No let-up in war against graft

Subsidy cuts will not hamper bid to remove wastage or curb inefficiencies

PETALING JAYA: The proposed subsidy reduction will not deter the Government from fighting corruption, removing wastage and curbing inefficiencies.


Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala said this was clearly spelt out in the Government Transformation Plan (GTP), where one of the national key result areas (NKRAs) was to combat corruption.

He cited the approval of the Whistleblower Protection Act in Parliament and the conviction of 97 offenders for corruption as examples of work in progress.

In an interview, Idris reassured low-income earners that the poor would continue to be protected.
The Performance Management and Delivery Unit’s (Pemandu) proposal to reduce subsidy last week had stirred a strong reaction from Malaysians, with many questioning the Government’s rationale. Idris, who is also Pemandu CEO, took the questions head on as he explained the rationale behind the recommendations.

Q: Why did you say that Malaysia will go bankrupt in 2019? Have you misled us?

A: During the Open Day, I presented some salient facts about the economy. For the last 10 years, we have been running a fiscal deficit which has been growing progressively from RM5bil in 1998, to a record high of RM47bil in 2009. This was due to Government expenditure, including subsidies, escalating whereas Government revenue has not kept pace as our GDP grew at only 3% per annum. Consequently, the Government has to borrow a lot of money to cover for the shortfall. Our Government debt in 1997 was RM90bil and has grown at a rate of 12% per annum to reach a record RM362bil in 2009.

In addition, as a proportion to GDP, Malaysia is one of the world’s highest subsidised countries with 4.7% of GDP compared to Indonesia 2.7%, Philippines 0.2% and OECD countries at 1.5% on average. (See chart 1)
To be clear, I said we could go bankrupt IF, and I repeat the word IF, we continue with the same trend as in the past 10 years. Based on an annual increase of 12%, our debt will reach 100% of GDP in 2019 (a staggering RM1.158 trillion) and we could potentially go bankrupt then. Together with escalating fiscal deficit exceeding 10%, we could end up in a similar economic situation like Greece. (See chart 2)

According to studies conducted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), countries get into sovereign crisis (bankruptcy) when:
> Government debt is more than 100% of the GDP,
> Fiscal deficit is more than 10% of GDP.

This is because Government revenue is not enough to service its debt and it does not have any money to operate.

All economists make assumptions and I did not say Malaysia will go bankrupt without qualifying it with certain assumptions. These assumptions are:
– The GDP continues at a rate of 3% per annum;
– Our deficit continues to balloon; and
– Our Government debt continues to increase at a rate of 12% per annum.

The outcome of this projection is that by the year 2019, our debt will be 103% of GDP and our fiscal deficit will reach RM449bil (38% of GDP).

Unfortunately, some of the reports about Pemandu’s bankruptcy projections did not state these assumptions and therefore can be taken out of context.

Some people question whether our assumptions are realistic. I think it is fair to make projections into the future based on our historical trends over the last 10 years.

It is on this basis that Pemandu made its assumptions and therefore its projections.

These assumptions are used by Pemandu to make forecast about the future.

In reality, as a country, we will have to do everything we can to avoid this from happening. The Prime Minister has laid out four strategic pillars which make up the country’s roadmap to achieving Vision 2020 i.e.

> 1 Malaysia, People First, Performance Now;
> Government Transformation Programme;
> New Economic Model; and
> 10th Malaysia Plan.

The future is clearly in our hands. And if all of us Malaysians work together, we can achieve Vision 2020. This involves concerted effort to grow our economy and be prudent in our spending.

> Surely there must be some positive things that are happening in our economy? Why are you not highlighting them?

Actually I highlighted those positive aspects of the economy. Firstly, I said our economy is rebounding in the first quarter of this year by 10.1%. This is the highest quarterly result in a decade. Our international competitiveness ranking has improved from 18th to 10th position. This is a phenomenal jump of eight places in one year. This should give us, as Malaysians, the comfort that we can shape a better future for our country.

> The Government should focus on growing the economy (thereby increasing Government revenue) rather than reducing the subsidies. 

As I explained during the presentation, the Government will conduct 12 laboratories on National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) to recommend ways for us to increase our economic growth (GNI per capita) from US$7,000 to US$15,000 by the year 2020. This will help to potentially increase Government revenue in the next 10 years. These laboratories, which run from June 1 until the end of July 2010, comprise more than 400 representatives from the private and public sector, facilitated by Pemandu. Once these laboratories are completed, we will conduct open days to exhibit the labs’ recommendations to the public. (See chart 3)

The Subsidy lab’s view is that growing the economy is necessary, but not sufficient.

We have to take a holistic approach by addressing both economic growth as well as expenditure/subsidy reduction.

> The Government should cut its expenditure rather than focus on subsidy reduction.

As part of the measures to reduce Government expenditure in the 2010 budget, the prime minister has announced a RM24bil reduction in expenditure and a projected reduction in fiscal deficit from 7.6% to 5.5% of GDP.

The prime minister also emphasised that all Government projects deliver “value for money”. Going forward, the Government will continue to adopt a prudent approach in terms of its spending and this will be apparent in the 10th Malaysia Plan.

> Why didn’t the Government conduct independent polls from the rakyat to gauge public feedback on the subsidy rationalisation?

That was exactly what we did. Before the Open Day, we asked Maxis to send an SMS blast to their phone subscribers asking whether Malaysia needs to reduce its subsidy bills.

Some 190,152 people responded, which showed that 115,246 people (61%) agreed for Malaysia to reduce subsidies and 123,557 people (67.5%) suggested to reduce subsidies gradually over three to five years.

During the Open Day, 1,899 people who attended responded. Of which, 1,712 people (90%) agreed that we should reduce subsidies and only a small minority (187) opposed the subsidy reduction.

> Why are we not protecting the poor and the low income in this Subsidy Rationalisation proposal?

For every subsidy reduction proposal, the lab has recommended mitigation measures to protect the rakyat, particularly the poor.

For example, in the case of increases in the electricity tariff, the mitigation measures are as follows: For those whose electricity consumption is less than 100 kWh per month, the Government will continue with the current practice of giving it free of charge. For those who consume between 101-200 kwH per month, the existing tariff apply (no change). Based on our statistics, these two categories constitute 56% of all consumers.

In the case of fuel price increase, the mitigation measures include cash rebate of RM126 per year for owners of cars less than 1,000cc and RM54 per year for owners of motorcycles less than 250cc.

Car and bike capacity is used as a proxy to determine the low income and the poor category.

In the case of flour, sugar and cooking oil and LPG cooking gas, the mitigation measure will include a cash rebate of RM20 per person per year. For a family of five, they will receive RM100 cash per year.

> We should not remove subsidy on Education, Health and Agriculture. 

The lab agrees. Education is indeed an investment in Human Capital. We will continue to provide subsidies on education such as scholarship, text book assistance, food, etc. However, we will remove wastage and abuse, such as abolishing the subsidised fee for foreign students. For Health, we will continue to provide subsidies but with nominal outpatient fee of RM3, which incidentally is one of the lowest outpatient fees in the world.

For Agriculture and Fisheries, the subsidies will continue but we will improve implementation so that the subsidies will reach the target audience.

> Instead of subsidy reduction, the Government should focus on fighting corruption, removing wastage and improving efficiencies. 

Under the Government Transfor-mation Programme (GTP), one of the six National Key Result Areas (NKRAs) is fighting corruption. To date, we have implemented several key initiatives to address this. For example, since January this year, we have passed the Whistleblower Protection Act in the Parliament, we have convicted and published 97 offenders in the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) website.

In the spirit of transparency, we have published 2,665 Government contract awards in the procurement portal and we have issued clear guidelines to prevent supporting letters from being abused.

In addition, we are implementing the Integrity Pact as recommended by Transparency International in Government procurement contracts. The Government is following up on the findings and recommendations of the Auditor General’s report.

> The Government should app-oint a high-powered team to renegotiate existing contracts with the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and Highway Toll Conces-sionaires. 

This is a fair suggestion. The lab will recommend this to the Cabinet.

> Don’t you realise that this is a very unpopular action by the Government that will cause Barisan Nasional to lose votes.


During the Open Day, we acknowledged this is the most unpopular action that the Government would have to take since independence and understandably, people will be shocked and angry.

The lab is of the opinion that we should not be partisan in addressing the issue of subsidy rationalisation. Indeed, in our panel discussion during the Open Day, we also invited DAP’s Tony Pua as a panellist.

However, we have to face realities and now we have to make the sacrifice for our future generations.

If we ask all Malaysians who are not yet born to participate in a public vote, we are sure that all of them would ask us to implement subsidy rationalisation now and they will condemn us for not having the courage and foresight to take this bold step.

The lab’s view is that we must take into account the views of both the existing and future generations of Malaysians.

By TEH ENG HOCK
enghock@thestar.com.my

Prostate Cancer Patients' Weight Linked to Tumor Size, Study Finds

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ScienceDaily (June 2, 2010) — The size of tumors in prostate cancer patients is directly linked to their weight, according to a new six-year study conducted by researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

The research team, led by Nilesh Patil, M.D., of Henry Ford's Vattikuti Urology Institute and Department of Radiology, found heavier patients, or those with the highest body mass index (BMI), also had the largest tumors. They discovered the connection after studying 3,327 patients who had undergone robotic removal of their cancerous prostate glands and surrounding tissue.

"As the patients body mass index increased, the tumor volume increased synchronously," says Dr. Patil. "Based on our results, we believe having a larger percentage of tumor volume may be contributing to the aggressive nature of the disease in men with a higher BMI."



The study will be presented June 2 at the 2010 American Urology Association's annual meeting in San Francisco.

Working from a well-established link between aggressive prostate cancer and higher BMI, the team set out to find if overweight and obesity specifically affects the tumor volume in cancerous prostates.

The BMI measures body fat based on combined height and weight in adult men and women, and sets a number that defines underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obesity -- from 18.5 or less for underweight to 30 or higher for obesity. Tumor volume is the size of a malignant tumor as a percentage of the space it takes up in the affected tissue, in this case the prostate gland.

Patients were studied from October 2001 to October 2007. They were divided into six categories based on their BMI -- 24.9 or less (normal or underweight), 25 to 29.9 (overweight), 30 to 34.9 (obese), and 40 or higher (morbidly obese). In each category, the mean age was about 60.

After their tumors were removed, each was weighed and compared to a categorized database of prostate weight. In each BMI category, they found the weight of the patient to be directly correlated to the size of the tumor (i.e. the smaller the patient, the smaller the tumor, and the heavier the patient, the larger the tumor).

In addition to Dr. Patil, study co-authors at Henry Ford Hospital included Sanjeev Kaul, M.D.; Akshay Bhandari, M.D.; James Peabody, M.D.; and Mani Menon, M.D.

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Euro Exit Is Ludicrous Idea for Any Country

Commentary by Hannes Androsch

The Greek sovereign-debt crisis and the attempts of the European Union to quell the simmering pot before it boils over is commanding the attention of the international community.

The sovereign-debt problem isn’t in any sense the end of the euro zone; not even the beginning of the end. The foreign- exchange rate of the euro may fluctuate against other leading currencies, as is to be expected in a floating-rate regime, but Greece isn’t going to withdraw from the euro zone, nor is it likely to be expelled by the other members.

Whatever the legal position, the view that Greece, or any other country in the throes of recession, should withdraw in order to benefit from devaluation of their currencies, is simply ludicrous. It is difficult to introduce a new currency at the best of times. But when the first item on the agenda of a new currency is likely to be a substantial devaluation, the mere suggestion might be sufficient to spark a civil war between creditors and debtors.

Given that all public as well as private-sector debts are denominated in euros, or other hard currencies, the introduction of a new drachma would provide little respite. It would probably cause the domestic banking system to collapse as its assets were devalued relative to its liabilities, and the government to default as the international community would hardly perceive such a move as being in its interests.

Long for Safety

The trend is actually going in the opposite direction as small countries, whose currencies lack credibility and stability in unregulated foreign-exchange markets, long for the safety of a major currency with deep reserves.

Nor is the euro zone likely to expel Greece, or any other aberrant member, notwithstanding the acknowledgement of cooked books as the latest addition to Greek fiscal cuisine.

A more pertinent question is whether the euro zone was wise to adopt measures to avert a Greek default. Two issues are pre- eminent here.

First, a bailout provides a classic case of moral hazard, both for other governments as well as for banks, which knowingly buy high-yielding, but risky assets.

Second, even after all the political grumbling and foot- dragging, the euro-zone governments had little option but to bail out Greece. Such is the involvement of German, French, Austrian and other banks in the Greek sovereign-debt market that the alternative would have been a rescue operation of domestic euro-zone banks. The motive was self-interest, not altruism.

Greatest Achievement

We need to consider that the European Union was conceived as a political entity, with the primary goal of eliminating warfare in Europe. The instruments of choice were closer integration of national economies, and political cooperation between national governments. Against this background, the single market has to be regarded as the greatest achievement of the EU to date.

Less well understood is that a single market, as a structure, can only work effectively and efficiently if supported by a number of complementary systems. One of these is undoubtedly the single currency and monetary union. Another is fiscal union: the public sector is too large a participant in the economy, creating incentives that may carry powerful externalities, to leave fiscal policy the autonomous concern of component member states. This piece of the jig-saw is missing.

Inevitable Phase

We need to view the current sovereign-debt problem as a second, inevitable phase of the international financial crisis, whose major eruption followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008.

At that time, the interbank market was paralyzed due to increased credit risk and excessive leveraging, combined with an overextending of the maturity mismatch that lies at the heart of the financial system. The preceding decades of economic prosperity had been wasted; budget surpluses, inflated by the boom, became instruments of public largess or political adventurism. Cyclical correction was largely ignored; structural problems arising from demographic change, untenable pension systems and bloated public sectors, were confronted half- heartedly, if at all.

The stimulus packages to inflate economies sliding into recession, along with supportive monetary policies, were an unavoidable policy response. For reassurance, we need look no further than the decline in real income and the increase in unemployment in this crisis; painful as these have been, they pale into insignificance compared with the Great Depression. This was achieved at a cost of growing budgetary deficits and spiraling debt ratios, but surely it is worth the price.

Market Verdict

So why are the markets unimpressed? Why is the market verdict unfavorable?

This is a clear vote of no confidence in the political management and fiscal administration of our economies. The wasted opportunities in the past; the delusion that deregulation was all that was required to ensure prosperity; the public promotion of an incentive structure that juxtaposed personal enrichment with the public good and the self-laudatory conceit during the good times, are all now coming home to roost.

It was always clear that the financial crisis couldn’t be confined to a single market, if only because of the close linkages between such markets when regulatory hurdles have been removed. Once more, we must confront the issue of “too big to fail,” but this time in relation to sovereign governments. Once more, we must consider to what extent the European Central Bank should pump public-sector liquidity into a market when private- sector liquidity has dried up.

Prosperity With Growth

As for fiscal policy, it is imperative to restructure public-sector revenue and expenditure, as soon as developments allow, in order to regain the long-term path of sustainability. Prosperity can only come from economic growth, and this requires that we focus on investment in education, training and research.

We must be prepared to bite the bullet with regard to pensions and social services, something our governments have shown little appetite for to date. Sooner or later, we will have to stop trying to plug every leak in the dyke, permit some flooding if necessary, and be prepared to start again. The longer we wait, the more our economies are likely to underperform, relative to potential, for the foreseeable future.

(Hannes Androsch was Austria’s finance minister from 1970 to 1981. He is founder of AIC Androsch International Management Consulting in Vienna. The opinions expressed are his own.

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US debt tops $US13 trillion

US debt has reached $US13 trillion ($A15.66 trillion) for the first time in history, the Treasury Department says.

Amid vast government spending designed to stave-off economic calamity, the debt reached $US13,050,826,460,886.97 ($A15.72 trillion) on June 1.

The debt has increased by around $US1.6 trillion ($A1.93 trillion) in the last year and more than doubled in the last ten years.

It now stands at just under 90 per cent of annual gross domestic product, the US Treasury said on Wednesday.

© 2010 AFP
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India, Indonesia 'worst for red tape'

India, Indonesia and the Philippines have Asia's most inefficient bureaucracies, with red tape a constant blight to citizens and deterrent to foreign investment, a survey said on Wednesday.

Regional financial centres Singapore and Hong Kong have the most efficient bureaucracies, according to the survey of expatriate business executives by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC).

Government bureaucracies in some Asian countries have become "power centres" in their own right, allowing them to effectively resist efforts toward reforms by politicians and appointed officials, the Hong Kong-based firm said.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's failure to carry out reforms contributed to the resignation last month of respected finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who accepted a senior position at the World Bank, PERC said.


"Despite President Susilo's strong election mandate, he lacks the power to really shake up Indonesia's bureaucracy," the consultancy said.

Ranking 12 key countries and territories on a scale from one to 10, with 10 as the worst possible score, the business executives in the survey rated India as having the region's most inefficient bureaucracy.

India had a score of 9.41, followed by Indonesia (8.59), the Philippines (8.37), Vietnam (8.13) and China (7.93).

Malaysia was in sixth place from the bottom with a score of 6.97, followed by Taiwan (6.60), Japan (6.57), South Korea (6.13) and Thailand (5.53).

Singapore was ranked as having the most efficient bureaucracy, with a score of 2.53, followed by Hong Kong with 3.49.

PERC said 1,373 middle and senior expatriate executives took part in the survey carried out earlier this year.
Singapore was also number one and Hong Kong was in third place globally in the World Bank's latest survey on the ease of doing business, which covered 183 economies.

In India, "politicians frequently promise to reform and revitalise the Indian bureaucracy, but they have been ineffective in doing so - mainly because the civil service is a power centre in its own right", PERC said.

Dealing with India's bureaucracy "can be one of the most frustrating experiences for any Indian, let alone a foreign investor", it added.

Bureaucratic red tape is both a "serious problem" in China and India, "but the differences in the political systems of these two countries have made inertia much worse in India than in China", it said.

In the Philippines, the government "goes through the motion" of addressing problems of bureaucratic red tape "but nothing has really made a dent in the problem", PERC said.

"Illegal fixing is well-entrenched in the Philippine bureaucracy," it said, referring to people called "fixers" who offer to facilitate transactions with government offices for a fee and often in collaboration with corrupt employees.

© 2010 AFPNewscribe : get free news in real time 

China supercomputer design points to future speed kings

China’s new Nebulae Supercomputer is No. 2, right on the Tail of ORNL’s Jaguar in Newest TOP500 List of Fastest Supercomputers

Jack Dongarra, a professor at University of Tennessee's department of electrical engineering, says graphics chips will be used increasingly in supercomputers to boost performance.
(Credit: University of Tennessee)

China has muscled into the No. 2 spot on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers thanks, in part, to specialized Nvidia graphics chips: a technology that Intel is now pursuing to keep pace with this new trend in high-performance computing. 

China's Nebulae supercomputer is located at the recently constructed National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, and achieved 1.271 petaflops/s (1.271 quadrillion floating point operations per second) running the Linpack benchmark, which put it in the No. 2 spot on the widely reported Top500 list. The latest list was formally presented Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany. (Jaguar, a Cray system at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, retained the top spot.)

Nebulae achieved this "in part due to its Nvidia GPU (graphics processing unit) accelerators...Nebulae reports an impressive theoretical peak capability of almost 3 petaflop/s--the highest ever on the TOP500," according to a press release Friday.

Though Nebulae also uses Intel Xeon processors, those are so-called commodity processors that are also employed in standard server computers. So, Intel--despite canceling its Larrabee graphics chip project--is pursuing a technology that leverages Larrabee R&D. On Monday, Intel said the first product of this kind, code-named Knights Corner, will be made on its future 22-nanometer manufacturing process--using transistor structures as small as 22 billionths of a meter--to pack more than 50 processing cores on a single chip.

On Tuesday, I spoke with Jack Dongarra, Distinguished Professor at University of Tennessee's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory. Dongarra introduced the LINPACK Benchmark, which is used as the primary yardstick to measure supercomputer performance.

Q: Are GPU accelerators in supercomputers a trend we'll see more of in coming years?

Jack Dongarra: This looks like this is going to be one of the modes of high-performance computing. Taking commodity processors (such as standard Intel or AMD server-class processors) together with specialized accelerators, in this case graphics processors.

How much do GPUs generally boost performance?

Dongarra: A board by Nvidia can give an order of magnitude greater performance than the commodity processor.

But programs must be written to take advantage of this, it just doesn't happen, correct?

Dongarra: There's nothing automatic about it. You have to write a program that explicitly passes information to the GPU and tells the GPU what to do. That can be easy or hard. In most cases it becomes a challenge to write an efficient program to do the operations. Part of the issue there is that the connection between the commodity part of the computer and the graphics processor is a very thin pipe. So, you have to pass information and think of a very thin straw through which you're passing a lot of information. And once you move it over there, you have to do a lot of operations to gain back any benefit.

And what's the future hold for GPU supercomputing?

Dongarra: Two things will happen. One, the connection will improve slightly. And then ultimately what's going to happen is that the graphics processor is going to be integrated into the commodity processor. So, you'll have a chip that has both the commodity processor's cores plus the graphics processors or an accelerator for doing floating-point arithmetic embedded into the chip itself. It's a path a number of companies are pursuing. Intel is one. AMD is another. Companies would like to pursue that path because it does provide the best performance but it does require another ratchet up in chip design.

Dongarra added that chips have been designed in the past with accelerators, though, of course, the chip-manufacturing technology at the time yielded different results. "There were companies that made these things that attached to mainframes," he said, citing Floating Point Systems, a company founded in 1970.

by Brooke Crothers, 

Brooke Crothers has been an editor at large at CNET News, an analyst at IDC Japan, and an editor at The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, among other endeavors, including co-manager of an after-school math-and-reading center. He writes for the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. Disclosure. 

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China’s new Nebulae Supercomputer is No. 2, right on the Tail of ORNL’s Jaguar in Newest TOP500 List of Fastest Supercomputers

Fri, 2010-05-28 00:31
 

HAMBURG, Germany—China’s ambition to enter the supercomputing arena have become obvious with a system called Nebulae, build from a Dawning TC3600 Blade system with Intel X5650 processors and NVidia Tesla C2050 GPUs. Nebulae is currently the fastest system worldwide in theoretical peak performance at 2.98 PFlop/s. With a Linpack performance of 1.271 PFlop/s it holds the No. 2 spot on the 35th edition of the closely watched TOP500 list of supercomputers.

The newest version of the TOP500 list, which is issued twice yearly, will be formally presented on Monday, May 31st, at the ISC’10 Conference to be held at the CCH-Congress Center in Hamburg, Germany.

Jaguar, which is located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, held on to the No. 1 spot on the TOP500 with its record 1.75 petaflop/s performance speed running the Linpack benchmark. Jaguar has a theoretical peak capability of 2.3 petaflop/s and nearly a quarter of a million cores. One petaflop/s refers to one quadrillion calculations per second.

Nebulae, which is located at the newly build National Supercomputing Centre in Shenzhen, China, achieved 1.271 PFlop/s running the Linpack benchmark, which puts it in the No. 2 spot on the TOP500 behind Jaguar. In part due to its NVidia GPU accelerators, Nebulae reports an impressive theoretical peak capability of almost 3 petaflop/s – the highest ever on the TOP500.

Roadrunner, which was the first ever petaflop/s system at Los Alamos in June 2008, dropped to No. 3 with a performance of 1.04 petaflop/s.

At No. 5 is the most powerful system in Europe -- an IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer located at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ) in Germany. It achieved 825.5 teraflop/s on the Linpack benchmark.
Tianhe-1 (meaning River in Sky), installed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin, China is a second Chinese system in the TOP10 and ranked at No. 7. Tianhe-1 and Nebulae are both hybrid designs with Intel Xeon processors and AMD or NVidia GPUs used as accelerators. Each node of Tianhe-1 consists of two AMD GPUs attached to two Intel Xeon processors.

The performance of Nebulae and Tianhe-1 were enough to catapult China in the No.2 spot of installed performance (9.2 percent) ahead of various European countries, but still clearly behind the U.S. (55.4 percent).

Here are some other highlights from the latest list showing changes from the November 2009 edition:

• The entry level to the list moved up to the 24.7 teraflop/s mark on the Linpack benchmark from 20 teraflop/s six months ago. The last system on the newest list would have been listed at position 357 in the previous TOP500 just six months ago. This replacement rate was far below average. This might reflect the impact of the recession and purchase delays due to anticipation of new products with six or more core processor technologies replacing current quad-core based systems. 
• Quad-core processor based systems have saturated the TOP500 with now 425 systems using them. However, processor with six or more cores per processor can already be found in 25 systems.
• A total of 408 systems (81.6 percent) are now using Intel processors. This is slightly up from six months ago (402 systems, 80.4 percent). Intel continues to provide the processors for the largest share of TOP500 systems. The AMD Opteron is the second most common used processor family with 47 systems (9.4 percent), up from 42. They are followed by the IBM Power processors with 42 systems (8.4 percent), down from 52.
• IBM and Hewlett-Packard continue to sell the bulk of systems at all performance levels of the TOP500. HP lost its narrow lead in systems to IBM and has now 185 systems (37 percent) compared to IBM with 198 systems (39.8 percent). HP had 210 systems (42 percent) six months ago, compared to IBM with 186 systems (37.2 percent). In the system category, Cray, SGI, and Dell follow with 4.2 percent, 3.4 percent and 3.4 percent respectively.
• IBM remains the clear leader in the TOP500 list in performance with 33.6 percent of installed total performance (down from 35.1 percent), compared to HP with 20.4 percent (down from 23 percent). In the performance category, the manufacturers with more than 5 percent are: Cray (14.8 percent of performance) and SGI (6.6 percent), each of which benefits from large systems in the TOP10.
• The U.S. is clearly the leading consumer of HPC systems with 282 of the 500 systems (up from 277). The European share (144 systems – down from 152) is still substantially larger then the Asian share (57 systems – up from 51). In Europe, UK remains the No. 1 with 38 systems (45 six months ago). France passed Germany and has now 29 (up from 26). Germany is still now the No. 3 spot with 24 systems (27 six months ago). Dominant countries in Asia are China with 24 systems (up from 21), Japan with 18 systems (up from 16), and India with 5 systems (up from 3).

The TOP500 list is compiled by Hans Meuer of the University of Mannheim, Germany; Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon of NERSC/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. For more information, visit www.TOP500.org.

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BP's $70 billion whipping

 
Since April 20 when the Gulf oil spill began, BP shares have tumbled about 40%.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Despite the sharp fall in BP's share price following the company's inability to cap a leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico, most analysts say the selloff is overdone.

BP shares sank nearly 15% Tuesday after the company's latest attempt to seal the leaking Gulf oil well failed over the weekend. The selloff accelerated just before the closing bell, when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal probe into the spill.

Since the accident happened April 20, which resulted in 11 deaths and an oil leak of up to 19,000 barrels per day, BP shares have fallen nearly 40%, wiping out nearly $70 billion in shareholder value. Before the accident the company had a market capitalization of nearly $183 billion. Now it's just below $115 billion.

Investors are concerned the clean up costs, lawsuits, and added restrictions from the spill, the worst in U.S. history, will sap BP's earnings potential.

Plus, like most big oil projects, BP is self-insured for the operation, so all of the costs of the cleanup and damages will fall on its shoulders.

No one knows how much the spill will eventually cost BP. Estimates have ranged from $3 billion to $25 billion - many fall somewhere in the middle. As of Tuesday BP said it has spent just shy of $1 billion on the accident.

0:00 /4:20Analyst: Oil spill could cost up to $30Bn

 

But whatever the price tag, it will likely be paid out over a period of years. For a company that made nearly $17 billion in profit last year and is expected to top $20 billion this year, most analysts say the stock hit is unjustified.

"They've got a balance sheet you could slap $20 billion of debt on and not miss a beat," said Mark Gilman, an oil and gas analyst with the Benchmark Co., a boutique broker-dealer. "We think the financial hit has been excessive."

Indeed, so do the majority of analysts.

In England, where BP (BP) is based, 38 analysts have a buy rating on the stock and eight have it as a hold. Only three recommend selling it, said Douglas Youngson, an oil analyst at Arbuthnot Securities, a London-based investment bank.

Beyond the clean up costs and lawsuits, there's also possible damage to BP's reputation. This is, after all, the company that branded itself an environmentally friendly oil firm, buying wind farms and solar arrays and adopting the slogan "Beyond Petroleum."

Will there there be a major public backlash?

"'Here in America we tend to have pretty short memories," said Ken Carol, an oil analyst at Johnson Rice & Co. "There was a big boycott after the Exxon Valdez, and they seem to be doing just fine now."

Satirists cash in on oil spill

 

Carrol also didn't think the spill would impact too heavily on BP's relationship with other oil companies. Because of the high up front costs to develop an oil field, many partners are often required on a project. In this case, BP had partnered with Anadarko (APC, Fortune 500) and the Japanese firm Matsui.

Many subcontractors are also brought in to work on an oil well. The primary subcontracts in this case were Halliburton (HAL, Fortune 500) and Transocean (RIG).

Might it be harder for BP to find partners in the wake of this disaster?

"BP has been a good partner before," said Carrol. "I don't think people will turn their backs on them."

Carrol said the selloff in BP's share price was likely overdone, but said he didn't expect it to get any better until BP can fix the problem.

As long as the well is leaking, the costs are adding up, he said.

Dissenting opinion

 

When BP will fix the problem is anyone's guess. The company is trying to put a new dome over the leak this week, but with several previous attempts to cap the well failing, that procedure looks like a long shot.

The company is saying it may not be able to stop the leak until August, when a relief well being drilled into the failed well's base is completed.

"That's two months of horrible images and horrific headlines," said Youngson, the analyst at Arbuthnot Securities.

Youngson is one of the few analysts that are recommending people sell BP's stock.

He thinks that in addition to the massive cleanup and liability cots, BP will face serious regulatory pressure going forward. That may mean a loss of leases in the Gulf of Mexico, and a loss of confidence from their peers.

"Anything BP does in the future will be under the microscope, and that will drive costs higher," he said.
Youngson also brought up another possibility that most other analysts have not openly talked about to date: That BP stock could get so cheap it might be the subject of a takeover.

He thinks if the stock falls much below $30 a share, BP will become a target. Shares traded around $38 Tuesday afternoon.


'If the share price continues to fall," he said, "other companies may see this for the bargain it will be."

By Steve Hargreaves, Senior writerJune 1, 2010: 4:52 PM ET
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Clickjacking' worm hits hundreds of thousands on Facebook

'This girl gets OWNED.' And you can too

A vulnerability on Facebook forced hundreds of thousands of users to endorse a series of webpages over the holiday weekend, making the social networking site the latest venue for an attack known as clickjacking.

The exploit works by presenting people with friend profiles that recommend — or "Like," in Facebook parlance — links with titles including "LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE." Those who click on the link see a page that's blank except for the words "Click here to continue." Clicking anywhere on the page automatically forces the person to add the link to his list of Likes.

Clickjacking is a term that was coined in late 2008 by web application security researchers Jeremiah Grossman and Robert "RSnake" Hansen. It describes attacks that allow malicious website publishers to control the links visitors click on. Virtually every browser is vulnerable, although many browsers come with safeguards that can make exploitation harder.

The Facebook worm that hit over the weekend superimposes an invisible iframe over the entire page that links back to the victim's Facebook page. As a result, as long as the person is logged in, his profile automatically recommends the link to new friends as soon as the page is clicked on.

Twitter was attacked by a series of clickjacking exploits last year that forced users to publish tweets against their will. The exploits stopped after company engineers finally tightened down their site. Facebook engineers will undoubtedly follow suit, if they haven't already. But this isn't the first time Facebook has been hit by clickjacking.

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco • Get more from this author
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