I’ve created a brief cookbook for applying Daylight Savings Time patches for LINUX boxes where patches are not generally available or have failed for some other reason. This example is on a OpenSuSE 10.0 system in CST6CDT where Yast attempts to apply the timezone patch failed.

This document is attached as a PDF since some of the required formatting induced a series of WordPress errors. As this information is time sensitive, I’ve posted this process in the most expedient method.

Thank you to Peter Fleck for requiring me to collect this process in some meaningful way.

Your mileage may vary. Proceed with care.

Apple’s Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, iTunes now synchronize easily to the Blackberry 8100. Though the software is considered ‘preview’ its utility restores the promise of this device as a peer in my personal information management arsenal, centered around my Apple Macintosh. I’ll give it a couple of weeks, but this new functionality may allow my Pearl to replace my trusty PALM Tungsten C.

Promising. Stay tuned.

Mac System Requirements:
PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, or Intel processor
Mac OS X, 10.4.8 or higher (Tiger)
Internet connection for product registration

BlackBerry Requirements:
The following devices running version 4.0 and later of the BlackBerry operating system have been tested:
7100 series
7290 (Cingular/T-Mobile)
7250 (Verizon)
7520 (Nextel)
7130 series
8700 series
8707 series
8703 series (Sprint)
8705
8100 series, aka “Pearl”
8800 series

Other devices may work, but have not been tested.

UPDATE: 3/19 ‘Missing Sync’ software works well with the SanDisk 2GB microSD memory card. This is perhaps the best accessory for the Blackberry Pearl. I needed to update the firmware on the phone to recognize the memory card. The card should work as expected if you are running version 4.2.0.64 or newer.

With ‘Missing Sync’ software I can now reliably sync my Macintosh systems to the phone. It also mounts the flash memory as a storage device on the desktop.

The memory is not blindingly fast when transferring data from the computer to the phone. Phone operations appear lively enough for interactive use.

Weather.com is sporting a new beta interface to their weather maps. Powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth and overlaid with radar and or cloud animations. Like Google Earth, you click on the map and manipulate it directly to pan from side to side. You can adjust cloud transparency and map-type, choosing either ‘Road’ or ‘Satellite’.

Now if I could just drag those storm systems around.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has introduced a new symbol to help reduce death and injury from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplemental warning to the current ‘trefoil’, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance.

According to tests, red appears to be a universally alarming color. The hope is people will see the symbol and run away. Scavengers, coming upon a radiant source, might otherwise remove protective sheilding, exposing themselves and others.

“I believe the international recognition of the specific expertise of both organizations will ensure that the new standard will be accepted and applied by governments and industry to improve the safety of nuclear applications, protection of people and the environment,” said Ms. Eliana Amaral, Director, Division of Radiation, Transport and Waste Safety, IAEA.

Current Intel prototype chips the size of a fingernail wield the power equivalent to 2000 square feet of computer equipment and 10,000 chips 11 years ago.

This week, Intel introduced a prototype chip with 80 cores, capable of more than a trillion calculations per second (teraflop).

“It’s not too difficult to find two or four independent things you can do concurrently, finding 80 or more things is more difficult, especially for desktop applications. It is going to require quite a revolution in software programming. ” – Dr Mark Bull, at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre

Within scientific computing, specifically life sciences, I can think of several codes I’d like to try on a system like this: Smith-Waterman, BLAST, CLUSTALW. While traditional supercomputing codes (NASTRAN, CFD, Weather modeling) would benefit from tightly integrated interconnects made possible by a single-die supercomputer, most life science codes we run are less tightly interdependent and often bound by memory bandwidth.

Speeds and feeds will still be important, perhaps even more so now the processing is centered on a single die. In the Intel press piece there is some talk about ‘network on a chip’ routing of message passing between cores, but little talk about the memory architecture. Tera-scale bandwidth to memory is suggested by exploring 3-D stacked memory, directly connected to the processor. Each processor would have a local and a shared memory cache: NUMA, ccNUMA — or some other variation?

I’ll be interested to get my hands on these in the coming years.

Check out the ‘Tera-scale Architectural Vision’ FLASH presentation on the Intel site. (link)

New York Times: (article)