@fluffy: I take it you haven’t seen an HP Superdome?  Big chassis, lots of computational blades inside the guts.  Very little cubage required in your data center, maybe 90 cubic feet.  But it is more common for discrete units, like the USAF’s new PS/3 supercomputer, some 1700 Playstations networked together.  Guitar Hero SXSW!  Every band AT THE SAME TIME!  At the fair grounds SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!  Ladies half-price!

(sort of sorry, it’s early and my brain is still sorta free-wheeling.)

Man, Friendster. Apparently they’ve rebranded themselves as a “social gaming portal,” as if that isn’t also a space completely dominated by Facebook. (Or maybe they’re going after Kongregate’s much-smaller slice of the pie.)

Also the idea of a supercomputer as a singular giant monolithic entity is also pretty dated now. Even the big iron from IBM (the only real contender in the classical “supercomputer” space anymore) is really made up of a giant cluster of smaller regular desktop-class PCs. Today’s large-scale computing infrastructure isn’t about single gigantic units of computation, it’s about breaking up your computation in a way that thousands of normal-sized units can work on it effectively. (If you have ever heard the computing terms “Beowulf” or “MapReduce,” that’s what those are about.)

Where’s Lovelace online?
Can’t find a trace online!
Tracing IP’s and worm attacks …
She’s quite good when she hides her tracks!
Does she … seek me?

My name is googled by Lovelace,
Checking on Friendster and MySpace,
We race …

As we try to go
Identify our foe,
Search for Lovelace distracting me,
Won’t ask, “Who can Tinasky be?”
Who’s he?
Who’s she?
Search me!

To tell the truth, I don’t think I even suspected Helen of being Lovelace throughout these three weeks of strips. Consider that Lovelace has been established as A) a hacker, and B) someone Helen appears to be jealous of, even outside Dave’s presence. To be secretly conducting a grand scientific experiment throughout the entirety of this webcomic’s run is one thing, but to pull off a ruse of this magnitude is unthinkable.

Bet let’s not forget the other important revelation in today’s strip: Lovelace’s voice has been upgraded to Chicago. Madblood has finally accrued a modicum of taste.

So, yeah, good work.