Gizmodo: colossus

OCZ Colossus 3.5-Inch SSD Reaches 1TB, Super Speeds

Mark Wilson — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:42:48 EST

OCZ's new Colossus drives are among the first SSDs designed for desktops, and they're the very first to store up to 1TB of data. Oh, and on top of all that, they work pretty well, too.

PC Perspective tested one of OCZ's 256GB Colossus drives and found "read and write speeds are about as fast as SATA 3Gb/sec will go!" It's nuts that our drives are finally catching up with the plentiful, SATA pipelines, even if OCZ has hacked speeds a bit by essentially building one giant drive out of four smaller SSDs.

Whatever works. Now to sell a spare kidney for the $3300, 1TB configuration. Read the full testing results at: [PC Perspective]

Colossus of Rhodes to be Rebuilt as Colossal Light Sculpture

Kit Eaton — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:30:00 EST

The Colussus of Rhodes, one of the original Seven Wonders of the World, is going to be rebuilt as an innovative light sculpture—the "world's largest light installation" according to its architect. And it'll be even bigger than the 120-foot original, which was destroyed in an earthquake in 226BC.

The new architectural piece will be between 200 and 320 feet tall, and instead of being a recreation of the original—risking inflaming Greek public opinion on heritage issues, apparently—it'll be a building visitors can enter, covered with light effects so that it can "tell" stories throughout the day.

There's no word on whether it'll stand astride the harbor like the original is sometimes thought to have, but with planning and funding already underway it may be standing within six years, half the time the original took. [Guardian]

WW2 code-breaker behemoth Colossus was beaten...

AddyDugdale — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:23:57 EST

WW2 code-breaker behemoth Colossus was beaten by amateur Joachim Schuth in yesterday's code-cracking challenge. Bonn-based Schuth had written his own suite of software specially for the challenge. [BBC Online]

Colossus Back to Crack Codes After a 60-Year Absence

AddyDugdale — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:36:30 EST

Colossus, the code-breaking computer used to decipher German messages during World War Two, has been put back together. Over six decades after the 10 truck-sized devices were dismantled, one has been rebuilt. Today, two teams of code-breakers, one using the Colossus, another using modern technology, are going head-to-head as they attempt to unscramble messages sent from Paderborn, in Germany.

Tony Sale, the man behind Colossus' restoration, had just a few old photos to go on when he started on the project 14 years ago. One of the reasons that the machine, which contains over 2,000 valves, is so fast, is because it was a single-purpose processor rather than one with multiple uses, like modern computers. Of the two teams, he is unsure which one will win the Cipher Challenge.

"A virtual Colossus written to run on a Pentium 2 laptop takes about the same time to break a cipher as Colossus does," he said. The original machine could break codes in a matter of hours, and was instrumental in the Allies' eventual victory, shortening the war by an estimated 18 months.

"It was extremely important in the buildup to D-Day," reckons Mr Sale. "It revealed troop movements, the state of supplies, state of ammunition, numbers of dead soldiers—vitally important information for the whole of the second part of the war." Today's messages will be scrambled using a Lorenz SZ42 machine, the same used by German high command back in the '40s. [BBC News and 24 Hour Museum]