What computers can do these days
If true, this is both interesting and frightening:
At a research center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, agency scientists and engineers are building super computers capable of running at exaflop speed–that’s one million, trillion operations per second. Very useful in performing complex tasks, such as logging and categorizing every phone call dialed in America every day (emphasis ours), or performing brute force calculations required to break advanced encryption systems.
By some accounts, NSA has already achieved an incredible breakthrough in computer speed, creating machines in the 10-20 petaflop range, optimized for code-breaking. Others suggest the agency isn’t quite there yet, opining that the new Utah Data Center is being built to store vast amounts of information until the next generation of NSA computers can begin plumbing its voluminous haul.
Orwell was a brilliant guy with a great imagination, and his “telescreen” was a chilling concept and image. Remember, also, that his book was titled 1984. If he had written 2013 instead, he might have come up with something more computer-oriented.
One thing, though, that I object to in the above quote is the word “dialed.” Vanishingly few phone calls in the US today are “dialed.”
I work in the department that works on one of the many Minerva super computers…
there is one in nottingham, more than one in ny, and a few elsewhere.
ClusterVision Partners to Deploy Minerva Supercomputer at the University of Nottingham
“The Minerva system comprises 2 redundant master nodes; Dell PowerEdge R720’s, with a single master node shared storage provided by the 2U 12 disk Dell PowerVault MD3200. The compute capacity is shared between 156 Dell PowerEdge nodes, arranged in Dell C6220 servers, with 12 high memory fast I/O nodes also in Dell 6220’s, and 6 additional GPU accelerated nodes. Originally designed using C6100 servers, the Dell compute node specification was subsequently upgraded to Dell PowerEdge C6620’s which were introduced as a vehicle for the latest Intel Xeon E5 Sandy Bridge processors. Each 2.6 Ghz compute unit contains a 500 GB local disk. The fast I/O nodes have 500 GB SATA and 4 100 GB SSD’s and are designed specifically for the high intensity needs of the applications. The 6 GPU accelerated nodes comprise a Supermicro base chassis, also incorporating the 8-core Intel Xeon E5 processor, together with 2 Tesla M2090 series GPU’s from NVIDIA.”
right now, the thing i am working on (ON MY OWN FOR FUN) is a proof that french flag morphogenesis is wrong, which i have pointed out why for years. but now there was a paper that came out a week or two ago, that would allow me to tie my mathematical work (for which i get no credit and can never have a raise and so on), with that paper.
its a artificvial life simulation using cellular automata basis, and self organizes without any directives. not even being able to detect a gradient change in morphogen across their own bodies!!!
its almost finished… then i can throw it away
as i am not authorized to think
i am when they want that, but then i am erased.
i have lots of such stuff.
but being autistic, i cant have raises, promotions, no one defends me, and everyone uses me…
or as my friend says
the beatings will continue till your happy
One thing, though, that I object to in the above quote is the word “dialed.” Vanishingly few phone calls in the US today are “dialed.”
so you dont want to listen to records either?
how about q-tips instead of sanitary swaps?
you say kotex, despite it being a napkin
i can list a few thousand if you want
what computers do today is not as amazing as in the past. today, they are no where near where they should be with them, and ist mostly because the well is ideologically tainted. so they dont want the best solution, they want the comfortable soliution theyc an call best.
not the same thing
not to mention that collectivism keeps putting gatekeeprs in place to make up for their lack of ability
so the place i worked for, sat on a patent for big data before big data was coined (the same thing above that your commenting on the NSA). and the Chinese took it…. (its at BGI now).
by sitting on the patent for 5 years, they insured that the things they were working on would not have competition from themselves…
the design can go faster than the design your talking above…
we computed that i could sift through and index all the information mankind has created and do so in less than 6 months…
they cant come near that
we computed that i could locate the SNPs of 1,000,000 genomes in less than a month.
ventner is using 60,000 computers to do that over a decade or more..
its disruptive tech
but i am the wrong color and sex, and have no ties
so i am not allowed to think or participate.
I am just to be comfortable and be erased and not participate. otherwise, those wealthy peoples kids may have to compete with me for work instead of them having it all, and my family being exterminated by circumstances i cant change…
artfldgr:
Oh, I use plenty of those “archaic” words myself. I just thought it odd and worthy of note that in a passage that describes such new technology the old word was used.
“Logging and categorizing” reminds me of Stalin’s rule: It’s not the votes that count, it is who counts the votes.
Categorizing? Whose categories? Who categorizes?
Neo,
Just wait till your phone can read your thoughts so you won’t even have to push buttons.
Years ago, I read an article which stated that the NSA had boxcars of intercepted Soviet communications that were waiting for improved code breaking technology.
NSA could again be warehousing data for future advances in codebreaking.
One thing, though, that I object to in the above quote is the word “dialed.” Vanishingly few phone calls in the US today are “dialed.”
What’s the term, then? “Punched”? “Pressed”?
dicentra:
We could be safe and use the generic “made” or “placed.” Those are the words I would use.
If we want to get more technical, we could say “entered” or even “keyed.”
“Dialed” has a nice nostalgic retro quality, though, doesn’t it? I wonder what percentage of the population alive today even remembers what it felt like to dial: the resistance of the dial, the little holes in which the dialing finger went, the sound made as the dial returned to its original position, the lengthy wait while it did, and the efforts some made (me, for example) to rush it along on its journey by pulling it back to the starting position.