While it’s always fun to compare the speed of modern day desktop computers to, say, those from 1995, it’s even funner with supercomputers. Supercomputers are only super for so long, and after a certain point, your everyday computer becomes much more powerful than older supercomputers. Computers also tend to have hardware problems as they age, and the most recent software they can effectively run after a point becomes obsolete.
In this post, I’m going to be comparing the amount of FLOPS (FLoating point operations per second, a general measure of processor “speed”) in a modern day computer processor – specifically, the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, our reference processor vs FLOPS in various supercomputers over time. Our reference processor performs at a theoretical max of 38 GFLOPS (38 billion FLOPS.)
The Z1, designed and built by Konrad Zuse between 1935 and 1938, a mechanical machine, and arguably the granddaddy of all modern computers, performed at a measly 1 FLOPS. Our reference CPU is 38 billion times faster than this. A simple, handheld, dollar store calculator beats this by 9 FLOPS (since it’s doing relatively simple calculations at the slow rate humans can enter in problems, it doesn’t need to be any faster.)
Next, we have the first real supercomputer – the Colossus 1, introduced in 1943 and specifically designed by the British during WW2 to break encrypted German messages. It performed at 5 KFLOPS, about 5000 times faster than the Z1. Still, our reference processor beats it 7.6 million times in speed. Though, back then, the idea of a supercomputer was practically non-existent, since there were no desktop computers to compare to, and this particular computer didn’t have much before it.
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One thing that really annoys me about the tattered state of civil rights in the US is how technology is being used by law enforcement as a means to short-circuit basic privacy protections. Flying under the banner of things like “Homeland Security,” the common excuse seems to be made these newfangled desktop and mobile computer-machines don’t operate like the old, analog, physical things that used to replace them, and so somehow, this means the existing laws don’t apply. Sadly, it also seems like lawmakers are in no rush at all to make it clear that our Fourth Amendment Rights apply whether or not our belongings are stashed in a physical box, or whether they’re accessible via a keyboard or touch screen.
The latest arena for the battle for your privacy is your cell phone, and so far, law enforcement is on the offensive here.
Quite a lot of school districts are experimenting with the idea of issuing laptops to their students to enhance learning initiatives. On the face of it, this seems all fine and good: parents don’t have to buy hardware for their kids, and the schools all know that their students have the technology they need to do their homework.
There’s just one little problem: naturally, kids – and even adults – will do a little more on their computers than just academics and serious work. It’s just a fact of life.
So, if you have a school or work-issued laptop, and haven’t figured this out already, let me warn you: you MIGHT be under surveillance. And if your school or work-issued laptop has a webcam? Consider investing in some electrical tape, and covering that bad boy up when you’re not actively using it.
The web is totally abuzz this weekend, after some kid in Pennsylvania recently found out the hard way that maybe the school-issued laptop program isn’t totally altruistic:
On November 11, an assistant principal at Harriton High School told the plaintiffs’ son that he was caught engaging in “improper behavior” in his home and it was captured in an image via the webcam. According to the Robbinses’ complaint, neither they nor their son, Blake, were informed of the school’s ability to access the webcam remotely at any time. It is unclear what the boy was doing in his room when the webcam was activated or if any punishment was given out.
On November 11, an assistant principal at Harriton High School told the plaintiffs’ son that he was caught engaging in “improper behavior” in his home and it was captured in an image via the webcam.
According to the Robbinses’ complaint, neither they nor their son, Blake, were informed of the school’s ability to access the webcam remotely at any time. It is unclear what the boy was doing in his room when the webcam was activated or if any punishment was given out.
Now, let’s just let this sink in for a moment. It isn’t specified what kind of “improper behavior” the kid was engaging in, but it does leave one open to wonder. There’s a LOT of things teens will do in their rooms thinking no one else is watching (though granted, in the age of MySpace and Youtube, sometimes they do things totally knowing that people are watching, but let’s set that aside for a minute). In fact, if you really think about it, there’s lot of opportunities for very inappropriate things to be captured on a webcam that some creepy assistant principal in a high school is accessing without the kid’s knowledge. Voyeuristic tendencies, anyone?
Before anyone even says a word: no one ever claimed my writing skills happened to extend to clever titles. They don’t.
A while ago, a friend of mine mentioned a movie trailer for what looked like a great zombie movie that he thought was titled “The Creepies” or something like that. I didn’t think much of it, since zombie movies (like 28 Anythings Later) tend to take themselves seriously to the point where they end up crawling up their own asses. Resist the urge to bitch about how I’m wrong and that the 28 Anythings Later movies were artistic genius for now, if that’s possible.
The previews for “The Crazies”? They look promising. My initial reasoning to go see it? Well, that came from the fact that I’m not a movie buff and had no idea that there was the 1973 version of “The Crazies”. Damn you, Romero, wrecking my belief that this movie could be a spiritual successor to Romero’s (Place) of the Dead. That logic went down the toilet the second I found out Romero directed the original “Crazies”. Keeping this in mind, it’s now necessary to wonder if this version of “The Crazies” lives up to the standards set by the previous one (and, as I haven’t seen that one, those standards could be easy to meet).
For those of you who have been living under a rock, or just can’t be bothered with cable, the general plot of “The Crazies” is that there’s this nice town, Ogden Marsh, in Iowa (a mythical land in the United States that resists the passage of time). The people suddenly start going banana-rama crazy and killing the other people because of a virus that doesn’t make Christopher Eccleston put them on a leash in his backyard.
Maybe I have high hopes because I want a crazy people horror movie that’s good, so I can rinse away the foul taste left behind by 28 Weeks Later. Maybe I’m just hopeful because the previews are creepy as hell. Or maybe, just maybe, I hope this movie carelessly wanders into the busy street and is mowed down by the speeding truck that is my critic’s wrath (which will not be hauling my mighty cache of poorly conceived metaphors).
My tip to the folks who were involved with this movie? Delay its release in theaters, and add in footage of this man:
“The Crazies” arrives in theaters February 26th.
Throughout the course of history, there have been many great and profoundly meaningful events. Events that happen once-in-a-lifetime, events that only happen once, that kind of thing…You know what I mean.
What I’m referring to is me being wrong, of course. Take a second. Calm down. The world isn’t ending, I promise. Not too long ago (read as “the last time my lazy-ass wrote a meaningful post here), I wrote a rather angry post concerning “And Another Thing”, the latest addition to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series. I went on about how Eoin Colfer was so very wrong to have written this book, and how it would obviously be a piece of garbage, and so on.
That is why I feel it is appropriate that I write this and correct myself. For the record: “And Another Thing” is a passable, and welcome, addition to the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” series, and I would go so far as to say that Eoin Colfer did a hell of a job continuing where Douglas Adams left off.
No, it is not quite Douglas Adams’ brilliant writing but it comes close enough that it fits with the rest of the series. When I started reading, I hated the book on principle. I still had that “Grr, how dare you?” mentality. Only a little into the book, I felt myself fighting off a chuckle here and a knowing grin there. The further I got into the book, the more I lost the battle and found myself laughing out loud.
And so, I must concede that “And Another Thing…” may not be the best book ever written, and I still say Douglas Adams is the only person who is truly fit to write books under the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” title…but Eoin Colfer did a hell of a job, and “And Another Thing…” has proved itself worthy of its place in this truly epic trilogy.
