CERN

Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire), commonly known as CERN is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated just northwest of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland. The convention establishing CERN was signed on 29 September 1954. From the original 12 signatories of the CERN convention, membership has grown to the present 20 member states. Its main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them.



The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis, and because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been (and continues to be) a major wide area networking hub.



CERN currently has approximately 2600 full-time employees. Some 7931 scientists and engineers (representing 500 universities and 80 nationalities), about half of the world's particle physics community, work on experiments conducted at CERN.



Several important achievements in particle physics have been made during experiments at CERN. These include, but are not limited to:

* 1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber.
* 1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments.
* 1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment.
* 2001: The discovery of direct CP-violation in the NA48 experiments.

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Albert Camus Society UK

Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960) was a French author and philosopher. Although he is often associated with existentialism, Camus preferred to be known as a man and a thinker, rather than as a member of a school or ideology. He preferred persons over ideas. In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: “No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked....” (Les Nouvelles litteraires, November 15, 1945).

Camus was the second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (after Rudyard Kipling) when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award, in 1957. He is also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award.

Novels

* The Stranger (L'Étranger, sometimes translated as The Outsider) (1942)
* The Plague (La Peste) (1947)
* The Fall (La Chute) (1956)
* A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse) (written 1936-1938, published posthumously 1971)
* The First Man (Le premier homme) (incomplete, published posthumously 1995)

Sun Solaris

Solaris at sun.com

OpenSolaris

Solaris is a computer operating system developed by Sun Microsystems. It is certified against the Single Unix Specification as a version of Unix, and although historically a closed-source product, a majority of the codebase has been open-sourced by Sun Microsystems.

In the early 1990s, Sun replaced the BSD-derived SunOS 4 with a version of UNIX System V Release 4 (SVR4), jointly developed with AT&T. The underlying release name was SunOS 5.0, but a new marketing name was introduced at the same time: Solaris 2. While SunOS 4.1.x micro releases were retroactively named Solaris 1 by Sun, the name Solaris is almost exclusively used to refer to SVR4-derived SunOS 5.0 and later.

Solaris is considered to be the SunOS operating system plus a graphical user environment, ONC+, and other components. The SunOS minor version is included in the Solaris release name; for example, Solaris 2.4 incorporated SunOS 5.4. After Solaris 2.6, Sun dropped the "2." from the name, so Solaris 7 incorporates SunOS 5.7, and the latest release SunOS 5.10 forms the core of Solaris 10.

Sunshine (2007)

Sunshine Official

sunshinedna.com

Sunshine IMDb (7.4 out of 10)

A tense, claustrophobic thriller, SUNSHINE is directed by Danny Boyle and produced by Andrew Macdonald from an original screenplay written by Alex Garland. The film stars Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity, Cillian Murphy, Hiroyuki Sanada, Benedict Wong, and Michelle Yeoh.

'The premise of SUNSHINE,' explains producer Andrew Macdonald, 'is that in 50 years from now the Sun is dying. It is no longer providing the energy and the light that mankind needs to survive on Earth. The entire global community pools its resources to send a mission into space to deliver a bomb to reignite the part of the Sun that is failing. Our story concerns the eight astronauts and scientists who lead this mission. On their journey towards the Sun the crew stumble upon the ship that was sent on the same mission seven years previously, the Icarus I, drifting in space. From this point on things start to go very wrong and it’s about how the crew react under the enormous pressure of their endeavor to save mankind.'

Anathema

   

Anathema Official

Anathema are an English band from the city of Liverpool, who — together with Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride — helped develop the death/doom sound, a subgenre of doom metal. Since their album Eternity, Anathema have strayed away from doom and eventually metal altogether, becoming an atmospheric rock band.

Current members

* Vincent Cavanagh - Vocals, rhythm guitar (1990-Present)
* Daniel Cavanagh - Lead guitar (1990-2002, 2003-Present)
* Jamie Cavanagh - Bass (1990-1991, 2001-Present)
* Les Smith - Keyboards (2000-Present)
* John Douglas - Drums (1990-1997, 1998-Present)
* Lee Douglas - Vocals (2000-Present)

Albums

Serenades
February, 1993

The Silent Enigma
October 23, 1995

Eternity
November 11, 1996

Alternative 4
June 22, 1998

Judgement
June 21, 1999

A Fine Day To Exit
October 9, 2001

A Natural Disaster
November 3, 2003

CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia07 (Oct 2nd-7th)

CeBIT Bilişim Eurasia 2007
Istanbul, Turkey

CeBIT Official

The largest and most important ICT trade show in the region covers the entire spectrum of information technology, telecommunications, software and ICT-related services.



Over 950 represented companies will again converge on Istanbul to exhibit the very latest integrated technology solutions - informing, influencing and inspiring well over 150,000 visitors from more than 70 countries.

Dark Sanctuary

Dark Sanctuary Official

Dark Sanctuary is a French band that was created in February 1996. They play a kind of "Dark Atmospheric" music. Their first official release was a 20 min single track Mcd, " Funeral Cry ", released in 1997 and, at that time, the band only consisted in two members, Arkdae on keyboards and Marquise Ermia on vocals.

In 1998, the band wanted to increase its strength by adding new members; another keyboards player, Hylgaryss, a percussionnist/bassist, Sombre Cÿr and a violinist, Eliane joined Dark Sanctuary. Together, they recorded the 1st album, " Royaume Mélancolique " and made their first concert in September 1998 near Paris.

In November 1999, they signed with Wounded Love Records and after the 2nd violinist Marguerite joined, they recorded their 2nd album, " De Lumière et d'Obscurité ", which was released in November 2000.

But, right after their recording sessions, Marquise Ermia left the band to carry on her studies, and a new singer, Dame Pandora, thus joined Dark Sanctuary.

Their 3d album, " L'Etre Las-l'envers du miroir " was recorded in March 2002 and released at the beginning of 2003, few months after the release of a two-track single. This album, which has had a huge success in France and Germany, definitely established Dark Sanctuary as one of the greatest bands in this musical style.

After few concerts in France, the band returned to Germany in order to record its 4th album, " Les Mémoires Blessées ". This album was released in early 2004 and confirmed Dark Sanctuary's own style while providing a deeper maturity, as well as new musical horizons.
The same year, the band was on tour in Europe, including a memorable date at the Wave Gothik Treffen, in the majestic Leipzig's theatre.

Then the year 2005 began with a major event: their first compilation, " Thoughts:9 years in the sanctuary " was released on the U.S label Projekt; it summarizes no less than 9 years of career.
The other event of the beginning of this year is Dark Sanctuary's appearance in the tribute to Dead Can Dance, " Summoning of the Muse ~ a tribute to Dead Can Dance ", also released on Projekt.

In july 2005 Dark Sanctuary went back to Germany to record their 5th opus at the E-Klangschmiede Studio. Consequently,their new album " Exaudi Vocem Meam - Part I " is scheduled for November 2005.

The year 2006 promises to be rich too as the sequel of this opus, " Exaudi Vocem Meam - Part II ", as well as concerts are announced.

Irix

SGI Irix

Irix History by Ryan Thoryk

IRIX is a computer operating system developed by Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) to run natively on their 32- and 64-bit MIPS architecture workstations and servers. Based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions.

The current major version of IRIX is IRIX 6.5 which was released in May 1998. New minor versions are released every quarter. Through version 6.5.22, there were two branches of each release: a maintenance release that included only fixes to the original IRIX 6.5 code, and a feature release that included improvements and enhancements. An overlay upgrade from 6.5.x to the 6.5.22 maintenance release is available for free download, while version 6.5.23 and higher require an active Silicon Graphics support contract, despite only running on Silicon Graphics hardware.



The IRIX name was first used around the time of release 3.0 of the operating system for SGI's IRIS 4D series of workstations and servers, in 1988. Previous releases were identified only by the release number prefixed by "4D1-", eg. "4D1-2.2". The 4D1- prefix continued to be used in official documentation to prefix IRIX release numbers.



IRIX 3.x was based on UNIX System V Release 3 with 4.3BSD enhancements, and incorporated the 4Sight windowing system, based on NeWS and IRIS GL. SGI's own Extent File System (EFS) replaced the System V filesystem.

IRIX 4.0, released in 1991, replaced 4Sight with the X Window System (X11R4), the 4Dwm window manager providing a similar look and feel to 4Sight.



IRIX 5.0, released in 1993, incorporated certain features of UNIX System V Release 4, including ELF-format executables. IRIX 5.3 introduced the XFS journaling file system.

In 1994, IRIX 6.0 added support for the 64-bit MIPS R8000 processor, but was otherwise similar to IRIX 5.2. Later 6.x releases supported other members of the MIPS processor family in 64-bit mode. IRIX 6.3 was released for desktop systems only. IRIX 6.4 improved multiprocessor scalability for the Origin 2000 and Onyx2 systems and was marketed as "Cellular IRIX", although it only incorporated some features from the original Cellular IRIX distributed operating system project. IRIX 6.4 had severe reliability issues, limiting its adoption. IRIX development stabilized with IRIX 6.5, released in 1998. The current version of IRIX is 6.5.30, released in August 2006.



IRIX 6 is compliant with UNIX System V Release 4, UNIX 95 and POSIX (including 1e/2c draft 15 ACLs and Capabilities).

IRIX has strong support for real-time disk and graphics I/O. IRIX was one of the first Unix versions to feature a graphical user interface for the main desktop environment. IRIX was widely used in the computer animation industry and for scientific visualization due to its once-large application base.



IRIX uses the Indigo Magic Desktop, which by default uses the 4Dwm X window manager with a custom look designed using the Motif widget toolkit.

Horse Dealer’s Daughter, The - D.H. Lawrence

D.H. Lawrence Wikipedia

Commentary by Karen Bernardo

D.H. Lawrence's "The Horse Dealer’s Daughter" could be described as a story in which boy meets girl. Its plot, on the surface, resembles that of any number of traditionally romantic pastorals: a country boy saves a country girl from drowning, sees something in her that he never saw before, and, at the end of the story, proposes marriage. But, as we soon see, there is nothing typical about Lawrence's story, because the psychological workings of its characters, particularly that of the rescuer, defy all our expectations of how such a story should work. Lawrence cuts through the romanticism inherent in such a plot line to reflect the dark and conflicting feelings of the so-called lovers.

"her eyes were now wide with fear, with doubt, the light was dying from her face, a shadow of terrible greyness was returning. he could not bear the touch of her eyes' question upon him, and the look of death behind the question."

SCO OpenServer

SCO Open Server 6.x

SCO OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT), is a closed source version of the Unix computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and now maintained by the SCO Group.

SCO UNIX was the successor to SCO Xenix, derived from AT&T System V Release 3.2 with an infusion of Xenix device drivers and utilities. SCO UNIX System V/386 Release 3.2.0 was released in 1989 as the commercial successor to SCO Xenix. The base operating system did not include TCP/IP networking or X Window System graphics. Shortly after the release of this bare OS, SCO shipped an integrated product under the name of SCO Open Desktop, or ODT. 1994 saw the release of SCO MPX, an add-on SMP package.

At the same time, AT&T completed its merge of Xenix, BSD, SunOS and System V features into System V Release 4. SCO UNIX remained based on System V Release 3, but eventually added home-grown versions of most of the features of Release 4.

The 1992 releases of SCO UNIX 3.2v4.0 and Open Desktop 2.0 added support for long file names and symbolic links. 1995's rebranded OpenServer Release 5.0.0 added support for ELF executables and dynamically linked shared objects, and made many kernel structures dynamic.

SCO purchased the UnixWare system and its System V Release 4 code base from Novell in 1995. SCO was eventually able to re-use some code from that version of UnixWare in later releases of OpenServer. Until Release 6, this came primarily in the compilation system and the UDI driver framework and the USB subsystem written to it.

By the end of the 1990s, there were around 15,000 value-added resellers (VARs) around the world who provided solutions for customers of SCO's Unix systems.

SCO announced on August 2, 2000 that it would sell its Server Software and Services Divisions, as well as UnixWare and OpenServer technologies, to Caldera Systems, Inc. The purchase was completed in May 2001. The remaining part of the SCO company, the Tarantella Division, changed its name to Tarantella, Inc., while Caldera became Caldera International, and subsequently in 2002 the SCO Group.

top500.org

top500.org


The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful publicly-known computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The project aims to provide a reliable basis for tracking and detecting trends in high-performance computing and bases rankings on HPL, a portable implementation of the High-Performance LINPACK benchmark for distributed-memory computers.

The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The list is updated twice a year. The first of these updates always coincides with the International Supercomputer Conference in June, the second one is presented in November at the IEEE Super Computer Conference in the USA.

The Systems Ranked #1 Since 1993

* IBM Blue Gene/L (since 2004.11)
* NEC Earth Simulator (2002.06 - 2004.11)
* IBM ASCI White (2000.11 - 2002.06)
* Intel ASCI Red (1997.06 - 2000.11)
* Hitachi CP-PACS (1996.11 - 1997.06)
* Hitachi SR2201 (1996.06 - 1996.11)
* Fujitsu Numerical Wind Tunnel (1994.11 - 1996.06)
* Intel Paragon XP/S140 (1994.06 - 1994.11)
* Fujitsu Numerical Wind Tunnel (1993.11 - 1994.06)
* TMC CM-5 (1993.06 - 1993.11)

last.fm

last.fm

last.fm Wikipedia

Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It is one of the world's largest social music platforms with over 15 million active users based in more than 232 countries. On May 30, 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for US$280m (£140m), the largest European Web 2.0 purchase to date.



Using a unique music recommendation system known as "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user's own computer or iPod. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("Scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the users' music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, but are not able to listen to individual tracks on demand, or to download tracks unless the rightsholder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

Voyager - NASA

NASA Voyager

NASA's two venerable Voyager spacecraft are celebrating three decades of flight as they head toward interstellar space. Their ongoing odysseys mark an unprecedented and historic accomplishment.

Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977. They continue to return information from distances more than three times farther away than Pluto.

The Voyagers call home via NASA's Deep Space Network, a system of antennas around the world. The spacecraft are so distant that commands from Earth, traveling at light speed, take 14 hours one-way to reach Voyager 1 and 12 hours to reach Voyager 2. Each Voyager logs approximately 1 million miles per day.

Each of the Voyagers carries a golden record that is a time capsule with greetings, images and sounds from Earth. The records also have directions on how to find Earth if the spacecraft is recovered by something or someone.

James Gleick - Chaos (1987)

James Gleick

James Gleick - Chaos amazon.com


Chaos: Making A New Science is the best-selling book by James Gleick that first introduced the principles and early development of chaos theory to the public. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.

The first popular book about Chaos Theory, it manages to explain the Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, Lorenz Attractors etc. without delving into the complex math. It also includes clear interesting descriptions of dozens of extraordinary and eccentric people, the individuals whose separate work converged on a new understanding. It remains in print and is widely regarded as still the best introduction and summary for someone who doesn't know much math.

• James Gleick is an author, reporter, and essayist. His latest book, Isaac Newton, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year and a national bestseller, as were Chaos: Making a New Science (Viking Penguin, 1987) and Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (Pantheon, 1992). His other books include Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (Pantheon, 1999) and What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier (Pantheon, 2002). They have been widely translated abroad.
  
  A native of New York, Gleick graduated from Harvard College in 1976 and helped found Metropolis, an alternative weekly newspaper in Minneapolis. Then he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter for The New York Times. In 1989-90 he was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University. He collaborated with the Natures Chaosphotographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos (Little, Brown) and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software.
  
  In 1993 he and Uday Ivatury founded The Pipeline, a pioneering New York City-based Internet service. He served as the Pipeline's chairman and chief executive officer until 1995. He was the editor of Best American Science Writing 2000. He is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.

Tokamak

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)

TOKAMAK Info

Unofficial ITER Fun Club

A tokamak is a machine producing a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) magnetic field for confining a plasma. It is one of several types of magnetic confinement devices and the leading candidate for producing fusion energy.

The term Tokamak is a transliteration of the Russian word Токамак which itself comes from the Russian words: "тороидальная камера в магнитных катушках" (toroidal'naya kamera v magnitnykh katushkakh) — toroidal chamber in magnetic coils (Tochamac)). It was invented in the 1950s by Soviet physicists Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm and Andrei Sakharov (who were in turn inspired by an original idea of Oleg Lavrentyev).

The tokamak is characterized by azimuthal (rotational) symmetry and the use of the plasma current to generate the helical component of the magnetic field necessary for stable equilibrium. This can be contrasted to another toroidal magnetic confinement device, the stellarator, which has a discrete (e.g. five-fold) rotational symmetry and in which all of the confining magnetic fields are produced by external coils with a negligible current flowing through the plasma.

Antimatter

Antimatter Official

Antimatter is a band formed by Duncan Patterson (former bass player and songwriter of Anathema) and Mick Moss. The earlier Antimatter albums, Savior and Lights Out, focused on melodic vocal lines, dark electronica and balances on the borderline between gothic and trip hop while later works Planetary Confinement and Leaving Eden feature more of an acoustic based melancholic rock sound.

Shortly after the completion of Planetary Confinement, Patterson left the band. Moss continued and released the projects fourth album Leaving Eden, in the early months of 2007.

Albums:

* Saviour (2000)
* A Dream for the Blind (2002)
* Lights Out (2003)
* Planetary Confinement (2005)
* Leaving Eden (2007)

Very Large Array

VLA Official

VLA Wikipedia

Astronomy Picture of the Day May 14 2006

The Very Large Array, one of the world's premier astronomical radio observatories, consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. Each antenna is 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter. The data from the antennas is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna 36km (22 miles) across, with the sensitivity of a dish 130 meters (422 feet) in diameter.



latitude = 34°04'43.497" north
longitude = 107°37'03.819" west
elevation = 2124 m (6970 ft)



Each antenna: 25 m (82 ft) in diameter, 230 tons.
The array: there are four configurations: A array, with a maximum antenna separation of 36 km; B array -- 10 km; C array -- 3.6 km; and D array -- 1 km. The telescopes are switched between these configurations every four months or so.



The resolution of the VLA is set by the size of the array -- up to 36 km (22 miles) across. At our highest frequency (43 GHz) this gives a resolution of 0.04 arcseconds: sufficient to see a golf ball held by a friend 150 km (100 miles) away. Of course, very few golf balls contain high-power radio transmitters.



Slew rates: 40° per minute in azimuth, 20° per minute in elevation
Minimum elevation angle: 8° above the horizon
Frequency coverage: 74 to 50,000 MHz (400 to 0.7 cm)

Hubble Space Telescope

HubbleSite

Hubble Space Telescope Wikipedia

Hubble NASA

HST

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a telescope in orbit around the Earth, named after astronomer Edwin Hubble. Its position outside the Earth's atmosphere provides significant advantages over ground-based telescopes — images are not blurred by the atmosphere, there is no background from light scattered by the air, and the Hubble can observe ultra-violet light that is normally absorbed by the ozone layer in observations made from Earth. Since its launch in 1990, it has become one of the most important instruments in the history of astronomy. With it, astronomers have made many observations leading to breakthroughs in astrophysics. Hubble's Ultra Deep Field is the most sensitive astronomical optical image ever taken.

   

   

Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale Official

Casino Royale Wikipedia

Casino Royale IMDb

Casino Royale MySpace

Casino Royale, released in 2006, is the 21st film in the James Bond series, and the first to star Daniel Craig as MI6 agent James Bond. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ian Fleming (the first Bond film to directly use Fleming source material since 1989's Licence to Kill) it was adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, and Paul Haggis and directed by Martin Campbell. It is the third screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, which was previously produced as a 1954 television episode and a 1967 satirical film. The 2006 release is the only official EON Productions adaptation of Fleming's novel. It is a reboot of the Bond franchise, establishing a new timeline and narrative framework not meant to precede Dr. No or any previous films. This not only frees the Bond franchise from more than forty years of continuity to maintain, but allows the film to show a less experienced and more vulnerable Bond. The film is set at the beginning of James Bond's career as Agent 007, having earned his licence to kill. After foiling a terrorist attack at Miami International Airport, Bond falls for Vesper Lynd, the treasury agent assigned to provide the money he needs to foil a high-stakes poker tournament organized by Le Chiffre.