The NCSA held a community day yesterday at their new National Petascale Computing Facility located in Champaign, IL which will be the home of the Blue Waters Sustained Petascale Computing super-computer amongst other super computers. When the new hardware comes online next year it will be the world's fastest super-computer yet, powered by IBM's POWER7 systems. With the rest of … [Read more...]
Archives for 2010
WordPress 3.0 Final is Available
WordPress 3.0 Final has been released and as the engine behind 404 Tech Support, I'm interested in their progress. Dubbed "Thelonious" it's gone through 3 different release candidate versions so hopefully it's well-polished now and plugins have had time to update. 3.0 has been worked on for half a year and includes "1,217 bug fixes and feature enhancements". Big new features … [Read more...]
The Backlash for Computer Security Experts
It seems to happen every 6 months or so: Technology companies get mad at security researchers and the terms that get thrown around a lot are 'responsible disclosure'. We just so happen to be in another one of those situations where more than one incident has occurred recently. Last week, a Google employed researcher went public with information regarding a vulnerability he had … [Read more...]
Good in Theory, Poor Execution: A/C in the Home Office
This is one of those occasions where I get to tell you that I was wrong. I tried something and it failed. In theory it was sound, would have saved energy, and improved comfort. The plan was to add a window air conditioner in my office at home. With the weather we've already had before even getting to the hot summer months, it sounded like an ideal setup. Unfortunately, like … [Read more...]
Book Review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, the co-editor of the popular site boingboing.net, is a work of fiction for young adults (and even us adults) that was on the New York Times best-seller list for seven weeks. Although a fictional account of the events after an event similar to 9-11, the story relates to those interested in IT security very readily. Deeply embroiled as a political … [Read more...]