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Well, so this story and discussion doesn't go *completly* meaningless lol, I'm glad someone said clusters :)

If anyone has a few older boxes that can boot from cd (or can make your own boot disks) which *ahem* **SHOULD** be the majority of people reading this, take a look at Parallel Knoppix:

Parallel Knoppix Project

It's not just another knoppix hack. It really is a 5 minute deploy HPC cluster, and comes with all kinds of goodies to help you play with (and understand) how parallel processing works. You need 2 computers and a cross-over cable (or more .. and a switch).

It won't break any nose bleed records on those Pentium 2's you have collecting cat urine in your garage, but if you work really hard you can burn the urnie off like anti freeze on your car exhaust.

Fun way to spend some time (and old hardware) if such things interest you. If you just want to click links and chuckle check out the author and his cluster.

Some of us appreciate the old stuff as much as the new stuff :) But yeah, this isn't "news" guys .. did people stop submitting or something?

Well, so this story and discussion doesn't go *completly* meaningless lol, I'm glad someone said clusters :)

If anyone has a few older boxes that can boot from cd (or can make your own boot disks) which *ahem* **SHOULD** be the majority of people reading this, take a look at Parallel Knoppix:

Parallel Knoppix Project

It's not just another knoppix hack. It really is a 5 minute deploy HPC cluster, and comes with all kinds of goodies to help you play with (and understand) how parallel processing works. You need 2 computers and a cross-over cable (or more .. and a switch).

It won't break any nose bleed records on those Pentium 2's you have collecting cat urine in your garage, but if you work really hard you can burn the urnie off like anti freeze on your car exhaust.

Fun way to spend some time (and old hardware) if such things interest you. If you just want to click links and chuckle check out the author and his cluster.

Some of us appreciate the old stuff as much as the new stuff :) But yeah, this isn't "news" guys .. did people stop submitting or something?

The discussion that you are having here is actually exactly the one Stallman discussed in one of his (IMO) best speeches, see here.

You are both right from different perspectives: Copyright is not necessarily unethical, but the way our laws implement it is.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

Agreement: Although configuring clustering softwares such as pvm mpi lam mosix ...I prefer something which has almost everything build into one package

There is a similar distro, based off of ClusterKnoppix, called ParallelKnoppix, which includes LAM/MPI. In addition, ClusterKnoppix includes OpenMosix, so the tools are there. You already have it built in:)

Plus, if you are really looking for a HA system, it may be worth a remaster of either Cluster or ParallelKnoppix to add exactly the tools you want.

Sorry to disagree, but the original author is right, and you even point it out yourself:

Interaction is a bit different than usual, i'll admit, but it's intuitive and easy once you get used to it.

There's the problem right there, staring you in the face.

Why should I have to "get used to it"? I have already spent time and effort gaining knowledge about how to deal with scroll bars, file selectors, bringing windows to the top, minimizing windows, etc. If I can't apply that to this app, and have to learn all those things all over again just for this app then I lose.

I haven't got the time to "get used to" every app's idea of a pretty UI. I want something that works the way everything else works, thanks.

For some reason, it's media stuff that tends to sport these kinds of interfaces. Non-standard windows. Controls I can't see, or that don't work the way I expect, or that don't do anything because they are cruft that just looks like a control. More pixels dedicated to the skin than to the movie. Favorites bars. Channel bars. Media bars. Quicklaunch bars. For all I know or care, topless bars.

WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT I WANTED ANY OF THIS CRAP?

What I want from a media player is simple: a rectangular window with a standard title and menu bar. Controls: play, stop, and a horizontal scroll bar for fast forward/rewind - and it had better be a proper UI standard scrollbar too. Maximise widget for full screen video. Standard menus for everything else.

Of course, Linux isn't the only OS that has this problem. Windows Media Player is another execrable pile of "cool" skins and stuff. I selected the "classic" skin as soon as the thing installed, and turned every UI option off. And Quicktime player's UI rightly has its own page in the UI hall of shame. You don't even get a choice with this one.

No wonder users these days get confused. And when users get confused, they leave.

DNI (Documento nacional de identidad, or national identification document) has been used in spain for more than 40 years (and maybe more).
It has an 8-digit number followed by a letter (calculated with a very simple algorithm). It contains your name, 1st and 2nd surname. Date and place of birth, parent's name and your last known adress. Its mandatory to everybody older than 14.
You use your id-number for SS (Seguridad Social), passport, voting, driver's license, bank account etc... And travelling to some countries you dont need to carry your passport, just your DNI (smaller).
Here you can find some pics of it (i found them using google's image searcher):
front
rear

DNI (Documento nacional de identidad, or national identification document) has been used in spain for more than 40 years (and maybe more).
It has an 8-digit number followed by a letter (calculated with a very simple algorithm). It contains your name, 1st and 2nd surname. Date and place of birth, parent's name and your last known adress. Its mandatory to everybody older than 14.
You use your id-number for SS (Seguridad Social), passport, voting, driver's license, bank account etc... And travelling to some countries you dont need to carry your passport, just your DNI (smaller).
Here you can find some pics of it (i found them using google's image searcher):
front
rear

Protocols to mention besides OpenLDAP and OAI are Whois++ and Z39.50. OAI actually is transported over HTTP. You could do the same with EAD or others.

Projects which implemented Z39.50 for the purposes of interoperability are ONE and ONE-2, EUROPAGATE, Desire and Desire II, DECOMATE and DECOMATE II, and Renardus just to touch the surface. Don't forget OHIOLINK...

Another other older, but interesting, metadata activity have been SGML MARC, and the corresponding XML MARC.

The BYTE article was exciting to see again and could have benefited further from pointing out the relative ease of use of Dublic Core. OAI uses unqualified Dublic Core, SAFARI uses qualified Dublin Core to create an up to date index over academic research in Sweden. Shoot, since it already uses some META tags, you could even tweak htdig to use Dublic Core on your own site for those high precision searches.

With the interest in structured data (XML?) maybe well see some sites serving up not just HTML with Dublic Core, but maybe even Docbook or even TEI / TEI Lite. There are great tools for converting from Docbook to HTML, PDF, RTF, etc. and AbiWord and Kword already have partial support for docbook. If there were more, then we could see some real changes on searching the web. Coding for SGML is more difficult, so the obvious choice would be to start from Docbook XML.