Archive for '800HighTech'

Sun and the Texas Advanced Computing Center recently unveiled a new supercomputer dubbed ‘Ranger,’ that can process 500 teraflops or 500 trillion floating point instructions per second.

The 500 teraflops of power will enable Ranger to process simulations and computations beyond anything we have seen before. This ability will give way to scientific breakthroughs and economic growth in all areas of society from weather forecasting to astrophysics.

Sun Constellation Linux Cluster

System Name: Ranger
Host Name: ranger.tacc.utexas.edu
IP Address: 129.114.50.163
Operating System: Linux
Number of Nodes: 3,936
Number of Processing Cores: 62,976
Total Memory: 123TB
Peak Performance: 504TFlops
Total Disk: 1.73PB (shared); 31.4TB (local)

The Ranger is based on Sun’s Constellation System which ushers in the new era of “petascale” computing in which high performance supercomputers approach one petaflop (one quadrillion floating point instructions) per second.

Using petascale architecture reduces switching elements by a factor of 300, cabling by a factor of six, and system footprint by up to 20%.Director, Texas Advanced Computing Center, Jay Boisseau says,

“Without a doubt, Ranger is the most powerful general-purpose supercomputing system for research ever.”

At the heart of Ranger are 72 Sun Fire X4500 storage servers, each with 48 500GB drives, yielding 1.7 petabytes of raw storage capacity and125 terabytes (TB) of memory.

Ranger also links two Sun Datacenter Switch 3456s, the world’s fastest InfiniBand switch to achieve an aggregate bandwidth of up to 110 terabits.

The system’s ultra-dense unibody chassis saves about 500 lbs. per rack when compared with traditional chassis and rack combinations. It also gives you 50 percent more compute power than its nearest competitor from HP, and 71 percent more than an IBM rack.

Check out these great Sony Vaio concept designs that have been popping up on the net, they are certainly a step a head of the iMac concept designs we featured in January’s posts (click here to read iMac Concept Designs).

Although not official, these new Sony Vaio concept designs are really worth a mention. They feature a holographic glass screen that can go transparent and a keyboard that turns opaque when turned off.

Some of technology featured here is a way from being mastered to really perform well but the designs are certainly an interesting peek of things to come. Perhaps Sony will think about taking these ideas on board for their future range of Vaio laptops.

Sony Viao Laptop Computer Notebooks Finance

The revolutionary F-117 Night Hawk, the worlds first attack aircraft to employ stealth technology, is scheduled to be retired at the end of this month.

‘The Black Jet’ with its futurist angular design has spent a wholesome 27 years serving as part of the airforce’s arsenal, secretly patrolling hostile skies from Serbia to Iraq. This will all come to an end on April 22nd when the last F-117’s are scheduled to arrive at their final destination, Tonopah Test Range Airfield in Nevada, the site where the jet made its first flight in 1981.

Last month the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which previously managed the F-117 program, had an informal private retirement ceremony with military leaders, base employees and representatives from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The last of the F-117’s will now fly to Palmdale, California, for one more retirement ceremony on April 21st, before making their final flight to Holloman.

Fifty-nine F-117s were made; 10 were retired in December 2006 and 27 since then, the Air Force said. Seven of the planes have crashed, one in Serbia in 1999.The technology which led to the development of the F-117 was designed back in the 1970’s and although it was not invisible to radar, the shape and coating of the F-117’s design greatly reduced its detection.

The single-seat aircraft was designed to fly into heavily defended areas undetected to drop its payloads with surgical precision.

Since the F-117 went operational a total of 558 pilots have flown the jet. Each pilot is then dubbed a ‘bandit’ each with their own bandit number. Feest, ‘Bandit 261′, was the first to lead the stealth fighter on missions into Iraq during Desert Storm in 1991.

He said the fire from surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft guns was so intense that he stopped looking at it to try to ease his fears,

“We knew stealth worked and it would take a lucky shot to hit us, but we knew a lucky shot could hit us at any time,”

Incredibly, not one stealth was hit during those missions,

The Air Force decided to accelerate the retirement of the F-117s to free up money to modernize the rest of the fleet. The F-117 is being replaced by the F-22 Raptor, which also has stealth technology.

With most of the population owning a cell phone, the numbers of text messages flying around the airwaves has drastically increased over the last 5 years. And with spammers try to expand their audience, text messages have become fertile territory for malicious spam adverts.

Estimates vary greatly regarding the exact percentage of spam text’s out there, however Clouldmark - a San Francisco company that makes anti-spam software for carriers – claim that the problem is on the increase with numbers expected to quadruple by the end of the year.

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The Optimus Maximus keyboard is one of its kind. At first glance it looks like a standard keyboard, nothing too flashy going on, just a nice simple design with pleasing lines. But upon closer inspection you will see that each and every button on the Optimus Maximus keyboard is actually a tiny display screen that uses OLED technology.

Each button consists of a moving cap, a microchip and a display which shows the current function assigned to the key.

To help extend the lifetime of the buttons and to cut down on vulnerable wires, the OLED display is fixed in the transparent cap, this means replacing a key is as easy as it would be on a standard keyboard, perhaps with one exception…the cost.

Optimus’s customizable layout enables the use of any language — Cyrillic, Ancient Greek, Georgian, Arabic, Quenya, hiragana, etc. — as well as any other characters: notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions etc.

The included configurator software enables the user to program each button and the image displayed and once everything is set up, you can switch between layouts with ease.

To run the Optimus Maximus you’ll need Windows XP, Vista or Mac OSX 10.4.8 or higher, at least 20 MB of hard disk space, at least 256MB of RAM and the $400+ it costs to buy one.

The OLED technology used in the keyboard is still an expensive alternative to a standard keyboard however; OLED screens are theoretically cheaper to produce in the long-run compared to regular LCD screens.

There are also other advantages over LCD. OLED screens can be as thin as a human hair, they can produce light without the need for a back-light, the can be bent and transferred to fabric, they have a greater range of color and the image quality is equally as good.

The main disadvantage is the lifetime of the OLED is very limited, almost 10 times shorter than LCD. But, according to experts it will only be a matter of time before the technology is improved and these types of displays will be found on many devices from laptops to revolutionary new ‘multi-use newspapers’ or video screens embedded in clothing.

Check out the video to see the OLED keys in action!!!

Stumble Upon is a collaborative web search tool that utilizes a growing Stumble Upon community to help you cut down on Googling and get better directed to what you are looking for.

Developed by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd,“StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences.”

This web search tool comes in the form of a browser add-on which can be found for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Click Here To Download StumbleUpon

How StumbleUpon Works

StumbleUpon finds a new site every time you click the ‘stumble!’ button; once you find a page that you like, you can rate the page by giving it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down.’

The pages which StumbleUpon send your way are based on your ratings of previous pages, as well as ratings from your friends and other users with similar interests. In this way, websites with great content get recommend for the next user by real people – not heartless machines.

The StumbleUpon community is extremely large and continuing to grow. In July 2006 StumbleUpon had around 1 million users and as of December 2007, the community had grown to over 4 million. The rising number of the stumble upon community was something that eBay noticed back in May 07 when they acquired StumbleUpon for a whopping $75,000,000 (75 million) USD.

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The highly anticipated MacBook Air hit finally stores earlier this year and for most Mac fans, it really does live up to expectations.

With all the press the MacBook Air is getting, it wasn’t going to be long before we at 800HighTech managed to make these available on finance for all Military Service Members and Civilian DoD’s regardless of past debt or bad credit history.

MacBook Air Now Available On Finance From 800HighTech

So why all the hype? For starters the MacBook Air has managed to cram a powerful 1.6GHz (or optional 1.8GHz) Intel Core 2 Duo processor, an 80GB hard disk (or optional 64GB solid-state drive) and Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor into an extremely slim line casing measuring just 0.16 to 0.76 inches, whilst at the same time, still offering the comfort of a full sized backlit keyboard as well as a large 13.3 inch screen.

A couple of things you will immediately notice about the slim design is the absence of an optical disk drive and the reduction of video and audio in’s and out’s. As standard the MacBook Air only comes with a DVI output (which can also support VGA by the use of an included adaptor), one USB port and an audio out. This may seem like a drastic measure to save space but Apple have done their best to compensate for this by incorporating remote disk technology (keep reading for more information about MacBook Air’s remote disk technology works).

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Asus are all set to release the big brother of the popular 7 inch Eee PC. The new larger model referred to as the Eee PC 900 (not confirmed) will boast a slightly higher spec as well as some great new features.

The Eee PC was a big hit for Asus, being voted the “The Most Wanted Christmas Gift” by American Amazon.com and CNet, as well as winning a prestigious award at the International CES Innovations Design and Engineering Awards for 2008, it was inevitable that Asus would develop a bigger more powerful machine.Recently unveiled at CeBIT 2008 the new Eee PC 900 seems to have kept the same basic concept as its smaller counterpart, adding a slight specification upgrade and just enough new features to keep you happy.

ASUS promises the screen will display a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution and specs will be upgraded to 1G of memory, a larger storage of up to 12GB and wider 8.9-inch screen. There is also the addition of a “multi-finger gesture input” trackpad, which will provide the ability to zoom in and out as well as allowing for two-finger scrolling similar to the pad found on Macs.

The Eee PC will be compatible with both Linux and Windows although the Windows version is set to retail at nearly twice the price. Here we really notice the cost benefits of open source software.The Eee Pc is set to release in the summer, will retail for around 399 (Linux OS), making it reasonably priced depending on the choice of hard drive space.

Are you a military member looking for the best laptops and computers available on the market, but do not have the cash to buy one? Apply for financing and receive the most popular electronics direct to your barracks - Even Before Your First Payment! Low monthly payments and Zero Money Down - Regardless of Bad Credit History.

The newest version of the Guitar Hero series hit the stores late last year and has been causing a storm ever since. Developed by Neversoft and Aspyr Media, and published by Activision and RedOctane, Legends of Rock is the third full installment in the Guitar Hero series and the fourth title overall.

The game is available for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac platforms. Xbox 360, Wii, and Playstation 3 users can also connect online to rock out with others anywhere in the world.As with the previous Guitar Hero games, the player can use standard controllers or a new wireless guitar-shaped controller specially designed for the game.

The gameplay in Guitar Hero 3 remains essentially the same, with the player guiding the guitarist through the varying genres of rock music by hitting the notes in time as they scroll across the screen.One notable addition to the game is the new cooperative career mode. The co-op mode is arranged similarly to the single player career, with one player on lead guitar and the other on bass or rhythm guitar. In this mode you’ll find just 6 tiers of songs - each encore song is unique to the co-op mode but the boss battles have been removed.

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There is no doubt about it, guided ammunitions are changing the way we fight wars. In the days of the Vietnam War, guided ammunitions had already been developed however dumb or iron bombs were still largely in use. These days many munitions have guidance systems ranging from lasers to GPS, some of these systems are even being fitted to unmanned vehicles to enable a totally autonomous attack.

Dumb bombs are what most people imagine when they think of a bomb. There is no way to control the bomb once it has been deployed, they simply fall to the ground and explode, hence the name. Needless to say hitting a target with a dumb bomb is an extremely difficult task and innocent bystanders are often caught up in the carpet bombing technique which is employed.Smart bombs are designed to guide themselves to the target. The concept of this smart weapon is certainly not new. First developed back in 1943 by the Germans, the technology would go through stages of radio-controlled and laser-guided developments before being used on a large scale. The first large-scale use of smart weapons came in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm when they were used by coalition forces against Iraq.

More Information On The Air Force’s Newest Smart bomb Plus Two Videos After The Jump.

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This great custom R2-D2 PC case modification is set to rock the worlds of all Star Wars fans. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be information regarding this particular mod, except that it could possibly have been made from the original R2 chassis.

The original R2-D2 chassis used in the movies was precision made to a high standard by an Australian firm called Petric Engineering. A closer look at this R2-D2 PC case reveals slight imperfections in the build quality but considering the thing looks this much like R2-D2, I don’t see many people complaining, just asking where on earth they might be able to pick one up.

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Whether or not the creator actually wanted to keep his name quiet is unclear but one thing is for sure, he has sparked off a lot of interest regarding R2 mods. There seems to be a bunch of R2 case mods popping up here and there, and one of the better ones we found actually had some information.

This R2-D2 case was created by Ken “TGS” Kirby for ExtremeTech’s Science Fiction Case Mod Contest. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to complete the mod in time for the competition deadline so didn’t make rank, however many have reported that R2 would of certainly taken the 1st prize had it been entered.

The idea started when Ken salvaged two R2-D2 legs from an old R2-D2 Pepsi cooler. The after a long search he managed to find a white plastic barrel for R2’s body and a weber grill for R2’s head, then the chassis was ready.

Ken’s finished mod comes complete with:

• ABIT IC7-G
• P4 3.2Ghz w/HT @ 3.71Ghz
• 2GB (4 x 512MB) of DDR400 RAM
• 120GB Hard drive
• Radeon 9800XT 256MB Graphics Card
• Creative 7.1 surround sound
• Asetek Vapochill Phase Change cooling @ -38C

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As the trend for R2-D2 mod’s catches on and begins to grow, perhaps it won’t be long before a large company patents the idea and sets up for mass production.

As Blu-Ray seems to be leading the high definition format war over rival HD DVD, Sony and Nichia have teamed up to develop a new Blu-Ray player that is smaller and more cost efficient.

The new laser unit is just 3mm think and is compatible with normal DVD’s. Standard Blu-Ray players can not read DVD’s that contain organic dyes in the recording layers - Sony and Nichia’s new player can, this means the company will be able to save money churning out compatible disks from existing DVD lines and hopefully these savings will be passed on to the consumer.

The smaller dimension of the new Blu-ray laser makes the drive very efficient on space. This should also reduce cost of laptops and handheld devices that require time and money spent to map out how all the components will fit into case size deemed “portable.”

There is little news as to which products will be incorporating the new Blu-Ray player however Sony did announce that the new disc drive should make an appearance in their Vaio laptop range later this year, there are also rumors of the PS3 possibly getting this upgrade.

Brickhouse Security has just released their “Secret Service Invisible 2-Way Micro Headset,” the smallest communications device currently available to the general public. So, if you’re in need of an invisible headset for your business communications, covert operations or simply to impress your friends, you can pick one up for a mere 650 bucks.

This tiny communications device comprises of a micro-sized earphone, a transmitter necklace and a microphone which is connected to a cell phone. The micro earphone is wireless and weighs approx 1 gram, the wireless transmission works silently and is automatically picked up by the micro-earbud on the transmission necklace.

The earphone isolates the sound in the ear so nothing can be heard from the outside and there is an invisible thread which allows for a quick safe removal after use.

The device is marketed for suits business negotiations and meetings, live media appearances and personal surveillance requirements. People like President Bush and Barak Obama are already wearing the Secret Service Invisible 2-Way Micro Headset to ensure the correct wording, details and quotes are used when speaking publicly.

Check Out The Promotion Video From Brickhouse.

There was never really any doubt the X-Box’s favorite master chief would return in another episode of the Halo series, especially with the cliff hanger we were all left with at the end of Halo 2. Well, avid fans (who haven’t already completed the game) will be please to hear the final chapter in the Halo trilogy continues the story and concludes it brilliantly.

For those who didn’t get caught up in “one of the most popular games in history,” the Halo story centers on the interstellar war between 26th century humanity, led by the United Nations Space Command, and a collection of alien races known as the Covenant.The player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a cybernetically enhanced supersoldier, as he wages war in defense of humanity, assisted by human Marines as well as allied alien Elites.Following the events of Halo 2 - The Covenant is on its way to Earth, continuing its universal ethnic cleansing and attempting to activate the floating space weapons known as Halos, which could destroy civilization as we know it. The Master Chief and the other Earth forces of the UNSC are in hot pursuit to stop them, with newfound alien allies such as the Arbiter coming along for the ride.

The third and final part of the Halo trilogy was released in September, 2007. During the opening day, over one million people connected to X-Box live to play Halo 3 and by the end of the day, Halo 3 had broken the record for the highest grossing opening day in entertainment history, bringing in $170 million within the first 24 hours. The game then went on the sell over 8.1 million copies by January 2008.

So now this is officially the most popular game to date, let’s take a look at the new features Bungie Studios have added.

Continue reading this article for a review on the game, lots of screenshots and a video review.

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Pioneers in military technology DARPA - The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - have just unveiled a six-wheeled autonomous robot that is capable of maneuvering through ditches, walls, streams and even other vehicles whilst raining down a hail of bullets against its enemies.

The Crusher - developed at the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute - weighs nearly 7 tons, has a top speed of about 25 mph and is designed to be totally autonomous; it doesn’t even require a remote driver to control the robot, although this is an option if necessary.

Check out this first video of the Crusher Climbing a 4 foot wall.

The robot is armed with a large caliber gun, long range cameras that can spot enemy targets up to two and half miles away, as well as GPS sensors and internal maps to plot out its route. The Crusher can roll through just about anything that gets in its way, deviating from the most direct route only when faced with obstacles over six feet tall or deep.

Another two videos and more info after the jump

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