Geeks for Christ

There are limos and there are limos and then there is the presidential limo (I should make that Presidential). This is the one that will carry the new president and, believe me, it is not like other limos.

Known in the Secret Service as “The Beast,” the customized Cadillac limousine is thought to be built on General Motors’ hefty 2500-series truck chassis. The Secret Service, of course, does not give you a spec sheet or much other information on The Beast, other than to say a new one is being put in service for Barack Obama.

There are some glimmers of information, however, in a New York Times piece by Gregg D. Merksamer, who says he has spent 30 years studying and writing about presidential cars, part of a class called “professional cars,” which also includes hearses and ambulances. Suffice to say that the limo is essentially a gussied-up and lavishly comfortable armored personnel carrier with, it is rumored, five-inch-thick windows and armor plating throughout.

December 7, 2008

The London Daily Telegraph reports: “The world’s first personal supercomputer, which is 250 times faster than the average PC, has been unveiled.

With its £4,000 price tag, the Tesla supercomputer is beyond the reach of most consumers, but is expected to revolutionise the way scientists and medical professionals carry out their work.

The gadget’s power will allow doctors to process the results of brain and body scans much more quickly. This would allow them to tell patients within hours instead of days whether they have a tumour.

Scientists also believe that the supercomputers could help them discover cures for diseases, such as cancer and malaria, much more quickly than using traditional research methods.

This is because the device lets them run hundreds of thousands of simulations to create a shortlist of the drugs that are most likely to offer the potential for a cure.

Until now, supercomputers were massive systems made up of thousands of machines taking up entire rooms, which cost millions of pounds to build and maintain.

By contrast, Tesla personal supercomputers will cost between £4,000 and £8,000 and look much like an ordinary PC.

David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA, the American company which has designed the new technology, said: ‘Pretty much anything that you do on your PC that takes a lot of time can be accelerated with this.’

‘These supercomputers can improve the time it takes to process information by 1,000 times.

‘If you imagine it takes a week to get a result [from running an experiment], you can only do it 52 times a year. If it takes you minutes, you can do it constantly, and learn just as much in a day.’

The new computers make innovative use of graphics processing units – a technological breakthrough, which the company claims could bring lightning speeds to the next generation of home computers.

They went on sale to British customers yesterday and will initially be sold to universities and to the scientific and research community.

The PC maker Dell, however, said that it would soon be mass producing them for the general consumer market…”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/3564435/Worlds-first-personal-supercomputer-unveiled.html

December 7, 2008

The London Daily Telegraph reports: “The world’s first personal supercomputer, which is 250 times faster than the average PC, has been unveiled.

With its £4,000 price tag, the Tesla supercomputer is beyond the reach of most consumers, but is expected to revolutionise the way scientists and medical professionals carry out their work.

The gadget’s power will allow doctors to process the results of brain and body scans much more quickly. This would allow them to tell patients within hours instead of days whether they have a tumour.

Scientists also believe that the supercomputers could help them discover cures for diseases, such as cancer and malaria, much more quickly than using traditional research methods.

This is because the device lets them run hundreds of thousands of simulations to create a shortlist of the drugs that are most likely to offer the potential for a cure.

Until now, supercomputers were massive systems made up of thousands of machines taking up entire rooms, which cost millions of pounds to build and maintain.

By contrast, Tesla personal supercomputers will cost between £4,000 and £8,000 and look much like an ordinary PC.

David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA, the American company which has designed the new technology, said: ‘Pretty much anything that you do on your PC that takes a lot of time can be accelerated with this.’

‘These supercomputers can improve the time it takes to process information by 1,000 times.

‘If you imagine it takes a week to get a result [from running an experiment], you can only do it 52 times a year. If it takes you minutes, you can do it constantly, and learn just as much in a day.’

The new computers make innovative use of graphics processing units – a technological breakthrough, which the company claims could bring lightning speeds to the next generation of home computers.

They went on sale to British customers yesterday and will initially be sold to universities and to the scientific and research community.

The PC maker Dell, however, said that it would soon be mass producing them for the general consumer market…”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/3564435/Worlds-first-personal-supercomputer-unveiled.html

The company, Element Four, has developed a machine that it hopes will become the first mainstream household appliance to have been invented since the microwave. Their creation, the WaterMill, uses the electricity of about three light bulbs to condense moisture from the air and purify it into clean drinking water.

The machine went on display this weekend in the Flatiron district of Manhattan, hosted by Wired magazine at its annual showcase of the latest gizmos its editors believe could change the world. From the outside, the mill looks like a giant golf ball that has been chopped in half: it is about 3ft in diameter, made of white plastic, and is attached to the wall.

It works by drawing air through filters to remove dust and particles, then cooling it to just below the temperature at which dew forms. The condensed water is passed through a self-sterilising chamber that uses microbe-busting UV light to eradicate any possibility of Legionnaires’ disease or other infections. Finally, it is filtered and passed through a pipe to the owner’s fridge or kitchen tap.