By Soulskill from
Slashdot's petaflops-for-megabucks department:
aarondubrow writes:
As supercomputing becomes central to the work and progress of researchers in all fields, new kinds of computing resources and more inclusive modes of interaction are required. The National Science Foundation announced $16M in awards to support two new supercomputing acquisitions for the open science community. The systems — "Bridges" at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and "Jetstream," co-located at the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute and The University of Texas at Austin's Texas Advanced Computing Center — respond to the needs of the scientific computing community for more high-end, large-scale computing resources while helping to create a more inclusive computing environment for science and engineering.Reader 1sockchuck adds this article about why funding for the development of supercomputers is more important than ever:
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's it's-marketing-all-the-way-down department:
antdude points out a story at ZDNet about
how the naming of security vulnerabilities and exploits has evolved into branding and awareness campaigns. Heartbleed set the trend early this year, having a distinct name and logo to represent a serious security problem. It seemed to work; the underlying bug got massive exposure, even in the mainstream media. This raises a new set of issues — should the response to the disclosure of a vulnerability be dependent on how catchy its name is? No, but it probably will be.
Heartbleed charmed the public, and in a way, it was designed to do so. By comparison Shellshock, POODLE (aka clumsy "Poodlebleed"), Sandworm, the secretively named Rootpipe, Winshock, and other vulns seem like proverbial "red headed stepchildren" — despite the fact that each of these vulns are critical issues, some are worse than Heartbleed, and all of which needed fast responses. The next "big bug" after Heartbleed was Shellshock — real name CVE-2014-6271. Shellshock didn't have a company's pocketbook or marketing team behind it. So, despite the fact that many said Shellshock was worse than Heartbleed (rated high on severity but low on complexity, making it easy for attackers), creating a celebrity out of Shellshock faced an uphill climb.Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's working-to-end-eternal-september department:
New submitter
lx76 writes:
The International Telecommunications Union does research on telecommunications in society worldwide, from cellphones to internet use. Since 2009, on a yearly basis, they've released their research findings in a report called the Measuring Information Society Report. This year's report is over 200 pages long, illustrated with abundant graphs and tables (PDF). It's not a light read. But one of the interesting numbers is an index showing the divide in global connectivity. From the report: "Over the past year, the world witnessed continued growth in the uptake of ICT [Information and
Communication Technology] and, by end 2014, almost 3 billion people will be using the Internet, up from 2.7 billion at end 2013..... Despite this encouraging progress, there are important digital divides that need to be addressed: 4.3 billion people are still not online, and 90 per cent of them live in the developing world."
The report continues, "As this report finds, ICT performance is better in countries with higher shares of the population living in urban areas, where access to ICT infrastructure, usage and skills is more favorable. Yet it is precisely in poor and rural areas where ICTs can make a particularly significant impact." Projects like Google's Project Loon have their work cut out for them."Read Replies (0)
By Soulskill from
Slashdot's there's-an-app-for-everything-these-days department:
rossgneumann writes:
Terry Davis, a schizophrenic programmer, has spent 10 years building an operating system to talk to God. He's done this work because God told him to. According to the TempleOS charter, it is "God's official temple. Just like Solomon's temple, this is a community focal point where offerings are made and God's oracle is consulted." [The TempleOS V2.17 welcome screen] greets the user with a riot of 16-color, scrolling, blinking text; depending on your frame of reference, it might recall DESQview, the Commodore 64, or a host of early DOS-based graphical user interfaces. In style if not in specifics, it evokes a particular era, a time when the then-new concept of "personal computing" necessarily meant programming and tinkering and breaking things.Read Replies (0)