suparjerk - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Why bother? (Score 1) 164

by neocrono on Friday October 03, 2008 @12:22AM (#25242563) Attached to: Cell Chip Coming To the PC Via a PCI Express Card

Cell may be more applicable to general purpose tasks than GPGPU, yes, but I recall hearing from several Playstation 3 developers that the synergistic processing elements, or "SPEs"--the only part of the Cell architecture that this board includes--are agonizingly difficult to program for because of the incredibly small amount of local memory available to them. I want to say it's 256 KB?

Given 4 SPEs, that's a total of a megabyte of memory, shared 4 ways. I'd say these add-in cards are arguably even more limiting than a graphics card.

Comment This has absolutely... (Score 5, Funny) 185

by suparjerk on Thursday April 10, 2008 @01:13PM (#23027594) Attached to: GPS Trackers Find Novel Applications

... no potential for abuse whatsoever!

Two Companies Now Offering Personal Gene Sequencing 146

Posted by Zonk on Saturday November 17, 2007 @03:34PM from the sequencing-for-fun-and-profit dept.

corded writes "Yesterday, deCODE genetics announced the launch of their $985 personal genotyping product, deCODEme (video), beating their competitors to market. Perhaps not coincidentally, 23andMe's website is suddenly much more informative today, and the New York Times features a preview of 23andMe's $999 offering. deCODEme and 23andMe will scan about a million and 600,000 sites across the genome, respectively and assess your risk for common diseases, along with providing information about ancestry, physical traits, and the ability to compare genes with friends and family."

Bone Hormone Linked to Obesity and Diabetes 218

Posted by Zonk on Sunday August 12, 2007 @03:36PM from the keep-your-skeleton-happy dept.

grrlscientist writes "New research has shown that the skeletal system may be an important player in preventing obesity and type-2 diabetes in animals. This may also be true for humans, and thus represents an important development for the treatment of these health conditions. From the article: 'Not only do bones produce a protein hormone, osteocalcin (pictured), that regulates bone formation, but this hormone also protects against obesity and glucose intolerance by increasing proliferation of pancreatic beta cells and their subsequent secretion of insulin. Osteocalcin was also found to increase the body's sensitivity to insulin and as well as reducing its fat stores ... "The skeleton used to be thought of as just a structural support system. This opens the door to a new way of seeing the bones," said Dr. Gerard Karsenty, chairman of the department of genetics and development at Columbia University Medical Center in NYC, who headed the team that made the discovery.'"

Flickr To Abandon Early Adopters 254

Posted by Zonk on Thursday February 01, 2007 @02:20PM from the enjoy-the-side-of-the-road-suckers dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet's Steve O'Hear opens old wounds for Flickr veterans. 'An email dropped into my in-box yesterday from Yahoo. Titled "Flickr: Update for Old Skool members", the message went on to explain that Yahoo was discontinuing the old email-based Flickr sign-in system and that from March the 15th, all users will be required to have a Yahoo ID to sign-in to Flickr. It was one of those déjà vu moments when I thought, hang on a minute, haven't we been here before?. And of course we have.' Yahoo tried to pull this stunt almost two years ago, after it first acquired Flickr. So why open up old wounds? Yahoo say it is to make the service easier to manage as they add new features, such as localization. Many users are calling this BS, saying it's all about Yahoo marketing its other properties to Flickr's user-base. Much of the criticism is being lead by a prominent user named Thomas Hawk who also happens to be CEO of Zooomr, a direct competitor to Flickr."

The War Is Over, and Linux Has Won 593

Posted by Zonk on Friday November 10, 2006 @08:14PM from the victory dept.

xtaski writes "Dana Blankenhorn bluntly states a reality that many have known: 'The war is over and Linux won'. With Oracle and Microsoft putting Linux in the spotlight and positioning themselves to grow with Linux. 'A new report shows that 83% of companies expect to support new workloads on Linux against 23% for Windows. ... Over two-thirds of the respondents said they will increase their use of Linux in the next year, and almost no one said the opposite.'"

Tree Climbing Robot 143

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @02:42PM from the bugbot-crawling-its-way-to-the-top dept.

galactic grub writes "New Scientist's new Tech Blog has an article about a remarkable, if slightly creepy, tree-climbing robot being developed by robotics experts from Carnegie Mellon and several other US Universities. The article comes complete with a video clip of it going up several different surfaces."

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