Saudi Arabia Begins To Realize Supercomputer Ambitions 191
An anonymous reader writes "Saudi Arabia is building a supercomputer that could rank among the 10 most powerful systems in the world. And the country isn't stopping there. It has plans to turn this marquee system for the Middle East into a petascale system in two years, and, beyond that, an exascale system."
What does it run? (Score:4, Informative)
TFA does not name the O/S it runs, though a linked article from TFA says the Iranian's supercomputer runs Linux.
Inquiring minds want to know, I think.
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The article quotes on of the leads as saying that they have no legacy restrictions, so they are probably going to go with something very fast and very state of the art.
IOW, ForthOS.
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I googled Blue Gene/P after posting that. It's from IBM, it's a supercomputer. Duh. What else would it be running?
The article quotes on of the leads as saying that they have no legacy restrictions, so they are probably going to go with something very fast and very state of the art.
From http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21791.wss [ibm.com]
The Blue Gene supercomputer operating system is based on the open-source Linux operating system. Applications are written in common languages such as Fortran, C and C++ using standards-based MPI communications protocols. The Blue Gene/P supercomputer is compatible with the diverse applications currently running on the Blue Gene/L supercomputer, including leading research in physics, chemistry, biology, aerospace, astrophysics, genetics, materials science, cosmology and seismology.
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"Marquee"? (Score:2)
from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of an odd way to run a research institution - research is all about legacy.
Re:from TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Not odd if you've ever been to a Saudi university. They'll spend millions on this so they can say they have it, then it'll just sit there using electricity and being used to play Tetris.
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Al-Ghaslan said the system will be used by researchers for a wide range of computational work in life and physical sciences, as well as in high performance-computing research, to improve the performance of code on systems of this type.
And all scientists but us computer geeks want tons of computational power - talk to any biologist or physicist and they always moan about how long their projects take. Every research institution should have access to a high-performance computing lab, so this is possibly a good thing.
;-)
Although, bomb simulations also come under the heading of "research"
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Computer geeks know how to code and don't need big computers.
Biologist and physicist don't know how to code and need big computers.
Coincidence? I think not.
Re:from TFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Except many computational physicists do in fact know how to code, and their stuff still requires big computers.
What do you think they're doing, running COBOL on them? The lattice QCD code that I've seen is all in C. (Maybe you can teach them how to code? It's GPL, after all...)
There are legitimate scientific uses of that many cycles.
Re:from TFA (Score:5, Funny)
Step up one level. You'll find two princes who both have the same fastest cars in the world, the two fastest race horses in the world, the two largest private jet aircraft in the world, and the largest palaces in the world.
It's just the next competition.
Prince A: "My research lab has 1000 scientists!"
Prince B: "Oh Yea? Well I have 1000 scientists and I'm hiring 10 more next week."
Observer: "What are they working on?"
Prince A&B: "Mine's bigger!"
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A number of different factors are required for successful research, and the Saudis and neighbors have no interest in any that can't be accomplished solely by writing a check.
The biggest thing required for research is the cheque. Trust me on this :-)
:-)
When friends and family ask me "Why do you guys do research anyway", I confidently answer "To get more funds"
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So it's only the Polacks that are stupid?
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You forgot to mention the really crucial point: there are no women.
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Oops, I think I wasn't clear. I meant the Saudi University. In Egypt, there are women.
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Of course they won't admit to that, ever.
See, they're all in de nile [instantrimshot.com].
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Don't you think you are reading too much into this statement? It surely does not mean that they did not study previous research, only that since previous research has not been carried in a particular institution they do not have psychological inhibitions of overcoming bad legacy.
The fact that Newton who said famously Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident did not stand on the shoulders of his biological father, does not mean he did not stand on the shoulders of his scientific fathe
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Supercomputing's Top Systems (Score:2)
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There is, if you like windows.
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building a taller building has no real benefit, that is there is no reason not to build a wide building
There is, if you like windows.
Uh...
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Building the world's largest building has several important benefits:
1. It's a statement of superiority (why did you build that building? Because we CAN, and you CAN'T.)
2. It facilitates development in a number of related fields (construction, materials science etc)
3. It encourages national pride and a spirit of can-do in most areas of society.
IMO, the day we stopped building the tallest buildings is the day we started to fall behind.
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Here in Malaysia we had the world's tallest buildings [wikipedia.org] for a while. I
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A Link to some info about Burj Dubai. The tallest man made structure ever built.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_dubai
See where the architects are from? The contractors? Structural Engineers? Dubai's ONLY contribution to this feat of engineering is money.
Too bad they didn't address the basics first (Score:2, Insightful)
Like letting women drive and hold jobs, or letting men listen to music. The only purpose of a country is to treat its citizens right, and technological achievements do not mean zip if they are not applied for that purpose.
Re:Too bad they didn't address the basics first (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe they'll run some simulations to see how that pans out :)
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The only purpose of a country is to treat its citizens right
Um... Most countries came about because one particularly bloody family killed off all their competition and expanded into their territory.
I suggest you take a short look at world history.
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It's their religion and their country. Using a slightly less controversial topic:
If you didn't eat pork because you think it's unclean, would you give a rat's ass about all those crazy people eating it and trying to force it down your throat?
It's all fun and games, until someone starts a religious war.
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Um, historically the only purpose of a country is to organize the peasants under some rich and powerful leader, and to provide some convenient way to refer to groups of them in aggregate. Its all about who is paying taxes to whom.
Taking your narrow twisted viewpoint, by that measure technology exists to increase productivity and thus taxes collected and to ensure your taxpayers keep paying taxes to you, not your enemy.
Not if you have your own country. (Score:2)
It's called 'Saudi' for a reason: it belongs to the Saudi family.
Imagine America being owned by the Bush family!!! What would it be called? "Bushiland"? "USB" ("United States of Bush")?
How the hell do these people accept their country being named after a single person?
I didn't vote for them (Score:2)
How'd they get it then? I'll tell you how - by exploiting the proletariat! By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society...
I once sold softwar to Saudi Arabia (Score:5, Interesting)
The software was a big mess: A hospital management system (basically an accounting package) written in FORTRAN!.
It had evolved over decades. It was pretty much unsupportable, but we had the old developers in-house, so they were able to solve the weird bugs usually.
To our surprise, they did not want the regular compiled version with customer support. They just wanted the source code.
We told them that the source code was not for sale. It was also too embarrassing to release.
They then put an enormous amount of money on the table, and promised to keep it in house.
We said OK, and expected a lot of support calls at least for them to compile and install the system.
We never heard from them again. Ever.
Best sale ever.
Maybe IBM has entered into the same kind of deal. Would be great to get a follow up in a few years to see how this computer is being used.
Re:I once sold software to Saudi Arabia (Score:1, Insightful)
At one of the conferences I attended here in Beirut, the chair of the department of pathology at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Riyadh (I think his name was Fouad Al Dayel) one of the top SA hospitals was asked about their hospital system and how much it costs. He answered without a blink, Cerner for $ 50 Mil.
I then noticed that these people would never accept to fund research for any software development in SA or other universities; if they pay a couple a mil per yr, they may have som
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The software was a big mess: A hospital management system (basically an accounting package) written in FORTRAN!.
It had evolved over decades. It was pretty much unsupportable, but we had the old developers in-house, so they were able to solve the weird bugs usually.
To our surprise, they did not want the regular compiled version with customer support. They just wanted the source code.
We told them that the source code was not for sale. It was also too embarrassing to release.
They then put an enormous amount of
At least it does something for secular education (Score:5, Informative)
In some ways, it's encouraging. Until recently, 90% of the advanced degrees awarded in Saudi universities are in "religious studies". Most useful work is done by foreigners, and the country has a 25-30% youth unemployment rate. About four years ago, King Abdullah decided to throw money at the problem. [zawya.com] KAUST is part of this. The university is still being built and has no students yet; opening is scheduled for September 2009. It's a graduate school only, and is intended to have about 275 faculty members. Faculty will not be tenured; they'll be contract employees.
Presumably somebody thought that having a big supercomputer would help with recruiting or image. There are no research programs underway yet to use it. The logical application for that would be seismic processing for oil exploration, a classic supercomputer application, but that's moving to GPUs.
Re:At least it does something for secular educatio (Score:2)
What I've heard from Saudis who have returned to Saudi Arabia after grad school abroad is that it is almost impossible to do much research because their family obligations are so time-consuming.
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I suppose they could have special taxis for women, with a driver and two older women as chaperones. Of course, that wouldn't leave much room for passengers.
Seriously, though, my understanding is that Saudis are also expected to attend a great many family social events: not only weddings and funerals and so forth as in other countries but audiences and various other things.
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Re:At least it does something for secular educatio (Score:2)
In the industry, you see similar ambitions usually followed by failure.
The truth is, you can't just buy a honking computer and declare "users will come". You start small, build up institutional technical knowledge and a user base who is increasingly educated about HPC. Scientists new to computing will have no friggin' clue how to use the resources, and most often won't use them efficiently or often.
Start with a resource big enough to provide an incentive for using your resource and come to that computing
Re:At least it does something for secular educatio (Score:2)
About four years ago, King Abdullah decided to throw money at the problem. [zawya.com]
I don't think you will establish a scientific culture by "throwing money at the problem". The problem in Saudi Arabia and many other muslim countries is not lack of scientific institutions it is lack of a rational world view.
If Saudi Arabia wants to do science they have to address that problem. This means abandoning and actively combatting many islamic doctrines (Quran is the word of God, religious critique must be punished and so on).
When people grow up in a culture and with a religion which discourages cr
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I have to dispute the figure of 90%.
Having lived there for more than a decade, most Saudis I have worked with had secular degrees, mainly in engineering, computer and IT. Some in HR, ...etc. Most of them have Masters or Ph.D degrees from US universities, some from Europe. These were all on government grants. After 9/11, they shifted to Canada and Europe because the US would not be the welcoming place it used to be given the climate.
If you are talking of post-graduate degrees in religious studies, then it wo
Considering the state of Saudi Arabia... (Score:1, Troll)
Would it not be better to send them SkyNet, a few hundred T-800 Endoskeletons? You know, the kind with the plasma cannons that shoot at anything that moves?
Yeah, but... (Score:2, Funny)
is it Sharia compliant?
exascale supercomputer? what for? (Score:3, Funny)
Just plug in the Ka'bha (Score:2)
They still haven't figured out that the Ka'bha [wikipedia.org] is really the biggest Connection Machine [wikipedia.org] ever built.
They just need to pug it in and all the LEDs will light up!
Underground Supercomputer (Score:4, Interesting)
When I think about Saudi Arabia though one of the first things that comes to mind is that it's very hot. Building a super computer in a hot country must be quite a challenge from a cooling point of view.
I was wondering was if anyone has considered building a supercomputer in an underground cavern. They are, after all, naturally pretty cool. You would still need cooling to keep it that way but you would be sheilded from the worst of the sun.
Working in the above mentioned place.. (Score:5, Informative)
Posting Anonymously for obvious reasons.
Actually this is quite a late realization. They have known that for a fact for the past few years but cared less to get into a competition. The computers are used for Oil reservoir simulation (predicting fluid flow and oil in place, production/injection rates over time), and their simulator is one of the best in the industry besides Schlumberger's "Eclipse", which it's based on scientifically, and is considered to be an industry standard.
They dont only stop there, also "Visualization Clusters" perform parallel graphics rendering (thats what I do actually) due to the enormous amounts of data needed to be displayed on multiple screens. I also know for a fact that there is not a single country in the middle east besides KSA that has such technology (Do not know about Iran, but thats not ME anyway, or is it?)
There are other applications running on SEVERAL clusters.
KAUST which is mentioned in the article is actually overlooked by the national oil company Saudi Aramco (which has all the clusters I am talking about)
P.S. I am not Saudi, but I do have the pleasure to be working with them on this technology, and I am telling you they have some of the best minds on the planet.
Yeah (Score:2)
So, IBM is building it, but Saudi Arabia is "building it" according to the article summary. Hey guys, I built a gray minivan. By build, I mean I went to the dealership and bought it.
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Hey, I built my house. By built I mean I hired some guys to build it to my specifications.
Buildings, large ships and supercomputers are commonly referred to that way.
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Hey, I built my house. By built I mean I hired some guys to build it to my specifications.
Buildings, large ships and supercomputers are commonly referred to that way.
By "specifications" did you mean "I want to have the biggest house in all the desert!"?
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Nah. The desert is for losers. I've always wanted to live on an island. There weren't any around though, so I had to build one. Then I built a couple hundred for my friends when they stay over. For kicks I made the whole thing look like a map of the planet.
Note to world (Score:2)
I can't believe that the jingoism in the above comments can possibly be representative of slashdot users.
Hopefully more sane people with mod points will come along, and counteract the right-wing team-mods.
Title of article should have been (Score:2, Funny)
Saudi Arabia to become supercomputing Mecca.
Funding (Score:2)
When you have enough spare funds, you can do anything.
Re:Simulating... (Score:5, Informative)
What would Muslims need a supercomputer to simulate [bbc.co.uk]?
I would think it would be more for the oil industry.
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/news/press-releases/two-award-nominations-for-scottish-supercomputer
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2090687,00.htm
http://www.hpcwire.com/industry/oilandgas/Worlds_10th_Fastest_Supercomputer_Helps_Find_Oil_and_Gas.html
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There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the bloody Dutch.
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they have to respond to Iran's nukular ambitions somehow, don't they?
since live testing is kinda out of question for the moment, they can just buy the simulation software as well.
come next year, it may be pretty cheap ;)
Re:Simulating... (Score:4, Insightful)
But this is their typical reaction. They buy something expensive, that looks good. Then they let it rot.
A fool and his money ...
Re:Simulating... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, it wasn't a game as such... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it wasn't a game as such. See, one of the Saudi princes got taunted about his 3DMark scores once too often, by someone with an overclocked compressor-cooled 2x6 core Dual Xeon 7460 system with 3x nVidia GTX 280 SLI.
And as everyone(*) knows, your 3DMark score is not just the measure of your worth, but verily an accurate measure of penis size. In fact, they're in a feedback loop. It's true. If you fall out of the top 10, your Y chromosomes will spread their legs and go, "fuck, we were X all along". And the Penis Police will show up at your door with a rusty hedge scissors and revoke your right to pee standing. It's no laughing matter.
And, well, the royal family represents the whole country and people. The collective penis of the whole Saudi Arabia could be at stake, because someone didn't upgrade their machine to beat the best score. And the last thing you want as a ruling dynasty is to wake up one morning and find a mob of former men in front of the palace gates, wanting to beat you up with their handbags for what junior's lame machine did to them. You really don't want to go down in history as that kind of a ruling family.
So, anyway, it started kinda innocent enough. You know, _quad_ 6-core Xeons, liquid nitrogen cooling, stuff like that. But then they hired a consultant for the rest of the spec and it kinda snowballed from there ;)
(*) ... who wastes their time willy-waving about their system on those boards
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What would Muslims need a supercomputer to simulate?
Lol! Shows what you know.
Those bomb simulations you linked to are not about making bombs - they are about being able to avoid live tests of current stocks. [wikipedia.org] I.E. they don't really simulate explosions of different bomb desings, they simulate the effect of time passing on the stockpiles of bombs that the US already has.
Without the big computers they would need to explode a bomb or two every couple of years in order to verify that the remaining warheads are still functional and within specifications, which is
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Oh, they had computers at the Manhattan project. They were just female and pretty.
Oil geology (Score:2)
I don't know, maybe they don't follow the mainstream geological theory [wikipedia.org] ?
Maybe their weird geological model require more computing power to analyse ?
But stay reassured, they won't find anything. Everyone knows that the earth is 6500 years old and oil was put under the surface by the intelligent designer for us to use it ~
Re:Simulating... (Score:5, Interesting)
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We should liberate Saudis too. Vote for McCain.
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<blink>this baby is gonna be powered by homosexual people and Saudi feminists running on giant hamster wheels. I'm not trying to be funny. I wouldn't be surprised one bit.</blink>
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WTF? Did you actually think that was worth posting?
I appreciate the diversity of thought and opinion here at Slashdot, and I encourage people of all stripes to post here. But that post was just retarded.
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I recall having to work out a complicated formula to show that the very ordinary CPU in a product we were about to ship was under some critical limit for export. Civil servants work on a much slower timescale than Moore's law, so it would not surprise me at all if a latest-generation console had more bogomips than some arbitrary level set, say, eight years ago. The Cell processors in the PS3 amount to an impressive amount of crunch - some universities have already been linking them for DIY supercomputers.
Bu
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Sony's High-Tech Playstation2 Will Require Military Export License [8.12.42.31]
Sony's PlayStation2 may be more than just a toy.
Japan's Trade Ministry will require special permits to export the new, hot-selling game after labeling it a device that can be adapted for military use, the Mainichi newspaper reported Sunday.
Parts of the machine resemble a small supercomputer in their ability to process high-quality images quickly-a characteristic of missile guidance systems, according to another newspaper, Asahi.
Trade Ministry
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Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, I'm not a muslim (to paraphrase George Carlin, I used to be a christian until I reached the age of reason;), but I haven't found that much war-mongering in the Quran. Or at least in the translated copy of it that I still own. It seemed not much better or worse than the Bible, to be honest. I wish more people would actually read the damned thing before going on a mindless bashing spree bas
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But do christians or christianity as a whole actually act that way? No, I don't think I've seen any people who think we should, say, go mass-murder India because some Christians joined a new-age Guru and converted to some eastern tantric stuff.
Well the Spanish Inquisition did a pretty thorough job for 350 years.
Jews, Protestants, Muslims were all persecuted in various ways for not following the "correct" religion. And we're not talking comfy chairs or soft cushions either.
Long ago, and quite different (Score:2)
Well,
1. the inquisition worked quite a bit differently than most people seem to assume.
For a start it _only_ had jurisdiction over Christians, and only over faith matters. So if you had declared yourself a Jew or a Muslim, the Inquisition could kiss your ass.
The Inquisition only had a problem with (A) people who were gaming the system by declaring themselves Christians to gain the secular privileges those had in Spain, and then went and prayed to Allah or whatever, (B) clergy who did all sorts of crap from
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1. You could not declare yourself a Jew of Muslim if you had ever been or suspected to have been baptized. The Inquisition would not kiss your ass, they would get (late) medieval on it.
2. Any rumor or statement by a Catholi
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One of the nasty parts of history is that if you were a minority living in another king's lands, protectors of Islam, Catholicism, Calvinism, etc. would feel free to traipse across the border if you were abused. This led to continual warfare and, eventually when everybody was exhausted, the Peace of Westphalia and the modern system of sovereignty. So having a minority in your lands was something of a dangerous thing, geopolitically. All sorts of mischief could and often did ensue. The princes who expelled m
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You really ought to look at research on what ancient warfare actually was like. Complete genocide down to the last individual was a completely normal thing to do in our pre-history. The casualty figures are staggering. The Old Testament is a history of a progressive reduction in the bloody scale of warfare and brutal punishments. By the time the muslims came around, complete genocide had been largely denormalized in the monotheistic traditions, though the Mongols made a good run at bringing it back in style
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I don't find anything funny in this statement. Not sure if everyone has karma to burn or what, how come this comment got +4 Funny!
There are a substantial amount of Muslim's in the IT world who visit slashdot, myself included. And how the hell a country of 20 million Muslim represent 1.6 billion Muslims is beyond me!
There are 53 million muslim's in europe alone, a majority of them would be a more preferable example of Muslim's.
Few border line terrorist creating stereotypes and a few border line folks from th
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Unfortunately, the Saudis pay for a lot of mosques and imams and they have an outsized influence due to their control of the haj. Most people don't understand that US Islam is tremendously penetrated by Saudi financing as is Islam in many other countries. Cut the purse strings loose and you'll likely lose the associations.
It's not irrational to conclude that he who pays the piper calls the tune and the Saudis have been paying for a lot of pipers.
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The crusades, every one of them, were defensive wars to recover lands invaded by muslims. Stopping crusades is easy, stop invading christian lands.
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You pose a deep and profound question that may well shake the cultural gap between east and west to its very foundations.
But upon reflection, yes, I think there might be a small difference between systematically denying human rights to millions of people for generations... and sticking a flip one-word tag on a Slashdot story.
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Flamebait! Yeowch! Tell me where Mecca is, Einstein!
Re:What if I told you they had HPC systems way bac (Score:2)
The University is OPEN TO EVERYONE
Also Israel citizens?