Category Archives: Politics

Quick Twitter Rant on Terrorism Hysteria

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As promised to my good friend Lev Lafayette on the tram back from the last Linux Users of Victoria meeting here is my brief rant on terrorism hysteria sparked off on the 26th May by a tweet by Emily Lakdawalla mentioning an article about Kiera Wilmot’s situation written by Kiera herself.

Please read about where this #terrorism hysteria is leading us: RT @elakdawalla: Kiera Wilmot’s own words: http://www.aclu.org/blog/[...]

Fear is one of the most disabling afflictions we can have and it’s almost as if western society is craving it.

We make prisons for ourselves in our minds, voluntarily sacrificing liberties for illusionary security whilst paying for the privilege.

We arrest and almost criminalise a 16 year old girl for a class chemistry project gone wrong then wonder why society stagnates.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled funny cat videos and Farmville. Nothing to see here, be happy in your virtual cocoon

Not that Australia is that much better, we have our own hysteria about asylum seekers to deal with.. :-(

Paying for Freedom (Updated)

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There has been much furore over the Microsoft Windows 8 Logo requirements, and how they require UEFI Secure Boot to be enabled, requiring the user to reconfigure their UEFI firmare (on x86 platforms) to be able to boot non-Windows 8 operating systems. People are concerned about the fact that this may be a slippery slope to systems that are locked down completely (as ARM powered Windows 8 systems already will be) with Secure Boot not being allowed to be disabled in order to get the MS Windows logo tick and thus the valuable marketing dollars from Redmond.

Now to me the solution seems obvious – don’t buy systems from people who sell such systems, but instead buy from vendors who believe in making systems that are under your control, and agree that it is you who gets to decide whether or not you want to turn Secure Boot on, or not. Go to companies like ZaReason (who sell around the world and have an Asia Pacific setup in New Zealand now) and System 76 (who used to be US only, but now apparently ship internationally).

The problem seems to be though that people complain that their systems tend to be a bit more expensive than the Dell’s of the world, companies who ship millions of PCs and have huge economies of scale (and power over their OEMs). Because ZaReason and System 76 work on much smaller volumes they don’t get the same deals and so of course their hardware will be more expensive – but that extra cost is actually an investment, a small downpayment on having vendors around in the future who will care about our freedoms to do with our computers as we see fit.

If we don’t make that investment in these companies then we will have no right to complain should we suddenly wake up one morning and find we have a choice between a beige PC that will only boot Windows 8 or later (and the ability to get your own code blessed so it will boot has gone away) and a shiny white Apple iProduct that will allow you to install any of the applications from the App store, but nothing outside of that walled garden.

So I have made my choices, when my desktop PC came a cropper and cooked itself due to the Linux leap second bug I bought a ZaReason Valta desktop and I then replaced my 9 year old laptop with a shiny new UltraLap 430 ultrabook which, I have to say, absolutely rocks with 8GB of RAM and an i5 Ivy Bridge CPU. :-)

I believe freedom is worth investing in.

Update:

As spufidoo mentions in the comments the situation for desktops is not too bad at present whilst you can build your own, though there is always the chance that you end up with motherboards shipping with Secure Boot enabled and only Microsofts key installed (“why would you want anything else?”).

More of an issue are laptops and tablets where you can’t really build your own and you rely on companies to sell you the finished product. This was really the issue I had in mind when I wrote the article but failed to articulate it. We’ve already seen examples of the issues around tablets being locked down with the Nook Tablet from Barnes and Noble (though as the linked article reports people have worked around that now) so unless we support projects like the ZaTab where the package includes the source code we are purely relying on the munificence of companies for whom freedom is not the first thing they are thinking about.

A Possible Escape Route for Julian Assange from the UK (UPDATED x2)

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So Julian Assange has been granted asylum by Ecuador. The problem that he has though is he is still in the UK (and the UK can theoretically close that embassy down, it’s not a parcel of Ecuador in the middle of London) so the question would be how could he legally get out of the UK?

Here’s my idea (which is probably crazy, but Mark Newton had the same one on Twitter)..

  1. Ecuador makes him a citizen of their country.
  2. Ecuador appoints him to their diplomatic staff
  3. Ecuador makes him a diplomatic courier to courier a diplomatic bag from the embassy in London to Ecuador.
  4. Julian Assange leaves the UK.

So why do I think that will work?

Well I found a United Nations document from 1989 called “Draft articles on the status of the Diplomatic Courier and Diplomatic Bag not accompanied by a Diplomatic Courier and Draft Optional Protocols thereto with commentaries” (PDF) (not destined for commercial success with a title like that) which nicely explains what’s involved.

The important points I read were:

  • The receiving nation (in this case the UK) does not get to approve couriers who are nationals of the sending nation (Ecuador), that’s only for the head of missions.
  • The receiving nation is obliged to “accord to the diplomatic courier the facilities necessary for the performance of his function”, and even to provide temporary accomodation.
  • The receiving nation can declare the diplomatic courier who holds diplomatic rank “persona non grata” and then the sending country is obliged to recall the courier and they must leave the country. It’s only if they fail to recall the courier and they do not leave in a “reasonable period” that the receiving nation (the UK) can take action against them.

Now unless the status of diplomatic couriers has changed since 1989 then my feeling that the process would lead to one of two conclusions:

  1. Julian Assange leaves as a diplomatic courier and travels to Ecuador
  2. Julian Assange is recalled as “persona non grata” and travels to Ecuador

I’ve probably missed something (other than a flagrant breach of the Vienna Convention), but I can’t see what..

Update

It would appear the UK government agrees with this, their webpage on DIPPRIV2400 – Diplomatic Bags and Couriers: Diplomatic Couriers says:

Couriers are entitled to personal inviolability and must not be searched, arrested or detained.

Bingo.. :-)

Update 2

Here is the UK legislation confirming that, the Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964, which says:

5. The diplomatic courier, who shall be provided with an official document indicating his status and the number of packages constituting the diplomatic bag, shall be protected by the receiving State in the performance of his functions. He shall enjoy personal inviolability and shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention.

6. The sending State or the mission may designate diplomatic couriersad hoc. In such cases the provisions of paragraph 5 of this Article shall also apply, except that the immunities therein mentioned shall cease to apply when such a courier has delivered to the consignee the diplomatic bag in his charge.

Wikileaks confirms AFACT acted as a front for the MPAA in the iiNet case

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Via a tweet from iiNet, who were sued by AFACT in the Australian Federal Court, this comment on the case from a US cable released by Wikileaks:

Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of Australian companies Village Roadshow and the Seven Network, this is an MPAA/American studios production. Mike Ellis, the Singapore-based President for Asia Pacific of the Motion Picture Association, briefed Ambassador on the filing on November 26. Ellis confirmed that MPAA was the mover behind AFACT’s case (AFACT is essentially MPAA’s Australian subcontractor; MPAA/MPA have no independent, formal presence here), acting on behalf of the six American studios involved. MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public.

It also appears the Australian companies involved needed some persuasion to be involved – I wonder if it involved any of the folding paper/plastic type of persuasion ?

AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn’t just Hollywood “bullying some poor little Australian ISP.”

They also go into the expected reasons why they picked iiNet – mainly that they weren’t Telstra (they were scared of them).

Comment on Social Media and Social Unrest

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My good friend Alec Muffett has written on ComputerworldUK about a discussion on the pros and cons of social media in light of the riots in the UK. He puts it really well:

I support that some people might want to use Blackberries to organise riots. If people want to use a cellphone or social media to conspire, that’s fine by me. I also believe that young lovers should be able to whisper sweet nothings to each other in secret, I believe that rape victims should be able to communicate in private, and that pregnant girls should be able to seek abortion advice without state, corporate, or parental eavesdropping. Cancer sufferers should be able to share in private their illness with the people who care for them, and I believe that dissidents should be free to communicate political opinion.

I believe all of these things because I discriminate the ability to obtain privacy from the exercise of criminal intent, and I believe that the ability to have a private conversation – something that 200 years ago was easily guaranteed – is a valuable asset to the individual. Plus I further believe that a state which has been too lazy, too profligate, or too cheap to police what people are doing rather than how they talk about doing it, is in no position to argue that ability or secrecy of communication should be inhibited because the problem is too expensive for them to address otherwise.

This is even more appropriate these days given that David Cameron, the UK PM, has now said:

We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it will be right to stop people from communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.

I guess because it worked so well in Tunisia, Egypt, etc…

I would also suggest you watch his video “On Cyberspace, Social Media and Censorship“, recorded before the UK unrest.

Peter Norman, Australian Ostracised Olympic Hero

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In the 1968 Mexico Olympics a famous image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos who had won gold and bronze in the 200m giving the black power salute on the medal podium was taken.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos give the black power salute at the 1968 Mexico olympics

It has become an iconic image of that time, but little is known these days of the role of the silver medalist in that photo. Peter Norman was a new star in running and broke the world record in the heats, but he was also brought up in a Salvation Army family and to think about looking after his fellow humans. This excellent BBC news article about both the 40th anniversary of the event and the 2008 film “Salute” says, his choice on that day had lasting effects:

The three were waiting for the victory ceremony when Norman discovered what was about to happen. It was Norman who, when John Carlos found he’d forgotten his black gloves, suggested the two runners shared Smith’s pair, wearing one each on the podium. And when, to the crowd’s astonishment, they flung their fists in the air, the Australian joined the protest in his own way, wearing a badge from the Olympic Project for Human Rights that they had given him.

The American’s were kicked out of their olympic team immediately, but the repercussions for Peter Norman were more subtle. As the article says:

Seen as a trouble-maker who had lent a hand to those desecrators of the Olympic flag, he was ostracised by the Australian establishment. Despite qualifying 13 times over and being ranked fifth in the world, he was not sent to the following Munich games, where Australia had no sprinter for the first time in the Olympics. Norman retired soon afterwards without winning another title.

This continued right through to the 2000 Sydney Olympics where Peter Norman was the only Australian Olympian excluded from the VIP lap of honour, 36 years after his original action. Whilst the Australians may have ignored him others decided that this was too much.

But the US athletics team were not going to ignore this omission. They invited Norman to stay at their own lodgings during the games, and welcomed him as one of their own. In an extraordinary turn of events, it was hurdling legend Ed Moses who greeted him at the door, and that year’s 200m champion Michael Johnson who hugged him, saying: “You are my hero.”

He died in 2006, after that having seen an early version of the film his nephew had made bringing all three athletes together for the first time to tell the story of that iconic event. Both Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave eulogies and were pallbearers at his funeral.

Iran’s New GPU Powered Supercomputer(s) ? (Updated x 2)

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ComputerWorld has an article about Iran claiming to have two new supercomputers, fairly modest by Top500 standards, but lament the lack of details:

But Iran’s latest supercomputer announcement appears to have no details about the components used to build the systems. Iranian officials have not yet responded to request for details about them.

However, looking at the Iranian photo spread that they link to (which appears to be slashdot’ed now) the boxes in question are SuperMicro based systems (and so could be sourced from just about anywhere), with some of their 2U storage based boxes with heaps of disk and both 2U and some 1U boxes which are presumably the compute nodes. The odd thing is that they’re spaced out quite a bit in the rack, and the 1U systems have two fans on the left hand side (which indicates something unusual about the layout of the box). Here’s an image from that Iranian news story:

Iranian Supermicro GPU node

The nice thing is that it’s pretty easy to find a slew of boxes on SuperMicro’s website that matches the picture, it’s their 1U GPU node range which are dual GPU beasts, for example:

SuperMicro SuperServer 6016GT-TF-TM1

The problem is that this range goes back to a few years, for example in an nVidia presentation on “the worlds fastest 1U server” from 2009. HPC-wire describe these original nodes as:

Inside the SS6016T-GF Supermicro box, the two M1060 GPUs modules are on opposite sides of the server chassis in a mirror image configuration, where one is facing up, the other facing down, allowing the heat to be distributed more evenly. The NVIDIA M1060 part uses a passive heat sink, and is cooled in conjunction with the rest of the server, which contains a total of eight counter-rotating fans. Supermicro also builds a variant of this model, in which it uses a Tesla C1060 card in place of the M1060. The C1060 has the same technical specs as the M1060, the principle difference being that the C1060 has an active fan heat sink of its own. In both instances though, the servers require plenty of juice. Supermicro uses a 1,400 watt power supply to drive these CPU-GPU hybrids.

According to the HPC-Wire article the whole system (2 x CPUs, 2 x GPUs) is rated at about 2TF for single-precision FP. nVidia rate the M1060 card at 933 GF (SP) and 78 GF (DP) so I’d reckon for DP FP you’re looking at maybe 180 GF per node. But now that range includes ones with the newer M2070 Fermi GPUs which can do 1030 GF (SP) and 515 GF (DP) and would get you up to just over 2TF SP and (more importantly for Top500 rankings) over 1TF DP per node.

Now if we assume the claimed 89TF for the larger system is correct, that it is indeed double precision (to be valid for the Top500), they measured it with HPL and assume an efficiency of about 0.5 (which seems about what a top ranked GPU cluster achieves with Infiniband) we can play some number games. Numbers below invalidated by Jeff Johnson’s observation, see the “updated” section for more!

If we assume these are older M1060 GPUs then you are looking at something in the order of 1000 compute nodes to be able to get that number Rmax in Linpack – something of the order of 1MW. From the photos though I didn’t get the sense that it was that large, the way they spaced them out you’d need maybe 200 racks for the whole thing and that would have made an impressive photo (plus an awful lot of switches). Now if they’ve managed to get their hands on a the newer M2070 based nodes then you could be looking at maybe 200 nodes, a more reasonable 280KW and maybe 40 racks. But I still didn’t get the sense that the datacentre was that crowded…

So I’d guess that instead of actually running Linpack on the system they’ve just totted up the Rpeak’s then you would get away with 90 of them, so maybe 15 or 20 racks which feels to me more like the scale depicted in the images. That would still give them a system that would hit about 40TF and give it a respectable ranking around 250 on the Top500 IF they used Infiniband to connect it up. If it was gigabit ethernet then you’d be looking at maybe another 50% hit to its Rmax and that would drop it out of the Top500 altogether as you’d need at least 31TF to qualify in last Novembers list.

It’ll be certainly interesting to see what the system is if/when any more info emerges!

Update In the comments Jeff Johnson has pointed out the 2U boxes are actually 4-in-2U dual socket nodes, i.e. will likely have either 32 or 48 cores depending on whether they contain quad core or six core chips. You can see that best from this rear shot of a rack:

Rear view of a 4-in-2U rack

There are mostly 8 of those units in a rack (though rack at one end of the block has just 7, but there are 2 extra in a central rack below what may be an IB switch), so that’s 256 cores a rack if they’re quad core. There are 8 racks in a block and two blocks to a row so we’ve got 4,096 cores in that one row – or 6,144 if they’re 6 core chips!

The row with the GPU nodes is harder to make out we cannot see the whole row from any combination of the photos, but in the front view we can see 2 populated racks of a block of 5, with 8 to a rack. The first rear view shows that the block next to it also has at least 2 racks populated with 8 GPU nodes. The second rear view is handy because whilst it shows the same racks as the first it demonstrates that these two blocks coincide with a single block of traditional nodes, raising the possibility of another pair of blocks to pair with the other half of the row of traditional nodes.

Front view of GPU node racks Read view of GPU nodes Different rear view of GPU node racks

Assuming M2070 GPUs then you’re looking at 8TF a rack, or 32TF for the row (assuming no other racks populated outside of our view). If the visible nodes are duplicated on the other side then you’re looking at 64TF.

If we assume that the Intel nodes have quad core Nehalem-EP 2.93Ghz then that would compare nicely to a Dell system at Saudi Aramco which is rated at an Rpeak of 48TF. Adding the 32TF for the visible GPU nodes gets us up to 80TF, which is close to their reported number, but still short (and still for Rpeak, not Rmax). So it’s likely that there are more GPU nodes, either in the 4 racks we cannot see into in the visible block of GPU racks or in another part of that row – or both! That would make a real life Top500 run of 89TF feasible, with Infiniband.

Be great to have a floor plan and parts list! :-)

Update 2

Going through the Iranian news reports they say that the two computers are located at the Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) in Tehran, and Esfahan University of Technology (in Esfahan). The one in Tehran is the smaller of the two, but the figures they give appear, umm, unreliable. It seems like the usual journalists-not-understanding-tech issue compounded by translation issues – so for instance you get things like:

The supercomputer of Amirkabir University of Technology with graphic power of 22000 billion operations per second is able to process 34000 billion operations per second with the speed of 40GB. [...] The supercomputer manufactured in Isfahan University of Technology has calculation ability of 34000 billion operations per second and its Graphics Processing Units (GPU) are able to do more than 32 billion operations per 100 seconds.

and..

Amirkabir University’s supercomputer has a power of 34,000 billion operations per second, and a speed of 40 gigahertz. [...] The other supercomputer project carried out by Esfahan University of Technology is among the world’s top 500 supercomputers.

So is the AUT (Tehran) system 22TF or 34TF? Could it be Rpeak 34TF and Rmax 22TF ? Is the Esfahan one 34TF (which would just creep onto the Top500) or higher ?

Unfortunately it’s the Tehran system in the photos, not the Esfahan one (the give away is the HPCRC on the racks). So my estimate of 80TF Rpeak for it could well give a measured 32TF if it’s using ethernet as the interconnect (or if the CPUs are a slower clock in the 2U nodes). Or perhaps the GPU nodes are part of something else ? That and slower clocked CPUs could bring the Rpeak down to 34TF..

Need more data!

PPP Dialup’s for People in Egypt #Egypt #Jan25 – Updated x 6

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I’ve noticed two PPP dialups being published for people in Egypt who are struggling to get online due to the cutting of many Internet links into the country.

They are this one seen on a blog on the Internet blackout:

by Anon on January 28th, 2011 10:30 pm
“free” PPP dial-up access on Madrid, Spain:
+34 912910230
user:internetforegypt@trovator.com
pass:internetforegypt
We are Legion.

and this seen on Michael Moore’s twitter feed:

People of Egypt! Use this dial-up provided by friends in France 2 go online: +33172890150 (login 'toto' password 'toto') #egypt #jan25

Update #1 – a massive list of dialups listed here – http://werebuild.eu/wiki/Egypt/Main_Page#Internet_Access

Update #2 – instructions on dialup and more numbers are here – http://manalaa.net/dialup

Update #3 – seen on the telecomix Twitter feed:

One more modem dialup account on Swedish number for #Egypt user/pass tcx/tcx +46850009990 #Jan25 #Jan26

Update #4 – Again via the telecomix Twitter feed:

Another modem dialup number (unconfirmed if works) +46187000800, user: flashback pass: flashback #Egypt #Jan25 #Jan26

Update #5 – Not dialup related, but SMS info from the telecomix Twitter feed:

Vodafone users in Egypt: change your Message Ctr to +20105996713 able to send SMS pls spread #Egypt #Jan25 #Jan26

Update #6 – another dialup number via telecomix feed:

Anonymous dialup service provided by #FDN on +33172890150 login/pasword toto/toto #JAN25 #Egypte |Please RT

If you know of others please leave a comment here with the details!

New Victorian Government – Where’s the Science ?

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So it appears that us Victorians have a new State Government in the shape of the Liberal/National coalition. I decided I’d try and look through the Victorian Liberal Party policies to get an idea of what might be in store for science in this state given that the ALP has been a strong supporter.

I can’t find anything. Not a sausage.

Even searching their 2010 budget response – not a mention of the word science. The website of their science minister seems to be devoid of any policy outlines, let alone detail.

Oh well. At least us people of the Yarra Ranges will get new bus shelters under this government, and the schools of that well known destitute institute the Catholic church will get more taxpayers money.

The Pope, Atheists, Nazis and Reality

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So on his official visit to the UK the Pope apparently said:

“we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society [...] As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century“

Now compare that with some quotes from Hitler (who knew a thing or two about Nazi Germany) on atheism:

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.“

“ We have put an end to denial of God and abuse of religion.“

“ National Socialism neither opposes the Church nor is it anti-religious, but on the contrary, it stands on the ground of a real Christianity.“

Finally this classic from the lead up to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933:

“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.“

Doesn’t sound very atheistic to me..