murder (n) - The unlawful killing of one human by another.

The last time I checked, the war on iraq was not approved by UN. So it is an unlawful killing of others. I think it makes sense to take the pharse 'murder machine' as a fact, not a political opinion.

And for the protection of the US army providing to me - Lets not forget the US army is protecting me only because freedom of speech is protecting the army from falling into the wrong hands. And I am willing to use my life to defend your right to disagree with me too, by the way.

Well, as a plus, a lot of the technology we use today as consumers finds its roots in hardware created for US military purposes. I'm sure there are some very real commercial applications for this aero-thermodynamic modeling machine. Regardless, I think it is justifiable to question the ethics of selling this sort of hardware to a military, though murder-machine is quite a loaded term. Swedish firms, for example, are constitutionally prohibited from selling hardware to militaries engaged in combat. If Apple were a Swedish company, theoretically this sale could not go through.
Anyhow, point well taken. And I do feel it is germane given that most of the users on this site care deeply about Apple's image and ethical practices.

>The last time I checked, the war on iraq was not approved by UN. So it is an unlawful killing of others. I think it makes sense to take the pharse 'murder machine' as a fact, not a political opinion.

According to your logic, if Nation A is attacked by Nation B and the UN disapproves of Nation A striking back, then Nation A is - in fact - committing murder if it does so. Illogical and ridiculous.

The UN is not the judge and jury of the world. It makes decisions on wars based on its various members' own political agendas. Therefore, the UN calling a specific nation's action as "unlawful" is pure opinion.

It is astounding how the US can be called a murder machine when it is fighting to stop the actions of Sadaam Hussein's murder machine.

>The last time I checked, the war on iraq was not approved by UN. So it is an unlawful killing of others. I think it makes sense to take the pharse 'murder machine' as a fact, not a political opinion.

The last time I checked, only 2 of the last 200 wars fought in the war have been approved by the UN. One was the Gulf War, i forget the other at the moment.

However, the last time I checked, Apple builds the best computing machines in the country. I think it's a good thing that we finally get some positive recognition from a major organization. This is hopefully a glimpse into a better, positive future.

UCLA Plasma Physics just bought a 256 node G5 Xserve cluster... and they have a webcam where you can watch it be built....

http://neargo.ats.ucla.edu:8000/++viewlive?cameraNum=0&viewMethod=0&javaOK=1&67121

It would be awsome if Apple could engineer the 2.5GHZ G5's for the Xserve by the time COLSA needs the xServes. Since Phil Schiller is quoted as being happy about the deal maybe they will bend over backwards to get the fastest chips they can in there.

This is great PR for Apple, Mac OS X and the PowerPC!!!

HOWEVER...
Last time I heard the US was NOT attacked by Iraq. The USA attacked Iraq! Because Saddam tried to kill my dad?

Funny how it all works...

The US puts the Shah of Iran in power and ARMS Iran. Was it for oil or to buffer the Persian Gulf from the USSR?

Iran is taken over by fundamentalist Islamic groups headed by the Ayatollah Khomeni. Didn't they have an oil embargo ar two against the US while they were at it?

The US does not like this, so they ARM Iraq. Iraq wages a 10 year war against Iran. Some guy named Saddam Hussein is in charge. Yeah, he's a dictator, kills his own citizens by the thousands and is a threat to the entire region, but he's whippin' those Iranians.

Afghanistan is attacked by the USSR, so the US ARMS and trains "rebel forces"... could it be, the Taliban?.. to fight the Soviets.

Iraq gets too big for it's britches and makes the mistake of attacking Kuwait, another "client" state of the US.

Meanwhile, the US supports the growing military industial, anti-Islamic apharteid state of Israel, giving them carte blanche to do whatever they wish for "security". The evil Palestinians, resort to extremes. It all spins out of control, the US keeps pumping money into Israel.

This is all extremely confusing. The US has a long history of toppling leaders, duly elected or not, it seems not to matter. It goes back to the 1840s in places like Texas, Central and South America. The US also supports dictators and funds death squads and the like... Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina...

This is a great country, but it's not as simple as WE are GOOD. THEY are EVIL. It cuts both ways. We could be BETTER.

Spreading death and mayhem (not to mention McDonalds and other cultural rubbish) to every corner of the globe has NOT made us loved or secure. We, a mere 5% of the world's population, use 40% of the world's resources! If we built schools, hospitals, alternative energy systems, helped create self-sustaining societies instead of war machines, this would be a better planet. Over all, we'd be a LOT more secure.

I hear this cluster will be used to design a complex algorithm that teaches President Bush how to speak at approximately the 12th grade level, an increase over approximately 6 grades for the leader of the free world. It was estimated that 13,455 G5s would be needed to bring him up to Rhodes Scholar level, a project that could not be completed because all available funds have already been redirected toward sustaining countless lies.

I'm afraid jedi1yoda1 and friends won't understand what you've just said. Your comments are way too complicated, besides, they don't know where Nicaragua or El Salvador are, they've never heard of the Shah but they do know about McDonalds. Sigh

If you must display your political views go to CNN or the BBC with rest of your inbred liberal hacks. This about a great opportunity for the Mac technology to make inroads in a very biased (PC) IT enviroment.

Couple minor points...

There is nothing evil about supporting countries because of strategic necessity. You yeah, supporting the Shah was both...a buffer against the Soviet Union and to protect oil resources. If the government DIDN'T do things in our strategic interests, it would be bad...

Which brings me to Iraq. This war is about the most strategically boneheaded, arrogant, and incompetent thing we've done strategically in decades (if not ever).

GW/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld:
Yeah, I know! Lets "Fight Terrorism" by invading a country that has not provoked us, is toothless, has had it's military hamstrung for 10 years, For which there is NO EVIDENCE of any support for international terrorism for 10 years, and...WAIT! Lets see if we can find such a country in a region where the vast majority of people already distrust our motives! YEAH THAT'S IT! That would reduce terrorist recruiting!

Yeah we gave minor support to SH during the Iran/Iraq war, but their major suppliers were the soviets. Funny enough, our support for them went WAAAY up AFTER:

1. The Cold War came crashing down
2. The Iran/Iraq war ended
3. The incident wherein he gassed 5,000 kurds took place (and was widely reported)

I am personally astounded that the barely elected president actually thinks anything he did was anything except insane. People join terror groups because they are pissed of to the extent that they can't imagine doing anything except fighting back. People who have families, etc. in general won't do these things...unless the risk they incur does not outweigh the value of striking out. Common Sense. But then, the president seems to lack common sense.

However, as my quibble, the army is doing it's job for the most part. They didn't start the war. The civilian government did. I can hardly blame them (except for those violating the law of course). In fact, I feel horrible for the soldiers that have to go over there. They are the ones risking their lives. Perhaps if GW had to go over there he wouldn't play these games...but no, he's arrogant and brainless enough, not to mention unamerican.

Show us proof that there is "NO EVIDENCE of any support for international terrorism for 10 years" in Iraq.

Also, I work for a company that provides services to military personnel, lots of whom are actively deployed in Iraq. The many stories or rebuilding and hope I hear coming from those deployed is greatly at odds with the completely negative spin that the media puts on the war.

Right on, brutha!

I never characterized the US government of being evil. Shortsighted, stupid and with a penchant for repeating the same mistakes over and over again, yes. If you ignore history, it will repeat, no? In this case it bites us on the a**. Hard.

As for the current mis-administration... the stupidity is astounding!

The last time George W. felt any pain was when the doctor slapped his a**.

If he ever HAD developed a sense of personal responsibility, the world would be a safer place. It's a shame that members of the military pay the price for his foolhardiness. The fact that psychos like Cheney and Ashcroft (and by extension the religious right) hold the positions they do is mind-boggling.

Maybe when the Army get their mitts on so many Macs and get to play with the Dock, Rendezvous, iSights and other cool Mac things, they'll see the joy, light and sunshine! ;^)

You're wrong. The last time GW felt pain was when he fell riding his bicycle (he had never fallen before because he was riding a tricycle then). The previous time was when he choked while eating a pretzel. Read the real news.

Part of me is glad to see the expansion of the Mac's use in science and supercomputing, while on the other hand, I can't help but feel somewhat dismayed at the thought that a Macintosh will be developing weapons to kill people with.
And I refuse to hear any comments about the necessity of war or weapons. I spent 4 years as a grunt in the Army, and seeing countless bullet-ridden corpses was more than enough to turn me into a pacifist. Maybe if more of the chickenhawks in this country had to do their own dirty work we wouldn't find ourselves in this ridiculous war.

Show us proof that there is "NO EVIDENCE of any support for international terrorism for 10 years" in Iraq.

There's an argument, prove something that didn't happen! That's the same argument the UFO junkies use (prove that no aliens exist!) or even the religious zealots (prove to me God doesn't exist). Its kind of hard to prove something doesn't exist.

But I find it hillarious that the WMD we went to war over, which the gov't said they'd find, so far has netted a couple of old semi trailers that was 'the proof' and turned out not to be, and then it turns out that all they had was, at most, a paper WMD program. But now its no longer about WMD, its about freedom of people, and spin on other topics (which will go into high-gear once Fahrenheit 9/11 gets released in the US).

And I bet that when Clinton left office, most americans didn't think there'd be any group in there who was more oafish, bumbling, and stumbling.

Um... Well, it's tough to PROVE a lack of something.

However, as the Committee delegated to investigating 9/11 just stated there was no evidence of any connection with Iraq, and

Richard Clarke (among countless others...how many major administration officials need to leave in disgust?) have pointed to the fact that the last evidence of Iraqi involvement in international terrorism was the attack on GW's father 10 yrs ago (which resulted in the Iraqi intelligence building being blown up by a cruise missle), and

The administration has repeatedly lied (e.g state of the union and countless other times), misrepresented, failed to take any responsibility, etc. yet completely failed to find any evidence to support their claims...

Seems to me that if this doesn't satisfy you... You are quite living in denial.

As for the positive things happening... Hmmm. If the county/city/state where I lived occasionally had schools being built, etc. yet simultaneously has not had any consistency in basic infrastructure, and...oh yeah, the minor bit about car bombs, dozens of civilians killed every day, shootings, abuse of the locals, etc... All done under the watch of a country I didn't trust to begin with, as an OCCUPYING POWER after an unprovoked war....

Yeah, I guess I'd be concentrating on the negative I think.

As for the media, well as it was basically rubber stamping every single thing the idiot in the white house said leading up to this war, treated the war itself as a video game, and actually got indignant about stories in Al Jazeera [sp?] that pointed out civilian casualties or referred to the invaders as...well...invaders, I'd say it's about freaking time they got some objectivity.

I find it interesting that all your people know so much about the under-workings of our government. I'm glad to know that our government briefs you on all of our problems every day and that you know exactly how to solve all these problems. Wow, you know what, why don't we elect you all next year because I am sure that you will do a really great job! I am almost positive that the American people, me and all you other idiots, don't know even a eighth of what the president knows but I am glad that you think you do. And for all your Bush bashers, I'm sure you speak perfectly too......liberals are too illogical...they only think about things how they want to and block out everything else...get a life

inbred liberal hacks? tsk tsk. since when is looking at an issue from both sides and determing that the course is wrong and changes are needed liberal? or conservative? when you're in a hole and it keeps getting deeper, stop digging. why, you sound like yet another lemming. watch out for that cliff.

Actually, I am quite sure that many of the bush bashers are brighter than he. Regardless, it's not how bright they are, it's common sense vs. arrogance. Basic grasp of human nature vs. strategic idiocy.

And no...this information comes mainly from those who were delegated the responsibilty of knowing this stuff, analyzing it, investigating it, etc. Bush is the one that went into office with a desire to knock off Iraq. That has also been written about repeatedly by those who were actually there and involved in figuring out what to do.

Bush wasn't involved in international matters before Jan 2001. Your hero sat on his hands for 8 months trying to figure out how to get Iraq, while ignoring repeated increasingly serious requests to address Al Qaeda and terrorism. Now he wants to be the "terrorism president." And you buy it. Unbelievable.

Read something knowledgeable. You may find that Rush L. actually IS a hypocritical idiot. But then, you'd have to open your eyes. There actually is a lot of information out there, if you bother to look.

What does any of this political bashing have to do with computers? Take it to a political forum.

Honestly, I don't even know why you people waste your time. Do you think people are going to read your inane posts and think "hey! That guy is right. I'm switching parties now!"?

$20,000,000 = 4k Itaniums = 20 teraflops (Lawrence Livermore "Thunder" machine)

$ 5,800.000 = 3.1k G5s = 15 teraflops (US Army)

What was Lawrence thinking? For 20 million dollars' worth of G5s they coulda hit 51 teraflops.

.liberals are too illogical...they only think about things how they want to and block out everything else...get a life

Yes, that is soooooo different than the conservatives I've heard/seen. They're always looking at stuff from both sides and telling you the truth. Just look at Fox News!

Read elsewhere that these computers will be linked together via gigabit ethernet, rather than infinband. This means it'll probably rate less on some of those benchmarks, but how it really fares is completely dependent on what they're using the data for (are they processing lots of little bits of info vs. processing large amounts of info).

The article uses "TFlops/second" to describe performance. Doesn't the "s" in "TFlops" already stand for seconds?

Looks like Apple could become a target by terrorists for selling computers to the military.