Popular computing

I am interested in High-performance computing exploration and research, comparison of algorithms and platforms and tools. Example applications are optimization algorithms are Monte Carlo Simulations of Lattice QCD.

Two-Factor Authentication

For the User

Two easy steps for PhoneFactor™ authentication:Step 1:

Enter your usual username and password.

Step 2:

Instantly, you receive a phone call. Answer and press #.

That’s It!

This simple process provides two separate factors of authentication through two separate channels (your computer and your phone service):

Something you know – your password.
Something you have – your telephone.

Why is Two-Factor Authentication Important?

Linux Tracking

I am “smolten” with Linux!
Jack Wallen: “Linux isn’t sold generally. The majority of Linux users download a copy or get a copy burned from a friend or pick up their copy from the local LUG. You can’t really count those copies among Linux installations because there’s no way to track them. Until now… .”

Small Finland can do

Nokia Corp.’s second-quarter net income more than doubled to 2.83 billion euros, beating analysts’ expectations, as the world’s largest mobile-phone maker took a 38% share of the global phone market. Handset shipments jumped 29% to 100.8 million. Shares rose sharply in European trading.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, please see: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118354409527857284.html?mod=djemalert

BIG bro going RFID

US Government developing RFID implant for soldiers
Sci Fi Tech – New York,NY,USA
The next time some crazy homeless guy comes up to you saying that the government planted a microchip in his brain, he just might be telling the truth. …
See all stories on this topic

Hospital Manages Thousands of Patient Files with RFID
RFID Update – Alexandria,VA,USA
Each file is tagged with a Gen2 RFID tag from Intermec, allowing it to be tracked from the moment it is created for a new patient all the way until the file …
See all stories on this topic

RFID now forging ahead in manufacturing and logistics

Meet the cheapest laptop in the world

• Matthew Elliott
• 27 comments

From credit card debt and school loans to rising gas prices and adjustable mortgages, there are plenty of reasons why consumers in the developed world can’t afford a laptop. Not to mention the fact that underfunded schools and underprivileged kids also exist in the developed parts of the world. Enter the Medison Celebrity laptop. It’s a $150 laptop from Swedish company Medison that’s available through the Columbus, Ohio-based online reseller 2Checkout.com.

(Credit: Medison Europe Limited)

With Nicholas Negroponte’s OLPC hovering around $175, and Intel’s Classmate PC expected to cost more than $200, the Medison Celebrity laptop can lay claim to being the cheapest laptop in the world. And it boasts an impressive feature set for the money. For starters, it features a large, wide-screen 14-inch WXGA display and weighs a reasonable 4.8 pounds. Powering the Medison Celebrity is a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron M 370 processor and 256MB of memory. You may scoff at such a meager memory allotment considering all the reviews out there that complain whenever a PC serves up less than 1GB these days, but the Medison Celebrity doesn’t have to power Vista or any other flavor of Windows. Instead, it uses Fedora Linux, which requires less muscle to run than a Windows OS and no Microsoft licensing fee. Rounding out the specs are a 40GB hard drive, an integrated Via PN800 graphics chip, and 802.11g Wi-Fi. You also get stereo speakers, three USB 2.0 ports, and a PC Card slot. Medison backs the laptop with a one-year warranty but offers little detail about the terms.

IBM tells employees to behave in Second Life

Big Blue guidelines say don’t discriminate, harass or use inappropriate avatars

By Jon Brodkin, Network World, 07/27/07

 

IEEE News

1. Amended Standards Policy Prevents Patent Stranglehold
In a restatement of its policy, the IEEE Standards Association now
requires that members of IEEE standards development projects reveal
any knowledge they have of patents they or their employer hold on
intellectual property being considered for inclusion in the standards.
To learn more, visit http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/6719/04235081

2. New Search Engine Zeros In on Documents From Scholarly Societies
Need to dig up the latest documents in your field but hate to deal with the
clutter of the Internet? A new search engine eliminates that clutter by not
searching the Internet aimlessly. Scitopia.org can scour more than
3 million documents stored in the digital libraries of the IEEE and 14 other
leading science and technology societies. Read on at
http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/6720/04235081

3. Hacking With Heart
Winner of IEEE Spectrum/Make magazine’s Do-It-Yourself contest, Alan
Nishioka, solved adult engineering problems when he was a child and
improves children’s toys as an adult. Read about the IEEE member’s
winning project, a computerized Etch-A-Sketch that can easily draw
curved lines, at http://bmsmail3.ieee.org:80/u/6721/04235081

bullet spin

just so you know, a 30-06 with a 150 grain pointed projectile fired (level) at a muzzle velocity of 2910 ft/sec will drop a total vertical distance of 470 inches at 1000 yds after a flight time of 1.824 seconds.

Torque and horsepower

Explanation of Torque

Reprinted by permission of Craig Fry, from http://home.fuse.net/pagrosse/

Torque

Torque is strength; horsepower is speed. Torque is a measure of how much weight you can move; horsepower is a measure of how fast you can move a specific weight. For example, human weightlifting contests are contests of torque. Each competitor must lift the same amount of weight and the guy who can lift the most is the guy who has the most torque. If weightlifting contests were contests of horsepower then the winner would be the guy who can get a specific weight over his head the fastest.

If you have a one pound weight bolted to the floor, and try to lift it with one pound of force (or any other weight), you will have applied force and exerted energy, but no work will have been done. If you unbolt the weight, and apply a force sufficient to lift the weight one-foot, then one foot pound of work will have been done. If that event takes a minute to accomplish, then you will be doing work at the rate of one foot pound per minute. If it takes one second to accomplish the task, then work will be done at the rate of 60 foot pounds per minute, you get the idea.

In order to apply these measurements to automobiles and their performance (whether you’re speaking of torque, horsepower, or Newton meters), you need to address the three variables of force, work and time.

A gentleman by the name of Watt made some observations, and concluded that the average horse of the time could lift a 550 pound weight one foot in one second, thereby performing work at the rate of 550 foot pounds per second.  This is 33,000 foot pounds per minute, for an eight hour shift, more or less. He then published those observations, and stated that 33,000 foot pounds per minute of work was equivalent to the power of one horse, or, one horsepower.

We need to measure units of force from rotating objects such as crankshafts, so we’ll use terms which define a twisting or turning force, such as foot pounds of torque. A foot pound of torque is the twisting force necessary to support a one pound weight on a weightless horizontal bar, one foot from the fulcrum or the center pivot point.

Now, it’s important to understand that nobody on the planet ever actually measures horsepower from a running engine. What we actually measure is torque, expressed in foot-pounds.  This information can be obtained on a dynamometer. Then the actual horsepower is computed by converting the twisting force of torque into the work units of horsepower.

Now take that one pound weight we mentioned before. If we rotate that weight for one full revolution against a one pound resistance, we have moved it a total of 6.2832 feet (Pi * a two foot circle), and, incidentally, we have done 6.2832 foot pounds of work.  Now Watt said that 33,000 foot pounds of work per minute was equivalent to one horsepower. If we divide the 6.2832 foot pounds of work we have done per revolution of that weight into 33,000 foot pounds, we come up with the fact that one foot pound of torque at 5252 rpm is equal to 33,000 foot pounds per minute of work, and is the equivalent of one horsepower. If we only move that weight at the rate of 2626 rpm, it’s the equivalent of 1/2 horsepower (16,500 foot pounds per minute), and so on. Therefore, the following formula applies for calculating horsepower from a torque measurement:

                                     Torque * RPM
        Horsepower      =      —————–
                                                 5252

“Encyclpaedia Britannica.” Torque. http://search.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/idxref/1/0,5716,110227,00.html

Beer, Ferdinand P., Johnston, E. Russell Jr. Mechanics of Materials. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1981.