ITWeb By Nicola Mawson, Johannesburg, 14 Jan 2010

The deal will see investment coming to SA, says HP's Manoj Bhoola.
Microsoft's $250 million collaboration with HP is set to benefit about 10 000 channel distributors in SA.

The deal, the largest to date in the companies' 25-year partnership, will also see some of the $250 million coming into SA in the form of marketing spend, skills development, and research and development investment.

ITWeb

(By Paul Furber, ITWeb contributor, Hamburg, 5 Jan 2010 ) Cloud computing has a bright future over the next four years, according to HP's VP and GM of software products, Robin Purohit.

Linux Magazine Douglas Eadline, Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Truth is stranger than fiction. The connection that helped end HPC careers and companies in 2009

Linux Magazine has an article by Christopher Smart, Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

The next twelve months will be good to Linux and Free software, but we won’t capture the market just yet.

IT Web has an article of significant importance (rudely linked to another yoooohoooo! type press release from the DST saying look-how-clever-we-are). By Audra Mahlong, Johannesburg, 8 Dec 2009

The minister raises questions about SA's competitiveness and says R&D spending will be reviewed.

Science and technology minister Naledi Pandor has questioned investments in research and development (R&D), saying spending is not matching the country's aims to increase competitiveness.

This is a shocking admission. Not surprising though.

This could be a direction South Africa should follow in the VERY near future. Not with the usual continental time delays but maybe immediately. Partner with USA and learn from them now.
discovermagazine

Obama kicks off massive science education effort!

I just finished watching a live stream of a speech President Obama gave at the White House, pledging more support for science education in this country.
Woohoo!
[Edited to add: the speech transcript is now online, complete with Mythbusters shout-out.]

IT-Online - Supercomputer gets close to brain function Thursday, 19 November 2009, 09:16

IBM has unveiled significant progress toward creating a computer system that simulates and emulates the brain’s abilities for sensation, perception, action, interaction and cognition, while rivaling the brain’s low power and energy consumption and compact size.

The cognitive computing team, led by IBM Research, has achieved significant advances in large-scale cortical simulation and a new algorithm that synthesizes neurological data -- two major milestones that indicate the feasibility of building a cognitive computing chip.

The trend is to have your own "personal super computer" allowing testing of code and running of smaller jobs quickly and easily
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Personal Supercomputers Promise Teraflops on Your Desk

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/08/personal-supercomputers/

About a year ago John Stone, a senior research programmer at the University of Illinois, and his colleagues found a way to bypass the long waits for computer time at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

From the Good Gear Guide by
Dan Nystedt (IDG News Service) 27/10/2009 07:15:00

The ESC 1000 is the size of a large desktop computer and uses 960 Nvidia GPU cores

Asustek Computer unveiled its first supercomputer on Monday, the desktop computer-sized ESC 1000, which uses Nvidia graphics processors to attain speeds up to 1.1 teraflops.

From SUN

HPC enables us to first model then manipulate products, services, and techniques. These days, HPC has moved from a selective and expensive endeavor to a cost-effective enabling technology within reach of virtually every budget. This book will help you to get a handle on exactly what HPC does and can be.