According to newratings.com: International Business Machines Corporation (IBM.NYS) has claimed to have developed the world’s fastest supercomputer.
The global computer giant said today that its still-unfinished Blue Gene/L System supercomputer is eight times faster and consumed 28 times less power per computation than the current fastest supercomputers. IBM said that its Blue Gene supercomputer reached a peak speed of 36.01 teraflops (36.1 trillion calculations per second), exceeding the peak performance of 35.86 teraflops for the current fastest supercomputer, Earth Simulator Center, developed by the Japanese company, NEC Corporation. Moreover, the size of IBM’s Blue Gene is about 100 times smaller than the Earth Simulator.

IBM reclaims fastest supercomputer crown | newratings.com

From the interview: A company called Mainsoft provides a rather novel solution called Visual Mainwin, which allows Microsoft IL to run in a Java container. It’s kind of interesting technology from a computer science perspective, and it may solve a certain class of business problem. For Java zealots, this is not satisfying, as it does not convert any .NET programmers to Java programmers. In the words of Mainsoft CEO Yaacov Cohen “This is not a religious conversion, but more like mutual respect between camps”.

TheServerSide.com – Mainsoft Interview

By the end of the decade, Virgin Galactic – the most exciting development in the story of modern space history – is planning to make it possible for almost anyone to visit the final frontier at an affordable price.

Following Paul G. Allen’s visionary investment in developing SpaceShipOne, the world’s first privately funded spaceship, Virgin has, subject to all necessary government approvals, signed an agreement with Mojave Aerospace Ventures to license their intellectual property, enabling Virgin Galactic to develop a sub-orbital spaceship designed for space tourism.

www.virgingalactic.com

Shawn at Slashdot writes “This could possibly be the worst viruses yet! Earlier this month Microsoft announced a problem in their GDI driver that processes the way JPEG images are displayed. Someone has finally posted an exploit to Usenet. Easynews, a premium Usenet provider, found the virus Sunday afternoon. Up-to-date information about how we found it and what it does is located at www.easynews.com/virus.txt. When this picture is viewed it installs remote management software (winvnc and radmin) and will connect to irc.”

Slashdot | First JPEG Virus Posted To Usenet

Nature.com writes: Radio aerials have been around for over a century, and routinely receive information carried by radio waves into our homes. Now, finally, scientists have built an aerial that can do the same for light waves. The tiny antennas could be used in solar cells, or ‘optical computers’ that would move data round as light beams.

Radio waves, like light waves, consist of an oscillating electric field. When radio waves hit a receiving aerial, which is generally made of metal wire, they move electrons back and forth inside it. This current can then be amplified and the signal converted into sound.

But the aerial needs to be a roughly similar size to the wavelength of the incoming wave. This is easy enough for radio waves, which can have wavelengths measured in metres, but light-wave cycles are just a few hundred nanometres long, about 10,000 times smaller than the head of a pin.

Nature.com | Miniature aerials pick up light