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If I advertised in LBN, I would be seriously pissed at having my products linked to this sort of gutter journalism. http://www.sybase.com/linuxpromo>Sybase & Linux Networx are you listening?

Do click those links folks, the traffic at least should start them wondering what's up.

Sybase and Linux Networx, when you read this: I hope that the exposure that you've had as a result of these links more than makes up for the traffic you would miss from LBN. Please pull your advertising from LBN.

IBM, I'm guessing you don't have a choice about advertising Websphere on the LBN site, since it's through Google but don't you think it's kind of ironic to be subsidising Ms O'Gara's salary?

...the privaty equity firm that is the controlling shareholder of SCO (I forget its name) managed to persuade another investor of the likelihood of a multimillior dollar settlement from big names.

The name you're looking for is the Canopy Group.

The /. crowd is generally unable to affect stock prices, but if we (a) start a campaign to hurt SCO sales and, even better (b) isolate the leading shareholders of SCO, figure out what other business interests they have, and boycott the whole lot of them, we're likely to have justice prevail.

Here's a list of the Canopy Group's portfolio companies, including some that should know better and might be encouraged put some pressure on their investors to stop this nonsense. Do you do business with these companies or recommend their products? If suing their partners and customers is just part of "the Canopy Way" should you or your company worry about litigation from them next? If you're an investor or employee and Canopy loses, should you worry about your stocks or your job? Maybe it's time to start the "reverse slashdot effect."

Altiris
Axiom Press
Center7/Inc.
Cerberian
Cogitoinc
Communitect
Data Crystal
Devicelogics
DirectPointe
Fat Pipe
Geolux
helius
homepipeline
iArchives
Industrial Training Zone
LearningOptics
Linux Network
luxul
MaxStream
Mi-Co
mti
MyFamily.com
Perimeter Labs
PlanetEarthTools
Power Innovations
SCO/Caldera
Trolltech
Tuglet
viawest
Wrenchhead

Now, this is interesting. The canopy group also funds a company called Linux Networx. linuxnetworx.com

They also fund our friends over at TrollTech

Does it make sense for the Canopy group to endorse legal action for one of items in their portfolio that will almost certiantly hurt 2 other in the portfolio. Or are LinuxNetworx and TrollTech allower to use linux?

You tell me, cause I don't know.

For those of you wondering what this whole SCO vs. Linux thing was about, I can finally reveal the truth.

As chairman and CEO of Canopy I've done a lot for the Open Source community. I've promoted investments in companies like Linux Networx, who make the third fastest supercomputer in the world and use Linux to do it. Companies like Lineo the masters of embedded Linux. Also Trolltech producing the incredible QT widget set used by the KDE project. And of course Caldera, producing the finest Linux distribution and pushing forwards the United Linux initiative.

But one shadow lay over my record of achievements. Despite all I had done for the Linux and Open Source communities, I still had never achieved the triumph I most desperately sought. Not once had an article I submitted been accepted by Slashdot :(

I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters can understand how this gnawed away at my soul.

Together with Darl McBride and David Boies I hatched a master plan, to achieve my dream of an accepted Slashdot article or to destroy Linux trying.

Caldera would purchase IP rights from the Santa Cruz Operation and with funding from Sun and Microsoft would use them as the springboard to launch a devastating legal and PR blitz against Linux. As part of this Darl would write a searing open letter to the Open Source community, drawing responses in return. One of these from Groklaw would give me the opportunity I needed...

As you can see everything has gone exactly to plan. I have my successful Slashdot submission, and I'm sure that looking back on it you can all see it was worth any 'collateral damage' along the way.

Darl, you can call off the dogs now.

God bless you all.

Ralphie

Wouldn't IBM be happy to invest into companies like Trolltech and LinuxNetworx? Beeing in the same boat as Canopy Group makes your mouth smell unpleasant.

Don't forget Linux Networx also a Canopy company. There is a cut off nose to spite face situation!

They are buying the cluster from Linux Networx who are a Canopy Group company Like SCO. Perhaps Linux Networks customers are immune to the SCO claim. I think it would be interesting to ask them, and Canopy who obviously support the SCO claim.

I certainly like the idea of using effective air cooling like that rather than extreme / expensive methods like dipping the thing in fluorinert.

The only concern I have is servicing the boards. I've never worked with one of those racks before, but I imagine Linux Networx did a good job at making the boards fairly easy to swap out in case of node failure.

Here are some pics of the Evolocity 2 nodes in action for everyone to check out.

Who is Canopy (excuse my ignorance)?

(Shameless plug)

Head over to LinuxNetworx now for a LinuxBIOS-ready Evolocity II cluster!

Note: I'm not an employee of LinuxNetworx, but they still kick ass.

• Linux Networx
• Luxul
• Altiris
• Cerberian
• Cogito
• Communitect
• Data Crystal
• Digital Harbor
• Perimeter Labs
• Mi Co

And, of course, the Trolls.

What do all these companies have in common? They're geek companies. They employ geeks, and they sell to geeks. What geeks think of them matters to them and can hurt them. If you're doing business with any of these companies, tell the people you're dealing with that you're not happy with SCO's behaviour, and that your unhappiness is sufficient to start you re-evaluating their competitors.

It's also worth pointing out that several of these companies are making use of the Linux[tm] brand, including one of them using it in it's name. The owner of the Linux[tm] brand has it within his power to have a quiet word with them, although, of course, that's entirely up to him.

Ah, so friend Google, who are the the Canopy Group? Aha. Ray Noorda. http://www.canopy.com

Ok, so here is some "blah" from their web site....

Canopy Group Overview :: Canopy Group has been categorized as a technology accelerator and a dynamic operating company. Funding and influencing emerging technologies and then providing shareable management resources across its portfolio of companies is what Canopy Group does best. Originally founded in 1995, Canopy Group continues to operate by founder Ray Noorda's vision of "co-opetition," where synergies across the portfolio are optimized at the same time that each company develops independent market success.

ie. Hit any in the Canopy Group and you hit'em all. ie. If SCO makes a sucess of this, the rest will share the "management resource".

So who is in the Canopy Group?

• Altiris--Intuitive Manageability. A complete line of web-enabled IT solutions used in managing the corporate IT resource lifecycle.
• AvenueMe--Personal Desktop Shopping. Select and deliver special offers and gift ideas tailored to your interests and gift-giving needs with Desktop Personal Shopper.
• Axiom Press--CultureGrams and More. CultureGrams and other publications focused on serving the needs of elementary, secondary, and collegiate educators and their students.
• Center 7--Host, Manage, Succeed. Managed hosting solutions and painless enterprise management with rapid-deployment solutions.
• Cerberian--Powering Internet-Enabled Products and Services. Internet management solutions that help businesses improve productivity, free up bandwidth, and control Internet access.
• ClearstoneHealth--Improving Healthcare. Technologies to improve healthcare through e-training.
• Cogito--Harness the Power of Your Knowledge. Making knowledge management the essential productivity tool in organizations with complex information systems.
• Communitect--Intelligent Mobile Messaging. Meeting the needs of an increasingly mobile population with simple-yet-powerful mobile management that delivers personal enterprise data to any mobile device
• DataCyrstal--Rapid Indexing of Video Content. Providing flexible solutions for advanced video analysis.
• DeviceLogics--Providing DOS-based solutions.
• Digital Harbor--Correlate, Collaborate, Cross Boundaries. Business front office integration that puts the focus on people, not infrastructure.
• DirectPointe--Managing Your Technology. Enabling businesses to leverage technology by making it simple, manageable, and affordable and allowing you to focus on managing your business.
• EBIZ--We're About Solutions. Providing multi-faceted computing solutions to customers nationwide.
• FatPipe--Low Cost, Highly Redundant Internet Access. Leading-edge technology that provides highly redundant, reliable, and high-speed Internet access for deploying mission critical applications over wide area networks.
• Geolux Communications-Enlightening The World. Geolux provides both enriching content and the learning platform to deliver it.
• Global Mechanical Monitoring
• Helius--Satellite Powered IP Networks.Efficient, secure, and reliable delivery of broadband IP over satellites and local area networks.
• HomePipeline
• iArchives--A New Page in Information Retrieval. The software application that makes finding the valuable details in your data almost effortless.
• Industrial Training Zone--Interactive Industrial Training. Content designed specifically for apprentices and technicians who lack the specialized training required to troubleshoot complex systems utilizing motion control devices.
• JanusLogix--Elevate, Integrate, Generate. Generating a new game by building a web services nanosystem that allows any application service to integrate, elevate, or generate application functionality.
• Linux Networx--Powerful Cluster Technology. Simplied cluster computing, with an end-to-end approach that makes cluster technology more powerful and easy to use for commercial and scientific high performance computing
• Luxul--The Wireless Wave. Patented solutions for indoor, outdoor, fixed, and mobile wireless computing.
• MaxStream--Smart, Wireless Connections. Wireless OEM modules and stand-alone radio modems that provide long range, low power, and advanced networking capabilities
• Mixerz, First Thursday is a national network of member entreprenuers, executives and investors. The organization provides a regular forum for the exchange of ideas, the formation of strategic partnerships, and the fostering of business relationships.
• Mi-Co--Handwritten forms for Mobile Professionals. Innovative end-to-end solutions enabling the wireless capture, storage, communication, and use of forms-based and free-form handwritten data.
• MTI--Innovations in Enterprise Storage. Reliable, integrated, enterprise-wide online storage and backup solutions for customers requiring mission-critical, high-performance storage.
• MyFamily.com--Connecting Families and Generations. The leading network and largest of its kind for connecting families and generations on the Web.
• North Face Learning--We provide students with a high aptitude for computer science a better, faster, and cheaper way to earn a degree.
• Perimeter Labs--Secure Data Solutions. Inventing and bringing to market information security technologies
• Planet Earth Tools--Compact, Versatile, and Powerful. Award-winning, patented handheld tool technologies.
• Power Innovations--The Standard for Perfect, Dependable Power. Committed to total power independence with alternative means of generation, energy storage, conversion, and management of perfect power
• SCO--Smarter. Better. Faster. Providing software solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses and replicated branch offices
• Smart Chip Technologies--Loyalty Program Management. Patent protected loyalty application for use in the smart card and wireless environment.
• SurfChina--Enabling eBusiness. Developing business solutions that help Chinese companies participate in global eBusiness.
• TrollTech--Software that Makes Sense. Enabling professional, efficient, portable and maintainable GUI applications quickly and easily.
• Tuglet--Marketing Powertools. Providing useful web-based communication tools for corporate marketing professionals and home based or small business people.
• Vultus--The Look of Web Services. Delivering web apps that are feature-rich, cost effective and platform independent
• WrenchHead--Automotive Operations Solutions. Providing innovative technology and services to the Automotive Market to further lower operating costs, enhance profitability, and accelerate growth

Oooh looky looky, Trolltech! So when are they going to be forced to sue for $1bn?

Lawrence Livermore's new Linux-based cluter is currently the fifth most powerful supercomputer in the world. I can't speak to your experiences, but 11.2 Teraflops, 4.6 TB of memory and 138.2 TB of storage sounds pretty "super" to me. There are many more lesser Linux-based high-end computers as well. Google should give you a nice list.

Trouble is, you haven't seen/worked/heard about everything, so blanket statements like yours are typically what turns out to be blatantly false. Get some facts, and try to stay away from sweeping judgements.

-B

Bus 0, device 12, function 0: PCI bridge: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21152 (rev 3). Master Capable. Latency=64. Min Gnt=4.

But you can't use this to connect a rack of computers. For one thing the max cable length for connecting two busses would be just a few inches. For putting PCI cards in 1.75" high 1U rackmount cases, there are PCI risers with a short ribbon cable that connects to the PCI slot. Even these short cables often cause timing problems. For instance, with the riser, cards may only work in the first one or two slots that will otherwise work in all the slots.

But even if you could cable all the computers together on one giant PCI bus, it would still be a bad idea. A good 24 port gigabit ethernet switch (~$2000) has a 480MB/sec switching fabric, to support full speed full duplex on each port. 32 bit 33Mhz PCI is only about 132 MB/sec, not nearly as fast. You'd need a 64 bit 66 Mhz PCI bus to keep up. And there are more expensive gbit switches with more ports that have 100 Gbit/sec fabric. And this is just gbit ethernet, the slowest and cheapest of the high speed interconnects used in modern Beowulf clusters.

There are faster ways to connect computers than gigabit ethernet. The EE times article is very untechnical, but this one has some more information. LLNL has used a very fast and very expensive interface called quadrics. This is probably the fastest way to connect computers in a Beowulf. People like Cray/SGI and IBM have faster things still, but they cost real big bucks. Other ways to connect a Beowulf are the above mentioned gigabit ethernet (~$100-$250 a node for up to 24 nodes), myrinet (~$1400-$2000 /node up to 128 nodes), and SCIhardware and software (~$1400-$2100 /node). Myrinet uses a switch like gigabet ethernet and the largest switch they have is 128 ports. SCI is switchless, each card has multiple cables (1-3), and is connected in into a ring, 2D or 3D torus.

"The Science Appliance" as it is dubbed will use dual processor AMD based nodes.

Scary part is that this will be one of the top 5 supercomputers in the world.

Scary because you could buy all the hardware off the shelf for about half a million dollars.

On a lighter note:

"The Linux NetworX cluster will be used solely for unclassified computing, including testing on ASCI-relevant unclassified applications."

I think they mean text mode quake.

I guess they got tired of "Global Thermo-Nuclear War"

We build beowulf clusters and have (if I do say so myself) the most advanced cluster management utilities in the industry.

Check us out.

I'm not a salesman, but we've got some people that would be more than happy to talk to you. :)

These folks are using standard rack mounts, fitting 5 standard ATX motherboards in 8u of rack space (no special motherboard needed). They mount them vertically which makes cooling much more efficient when piling large numbers of CPU's into a small space.