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"The Boomer" is a column written for adults nearing retirement age and those already in their "golden years." It will also promote reader interaction by posting e-mail responses and answering reader questions. E-mail your questions or topic ideas to firstname.lastname@example.com.
Continue Reading Below
We all make New Year's resolutions with the best of intentions. But come spring, many of these pledges have long been forgotten or overlooked because of busy schedules and other priorities.
The political landscape in 2012 has left many Americans feeling uncertain and uneasy of their future—and for good reason. Washington started the new year with a bruising deadline fight to avert falling off the fiscal cliff and triggering steep tax hikes and spending cuts. While a last-minute deal was struck, lawmaker delayed spending cuts leaving the country at risk of defaulting.
These political uncertainties, coupled with the economic instability have many baby boomers worried about their financial future and retirement. Certified Public Accountant Sharon Lechter, who wrote Save Wisely, Spend Happily offers the following tips for boomers on how to manage our money in this intimidating environment, what tax changes we should take into account and what financial resolutions we should make—and keep--in the new year.
Boomer: What new Medicare surtaxes might be placed on high earners in 2013?
Lechter: Under the Affordable Care Act, a 0.9% Medicare tax is imposed on wages paid to employees in excess of $200,000 in a calendar year. The additional 0.9% Medicare tax must be withheld by employers in the pay period in which the employee's wages exceed the $200,000 threshold. Only employees pay the 0.9% Medicare tax; employers do not pay a share of the additional Medicare tax.
Also as part of the health-care law, a 3.8% Medicare tax kicks in on unearned net investment income this year for certain high-income taxpayers. (This is a tax on income to help finance Medicare and is commonly referred to as the "3.8% Medicare tax.")
Married couples may owe the 3.8% tax and yet never have any withholdings taken out. If each spouse earns less than $200,000, but together earn $250,000 or more, they will owe the tax on earnings in excess of $250,000. These employees can request added withholdings or will be assessed the tax when filing their tax returns.
BoomeHowr: could Social Security taxes impact baby boomers' take-home pay this year?
Lechter: Congress did not extend the 2% Social Security tax reduction as part of the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, so for employees, the Social Security tax this year returns to 6.2%. For workers earning $50,000 a year, will take home about $1,000 less this year. For people earnings $100,000, they will see about $2,000 less.
On Jan. 3, 2013, the IRS announced that "employers should…begin withholding Social Security tax at the rate of 6.2 percent of wages paid following the expiration of the temporary two-percentage-point payroll tax cut in effect for 2011 and 2012."
Boomer: For boomers that itemize their tax returns, what should they look out for with medical expense deductions?
Lechter: Under the Affordable Care Act, for the coming year or returns filed next year, for employees under age 65 the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) limit for medical expenses increases to 10% of AGI from 7.5% of AGI. If you are over 65, it remains at 7.5% after 2016.
Boomer: What's happened to the estate gift tax exemption that could affect boomers in 2013?
Lechter: Under the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, signed into law on Jan. 2 by President Obama, the estate and gift tax exemption amount will stay at $5 million, indexed for inflation. The indexed amount for 2012 is $5.12 million. That means most Americans will not pay any estate tax when they die if their estate and gifts are below $5 million.
Boomer: What financial resolutions would you advise baby boomers to make for 2013 to keep their retirement goals on track?
Lechter: The American Institute of CPAs recently did a survey that showed nearly two-thirds, 61%, of American adults lack a formal budget. What's more, only 36% of adults planned to set a financial goal as a New Year's resolution this year.
So that's where boomers need to start: get focused and develop a budget. In our book, we have national averages for expenses in various categories. Boomers should take into account the following when creating their budget: How much are you spending on food, housing and other items? How do you compare? Where can you make changes to bring yourself in line?
This is a more critical exercise this year because boomers will see less money in their take-home pay thanks to the expiration of the payroll tax holiday. For someone who earns $50,000, that's about $1,000 less in their paycheck. You need to make changes now to ensure you don't end the year with a shortfall.
On the specifics of retirement planning, boomers might want to reassess how they're saving for retirement. The fiscal cliff deal eliminated some limits and made it possible to more easily convert retirement savings from a 401(k) to a Roth 401(k). This has the advantage of letting your savings grow tax free, and might be an area worth exploring.
The real key is mindful planning and boomers shouldn't be afraid to ask for help. That same AICPA survey found just 13% of U.S. adults consult a financial professional for advice. In fact, that's one of the reasons we published this book. It captures the insight of 125 CPAs from across the country and represents more than 1,000 years of financial know-how. If you had medical questions, you would most likely turn to a trained medical professional for help. You should do the same with your finances, which underpin so many of your goals, dreams and ambitions. The book can be a great place to start. There's no hidden agenda or upsells and all of the proceeds go toward financial education programs.


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Coudray describes how to strengthen your online marketing and improve your standing in search-engine results.
We registered our first domain name, coudray.com, in 1997. Back then, Internet marketing was simply putting up a Website and scoring all kinds of business. The attitude was, "If you build it, they will come." It didn't work out quite that way for most companies.
First-generation Websites weren't much more than static brochures on the Internet. They were designed in much the same way as traditional media. The results were about the same as well. Starting in late 1997 or so, we began seeing dynamic Websites that changed based on user interaction—amazon.com, buy.com, Travelocity, and so forth. These were big B2C sites with lots of venture-capital money behind their dot-com-bubble growth.
These sites had the money to program relational databases to deliver pages based on what the consumer looked at or bought. The classic example is the Amazon page that recommends selections based on what others who made the same purchase also bought.
I distinctly remember the fever pitch of the dot-com boom in our industry. The buzz was around the collaborative portal with companies like Noosh and Impresse. They sought to redefine the buying workflow for graphics purchases. Their objective was to create a wide funnel to feed and develop orders across the Internet while dramatically reducing the cost to acquire each sale. They also sought to speed up the overall transaction process.
It was a time of lots of experimentation and few successes. By 2000-2001, the Web was beginning to change—the effects are still with us today. We began to see highly targeted niche sites appear that focused on improving the buyer experience. The low-hanging fruit was to buy it cheaper on the Internet.
Customers in local markets could now search the Web for comparable product at much lower prices, or so the theory was. The Internet competitors aimed to streamline their business, stripping out unnecessary overhead and passing the savings onto the customers. In the meantime, they could further subsidize their overhead by selling ad space on their highly trafficked Websites. This spawned the rise of the Web-to-print model we see virtually everywhere in our industry today. Companies like Café Press, Zazzle, and Vista Print fall into this category.
Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to the magazine.

subset: commoncrawl


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- Oct 16:
- Boulder City Council takes stance against Amendment 64
- Boulder municipalization metrics discussion postponed until November
- Boulder council approves 2013 budget despite municipalization funding dispute
- Boulder council gives initial approval to medical marijuana rule changes
- Pearl Street Mall smoking ban moves forward, but jail time in question
- Dec 12:
- Boulder holds design contest for reusable grocery bags ahead of new fee
- Nov 15:
- Boulder's 10-cent fee on disposable grocery bags becomes law in July
- Nov 1:
- Boulder's 10-cent grocery bag fee edges forward with near-unanimous support
- Oct 14:
- Boulder to hold hearings on budget, proposed bag fee
- Oct 2:
- Boulder's 20-cent fee on disposable bags moves forward in initial 5-0 decision
- Sep 29:
- Boulder's proposed 20-cent disposable bag fee gets mixed reviews from shoppers, retailers
- Sep 19:
- Boulder hosting open house Thursday on proposed 20-cent disposable bag fee
- Sep 12:
- Boulder board members raise concerns about proposed 20-cent grocery bag fee
- Sep 11:
- Boulder weighs 20-cent disposable bag fee in effort to promote reusable grocery bags
- Apr 23:
- Public feedback positive on Boulder plastic bag ban
- Oct 11:
- Boulder council supports possible fee on plastic bags
- Oct 9:
- Boulder to weigh plastic bag ban
- May 4:
- Group chooses plastic bags as 'easy target' for greening Boulder
- May 3:
- Boulder to consider ban on disposable plastic bags
- Jan 9:
- New Vista students want to ban plastic bags in Boulder
Boulder shoppers will have to pay a 10-cent fee for each paper and plastic bag they use at the grocery store starting in July under an ordinance approved Tuesday night by the City Council.
The fee is half the 20-cent fee supported by the city staff and three of the eight City Council members.
A divided council voted 5-3 to reduce the fee from 20 cents after several members raised concerns about how the city had arrived at the 20-cent fee.
Consultants from TischlerBise Inc. looked at what plastic bags now cost, both directly and in indirect costs to the area's waste management companies, who sometimes have to stop equipment and pull out bags by hand. They also looked at what it would cost to administer a bag fee, including additional costs to grocery stores and costs to the city for education and distribution of free, reusable bags.
They arrived at a 20-cent fee, with 4 cents staying with the retailers. City officials say they think the "nexus study" that connects the fee to actual costs incurred by the city means the fee is not a tax and does not have to go on the ballot.
However, several City Council members said the fee included too many indirect costs, and the city had not adequately explained how it would spend the money on advertising and education.
The city also plans to buy and distribute reusable bags to low-income residents.
Council members Suzy Ageton, George Karakehian, Ken Wilson and K.C. Becker and Mayor Matt Appelbaum voted in favor of a 10-cent fee. Council members Lisa Morzel, Suzanne Jones and Tim Plass voted no because they wanted a 20-cent fee. Councilman Macon Cowles was absent.
Then, in a second vote, all the present council members except Karakehian voted in favor of implementing the fee.
Because the vote represents a significant change, it will go back to council for a third reading at the Nov. 1 meeting.
The fee will not go into effect until July 2013. The fee would apply to all paper and plastic bags at food retailers, including grocery stores, convenience stores and Target. Gas station stores would be exempt if food sales account for less than 2 percent of their business.
Boulder resident Margie Belcastro was the sole person who spoke against the fee at the meeting Tuesday night. She said she always brings her own bags, but she doesn't believe the city should penalize people for using disposable bags.
"Sometimes a plastic bag is warranted," she said. "Meat wrappers leak. Yuck. Do you want household chemicals in the bag for produce? No."
But Leigh Cushing, campaigns coordinator for Eco Cycle, said people can still use plastic bags when they want them. They'll just have to pay for them, which she said is appropriate.


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A-Z of CATEGORIES
+ Festival Brass
Formed in 1995 'to provide music for a concert in aid of Tor Bank Special School, Dundonald ... but the concert, originally intended to be a one off performance, was a resounding success and a number of requests were received for Festival Brass to perform again. The members, encouraged by the success of this venture, decided to continue for the benefit of those in need. The band has raised funds in excess of £200k for various charities ... Festival Brass now perform on average six times a year'.
Listing Details
Directory Statistics
Recent Additions
- + Chineke! OrchestraCategory: Community Orchestras and BandsCreated:
- * London Saxophone FestivalCategory: Instrumental FestivalsCreated:
- * Music at ThornhamCategory: Local Concert PromotersCreated:
- + East Norfolk Operatic SocietyCategory: Operatic and Dramatic SocietiesCreated:
- + Grimsby Bach ChoirCategory: Chamber ChoirsCreated:
- * Classical Minds Guitar FestivalCategory: Instrumental FestivalsCreated:
- + Felici OperaCategory: Opera CompaniesCreated:
- * Centre for Music and Science [Cambridge]Category: Music Research CentresCreated:
- * Voices FoundationCategory: Accessibility to MusicCreated:
- + Miskelly ChoraleCategory: Ladies ChoirsCreated:
- * Sheffield Folk Sessions FestivalCategory: Folk FestivalsCreated:
- * Glossop Jazz ClubCategory: Jazz ClubsCreated:
- ~ North of Ireland Bands' AssociationCategory: Music Associations and SocietiesCreated:
- @ St Mary's Sturminster NewtonCategory: ChurchesCreated:
- + Band of the Gloucestershire ConstabularyCategory: Brass and Silver BandsCreated:
- + Fife Strathspey & Reel SocietyCategory: Traditional Orchestras and BandsCreated:
- @ St John's Chapel ChichesterCategory: Historic Houses and BuildingsCreated:
- @ Scarr BandstandCategory: Parks and BandstandsCreated:
- = Jennifer PikeCategory: ViolinCreated:
- + The Bach PlayersCategory: Early Music EnsemblesCreated:
- + Treorchy Male ChoirCategory: Male Voice ChoirsCreated:
- + Esterhazy Singers of LondonCategory: Choral SocietiesCreated:
- + Felixstowe Musical TheatreCategory: Operatic and Dramatic SocietiesCreated:
- + Pro Nobis SingersCategory: Chamber ChoirsCreated:
- + English Piano TrioCategory: Piano TriosCreated:


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At the moment we have mostly Calicut university B Com final year papers and are working on posting more.
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A new report on Los Angeles' creative economy shows the entertainment industry emerging from its recession-induced slump, with modest job gains in 2011 hinting at the early stages of a recovery.
The entertainment industry employed about 120,400 people in Los Angeles County last year -- off about 7% from the peak in 2006, but an improvement over 2010, according to the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region released Tuesday.
Motion picture and video production accounted for the greatest number of job losses in the entertainment sector from 2006 to 2011. Hollywood shed 6,700 positions during the five-year period, a 6% drop, as movie studios pared the number of films put into production and television studios began shipping work out of Los Angeles.
Post-production was the only part of the entertainment sector to show modest employment gains, according to the report.
Otis projects that employment across all creative industries -- not just those working in traditional Hollywood jobs, but in fashion, furniture and home furnishings and the visual and performing arts -- will rise to 316,600 by 2016. That would represent a gain of 4.2% from 2011, when some 304,000 people worked in such creative fields, according to the report.
-- Dawn C. Chmielewski


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See Cover of Justin Bieber's New Book 'Just Getting Started'
Music, movies, digital start ups and social media aren't the only areas where Justin Bieber excels or traffics in. The multi-tasking teen, who shared video footage of an impromptu country remix of 'Boyfriend' the other day, is publishing another book. This one is called 'Just Getting Started,' and it's his second. The Biebs tweeted the cover of the book, which is due out later this year, sharing the cool, hip image with his 25 million followers.
On the cover, the Biebs looks mature, leaning back and staring straight ahead while reclining on a beige couch and wrapped in a blood red-hued jacket with those famous Bieber bangs combed back. It's that serious stare that gives the Biebs a more grown up aura.
The book also boasts the "100% official" tag.
The tome was initially described as a photography book, so it will tell The Biebs' story via pictures. It is due to drop in September, so mark those calendars now, Beliebers.
While it's usually best not to judge a book by its cover, most Beliebers won't be able to help themselves in this case. The Biebs looks so adorbs in this image and since they already love him unconditionally, this book is most likely something they will want to own, read, absorb and devour.
The 'As Long as You Love Me' singer posted: "So excited to reveal the cover for my new book #JustGettingStarted. Hope u like it, I can't wait 4u 2 read it."
He also tweeted that he is telling the real story of his rise to fame with the book. You can peep that tweet below.
i pour it all out again. tell the real stories…the real truths…me to you. thanks for going on the ride. #JustGettingStarted
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) July 20, 2012
One other thing we wanted to mention: Notice that the Biebs is certainly creeping up on Lady Gaga with Twitter followers. While she's racked up over 27 million (!!!) followers, he is steadily and surely encroaching on her tally.
Watch the Justin Bieber 'Boyfriend' Video


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Product Highlights
The ALD-800 from Nady is a versatile VHF wireless assistive listening system that allows you to share an audio source with multiple listeners up to 300' away, ideal for museums, theaters, houses of worship, educational facilities, and more. The system includes a base station transmitter and 4 beltpack receivers. The system can support an unlimited number of receivers (sold separately), allowing you to add as many listeners as you like. The system is pre-tuned to 1 of 8 channels designated for listening assistance by the FCC. This provides clear transmission, and also allows you to set up multiple systems for different applications in the same vicinity.
The transmitter has mic and line level 1/4" input connectors with a manual input gain control. It also offers an automatic level control function. It has an extendable and positionable antenna, and LED indicators to show when the unit is turned on and transmitting audio. The transmitter operates on DC power via the included wall adapter.
Each beltpack receiver is compact and lightweight, fitting easily into a pocket or clipping to clothing. The top panel offers a power/volume wheel with a power LED indicator. A standard 3.5mm headphone jack accommodates the included stereo earbuds, or most other consumer headphones. The receiver uses the headphone cable as the antenna to minimize bulk and weight. Each receiver operates on a single 9V battery.
Note: Additional systems are available separately in 7 other pre-tuned frequencies from 72-76MHz.
|Frequency Response
|100Hz - 15kHz ±3dB
|Signal to Noise Ratio
|Total Harmonic Distortion (THD)
|< 0.5%
|Carrier Frequency
|HH: 75.9MHz
|Frequency Stability
|> 0.005%
|FM, ±75kHz Max
|Wireless Range
|Up to 300' (91 m) Line-Of-Sight
1 x 1/4" Mic Input (9VDC @ 1mA for Condenser Mic)
1 x 1/4" Line Input
|Input Impedance
|Line: 100 kOhms
|Output Power
|80,000µV @ 3 m
|Controls and Indicators
1 x Power Switch
1 x Audio Input Gain Knob
1 x Power LED
1 x Audio Modulation LED
|Permanently Mounted Telescoping Whip
|Power Requirements
|9VDC, Regulated @ 200mA, Adapter Included
|Dimensions (HxWxD)
|1.25 x 8.25 x 4.25" (32 x 209 x 108mm)
|18.2 oz (500g)
|Audio Output
|250mW Max into 16 Ohms
|3.5mm Stereo Headphone Jack
|Controls and Indicators
|1 x Power/Volume Wheel
|Uses Headphone Cable (Earbuds Included)
|2µV for 12dB Sinad with Squelch Defeated, Squelches at 10µV for Minimum 50dB S/N Ratio
|Mute Threshold: 8-10µV
|Battery Type/Life
|1 x 9V Alkaline, Approx 17-20 Hours
|Dimensions (HxWxD)
|3.35 x 2.75 x 0.75" (85 x 65 x 23mm)
|2.65 oz (73g) (Without Battery)
|Packaging Infosxeceuzuacttztcqyvuayy
|Package Weight
|3.25 lb
|Box Dimensions (LxWxH)
|10.7 x 9.7 x 5.3"


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Rep. Bob Goodlatte is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He has come under fire from conservatives who oppose amnesty-style immigration reform for signaling his desire to bring a series of immigration bills to the House floor as early as next month.
One such bill reportedly could make it possible for illegal immigrants to obtain legal status and to apply for citizenship through existing channels, as opposed to providing a "special pathway." Younger illegal immigrants who meet certain qualifications (the "DREAMers") would be able to pursue a more streamlined path to citizenship.
Goodlatte has responded to conservative criticism in a post on NRO's Corner. He assures us that he does not support the Senate's comprehensive immigration reform bill. To the contrary, he finds it "fundamentally flawed and unworkable." His objective is a "step-by-step approach to immigration reform" by considering targeted legislation addressing discrete issues.
But the point of his conservative critics is that, in the present context, it's a serious mistake to pursue any immigration reform. First, there is no hope of enacting immigration reform legislation that isn't comprehensive and that doesn't grant broad amnesty in one form or another. The Democrat-controlled Senate simply won't cooperate. If the Senate Dems can't get amnesty, they will block alternative legislation and use the issue against Republicans in the upcoming election.
Second, and decisively, by playing the immigration reform game at all, Goodlatte is increasing the odds that amnesty-style comprehensive immigration reform will be enacted. If the House refuses to play that game, the odds are zero; if Goodlatte plays his pointless game — remember, his discrete reformist approach has no chance of leading to enacted legislation unless it includes large-scale amnesty — the odds become considerably shorter than zero.
Why? Because the pieces of legislation that Goodlatte produces will be passed by the House and become, in effect, a House immigration bill. That legislation will then proceed to conference with the Senate.
Here the trouble begins. In the Senate, as noted, the Democrats are of one mind on immigration reform and enjoy some Republican support. Thus, there is no chance that, in conference, the Senate would yield on amnesty.
In the House, Republicans are divided (the Dems, of course, are solidly in favor of amnesty). Thus, it's an open question whether the House would yield to the Senate.
Goodlatte's NRO post doesn't address this concern until its final sentence. There, he writes: "Any final product must reflect conservative principles and be supported by a majority of the House Republican majority."
Nice words, but no guarantee — not even on its face — against Senate-style reform.
Mark Krikorian explains the danger:
It's true that Speaker Boehner has said he'd abide by the Hastert Rule, not bringing to the floor any bill that didn't have the support of the majority of Republicans, but once the conference had given its imprimatur to a slightly revised version of the comprehensive Senate bill, the pressure would be overwhelming to approve it.
It's clear Boehner wants to pass such a bill, and the White House is actually fine with the targeted approach so long as it's just a ruse: "Piecemeal bills are 'OK if we can get to a place and sit down and negotiate a final product,' she [WH immigration adviser Felicia Escobar] said." …
[I]t's not impossible Boehner would push a comprehensive amnesty bill over his own party's objections as his final act as speaker, and retire to a promised lucrative lobbying gig. Or a comprehensive bill might get 50 percent plus one of the GOP caucus by amnestying the illegal population only with work visas rather than citizenship, thus giving (they hope) political cover to gelatinous Republicans desperate to satisfy the demands of relentless corporate lobbyists.
I don't question Rep. Goodlatte's motives or his good faith [but see below]. But he's clearly playing into the hands of the comprehensive reform/amnesty crowd by keeping their hopes alive.
It's understandable that Goodlatte wants to produce reform legislation in an area that could use reform. That, under ordinary circumstances, is part of his job.
But a responsible legislator doesn't act for the sake of acting. To forge ahead when doing so can't possibly produce the right kind of reform, but opens up the possibility of massively ill-conceived action, is highly irresponsible.
UPDATE: This report shows that Goodlatte is actually quite sympathetic to amnesty on a large scale. No wonder he's keeping hope alive for comprehensive immigration reform.


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text: On Mon, 22 Nov 2004, Patrick Geoffray wrote: Warning and Disclaimer: The following is a Rant, a genuine rgb Rant, and hence represents a significant investment of time just to read (imagine what it took me to write:-). The faint of heart should quit now (and get some work done today...;-) <rant> > Hi Robert, > > No, it's a statistical study. The Top500 list is relevant for what it > was designed for: tracking the evolution of the HPC market, ie where > people put their money. > > Don't look at the top 10, don't look at the order, look at the 500 > entries as a snapshot of the known 500 biggest machines. In this > context, you are looking for the trends: vector vs scalar, SMP versus > MPP, industry vs academia, etc. > > Sure the vendors pay attention to it, and it's certainly a marketing > fight for the top10, but they cannot really influence the whole list, IMHO. Ah, but for whom is this snapshot useful? Who is, as you put it, looking? To me not at all -- my clusters have never intentionally resembled or been influenced in any way by anything on the top 500 list. To most of the people on this list, it is of very little use, again, even including those seeking to build a fairly advanced and powerful cluster or those who have built one that is represented there. It includes too little detail to support cluster design decisions or even to properly represent the considerable work that went into e.g. ASCI Red. It isn't just the top 10 that has to be ignored to get down to where the clusters are relevant to the needs or means of, say, a University based research group, or department, or even centralized computer cluster resources for an entire University -- it is almost the entire list, or rather, even where the clusters MIGHT be relevant to a given design goal, you cannot tell from anything on the list. The list is used, I suspect, primarily by groups like: groups, especially corporate groups, seeking to purchase a turnkey supercomputer cluster (following one of a few more or less accepted designs) just as once they would have bought a turnkey supercomputer. Vendors of hardware promoted by the list, to see what the competition is selling (and by "vendors" I mean stockholders, the board, sales and management, and design and engineering, each for their own purposes). Grant seekers, granting agencies, and grant reviewers (often the more ignorant of the above) concerned with the >>prestige<< associated with membership in the top500. People in general whose mouths might actually utter "OK, so I'm about to spend all this money on a cluster -- just where does that put me in the top 500?" (Something I've actually heard more than once, usually without a word about what the cluster is actually designed to >>do<<. Even from people that I >>know<< know better.) Of these groups, the one whose needs are best served by the list are the vendors, by far, as it is the perfect marketing tool for high margin sales backed by remarkably little design effort. The fact that there ARE so many duplicate clusters is clear evidence that it has become an ideal vehicle for selling a class of boilerplate, turnkey cluster especially in the middle to lower end of the range. "Buy our "over the counter" cluster (tuned, of course, to your budget range and needs within reason) and we'll guarantee a top 500 listing, which can't hurt with the funding agency, with the board, with the many people who control the spending of the money and who seek public exposure and prestige for marketing reasons of their own but who DON'T know enough to actually judge competing designs on intelligent grounds, eh?" > > a) It lists identical hardware configurations as many times as they > > are submitted. Thus "Geotrace" lists positions 109 through 114 with > > identical hardware. If one ran uniq on the list, it would probably end > > up being the top 200. At most. Arguably 100, since some clusters > > differ at most by the number of processors. What's the point, if the > > site's purpose is to encourage and display alternative engineering? > > None at all. > > When you take a snapshot, you take everybody on the picture, even the > N-tuples. If "Geotrace" has indeed 15 identical clusters (it is quite > frequent in industry to have several identical clusters BTW), they > should be on the list, otherwise your snapshot of the market is wrong. > > Why would you expect *all* of the entries to be different ? Who cares about a "snapshot of the market" except marketers or economists? Is this "computer science" and I missed it? As I noted in the last installment of the rant and up above, the people who most care all have something to sell, and to sell to a relatively ignorant marketplace, with basically no exception. Vendors to a class of client whose decision-making process is influenced by the simple and predictable metric of top 500 position, vendor management groups seeking to sell their strategy to boards whose approval is influenced by the number of top 500 clusters sold (and ditto vendor sales departments seeking to sell their sales strategy and performance to middle management and ditto vendor boards seeking to sell their strategy and performance to shareholders). Clients seeking to sell the clusters they want to buy to funding entities that are capable of understanding how many "megaflops" (or gigaflops, or teraflops) they are buying and the prestige associated being on the "in" list where they are utterly incapable of actually judging a cluster's design, suitability for any given purpose, or comparative cost-benefit. Even the "bragging rights" are a form of self-sales, self-deception, to the extend that they distract one from a proper design process. It's politics, not technology, driven. If the list were actually going to be >>useful<< to thoughtful engineers, would-be cluster purchasers or even would be sellers of clusters OUTSIDE of marketing and the marketplace, if it were to be TECHNICALLY userful, then obviously compressing the identical designs down to a single entry and presuming that all clusters built according to that design will have identical performance according to this metric (perhaps along with a count) makes tremendous sense. Information theory. It permits useful TECHNICAL information to be communicated far more efficiently, at the expense of sales demographics information, which is primarily useful to sales persons and weak-minded clients. > > b) It focusses on a single benchmark useful only to a (small) fraction > > of all HPC applications. I mean, c'mon. Linpack? Have we learned > > >>nothing<< from the last twenty years of developing benchmarks? Don't > > Haven't you learn the rule #1 of benchmarking ? > Rule #1: There is no set of benchmarks that is representative enough. I write benchmarking tools. Perhaps badly (as Greg has pointed out, it is Not Easy to write a really good benchmark:-) but well enough to have learned all sorts of rules about benchmarking and to write about those rules frequently on this list. What you are calling rule #1 is more commonly phrased the other way around: The only truly reliable benchmark is your own application. This presupposes that your purpose is to use benchmarks as some sort of universal metric from which one can PREDICT performance on your application. The truth is, one often CAN use benchmarks for this purpose but it is an expert-friendly process and not one that can -- usually or generally -- be reduced to a single number like "number of Linpack FLOPS". It presupposes a fairly deep knowledge of both the application itself and where and how it spends time and what its bottlenecks are, and the tools used to provide direct MICRObenchmark peeks right at the relevant performance dimensions. Have we not just spent a week and a half or thereabouts discussing networking hardware that provides bleeding edge latency, distinct topology-related performance scaling patterns, at costs that can actually be compared (to a degree of approximation)? >>This<< is what is useful (to some, but not to me in particular at the moment it is but one of many non-universal but very useful performance metrics), and is one of many reasons that this mailing list is a critical resource to real cluster designers and users where the top 500 club -- I mean "list" -- is not. Aside from a brief moment where vendors participating in the discussion got carried away with dueling Shameless Plugs (which was, by the way, annoying and clearly inappropriate for the list which is NOT to be used as a marketing vehicle except indirectly, where you can let your microbenchmark numbers and over the counter costs speak for themselves, or at least be spoken for by actual users) this was a really, really lovely discussion of the highest end networking technologies and bound to be of real use to lots of people seeking to optimize cost-benefit for actual cluster designs with known communication needs. It was very informative for others who DON'T have those needs -- it is very interesting to hear topology discussed on the list once again, as there was a period where it was only rarely considered as a design choice. And don't get me wrong -- vendors, especially including yourself, participated >>well<< in this discussion for the most part -- vendors are welcome on this list BECAUSE who could know their hardware (or supporting software) better? None of us, however, want the list to deteriorate to a de facto spamfest where marketing noise starts to outweigh signal and even the list host Scyld exercises extreme discretion in using the list to plug product without open solicitation to do so. > Linpack is a yard stick, that measures 3 things: > 1) the system compute mostly right. > 2) the system stays up long enough to be useful. > 3) the system is big enough to be in the snapshot. > > For these requirements, Linpack is just fine. What do any of these mean? "Mostly right"? You mean linpack can get wrong answers on a system that isn't openly incompetent in its basic engineering or that linpack validates that the cluster engineers in the top 500 aren't openly incompetent? How does keeping a brand new cluster up long enough for the seller (not even the client, but often the seller!) to complete a single benchmark demonstrate that it will still be running at a productive level in six weeks let alone six months? "Look, the cluster we sold you actually survived its vendor burn-in and completed linpack without crashing" is, I suppose, useful information (considering the alternative:-), but the real hardware burn-in is the next four to six weeks AFTER delivery, and the real test of the cluster's long term reliability is whether the seller goes bankrupt fullfilling the service contract or whether problems cost so much of the user's productivity that it is severely compromised. Which requires looking at the cluster 1, 6, 12, 24 months down time's stream...which WOULD be a really useful thing to publish, wouldn't it? But it isn't on the top500 list -- if half of the clusters there were broken nasty time sinks that had their administrators cursing and losing hair we'd never know it -- from the list data. The final measurement is obviously of no TECHNICAL use at all, however useful it is to marketers and however much it is the point of the whole list. Pissing contest is just about right. > I will tell you why the vendors would hate this: it takes a lot of time, > and they are not paid for this. Tuning Linpack on large machine is > already very time consuming. You want 10 more benchmarks to run ? Sure, > who will run them ? > > BTW, how do you cook up a cluster to run Linpack well ? I hope that you see the contradiction inherent in these two paragraphs. So on the one hand, vendors would hate having to provide real benchmarks because a) they would have to run them (for the most incapable or ignorant of their clients) in order to be able to provide them; b) they would have to make sure that their performance on the benchmarks is good, or they'll have to actually adjust prices to reflect their performance measurements; c) tuning a cluster design to optimize performance on any single benchmark or metric IS possible and in fact is SOP, but it is also expert friendly, time consuming and unavoidable, since running a simple test untuned might give Bad Numbers see b). Most vendors I've talked to, BTW are actually pretty happy to provide you with benchmark results, where they can, and provide access to systems where you can create your own where they cannot. It gives them an opportunity to convince you that they are worth the money, and most vendors are proud of their products and really feel that they are a good value and worth selecting on the basis of price/performance. And finally, benchmarks ARE paid for (as is everything else) -- ultimately by the consumer. Which one would I rather have a company provide me -- a glossy magazine advertisement showing racks of neat boxes and smiling geekoid administrators with their feet up on a desk, or hard benchmarks and other data on the actual PERFORMANCE and RELIABILITY of that same cluster? Hmmm.... Then you ask me how to cook up a cluster to run Linpack well? The same way one cooks up a cluster to run ANYTHING well. By analyzing the application, determining the bottlenecks, and investing the money spent on the cluster (including the de facto tuning process, which vendors SELL their clients, after all) in a balanced design. The problem is that a cluster design tuned to run Linpack well may be horribly balanced for running a distributed Monte Carlo application well, or a genomics application well, or a large scale cosmology simulation well, and so top 500 ranking is misleading even where no tuning occurs (and I'll guess that tuning always occurs, at least a bit). If one is running an application for which 100 BT communications is more than adequate, spending money to equip every node with Myrinet (not to pick on any single high-end network, you understand;-) is silly, I'm sure you'll admit. However, it is quite possible that a really big cluster built on 100 BT with an impressive aggregate compute capacity by many measures might lose out to a much smaller cluster with a more linpack-friendly balance between CPU and IPC. The fact that it costs 1/3 as much for the aggregate CPU it provides to ITS primary application is also somehow lost. Similarly, MANY clusters that are absolutely perfect for their particular application that DO use very high end communications but are truly IPC bound at (say) 64 nodes may be literally the fastest clusters in the world at their particular class of application -- top >>1<<, not just top 500 -- but still fail completely to make the top 500 at all. How can these clusters even be defended? "Oh, so you built the world's fastest cluster, did you -- how come it isn't on the top 500 list, then..." It's especially amusing that you'd try to defend Linpack in particular, as it has a long and checkered history of vendor tuning and intervention. Yes, it is rehabilitated and probably quite reliable at this point, but history has already shown that vendors WILL bend designs and skew results to make sales based on single metrics. lmbench, on the other hand, is very easy to build on a system, very easy to run (well, not openly DIFFICULT to build and run;-) and produces a standardized report that can be directly compared across systems to obtain meaningful information about how fast those systems perform a wide range of relevant micro-scale operations. stream is similarly directly useful for a wide class of programs. So is netpipe and netperf, the former in the direct context of selected IPC mechanisms. I suppose one >>can<< tune for parts of these benchmarks, but generally only at the hardware design level or driver design level, and the design improvements are (at that level) likely to actually DELIVER their benefits to all folks for whom the microbenchmark is relevant (those whose code is significantly bottlenecked by the measure and who use the improved hardware or drivers). That's WHY we can have discussions about network latency on this list. There are tools to measure it, and we can agree to use the same tool and we can agree that it provides a FAIR measure of performance that is RELEVANT to certain classes of application and affects overall performance in predictable, if complex, ways. When was the last time somebody had a serious discussion about linpack performance on list? It happens periodically, but isn't terribly interesting when it does as there are generally better measures for much of what it collectively tests. > > > c) It totally neglects the cost of the clusters. If you have to ask, > > What is the price of a machine ? List price ? Including software ? > machine room ? service ? support ? how long the support ? > You would need to define a benchmark to get comparable prices, and trust > the vendors to comply with it. Actually, I think that it would be remarkably easy to assemble a top 500-like list that would be actually useful and include both a suite of benchmark results for a variety of relevant cluser metrics, or to morph the exiting top 500 list into a form that would be useful to somebody besides marketers and their all-too-willing prey (ooo, did I say that;-). Yes, most of the changes would be anathema to marketers and certain vendors, who rely on the NON-flatness of the playing field to harvest margin. Interestingly, I really think that vendors WOULD benefit from this as much as anybody, just as my own experience is that most vendors are happy to provide real benchmark results anyway (or the opportunity to roll your own). Real business performance is linked to clear, everybody-agrees value delivered for the money spent. You want your customers to be happy a year, two years, four years down the road, which won't be the case if they come to realize that the design you sold them was a total rip-off. One can sell a price-performance loser for a while on the basis of reputation or the ignorance of one's clientele, but in the long run this is likely to be a losing strategy. At worst having a balanced-performance multi-metric top-500 (with different categories of membership and search tools to flatten across categories) would level the field and encourage the marketplace itself to determine fair prices between the various hardware alternatives. Competition is good, as long as the "fitness" used in the marketing genetic algorithm isn't a heavily skewed function relative to real fitness. > > best the cost after the vendor discounted the system heavily for the > > advertising benefit of getting a system into the top whatever. > > You mean I cannot really buy the VT cluster for $5M dollars ? What a > pity :-) I was thinking of this very cluster while writing much of these rants, of course. If ever there was a cluster built for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way, this has to be right at the top of the "Kids, Don't Try This at Home" cluster list. Build it once (for a fortune) and it sucks. Rebuild it (for a second fortune) and it doesn't suck, but nobody has a particular use for it or funding stream for it and it requires its own a small power plant just to keep it running. Maybe things are better by this point, but that's the impression I've gotten of the project, at any rate. However, there is little doubt (in MY mind) that the mindset that produced this cluster just to piss a bit further than the next one and attract media attention and to establish a certain platform as a viable cluster base for purely marketing purposes is rife within the top 500, and only thinly disguised at that. And it works. Look at the number of Power-based systems appearing in the Top 500. Vendor clout matters, and membership in "the club" is important and useful to those that can afford it. > > I could go on. I mean, look at the banner ads on the site. Vendors > > love this site. If it didn't exist, they'd go and invent it. > > Who is paying for the website, the bandwidth, the booth at SC, the > operational expenses ? The banner ads... Who is, and who should be, are very useful questions. Who is is likely a mix of the vendors and the granting agencies that support the sponsoring institutions and those institutions themselves (out of opportunity cost time if nothing else in the latter case). I wouldn't be surprised if there was grant support openly behind the project; there almost certainly is grant support behind the groups/individuals that do the actual work of running it even if that support is nominally for doing something else (common enough in academica). Who should be is indeed the major funding agencies, either singly or together. Let's face it -- the website and the bandwidth are likely nearly irrelevantly small expenses. A database (a small and non-complex one at that). A straightforward lookup tool and associated links. I've built sites like this myself in my copious free time, and that may well be how it is run this very day -- a good design and it runs itself, mostly. A cheap server on a network with decent backbone bandwidth and spare capacity (most universities and government labs would qualify). Hiring a fraction of a full-time person to run the website at and spending (say) $10K/year on hardware might cost $50K or even $100K, including overhead. To provide a >>useful resource<< to support all the many, many would be cluster users seeking NSF funding to BUY those clusters would be money well-spent and would result in saving 10 to 50 times the investment (at a guess) within the NSF alone. IF the information provided by the resource was actually (technically) useful! > There are no such things as "turnkey and mass produced" clusters, except > when a customer buy several instances of the same configuration. Most > configs are different. There is "different" and "significantly different", where I don't view systems with as being "different" unless the difference is in one of the primary design metrics actually exercised by the test being used. However, so fine, I agree. Everything is different, even if one is getting a Western Scientific Special (just one big enough to get on the top 500 list). Then let's CELEBRATE the difference, let's RECORD the difference. Instead of a "top 500" site that celebrates a single metric and a system description that is little more than a vendor name and a number of processors (giving a bit of a lie to this assertion, by the way) let's shoot for a "Cluster Registry" site where folks can "register" their clusters in some detail. Include a lot more detail -- CPU, clock, motherboard, memory, network(s), disk(s), network topology and yes, actual price paid for the cluster itself, component wise or in aggregate, exclusive of any software beyond the operating system (where relevant) and general purpose programming tools and libraries, e.g. the compiler (listed as separate entities if possible). Then run a standardized suite of benchmark tools on it to get an ARRAY of performance metrics, and price metrics, many of them microbenchmark results (and hence difficult to "tune" as they measure properties of the actual hardware architecture, operating system, and compiler chosen, along with critical libraries along e.g. network communications paths where relevant). Store all of these in a nice, extensible database. Insert a nice, powerful search engine that can look up and sort results according to nearly any specified range of design and expenditure metrics, and yes, you'd have a site that would be very, very useful. ESPECIALLY if you included two Very Important Fields: Owner comments (where they have the opportunity to bash the vendor if the pile of PC's they are sold turns out to be a pile of rubbish six months later) and owner contact information. If I >>did<< see a cluster in such a registry that had good price/performance in the spectrum of metrics that is relevant to my application(s), I'd very definitely love to have an email address so I could ask the owner if they are still satisfied and if there are any gotchas I should engineer out if possible. We Could Do This. Or at least, it could be done. I once attempted to do it for Duke (and ended up with a php/mysql based site that "worked" so I >>know<< it can be done) but it does require a bit more than the time a single, heavily overworked physicist who is learning php and mysql WHILE writing the site can contribute without actually getting paid for it... There was a time back at the very beginning when the beowulf website provided a service a bit like this, but yes, it is difficult to get folks to register their clusters without some visible benefit. Maybe that's the miracle of the top 500 list -- it is useful enough to vendors that they ARE willing to register the cluster more or less for you just to get that market visibility, and some data on a single metric is better than none at all. Sigh. > Let me say it again: the Top 500 is not designed to find the best > machine for your needs ! That the job of a RFP and the associated suite > of acceptance tests !!! > > when you want to spend enough dollars to buy you a 1 TFlops machine, you > do your homework: you identify the set of benchmarks that you have > confidence in, you ask vendors to bid, you choose one and you test it > for acceptance. You don't tape the Top500 list to the wall and throw a > needle. If you do, I have this nice bridge to sell :-) While I agree, I think there is a school in Virginia that is in the market for just such a bridge, and that while yes the process you describe is the ideal, the RFPs I've read from actual granting agencies seeking to give away large sums of money are not infrequently seeking linpack MFLOPs or (more recently) Spec* numbers in lieu of actual tuned design metrics. I'm idealist enough to hope that in the end good engineering does win out, and that the groups that DO identify the actual performance bottlenecks and spend the money optimally are rewarded with the actual grants. Oops, pardon me, I've got to go polish my rose-colored glasses with Adam Smith's invisible hands -- they fogged up from my tears of idealist joy...:-) > > useful information about things like latency, bandwidth, interconnect > > saturation for various communications patterns, speed for a variety of > > actual applications including several with very different > > computation/communication patterns (ranging from embarrassingly parallel > > to fine grained synchronous). Scaling CURVES (rather than a single > > silly number) would be really useful. > > Sure, and you do it all again every 6 months. > > Seriously, take something like bandwidth: it is pipelined or not ? > cold-start or not ? Back-to-back or through a switch ? how many stages > in the switch ? do you count a megabits as 1000000 bits or 1048576 bits > ? Let's imagine the mess when we talk about communication patterns... What mess. That's what we HAVE been talking about on this list. It is what this list DOES talk about. And yes, you do it all again, and again, and again as systems evolve and new technologies emerge and become cost-competitive with the old, which is why Myricom cannot rely on its market kudos of years past to guarantee future success. To the extent that cluster design is rational and not top 500 marketing hype, precisely the issues you raise are relevant to the would-be cluster owner, and there are real metrics that CAN be derived for accepted tools to provide the answers. Complex yes -- unavoidably so for complex network-parallel applications. However, complexity isn't necessarily a mess, and even a mess can be straightened out and organized according to certain principles. I'm not looking for the moon, here, BTW. I just think that we could do better than ranking everything according to Linpack (only). In fact, I think it would be difficult, literally, to do any worse! I mean, how about aggregate bogomips? I suppose that would be worse. Maybe. > > I mean, this site is "sponsored" by some presumably serious computer > > science and research groups (although you'd never know it to look at all > > The Top500 team is 4 people, with the same guy doing most of the work > since the list was created. There is no "groups" behind it. I was referring to the three institutions listed in the upper left hand corner of the site (as toplevel "groups"). Also, everybody who works for a University or government lab typically works for a "group" with some specified funding stream, and Dongarra, at least, is a serious computer scientist whose work I (generally) greatly admire. Maybe they haven't been able to get e.g. NSF to fund it directly. Maybe they actually make money from it and use running the list to fund other stuff. I don't know, I just find streaming ads annoying. Would we all still use this (the beowulf) list if vendors hammered us with visual ads and sales every time a technical issue was raised as a topic of discussion? I very much doubt it. Yet the top 500 list IS clearly very influential of purchase decisions -- so much so that vendors go to enormous lengths and great expense to ensure that they are represented there if at all possible and to maximize their representation there when it IS possible. > > sponsoring institutions are listed). If they want to do us a real > > public service, they could do some actual computer science and see if > > they couldn't come up with some measure a bit richer than just R_max and > > R_peak.... > > BTW, the 4 people aforementioned know quite a bit of computer science... > The fact is that the Top500 is a statistical study, not a public > service. You can use it as it is or not, but it does not really matter. As I said, I'm more than aware that they are competent CS people. I'm also highly aware of statistical studies and the value thereof (statistics is one of my many hobbies:-), and if the top500 is a statistical study, it is in my opinion a very narrow one. It requires voluntary participation (self-selection) and excludes by design a vast range of high performance computing operations to further narrow its range. These distortions bias the results, although yes the bias is uniformly applied and creates a self-consistent landscape. You might as well use Mensa members (only) as the basis of meaningful statistical measures of intelligence in the general populace. Try not to think too hard about all the brilliant people who don't belong to Mensa, including all the people who may not even test out that well in I.Q. but somehow manage to win Nobel prizes anyway. Also try not to think too hard about the kind of person that would WANT to belong to Mensa, and why. Not to particularly pick on another "top 500"-like club... I'm illustrating a point in statistical surveys with self-selection as opposed to unbiased sampling. However, the value of statistics is generally the correlations that it establishes, even though (yes) correlation is not causality and YMMV. Most of what my rant is concerned with is that the correlations that CAN be established from the top 500 list are so shallow as to be (by your own admission) nearly useless to real cluster design or informed purchase decisions, however much they ARE very useful to vendors seeking an oversimplified bazaar to sell their products. Still, your point is well taken -- list usage is a voluntary matter, and it can be taken for whatever it is worth even if it isn't worth all that much. Even a survey of the coffee-drinking preferences of Mensa members might mean something useful to coffee marketers, even if it was something much narrower than what they might have hoped for. > > AMD has more or less "owned" the price/performance sweet spot for the > > last two years. If you have LIMITED money to spend and want to get the > > What is the "price/performance sweet spot" ? > How do you measure it ? How do you know that AMD owned it ? For most consumers the bottom line is, quite correctly, how fast reliable hardware runs their application for the least cost. The sweet spot is thus typically where numerical performance by a variety of metrics (e.g. sure, linpack, but also SpecFP, SpecInt, and especially user's own applications) is the greatest for the least money spent, per node, compared to equivalently equipped hardware from other vendors. And yes, this is approximate and yes, I can fancy it up as much as you like but we'd still both know what I mean. To measure it, one ULTIMATELY runs one's own application. Alternatively, especially during the cluster design process, one considers a variety of metrics (many of which are mentioned above) with some known or expected relevance to one's own application, in a hardware configuration capable of providing performance on a par across the alternative being considered. For CPU/motherboard/memory choices, that would typically be networking and disk. Numerical performance, in turn, is often influenced strongly by memory bandwidth for certain applications, by processor design (e.g. pipelining etc) and compiler and OS support. So run your application on it if you can, run some benchmarks that tend to have performance variability that is related to how your application's performance varies (if you are lucky and know of some), then compare prices from vendors that provide all of what you need outside of the primary performance predictor space. I know you know all of this and work with it (for networking hardware) for a living -- it is just that yes, there is a sweet spot, both for "each" cluster purchaser/user, and an aggregate/average sweet spot for all cluster purchase/users. As for how I know it, from my own tests (limited as they may be) and other purely anecdotal experience, of course. When thinking of a cluster design for a new cluster, I run lmbench, cpu_rate, my own application ;-), the applications of many of my good friends who use clusters for a living, look up spec results and might even look up linpack results for Opterons or Athlons before them at a variety of clock and memory configurations. I look at the price of equivalently equipped and supported CPUs in a given class across the range of clocks supported by each to the extent that patience permits. While there are doubtless exceptions (although I have yet to find one) I've just gone through such a process and the Opterons at this particular moment in time (In My Opinion and as of Some Weeks Ago, things change rapidly) deliver the most general purpose "numerical" performance per dollar spent, in reliable and consistent hardware configurations from a variety of vendors, end of story. The Athlons and Durons were actually narrower winners in their day, but in the case of the Opteron it really has been little to no contest, EVEN with the 2.4 kernels wasting a goodly chunk of the potential of the hardware. With 2.6 kernels they simply fly. Not terribly surprising, actually. The technical and performance advantage of the 64 bits is at least partly offset by Intel's commanding market advantage, causing a relative price inversion so that AMD's best is priced better than Intel's best. Number 2 has to try harder. Now, if you object (perfectly reasonably) that THIS isn't an objective, reproducible, statistically supported conclusion but instead is anecdotal bullshit that might or might not be true, you'd be perfectly correct (not that it would change my opinion:-). I'd counter that this is precisely why having a MEANINGFUL statistical sampling of MANY performance measures on real production clusters at many scales and purposes would be so very useful, and why the top 500 list is so -- disappointing -- in contrast. > The Top500 list tells you that people put their money on Intel more than > on AMD. If you assume that people do they homework when they buy such > machines, you may deduct that Intel was more attractive in the bidding > process. There are so many flaws with this observation that I won't even bother addressing them. Next you'll be arguing that Windows is a technically superior operating system because Look! Countless Surveys Prove that more systems are sold running Windows than all of the alternatives put together! Not to mention the self-fullfilling prophecy aspect of the top 500 feeding upon itself. Perhaps the reason there are so many Intel systems represented is because there have been so many Intel systems represented in the past, and because people really ARE strongly influenced in their purchase decisions by the top 500 list itself. Perhaps it is because Intel twists the arms of many of the potential vendors of systems at that scale to use only their processor in everything that they sell or pay more for everything (shrinking their margins) just like Microsoft does with Windows. Perhaps it is because they charge such a high margin compared to the actual performance that they can afford to discount cluster components heavily to specific "big" purchasers and still make money while giving the consumer the illusion that they are "getting a bargain". Perhaps it is the eternal "TCO" chant of marketers everywhere seeking to justify their high-margin sales (sometimes with reason, mind you -- I'm just observing that this particular mantra plays to the advantage of the top player in any given market). I mean, c'mon. Even the best of humans have a bit of sheep within them. > I can understand how the Top500 is not matching your expectations, but > the truth is that it was designed to match them. What you are looking > for just does not exist. It's not utopia, you could really imagine a > company following the SPEC model: vendors pay for submitting (a lot of) > results and results are reviewed seriously. All you need is to convince > vendors to spend a lot of money on it. Is the HPC market big enough for > that ? I doubt it. I agree that the top 500 model is not matching my expectations, and I think that (deep down) we agree as to the groups for whom it IS matching expectations. However, we aren't limited to just the Spec model. We could use a different model altogether, one that we create and that need not cost a lot of money on anybody's part to play. I have great hopes for Doug's efforts to build a suite of cluster benchmarking and testing tools. Another group that CAN play the role of watchdog in this sort of thing is the news media -- a magazine, for example. Hmmm, the magazine I write for, for example. Even with magazines one has to be a bit careful -- they rely on vendors for advertising dollars -- but generally to my own experience they manage to present a fair and balanced view of performance analyses and tests. Magazines have most definitely developed their own suites of testing programs many times in the past and published regular comparative reviews of the available hardware on that basis. And of course you can trust ME implicitly...;-) So two (of many) possible funding/support models is for CMW (for example) or an NSF-supported site (for another example) to set up a "rich" database like the one I describe above, and to provide a prepackaged, ready to build and run suite of open source benchmarks to support a unified and consistent measure of performance. The cluster community appears to be big enough to support its own magazine and its own targeted advertising -- maybe it has grown to where it CAN support a real database of real performance metrics across a broad base of cluster owners. Note that I say just "build and run", the benchmark suite, not "tune", at least at the software level. Ideally, this would be a matter of e.g. rpmbuild or ./.configure;make (possibly after editing a single toplevel configuration file to select e.g. compiler and network and disk resources to be tested and to specify the test cluster). The tool itself could even be made autoreporting -- run it and it refreshes your password- or cookie-protected entry in the master table. So I think it is doable, and doable for very little more effort than that being spent already on the top 500 list. I also think that it is a WORTHWHILE, DESIREABLE, GOOD thing to do. Perhaps it will happen. Now, if I could only repackage the above and turn it into a CMW column, Life would be Good. Sigh. Heck, maybe I will. Then I'd get paid for writing it...;-) </rant> rgb Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/ Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:rgb at phy.duke.edu


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Former Phoenix officer accused of murder testifies it's his job to restrain resisting suspects
PHOENIX – A former Phoenix police officer charged with murder and animal cruelty acknowledged Wednesday under intense cross-examination that he was the aggressor in the early stages of a domestic violence call before he shot and killed a man and his dog, but he noted it was his job to try to restrain a resisting suspect.
Richard Chrisman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, aggravated assault and animal cruelty charges. He maintains the October 2010 shootings of Daniel Rodriguez, 29, and his pit bull, Junior, were justified because Rodriguez reached for the officer's gun during a tussle and tried to attack him with a bicycle.
Authorities say Chrisman abused his police powers by killing an unarmed man who posed no threat to officers. He was fired from the Phoenix Police Department about five months after the shooting.
On Chrisman's second day of testimony, prosecutor Juan Martinez aggressively questioned the former officer's recollection of the shooting while accusing him of fabricating key elements of the case.
"Do you have problems with your memory about this very significant incident?" Martinez snapped.
"It was three years ago, and I don't remember everything about it," Chrisman replied.
"He never touched you, did he?" Martinez asked pointedly.
"Yes, he did," Chrisman responded.
"And when he tries to get away from you a second time, you're the one who escalates the situation when you pulled your gun?" Martinez asked.
"I pulled out my gun, yes," Chrisman said.
"I don't get to run away," the former officer later explained. "My job is not to run away from criminals who don't want to be apprehended."
The prosecutor was set to continue his cross-examination Wednesday afternoon.
On Tuesday, Chrisman detailed for jurors how he and another officer arrived at the scene and made contact with a woman who had called authorities to report that her son, Rodriguez, had become violent. Chrisman said he learned before arriving that Rodriguez had a criminal history of drug use and weapons offenses, which elevated his awareness of what he sensed could become a dangerous encounter.
Chrisman said he and another officer received permission from the suspect's mother to enter their trailer, but Rodriguez refused to let them in at first. Chrisman eventually entered the home, and got into an altercation with the man as he refused to come outside to speak with officers.
Meanwhile, Chrisman testified, the man's pit bull was becoming aggressive, at one point lunging toward him, leading Chrisman to shoot the dog twice.
Amid tears, Chrisman explained how pepper spray and his stun gun failed to stop the suspect's aggressive behavior and screaming as the two then struggled, and Rodriguez picked up a bicycle from the living room floor.
"He was going to smash my brains in. ... I fired two rounds, center mass," Chrisman said.
Rodriguez died at the scene.
Martinez has accused Chrisman of manipulating the scene, lying about when he arrived and not following protocol.
Chrisman's testimony has run counter to that of the other officer who was at the scene. That officer previously told jurors that Chrisman was on a tear the moment he got to Rodriguez's door, then pulled out his gun and pressed it to the suspect's head. Chrisman has denied the allegations. The other officer also told jurors the suspect was backing away and was no longer a threat when Chrisman opened fire.
Chrisman has accused the officer of not being there to help with the struggling suspect inside the trailer, and at one point, even taking a personal call on his cellphone during the incident.
Opening statements in Chrisman's trial began in early August.


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Asian shares slipped on Tuesday after a plunge in U.S. manufacturing activity hit Wall Street stocks and the dollar, while the euro hovered near a six-week high on optimism over Greece's plan to buy back debt.
Declines in Asian stock markets suggested caution setting in after gains in recent weeks, with investors reluctant to chase shares higher amid continued gridlock in the U.S. Congress over proposals to avert the so-called fiscal cliff - $600 billion worth of tax increases and spending cuts that will be automatically triggered in early 2013.
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European shares were expected to open lower, U.S. stock index futures eased and riskier assets such as commodities were also hit, with oil, copper and gold all losing ground.
"Oil markets are starting to come off on the weaker-than-expected manufacturing data and the fact that the U.S. economic outlook remains unclear," said Natalie Rampono, commodity strategist at ANZ in Sydney.
"We are also seeing mixed headlines on the fiscal cliff negotiations, so markets have already taken on a cautious outlook on that account."
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> fell 0.2 percent, backing away from a nine-month high reached on Monday.
Australian shares eased 0.6 percent, while Japan's benchmark Nikkei share average fell 0.3 percent.
Financial bookmakers called London's FTSE 100 , Frankfurt's DAX and Paris's CAC-40 to open down 0.2-0.3 percent, and S&P 500 futures slipped 0.2 percent.
Global share indexes had risen on Monday after manufacturing surveys showed signs of a recovery, albeit an uneven one, in China's economy and a slower contraction in Europe. But sentiment toward equities soured after data revealed U.S. manufacturing unexpectedly contracted in November to its lowest level in more than three years.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said on Monday that its index of national factory activity fell to 49.5 in November, the weakest since July 2009, as companies worried about whether lawmakers in Washington could reach a budget deal in time to avert a fiscal crisis that may lead to a recession.
Heading into next week, even a hint of progress in the fiscal cliff negotiations could spawn a modest rally, said Vishnu Varathan, regional economist in Singapore for Mizuho Corporate Bank.
"Overall the euro zone noises are coming out positive and I don't see any turning around there. The only real deal-breaker, whatever will send the dollar spiking up and risk really off the table, will be if there is a complete breakdown in the Congress negotiations," he said.
"Right now there is some disappointment here and there, but overall still the consensus is that negotiations will result in some kind of acceptable compromise," Varathan said.
The Australian dollar recovered from initial weakness on Tuesday after a widely expected interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). The rate was trimmed by 25 basis points to 3.0 percent, matching the previous record low.
The RBA said the full impact of rate cuts in the past had yet to be felt, and that recent data confirmed the peak in resource investment was approaching.
The Aussie rose 0.2 percent on the day and last traded at $1.0440, not far from a two-month peak of $1.0491 touched last week.
The euro was flat around $1.3060, hovering near the previous day's high of $1.3076, the single currency's strongest level in about six weeks.
The euro gained as Greek bonds rallied on Monday after Athens announced better-than-expected terms for its planned debt buy-back, boosting chances it will succeed and lead to the release of fresh aid funds.
The U.S. fiscal cliff issue remained in the minds of many investors, underpinning the Treasury market, where benchmark 10-year yields held steady in Asian trading around 1.628 percent.
Brent crude slipped 0.3 percent to around $110.60 a barrel and gold fell nearly 1 percent towards $1,700 an ounce. Copper fell from the first time in four sessions, coming off a six-week high reached on Monday to drop below $8,000 a metric ton (1.1023 tons).
The White House dismissed a proposal from congressional Republicans on Monday that included tax reforms and spending cuts, saying it did not meet President Barack Obama's pledge to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
The Republicans proposed overhauling the U.S. tax code to raise $800 billion in new revenue over 10 years. Obama's opening bid, outlined last Friday, seeks $1.6 trillion in new revenue by allowing the expiry of tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush for the top two tax brackets.
"Now that the both sides have put out their plans on the table, we can say at least the negotiation is starting. But the way it looks, it will be difficult to get any deal by the second week of December. Probably it's going to take until the third week," said Tomoaki Shishido, fixed income analyst at Nomura Securities.
(Additional reporting by Ayai Tomisawa in Tokyo and Vidya Ranganathan, Ramya Venugopal and Alex Richardson in Singapore; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)


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Sue and John Ballard '55 TT'56 Professorship Inaugural Lecture: Forecasting Space Weather
William Lotko, Sue and John Ballard '55 TT'56 Professor of Engineering, Thayer School of Engineering
Friday, October 11, 2013, 3:30pm
Spanos Auditorium
This seminar is part of the Jones Seminars on Science, Technology, and Society series.
What is space weather? What causes it? How does it impact people and technological systems? Can it be forecast? How can forecasts be used?
Most weather in space is caused by storms on the Sun that propagate radiation and solar gases toward Earth. Adverse conditions during intense storms pose threats to human activities in space and to the communications, electric power transmission, and satellite systems on which modern society depends. The Holy Grail in forecasting space weather is to observe and follow disturbances as they emerge from the Sun and then use numerical models and multipoint measurements to determine their impact on geospace and at the Earth's surface. This goal has a long horizon, but its arc is bending toward success through multidisciplinary R&D efforts at Dartmouth and beyond. This first Ballard lecture addresses practical (everyday), exotic (apocryphal), and sublime (unpredictable) aspects of space weather and what we are doing at Dartmouth to enable forecast capabilities.
About the Speaker
William Lotko is best known for work on global geospace dynamics and magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling. His students have recently developed accurate methods for predicting auroral electron precipitation and, using computer simulations, discovered the causes of planetary-scale oscillations in geospace and anomalous upwelling of the thermosphere.
Professor Lotko, while leading NSF's Geospace Environment Modeling Program, partnered with academic, industrial and government scientists to advocate for the creation of a U.S. National Space Weather Program. He is a founding member of the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling, an NSF Science and Technology Center, Research Affiliate of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, former editor in chief for the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, and fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
Professor Lotko has served as Director of the M.S./Ph.D. Program at Thayer School, and as Senior Associate Dean and Interim Dean. Among his many educational contributions, he especially enjoys mentoring students in research and in project courses on engineering design, innovation, and invention.


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Spoofing in Spanish: Ferrell puts twist on his usual cheek
Casa de mi Padre is a cheeky comedy by Will Ferrell and his compadres at Saturday Night Live and the website Funny or Die. And when I say "cheeky," it's what you're thinking second. The movie has more butt-groping than anything this side of the Rio Grande. And the other side.
Ferrell and the entire cast perform entirely in Spanish, and Ferrell sings a song that has already gone viral on YouTube. He sounds perfectly fluent to me, but then, how would I know? The movie is a jolly send-up of horse operas on Telemundo, which I have never seen, but my lack of qualifications isn't fatal because the movie hopes to do crossover business in addition to its obvious target audience.
What possessed Ferrell to make this satire? My guess is, he got straight A's in Spanish and has spent years asking himself how that will further his career. Another possibility: He's made a lot of genre spoofs, and why stop now? Full reviewRead more on: casa de mi Padre


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Pamela Hearon Books & Biography
Maybe growing up in Kentucky didn't have any impact on Pamela Hearon's writing, but she has her own theories and believes otherwise. A lifetime of those sultry Southern nights surely infused her blood with a special heat-the kind that transforms simple love stories into tales of romance and desire and gives even the most unlikely couples their Happily Ever After. Pamela finds that her most powerful writing happens at some of the oddest times-in the garden, in a dream, even in the shower. Unexpected moments of inspiration bring dialogues together, make characters come to life, and fill gaping plot holes. Her writing process wouldn't work for everybody. It is, after all, a bit out of the ordinary. But Pamela embraces it because nobody wants a book that's ordinary. Visit Pamela on her website, on Facebook and at her group blog, Everybody Needs a Little Romance, where she writes the second Monday of every month.


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Hollywood Foreign Press - All posts tagged Hollywood Foreign Press
Jan 16, 2014
Hayden Panettiere wanted to wear Tom Ford to the Golden Globes so badly she paid for her own dress. At a store. Public shaming, of course, ensued.
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Behind the Storefront is a blog about all things retail. It's aimed at investors, shoppers and anyone else with a passion for learning about what drives consumer behavior. Hosted by Andria Cheng, Behind the Storefront will cover the business, brands and shopping behavior that's behind some of the biggest companies, and largest employers, in the world. You can reach Andria at email@example.com.
Follow Andria on Twitter: Follow @andriacheng


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Transform your photos into one-of-a-kind, hand painted masterpieces!
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You'll never run out of power again! If the battery on your smartphone or tablet is running low... no problem. Just plug your device into the USB port on the top of this portable battery charger, and then continue to use your device while it gets recharged.
With a recharge capacity of 5200 mAh, this charger will give you 1.5 full recharges of your smartphone or recharge your tablet to 50% capacity.
When the battery charger runs out of power, just plug it into the wall using the supplied cable (included), and it will recharge itself for your next use.
1.80" W x 3.875" H x 0.90" D
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Cute colorful mini soaps. Lovely design idea for your bathroom or spa. Photo of Mini Soaps Collection.
Welcome to my art gallery! My name is Anastasiya Malakhova, I create fractal and digital art and paint with acrylic and pastels. All my creations are unique and striking. They'll make great gifts for yourself, loved ones, dear friends, relatives and other special people in your life. My artworks cover quite a range - from traditional paintings of flowers, landscapes and animals to modern digital abstracts and fractals. Prints of my images make great wall art for homes, offices, hotels, hospitals. Lots of images can be printed in large sizes (some up to 72 inches). Gift of art is the most special and will be remembered for many years to come. All my works are original and Copyright - Anastasiya Malakhova, all rights...
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Post Title : Fall Into Orange: Living Room Accents for All Styles
Image Title : Orange Pendant Lamps Over The Kitchen Island
Posted by : Jenni Steele
Category : Interiors
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Linux Top 3: Hello ARM, Goodbye 386
Last week was a busy one on the Linux Planet with new kernels, new distributions and a (not so) fond farewell to Linux's first architecture.
1) Linux 3.7
The Linux 3.7 kernel was formally released by Linus Torvalds last week ushering in a new era for Linux on ARM. After years of fractured development across multiple version of ARM, unified system architecture support for ARM landed in the 3.7 kernel. The 3.7 kernel also provides full support for ARM v8 which provides 64-bit capabilities.
Btrfs continues to mature in Linux 3.7 by way of a number of incremental improvements including fsync()speedups and the remove of hard link limits.
On the networking side, Linux 3.7 now support VXLAN (Virtual eXtensible LAN), which is a tenant of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) movement). VXLAN is a layer 2 overlay over a Layer 3 network. VXLAN was started as a joint effort of Cisco and VMware and is not in the process of moving through the IETF for standardization.
Also on the networking side for Linux 3.7 is TCP Fast Open for servers. TCP Fast Open is a new Google led networking approach tha delivers an optimized method for performing the initial TCP handshake in a data connection. The initial code commits for TCP Fast Open debuted on the client side in Linux 3.6 in October of this year.
2) Linux 386
The cycle of kernel development never ends. When one kernel is released that the signal for the merge window on the next kernel.
While it is still early in the merge window for the Linux 3.8 kernel, we already know off at least on thing that will not be included: support for 386.
That's right Intel's original 386 has remained supported in the bleeding edge of the mainline kernel since the day Linus started and remains so today. That won't be the case in the mainline kernel beginning with Linux 3.8 in 2013.
Linux kernel developer Ingo Molnar got Linus Torvalds to pull in the, 'x86-nuke386-for-linus' code tree on Tuesday. According to Molnar,"this tree removes ancient-386-CPUs support and thus zaps quite a bit of complexity: 24 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 425 deletions(-)... which complexity has plagued us with extra work whenever we wanted to change SMP primitives, for years."
Molnar noted however that there is a cost.
"Your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff," Molnar wrote.
3) Slax 7
Some distributions have milestone updates somewhat less regularly than others. Case in point is the Slackware based Slax distribution.
This past week, the first major Slax update in three years was released with Slax 7.0, code name, Green Horn.
"Slax 7.0 is the major update of Slax Linux live operating system. It includes newest Linux Kernel, KDE4 desktop, GCC compiler and lots of other stuff and that all in just a ~210MB download," Slax developer Tomas Matejicek wrote in his release announcement.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.


text: Joe Landman <landman at scalableinformatics.com> wrote > Glen Beane wrote: > > I am considering adding a small parallel file system ~(5-10TB) my small > > cluster (~32 2x dual core Opteron nodes) that is used mostly by a handful of > > regular users. Currently the only storage accessible to all nodes is home > > directory space which is provided by the Lab's IT department (this is a SAN > > volume connected to the head node by 2x FC links, and NFS exported to the > > compute nodes). I don't have to "worry" about the IT provided SAN space - > > they back it up, provide redundant hardware, etc. The parallel file system > > would be scratch space (and not backed up by IT). We have a mix of home > > grown apps doing a pretty wide range of things (some do a lot of I/O, others > > don't), and things like BLAST and BLAT. > > Hi Glen: > > BLAST uses mmap'ed IO. This has some interesting ... interactions > ... with parallel file systems. Right, and it isn't just the mapping of the databases and input file. One must also be careful with how BLAST output is directed. Sending it all to the same NFS mounted file system as "node01.out", "node02.out", etc. will do very unpleasant things to both your network and the file server. Far better to write those locally to /tmp/nodeXX.out, and then take some care in moving them back to the central file system later, so that the data transfer can proceed without interference. This doesn't mean you have to wait until the end of the run and send each node's entire output file back at once. It can be more efficient, but more complicated, to write the output files on each node in reasonable sized chunks and then interleave the transfer of those to the central store with the ongoing run. Whether this is worth the extra effort depends mostly on the number of queries in the input file and the verbosity of the output file. Regards, David Mathog mathog at caltech.edu Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech


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Celso Fernandez Sanmartin was born in 1969 on Lalin, he was Galician storyteller and poet. He earned a degree in Philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He published several works on poetry and collective works. Among … Continue reading
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Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express.
Moussa's a Magpie
Newcastle have confirmed the signing of France international Moussa Sissoko from Toulouse for an undisclosed fee.
The 23-year-old midfielder is the club`s fourth signing of the week and the latest Frenchman to move to St James` Park.
Having made 218 appearances for Toulouse, his only club, Sissoko has signed a six-and-a-half-year deal with Alan Pardew`s side.
A six-cap France international, he said: "I am delighted to be a Newcastle United player.
"This is a massive club playing in the best league in the world, and I believe my style of play is suited to the Premier League.
"I have heard lots about how fantastic the Newcastle supporters are and cannot wait to get started.
"I am rising to a new challenge by coming here and want to firstly help the team improve this season and then progress after that."
Sissoko`s signing came at the end of a day during which Pardew was boosted by wantaway captain Fabricio Coloccini`s decision to remain with the club until the end of the season at least.
"This transfer window has proved very productive for us and Moussa arriving today is a massive plus for the club," Pardew said. "He will bring drive and energy to the squad, he is a winner and that's why I'm especially pleased to have him with us. What all our signings this window bring is essential competition for places and that is great for the remainder of the season."
Sissoko joins compatriots Yoan Gouffran, Massadio Haidara and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa in joining this week, while Mathieu Debuchy signed on January 4.


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Boxers dogs are famous for its strong jaws ideal for hunting a big prey. Boxer is a popular dog breed and can bring a lot of respect on a street. But boxer puppies are much more cute, especially when they are sleeping. The name Boxer is based on dogs tendency to play by standing on its hind legs and boxing with its front paws.
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Claudia Says:
June 2nd, 2012 at 6:41 AM
Hey I just got a baby BOXER an I'm so happy
Excellent blog you have got here.. It's difficult to find
quality writing like yours these days. I really appreciate individuals like you!
Take care!!
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