NextFest

Last year, we attended the CeBit 2003.
On our last day there, we visited the Future Pavillion. Big mistake. We almost had to drag ourselves out there because we had to leave. If we ever go again, that'll be the first hall to visit because of it's general cuhlness.
One of the most impressive things we saw there was project LOFAR (scienctific site, general public site in Dutch), by ASTRON.
The Main Objective of LOFAR is to build a large number of fields with hundreds of little, pyramid-shaped antennas in them. The placement of the fields will be such, that the rotation of the earth effectively makes for a radio antenna 350km in diameter.
To transport the 768 GB/s they are building fibre optical cables to the fields.
And to be able to keep up with the data flow generated by some 25.000 antenna's, they went shopping and came home with a IBM Blue Gene/L, with a capacity of almost 35 TFLOPs! The entire project is set to go operational somewhere in 2006.

Anyway, at this moment the NextFest is underway in San Fransisco. It features the Moller M400 SkyCar, definitely thé single cuhlest way of getting around ;-), a personal cloaking device, and much much more.

If you get around, GO THERE!

Link: http://www.nextfest.net/

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