Crunch time in a battle of the Apples

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Crunch time in a battle of the Apples
By Shlomi Isaacson
The Journal
18 May 2006

THE recently concluded court case fought between Apple Corps and Apple Computer related to a 15-year-old agreement between the two high profile companies.

Its origins however, actually date back a decade earlier than that, to 1981, the year after John Lennon’s assassination in New York and only five years following the founding of Apple Computers by its current chief executive, Steve Jobs.

The conclusion of the first clash between the two companies over the use of the Apple logo, resulted in an $80,000 settlement under which Apple Computer agreed to steer clear of the music business.

The 1991 trade mark agreement involved a $26.5m payment by Apple Computers.

It provided that Apple Corps got to keep exclusive rights to use the Apple mark for musical content, whilst Apple Computer was sanctioned use of the mark for “goods and services….used to reproduce, run, play or otherwise deliver such content.”

As Apple Corps QC, Geoffrey Vos succinctly put it during the recent case;

“The agreement was meant to say: ‘We do music and you do computer delivery systems.”

Apple Corps argued that the application of the Apple Computer company logo to the iTunes musical download store was a breach of this agreement.

The judge in the case, Mr Justice Anthony Mann concluded that the use of the logo by Apple Computer was in connection with the online store, “a form of electronic shop” as he put it – not the music itself.
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Fastest computers to get a lot faster (Miami Herald, 26 Jun 2006, Page 4B)

Fastest computers to get a lot faster
BY ROBERT S. BOYD Knight Ridder News Service
Miami Herald
26 Jun 2006


WASHINGTON — The federal government is pushing computer scientists and engineers to greatly step up the speed and capacity of America’s supercomputers.



Officials say much faster performance is needed to handle a looming tidal wave of scientific, technical and military data.



Powerful new telescopes, atom-smashers, climate satellites, gene analyzers and a host of other advanced instruments are churning out enormous volumes of computer bytes that will overwhelm even the swiftest existing machines.



In the next five years, the government’s goal is a computer system that can process at least a quadrillion (a million times a billion) arithmetic operations per second. The best current machines operate in the trillions ( a thousand times a billion) of calculations per second.



‘‘Within the next five to 10 years, computers 1,000 times faster than today’s computers will become available. These advances herald a new era in scientific computing,’’ according to Raymond Orbach, undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy.



A quadrillion- rated computer, known technically as a ‘‘petascale’’ system, will be at least four times faster than today’s top supercomputer — IBM’s BlueGene/L — which holds the world’s record at 280 trillion operations per second.



‘‘ Peta’’ is the prefix for a quadrillion in the metric system. ‘‘ Tera’’ stands for a trillion, so Blue Gene is a terascale system.



On a more familiar level, a petascale computer will be at least 75 times faster than the most powerful game machine, such as IBM’S XBox-360, and 100 times faster than a top-oftheline desktop personal computer, such as the Apple Power Mac.



1ST PETASCALE MACHINE



On Tuesday, RIKEN, a Japanese research agency, announced that it had built a computer system that theoretically can perform 1 quadrillion operations per second. If so, this would be the world’s first true petascale computer.



Henry Tufo, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who operates a Blue Gene/L system, said it would take petascale computer power to solve problems that stump presentday systems.

‘‘ One of the most compelling and challenging intellectual frontiers facing humankind is the comprehensive and predictive understanding of Earth and its biological components,’’ Tufo said in an e- mail message. ‘‘ Petascale systems will open up new vistas [for] scientists.’’

To meet this goal, the National Science Foundation asked researchers on June 6 to submit proposals to develop the infrastructure for a petascale computing system to be ready by 2010.



LARGE PROBLEMS



As examples of difficult questions that only a petascale system could handle, the NSF listed:



The three- dimensional structure of the trillions of proteins that make up a living organism. Proteins are the basic building blocks of all living things.



The ever-changing interactions among the land, ocean and atmosphere that control the Earth’s maddeningly complex weather and climate systems.



The formation and evolution of stars, galaxies and the universe itself.



‘‘ The scientific problems are there to be solved, and petascale computers are on the horizon,’’ said Walter Polansky, senior technical adviser in the DOE’S Office of Advanced Scientific Computing.



For example, the Energy Department wants ultra-fast computers in order to determine the 3-D structure of molecules that let drugs pass through cell walls, knowledge that can be vital against cancer.



‘‘ This is completely new,’’ Orbach wrote in the current issue of Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing, a DOE publication. ‘‘ No one has ever probed that region of science before.’’



The Energy Department also needs petascale computing to help solve problems that are blocking the development of nuclear fusion, an unlimited, nonpolluting energy... read more...

IPods offer athletes easy access to game videos (The Washington Times Daily, 16 Jun 2006, Page A1)

IPods offer athletes easy access to game videos
By Tim Lemke THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The Washington Times Daily
16 Jun 2006


Apple Corp.’s IPOD was once just a humble portable music player, a device used mostly by tech-savvy young professionals to play their collections of smooth jazz, speed metal or acid rock.

But in the past year, the seemingly ubiquitous pocket device (50 million sold and counting) has become big business in the sports world, as athletes, fans and broadcast outlets have found new uses for it.

The Colorado Rockies’ baseball team is using IPods to analyze their swings and pitching mechanics. Nike is building a shoe that will use an IPod to track a runner’s progress. And millions... read more...