Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Wednesday, October 1, 2003

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Security Expert Geer Sounds Off on Dismissal: "A security researcher and scientist with more than 30 years of experience, including work on some groundbreaking projects, Geer was let go just a day after the publication of a paper he co-authored that was sharply critical of Microsoft Corp. - one of @stake's customers. The paper covered the effects that Microsoft's monopolistic position have on the security of the Internet."

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Grand-Scale Smallpox Research Complete: "United Devices, IBM and Accelrys, along with several technology and research partners, delivered the results of the Smallpox Research Grid project [...] The event marked the completion of an important first-stage in finding a treatment for smallpox. [...] The project screened 35 million potential drug molecules against nine models of the smallpox protein to determine if any of the drug-like molecules would bind to, and inactivate the smallpox protein. Volunteers from more than 190 countries donated their spare CPU power at http://www.grid.org , the world's largest public computing resource, and contributed over 39,000 years of computing time in less than six months. Preliminary results have dramatically narrowed the field of molecules that can be considered lead candidates for the next phase of research."

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Huge computing power goes online: "The first phase of an ambitious computing network designed to handle huge amounts of data has been launched. The network, dubbed the Grid, has been set up by the Cern labs in Geneva to tap into the processing power of computers in 12 countries. The aim of the project is to handle data from an experiment on how the Universe began. Cern believes the Grid could eventually provide people access to a vast pool of processing power from their desktops." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

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IBM offers server computing remotely: "IBM Corp. will introduce new services on Tuesday that provide remote access to server computing resources and are priced based on usage. Aimed at companies that don't want to incur in the expense of buying, managing, and maintaining their own servers, IBM's Virtual Server Services lets companies buy server computing power from Big Blue. Customers then pay for what they use in the way utilities such as water and electricity are billed. IBM refers to this model as on-demand computing." [IDG InfoWorld]

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Open access to journals: "The Company of Biologists announced today that all three of its journals will offer a year-long experiment with open access starting in January 2004. COB is adopting what I call the Walker-Prosser model in which authors of accepted papers have the option to buy open access to them by paying the journal's expenses in conducting peer review and preparing the electronic editions. For some initial period, COB will even subsidize the processing fee. For authors who do not choose the immediate open-access option, COB still provides open access after a six-month embargo." [Open Access News]