KT 3-4-2013_Layout 1 - Kuwait Times

ALBUQUERQUE: It’s the end of the line
for Roadrunner, a first-of-its-kind collection
of processors that once reigned as the
world’s fastest supercomputer. The $121
million supercomputer, housed at one of
the nation’s premier nuclear weapons
research laboratories in northern New
Mexico, will be decommissioned Sunday.
The reason? The world of supercomputing
is evolving and Roadrunner has
been replaced with something smaller,
faster, more energy efficient and cheaper.
Still, officials at Los Alamos National
Laboratory say it’s among the 25 fastest
supercomputers in the world.
“Roadrunner got everyone thinking in
new ways about how to build and use a
supercomputer,” said Gary Grider, who
works in the lab’s high performance computing
division. “Specialized processors
are being included in new ways on new
systems and being used in novel ways.
Our demonstration with Roadrunner
caused everyone to pay attention.” In
2008, Roadrunner was first to break the
elusive petaflop barrier by processing just
over a quadrillion mathematical calculations
per second.
Los Alamos teamed up with IBM to
build Roadrunner from commercially
available parts. They ended up with 278
refrigerator-size racks filled with two dif-
technology
End of the line for Roadrunner supercomputer
Crisis hotlines
turning to text
to reach teens
NEW YORK: They stream in from teens around
the United States, cries for help often sent in by
text message. “I feel like committing suicide,” one
text read. “What’s the suicide hotline number?”
Another asked: “How do you tell a friend they need
to go to rehab?”
DoSomething.org, an organization that
encourages activism among young adults, gets
plenty of text messages asking for help, but it isn’t
a hotline. So the nonprofit’s CEO, Nancy Lublin, is
leading an effort to establish an around-the-clock
text number across trigger issues for teens in the
hope that it will become their emergency line, perhaps
reaching those who wouldn’t otherwise seek
help using more established methods of telephone
talking or computer-based chat.
“Most of the texts we get like this are about
things like being bullied,” Lublin said. “A lot of
things are about relationships, so we’ll get texts
from kids about breakups, or ‘I like a boy, what
should I do?’ But the worst one we ever got said,
‘He won’t stop raping me. It’s my dad. He told me
not to tell anyone. Are you there?’”
Lublin hopes the Crisis Text Line, due to launch
in August, will serve as a New York-based network,
shuttling texts for help to partner organizations
around the country, such as The Trevor Project for
gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning youth or
other groups already providing hotlines on dating
and sexual abuse to bullying, depression and eating
disorders.
As more teens have gone mobile, using their
phones as an extension of themselves, hotline
providers have tried to keep up. Fewer seem to
operate today than in decades past. A smattering
reach out through mobile text, including Teen Line
in Los Angeles, though that service and others
offer limited schedules or specialize in narrow
areas of concern when multiple problems might
be driving a teen to the brink.
Some text providers operate in specific places
or rely on trained teen volunteers to handle the
load across modes of communication. Several
agreed that text messaging enhances call-in and
chat options for a generation of young people
who prefer to communicate by typing on their
phones, especially when they don’t want parents,
teachers, friends or boyfriends to listen in.
Katie Locke, 26, in Philadelphia was one of
those teens in 2006, when she found herself in a
suicidal panic after a fight with an old friend. At 18,
she said she grabbed her phone, left her college
dorm room and headed out in the cold to sit on a
bench to talk with a worker on a crisis phone line
she knew from one of her favorite blogs. The number
was the only one she had handy and it didn’t
offer text, which she would have preferred.
“People don’t always have the (mobile phone)
minutes or aren’t in a position where they can
speak aloud if they’re in danger from somebody
around them,” Locke said. “I know for me there
were other times when I probably should have
called a crisis hotline and didn’t because of the
anxiety about calling. That was such an enormous
barrier, to have to dial a phone number.”
Brian Pinero, director of the National Dating
Abuse Helpline run by a nonprofit called Love is
Respect, knows that lesson well. The organization
launched phone and computer-based chat in
2007, and chat quickly grew to the more heavily
used method of contact. The Austin, Texas-based
group launched text in 2011 and it’s now about 20
percent of the operation, Pinero said.
According to research from the Pew Internet &
American Life Project, one in four teens is a “cellmostly”
Internet user. Texting among teens
increased from about 50 texts a day in 2009 to
about 60, with the number running into hundreds
for some.
“Phone calls are not the way young people
express themselves,” said Danah Boyd, a senior
researcher at Microsoft Research and an assistant
professor of media, culture and communication at
New York University.
Comparisons of text hotline volume and efficiency
are hard to come by. Researcher Deb
Levine, executive director and founder of the nonprofit
ISIS, for Internet Sexuality Information
Services, said it’s clear the number of hotlines of all
kinds has declined significantly since a heyday in
the 1980s. But chat and text help have been on the
rise for more than two years, she said. Most are
small-scale operations serving specific communities,
said Levine.
The Planned Parenthood Federation of
America is in its second year of running one of the
largest text and chat outreach operations for people
ages 15 to 24, targeting African-American and
Latino youth through promotional campaigns on
MTV, websites and mobile providers, social media,
wallet cards, video and Seventeen magazine.
Through February, nearly 185,000 conversations
- 22,447 via text - were recorded, according
to Planned Parenthood. About a third of conversations
on health-related topics - including birth
control, abortion and pregnancy tests - were with
users both under 25 and African-American or
Latino.
Debbie Gant-Reed sees the need every day.
She’s the crisis lines coordinator at a 24-hour help
line in Reno, Nevada, called the Crisis Call Center.
The center has been providing 24-hour text help
for two and a half years, fielding about 500 text
conversations a month.
“We’re now taking texts from all over the country,”
she said. “You can chat all you want but you’re
going to get older people. Young people don’t
chat. They text.” —AP
Six European countries move
against Google over privacy
PARIS: Authorities in six European countries
have taken steps to force US Internet giant
Google to comply with EU privacy rules, France’s
Cnil data protection agency said yesterday.
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands,
Spain, and the United Kingdom “have launched
actions on 2 April 2013 on the basis of the provisions
laid down in their respective national legislation”
to force Google to bring its privacy policy
in line with European regulations, Cnil said in a
statement. In October last year the data protection
agencies of the 27 EU states warned Google
that its new confidentiality policy did not comply
with European law and gave it four months to
make changes or face legal action. When that
TORONTO: With smartphone and tablet
users getting younger, new apps can help
parents of 2-to-13-year-olds monitor and
control their children’s use of the Internet.
A Pew Research Center study shows that
more than one-third of American teenagers
own a smartphone, up from more than a
fifth in 2011. For nearly half of these users,
the phone is their main way of getting
online, making it difficult for parents to
supervise their behavior.
“When you have a smartphone, you basically
have the Internet in your pocket wherever
you are - away from your parents’ eyes,”
said Anooj Shah, a partner in Toronto-based
company Kytephone, which develops apps.
Kytephone’s namesake app allows parents
to control the apps and sites their children
use and the people they receive texts
and calls from. The company on Monday
released Kytetime for 13-to-17-year-olds. The
new app has many of the same features as
Kytephone but does not include the ability
to block calls.
Earlier this month, Net Nanny, a monitor-
deadline expired in February several European
data protection agencies set up a task force to
pursue coordinated action against Google.
Cnil said it had seen no changes to Google’s
privacy policy after the company’s representatives
met on March 19 with the task force that
includes the data protection agencies of France,
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the
United Kingdom. Cnil added it had notified
Google that it had launched an inspection procedure.
Google rolled out the new privacy policy
in March 2012, allowing it to track users across
various services to develop targeted advertising,
despite sharp criticism from US and European
consumer advocacy groups. —AFP
Apps help parents monitor
children’s Internet use
ing software company, released a browser
app for Apple Inc’s iOS devices to filter Web
content and block profanity.
“Smartphones and tablets have added
new technology, with new challenges (for
parents) - full Web browsing capability,
unlimited texting, access to hundreds of
thousands of good, bad and malicious apps,”
said Russ Warner, chief executive officer of
the Salt Lake City-based company.
The Android version of Net Nanny, which
sells for $12.99, can control which apps a
child uses. The app is also available for iOS
devices, with fewer applications, for $4.99.
The company is also introducing Net
Nanny Social, a subscription, Web-based tool
to help parents monitor problems such as
cyberbullying, sexual predators and identity
theft on social networks including Facebook
and Twitter. The service costs $19.99 per year.
For parents of 2-to-8-year-olds, Bostonbased
Playrific has a free app with a locked
browser that allows only content suitable for
children, including educational videos, interactive
games and books. —Reuters
ferent types of processors, all linked
together by 55 miles of fiber optic cable. It
took nearly two dozen tractor trailer trucks
to deliver the supercomputer from New
York to northern New Mexico.
The supercomputer has been used
over the last five years to model viruses
and unseen parts of the universe, to better
understand lasers and for nuclear
weapons work. That includes simulations
aimed at ensuring the safety and reliability
of the nation’s aging arsenal. As part of
the U.S. nuclear stockpile stewardship program,
researchers used Roadrunner’s
high-speed calculation capabilities to
unravel some of the mysteries of energy
BEIJING: Apple apologized to
Chinese consumers after government
media attacked its repair policies
for two weeks in a campaign that
reeked of economic nationalism.
A statement Apple posted in
Chinese on its website Monday said
the complaints had prompted “deep
reflection” and persuaded the company
of the need to revamp its repair
policies, boost communication with
Chinese consumers and strengthen
oversight of authorized resellers.
State broadcaster CCTV and the
ruling Communist Party’s flagship
newspaper, People’s Daily, had led
the charge against the American
company. They accused Apple Inc. of
arrogance, greed and “throwing its
weight around” and portrayed it as
just the latest Western company to
exploit the Chinese consumer.
The attacks quickly backfired,
though, and were mocked by the
increasingly sophisticated Chinese
consumers who revere Apple and its
products. State-run media also inadvertently
revived complaints over
shoddy service by Chinese companies.
Nonetheless, Apple responded
with an apology from CEO Tim Cook.
“We’ve come to understand through
this process that because of our poor
communication, some have come to
feel that Apple’s attitude is arrogant
and that we don’t care about or value
feedback from the consumer,” Cook’s
Chinese statement said, as translated
by The Associated Press. “For the concerns
and misunderstandings passed
on to the consumer, we express our
sincere apologies.”
Although Apple enjoys strong
support from Chinese consumers,
the vehemence of the attacks and
the importance of the Chinese market
appeared to have persuaded the
company to appear contrite.
The People’s Daily newspaper ran
an editorial last Wednesday headlined
“Strike down Apple’s incomparable
arrogance.” “Here we have the
Western person’s sense of superiority
making mischief,” the newspaper
wrote. “If there’s no risk in offending
the Chinese consumer, and it also
makes for lower overheads, then why
not?”
Chinese observers accused
flow in weapons.
Los Alamos has been helping pioneer
novel computer systems for decades. In
1976, the lab helped with the development
of the Cray-1. In 1993, the lab held
the fastest supercomputer title with the
Thinking Machine CM-5.
“And to think of where we’re going to
be in the next 10 to 15 years, it’s just mindboggling,”
said lab spokesman Kevin
Roark.
Right now, Los Alamos - along with scientists
at Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque and Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in California - is using
a supercomputer dubbed Cielo. Installed
People’s Daily of gross hypocrisy and
pointed out that the newspaper had
maintained a stony silence when
Chinese companies were implicated
over food safety, pollution and other
scandals. Meanwhile, CCTV was
shamed when it emerged that
celebrities had been recruited to
blast Apple on Weibo, China’s version
of Twitter, in what had been billed as
a grassroots campaign.
“The public responded in two
ways to this incident,” popular commentator
Shi Shusi wrote on his
Weibo account. “One group supports
this criticism but quite a number of
people felt that there are state
monopolies which have severely violated
customer’s rights, but which are
not being exposed.”
Popular business magazine
Caijing said its readers identified a
long list of abusers, including state
banks that lend to those with political
connections while stiffing ordi-
nary savers with low rates on
deposits; a government oil company
that sets gas prices and other rates as
it sees fit; and state telecom
providers notorious for their lack of
customer service.
“If media is going to go after
Apple, let’s hope they spare some
thought for those big Chinese communications
companies and other
monopolies, the ones that enrich
special interests in the name of being
publicly owned,” Cai Tongqi, a lawyer
from the eastern province of Jiangsu,
wrote on Weibo.
Consumers seem unfazed by the
state media’s attacks on Apple.
Perusing the wares at an Apple
reseller in Beijing’s tony China World
mall, recent college graduate Zeng
Lu said she considered the controversy
a sign of the Chinese consumer’s
growing maturity.
“It’s great to see Chinese consumers
standing up for their rights,
but it’s ridiculous for the People’s
Daily to get involved,” Zeng said.
“They should be criticizing state companies
instead.”
Apple’s popularity flies in the face
of China’s ardent attempts to push its
own brands and develop internationally
competitive companies. The
company also has resisted trends to
enter joint ventures and move
research and development to China.
It also ignores big state media such
as CCTV and People’s Daily. Apple
relies on Chinese factories, though, to
make iPads, iPhones and other popular
products.
Sales of Apple products in the
region, which includes Taiwan and
Hong Kong, grew 67 percent to $6.8
billion in the first three months of
2013, compared with the same period
a year earlier, according to the
company. Apple sold 2 million
iPhone 5s during the first weekend it
was available in China, in December.
The region is Apple’s third largest
market, accounting for 13 percent of
all sales last year. More than 17,000
outlets sell its products in mainland
China, a figure that includes 11 Apple
stores and 400 premium resellers. In
January, Cook said he expects China
to replace North America as its
largest source of revenue in the foreseeable
future.
The attacks on Apple center on
complaints over Apple’s repair policies
in China - specifically its practice
of only replacing faulty parts rather
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2013
in 2010, it’s slightly faster than
Roadrunner, takes up less space and came
in at just under $54 million.
Roark said in the next 10 to 20 years, it’s
expected that the world’s supercomputers
will be capable of breaking the exascale
barrier, or one quintillion calculations per
second. There will be no ceremony when
Roadrunner is switched off Sunday, but
lab officials said researchers will spend the
next month experimenting with its operating
system and techniques for compressing
memory before dismantling
begins. They say the work could help
guide the design of future supercomputers.
—AP
Apple apologizes in China
after service criticism
Apple accused of arrogance, greed
BARCELONA: A hostess holds a new smartphone “Galaxy
Grand” by Samsung at the 2013 Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona in this February 26, 2013 file photo. Smartphones
using the Android platform boosted their US market share in
recent months, extending their lead over Apple’s iPhone, a new
survey shows. Android, the free mobile operating system from
Google, accounted for 51.2 percent of US smartphone sales in
the three-month period ending in February, said the survey
from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. —AFP
than providing new iPhones, as it
does in other markets. Critics say that
allows Apple to avoid having to
extend its service warranty by another
year.
Until Monday, the Cupertino,
BEIJING: People walk past an Apple store in Beijing yesterday. Apple chief executive Tim Cook
has apologised to Chinese consumers after the US technology giant was subjected to a barrage
of criticism in state-run media over alleged “arrogance” and double standards. —AFP
California-based company had kept
silent apart from issuing a statement
March 23 explaining its repair policy
and pledging its deep respect for the
Chinese consumer.
Yet consumers and analysts say
the complaints hardly justify Beijing’s
campaign of vilification. Such nationalist
outbursts are not uncommon,
although previous campaigns
against foreign companies have
often been tied to perceived national
slights, as often befalls Japanese
firms in China. Beijing accused
Google of being an arm of American
“information imperialism” after the
company announced in March 2010
that it would cease censoring its
search responses inside mainland
China and instead send visitors to its
uncensored search engine in Hong
Kong.
Beijing is also angry over
Washington’s efforts to exclude
Chinese high-tech firms Huawei
Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp. from
the US market, amid worries over security.
A spending bill signed by President
Barack Obama two weeks ago includes
a clause barring NASA, the National
Science Foundation and the Justice
and Commerce Departments from
contracting with firms tied to the
Chinese government.
Washington and Beijing have also
sparred over more recent hacking
attacks, including a forensically
detailed report by cybersecurity firm
Mandiant that tied Chinese hacking
to a unit of the People’s Liberation
Army based in Shanghai.
Apple, however, may have been
singled out simply because it is “the
biggest open target,” said Jim
McGregor, senior counselor at consultancy
APCO Worldwide. “We’re still
seeing a lot of things wrapped up in
economic nationalism,” McGregor
said.
Even before Monday’s apology,
he had predicted Apple would make
a show of contrition to get its relations
with the Chinese authorities
back on track. Duncan Clark, managing
director of BDA China Ltd., a
Beijing research firm, said the assault
probably stems from a combination
of factors, including the failure of
Chinese companies to make breakthroughs
in high-end consumer
electronics. “There’s a general sense
of frustration that China can’t move
further up the value chain,” Clark
said. —AP