titan

Titan steals No. 1 spot on Top500 supercomputer list

Predictions that Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Titan supercomputer had become the most powerful machine in the world have turned out to be right.

The machine, powered by Nvidia graphics processors and Advanced Micro Devices computer chips, stole the No. 1 spot on the Top500's list from another U.S. machine, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Sequoia.

Sequoia, which uses processors from IBM, became the top computer in June with a performance of 16.32 petaflops a second. Titan beat that showing, sending Sequoia to second place on the list, with a result of 17.59 petaflops per second. … Read more

Titan supercomputer debuts for open scientific research

Forecasting for weather like this week's "Frankenstorm" may become a lot more accurate with the help of the Department of Energy's Titan supercomputer, a system that launched this month for open research development.

The computer, an update to the Jaguar system, is operated in Tennessee by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, part of the DOE's network of research labs. Researchers from academia, government labs, and various industries will be able to use Titan -- believed to be one of the two most powerful machines in the world -- to research things such as climate change and … Read more

Scientists want to float a boat on Saturn moon Titan

While the Mars rover explores the Red Planet, a group of engineers submitted plans for a new out-of-this-world space mission: landing a boat on the Saturn moon Titan, which NASA, the European Space Agency, and Italian space agency ASI explored in depth over the last decade as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Building on the successful 2005 landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the new mission would aim to explore and collect data from the weird liquid methane makeup of the lakes found on the Saturn moon's surface. To explore these uncharted methane flows, engineers at the aerospace company Sener -- working in collaboration with Spain's Centro de Astrobiologia -- submitted a proposal last week to the European Planetary Science Congress for a Talise (Titan Lake In-situ Sampling Propelled Explorer) boat probe. … Read more

Prizefight punch-out! HTC Titan II vs. Nokia Lumia 900

AT&T is making quite the name for itself as America's top Windows Phone promoter. However, with so many Windows phones out there, it's getting harder to tell which one you should get.

Fear not, friends. Brian Tong straps on his gloves for a prizefight throwdown between the top Windows Phone contenders: the HTC Titan II, with its giant screen and 16-megapixel camera, and the Nokia Lumia 900 with its standout design and AMOLED display.… Read more

Camera megapixels: Why more isn't always better (Smartphones Unlocked)

Just days ago, Samsung announced the Samsung Galaxy S III, the global, quad-core, Android Ice Cream Sandwich successor to its best-selling smartphone ever, the Galaxy S II.

CNET readers' reactions were mixed, with several comments that the 8-megapixel camera didn't seem too hot.

Rumors of a 12-megapixel camera leading up to the announcement were partly to blame. It's no wonder that some felt that a perfectly good 8-megapixel spec was taking a step back, especially with the 16-megapixel shooter on the HTC Titan II out in the wild, and Nokia's 41-megapixel 808 PureView, a Mobile World Congress … Read more

More Lumia 900 converts coming from Apple, Android, says poll

Most people switching to the Lumia 900 or HTC Titan II Windows Phone handsets are moving from the iPhone and Android, at least according to a poll by WPCentral.

Grabbing responses from more than 3,500 users at this point, WPCentral found almost 30 percent jumping ship from the iPhone and 27 percent from Android.

BlackBerry accounted for 10 percent, Nokia's Symbian almost 12 percent, and HP's WebOS a little more than 6 percent. That left almost 15 percent of Lumia 900 and Titan II adopters upgrading from feature phones.

The results aren't fully comprehensive since WPCentral … Read more

'Titanic' 3D: Surprisingly decent

Last night I saw "Titanic" in 3D at the IMAX and, surprisingly, the 3D is actually pretty good.

Why is that surprising? Because "Titanic" wasn't filmed using 3D cameras. Back in 1997 we were perfectly content to watch Leo and Kate legging it around the sinking ship in the usual two dimensions.

Filming a 3D movie using proper 3D cameras means the depth of the extra dimension in every scene is exactly as it should be. If you embark upon a 2D-to-3D conversion, however, you'll need to use software that makes a guess at exactly how deep each object on screen should appear to be.

Read more "Titanic 3D: Surprisingly decent" on Crave UK.… Read more

Titanic 'story map' delves into passengers' fates

The explosion of digital tools is opening new ways to explore the famous 100-year old Titanic shipwreck.

Mapping software company ESRI today released an interactive map showing the country of origin and ultimate fate of all the passengers on the Titanic. For first-time Titanic followers, the map displays the actual route of the seemingly invincible ship and the location in the North Atlantic where it struck an iceberg and sunk.

The mapping shows that many of the 2,200 passengers came from London and New York, but there were many from Scandinavia, eastern Europe, and Lebanon.

It also clearly shows … Read more

In praise of the Twitterati who think Titanic never happened

It's easy to feel superior.

You must stretch your neck to its fullest, talk downward, and make sure you've got Wikipedia open at the right page.

So one shouldn't feel surprised that there was something of an outpouring of glee when some Twitter users -- who must surely all be "Glee" fans -- began to suddenly admit that they thought "Titanic" was, you know, just a movie.

Yes, a movie based on the late-night, absinthe-fueled imaginings of a screenwriter's mind.

Apparently, it all started when a tweeter with the handle Boring as Heck … Read more