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.”

“Google is proud to partner with the National Science Foundation to provide computing resources to the academic research community,” said Stuart Feldman, vice president of engineering at Google Inc. “It is our hope that research conducted using this cluster will allow researchers across many fields to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by large-scale, distributed computing.”

“Extending the Google/IBM academic program with the National Science Foundation should accelerate research on Internet-scale computing and drive innovation to fuel the applications of the future,” said Willy Chiu, vice president of IBM Software Strategy and High Performance On Demand Solutions. “IBM is pleased to be collaborating with the NSF on this project.”

Google and IBM created the cluster of approximately 1600 processors in October of last year to give the academic community access to otherwise prohibitively expensive resources.

While the timeline for releasing the formal request for proposals to the academic community is still being developed, NSF anticipates being able to support 10 to 15 research projects in the first year of the program, and will likely expand the number of projects in the future.

NSF partners with Google and IBM

Core Dump hahah

Geek Pub

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As if an inbox jam-packed with email ads for organ-enlargement and weight-loss products was not bad enough, now VoIP users can look forward to becoming a brand-new target. Slowly but surely, spammers are adding SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony) to their bags of tricks. Warned Terrence Brewton, a Frost & Sullivan market analyst, “SPIT is an evolving threat that will come on par with the prevalence of spam, all because of the VoIP products we’re now seeing in homes and the commercial marketplace.”
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More than simply an annoyance, SPIT’s real-time impact on a network “ ... creates business risks because it opens up companies to denial-of-service attacks like any other IP-based system,” said Brewton. What’s more, SPIT can consume bandwidth, thereby diminishing call quality and reducing employee productivity.

While it’s true that SPIT is still quite rare, VoIP’s growing popularity is certain to make its presence more widespread. Fortunately, there are steps that companies can take to combat SPIT.

VoIP Spam Is Called SPIT: It’s the same junk you’re used to with email, but it takes up to 10 times more bandwidth.

Sprint's recent troubles have made plenty of investors and subscribers uneasy, which has led to a number of acquisition-related rumors and highly speculative analysis. Here are three:

Sprint to spin-off Nextel

According to a Seeking Alpha report, Sprint Nextel has hired Morgan Stanley to implement board director Ralph Whitworth's plan to spin-off Nextel. Rumor has it the spin-off will be announced within the next two to four weeks. Most of Sprint's trouble can be traced back to the Nextel acquisition in the first place.

T-Mobile may acquire Sprint

Merrill Lynch analysts told the Kansas City Star today that Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile USA, might be considering a takeover of Sprint in an attempt to prevent a price war between the mobile carriers. Sprint's low share price and the weakness of the U.S. dollar both favor the European company, but Merrill Lynch said it is not privy to any inside information--it's just speculating.

Should Verizon buy Sprint?

Last week the Wall Street Journal's deals blog considered whether Verizon should acquire Sprint. The post brings up Verizon's stellar decision not to make a bid for Sprint back in 2004.

What do you think? Do any of these ring true?

Sprint's troubles inspire rumor mill

oday we tell the forgotten story of the first pager.

Although a few cities had pager-like devices for their police and firefighters as early as 1921, ordinary citizens couldn't use them. The creator of the first commercial pager service was Sherman C. Amsden (1889-1958), a native of Michigan who served as a U.S. Army Air Force pilot in both world wars.

One night in the early 1920s, Amsden had a family emergency and needed his doctor immediately, but the physician couldn't be reached; the doctor was not in his office and he couldn't afford a secretary to answer his phone. This experience inspired Amsden, then living in New York City, to start one of the first telephone answering companies, Telanserphone. Originally intended just for doctors, here's how the Telanserphone service worked: A subscriber who expected to be away from his telephone (playing golf, seeing a movie, taking a shower, etc.) would notify Telanserphone. If anyone called during the subscriber's absence, a Telanserphone operator would write down a message. The subscriber could then call the company at any time or from any location to hear the messages he missed.

Click to see more.
Click the image above to see drawings of Amsden's pager.

Amsden's next idea, which seems so ordinary in the present era of wireless technology, was in fact brilliantly creative. Instead of requiring subscribers to call Telanserphone to find out if they received messages, Amsden wanted a way to alert subscribers that they had messages. Working with inventor Richard R. Florac (1901-1991), Amsden developed the first commercially available pager. The pager was offered to his company's subscribers for a fee of $11.50 a month.

Here's how it worked. Every Telanserphone subscriber with a pager was assigned a three-digit code number. When a Telanserphone operator took a message for a subscriber, the company would play a voice-recording of that subscriber's code number on the company's high-frequency radio transmitter. The code number, perhaps recorded on magnetic tape, would be repeatedly played on a loop, along with all the other code numbers of subscribers with messages waiting at Telanserphone. Each pager was basically just a small battery-powered radio receiver locked onto the Telanserphone frequency, so when the subscriber held the pager up to his ear he would listen for his code number to know whether a message was waiting for him.

On October 15, 1950, a doctor became the first person to receive a pager signal from Telanserphone.

Amsden started a new company, Aircall, Inc., for his pager business. Within two years, Aircall had 400 subscribers, including doctors, salesmen, detectives, plumbers and undertakers

really cool... looks like there are some small battery powered tubes....

Richard Florac - First Pager, Early Portable FM Radios

When T-Mobile began selling Apple's iPhone in Germany last fall, a legal skirmish ensued, forcing the wireless carrier to sell it untethered to a contract--at $1,460, no less. T-Mobile eventually persuaded a court that the two-year contract was legal.

Now that same kind of European rule would be imported into the United States--meaning AT&T would be legally required to sell a contract-free iPhone--if a new Democratic proposal in the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law.

Sponsored by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a congressman who serves as chairman of a House telecommunications and Internet panel, it's similar to but somewhat more sweeping than a bill proposed in the Senate last year. His subcommittee has scheduled a hearing on the plan for Wednesday morning.

The draft legislation says every mobile provider "shall offer to consumers the opportunity to purchase subsidy-free wireless customer equipment."

The emergence of the 27-page draft bill (PDF), called the Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act, underscores what is apparently growing concern among congressional Democrats during this session with what they seem to view as insufficiently flexible, forthcoming dealings among wireless carriers and their customers.

Both bills would direct the Federal Communications Commission to establish a number of new rules for wireless carriers. Among other things, those companies would have to give abundant disclosure to their customers about their rate plans in a "clear, plain, and conspicuous manner," breaking out the cost of everything from early termination fees to state and local taxes for the customer.

Carriers would also be obligated to devise more detailed maps of their network coverage areas. And they'd have to permit customers to cancel a contract for any reason without penalty within the first 30 days and to prorate any fees associated with leaving a contract early.

Unlike the Senate bill, Markey's proposal would also dictate that wireless carriers offer customers the choice of buying a wireless service plan with no early termination fee.

Read on! I think that wireless carriers will go to a "service only" model and let the cell phone makers "make" the phones... Verizon is headed that way and Sprint is almost in trouble due to $$$$*ching*$$$$ issues...

So let it be known that the cell company(s) need to start CYA....

:)

Democratic bill could force Apple, AT&T to unlock iPhone

Locals in a North Yorkshire village are demanding that satnav companies remove from their databases a rural track recommended by in-car systems as a plausible route from Swaledale to Wensleydale, the BBC reports.

The problem is, the road is unsurfaced and runs alongside a 100ft cliff over which, the concerned villagers reckon, someone will eventually plummet. Carol Porter and hubby Steven, who live beside the carriageway of potential death, have been using their tractor to extricate bogged-down vehicles at the rate of one a week. More seriously, some drivers who are unable to progress attempt a reversing manoeuvre "perilously close to the cliff edge".

I worked for years as a driver for a company and I have to say that I would have loved satnav but nothing beats knowing where the hell your going ....

Crackpot satnav route leads to 100ft cliff

I believe that companies which attempt to have non-techies handling their security risk management, will end up in trouble.

Considering the recent hurricane. While the professional politicians and news analyts are playing the blame game, one major factor to the damage was the failure of the levy system....

The levy system was supposed to be able to withstand only a category 3 hurricane. (If even that, due to lack of maintenance.)

One could argue that it was risk management at work. The odds of a cat 5 hitting New Orleans is so small, why not take that risk? (The downside is that one did hit and the total damage in insured property greatly outweigh the cost of building the levy system to take a cat 5 hurricane.)

I agree that you can't call wolf at every perceived risk. But how can a "business type" manage these risks if they really don't understand the potential damage that can occur?

Ian

There might be a few dissenters over the risk of a cat5 storm hitting the gulf coast... If we remember correctly, it was flagged as one of three serious threats to the US at the start of Dubya's terms in office. The other two, you ask? Oh, a terror attack in New York and a big quake in California. Two outta three, and still time to go...

Securing the world for lost, bio-diesel car drivers