Slashdot Mirror
Spaf's Farewell, Ten Years Later
catfood writes "Ten years ago this evening, Usenet legend Gene Spafford posted his farewell to news.announce.newusers, news.misc, and a few other newsgroups. Among other things, spaf wrote: 'People don't seem to think before posting, they are purposely rude, they blatantly violate copyrights, they crosspost everywhere, use 20 line signature files, and do basically every other thing the postings (and common sense and common courtesy) advise not to. Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read.' Speaking of his own post, spaf said, 'even if it is perceived as self-indulgent garbage, it will fit right in with the rest of the net.'
Ten years later, we still have all of spaf's complaints plus mounting spammage just barely held in check by auto-canceling volunteers. Is Usenet still useful? Is it worth maintaining? I say yes, but I can feel spaf's pain. It may be too late now, but hey spaf: thanks."
we need the traffic!!!
http://www.jesusgeeks.net
"People don't seem to think before posting, they are purposely rude, they blatantly violate copyrights, they crosspost everywhere, use 20 line signature files, and do basically every other thing the postings (and common sense and common courtesy) advise not to. Regularly, there are postings of questions that can be answered by the newusers articles, clearly indicating that they aren't being read."
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Pratice your trolls for slashdot at
http://www.jesusgeeks.net
I just wrote about how childish it was to use "M$", "MicroSloth", "WorstBuy", etc in statements and how it is only 'cool' in elementary schoolyards in the last article.
Seems fitting and ontopic, here, though...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Spaf: "Last post! haha suxX0rs I ownz you BSD is dying the only way truth and life usenet sucks"
IBM and Cisco form an alliance to spread the joys of grid computing.
April 29, 2003
IBM, Cisco Partner On Grid Computing
By Paul Shread
Cisco will work with IBM to develop enhanced Grid services for Storage Area Networks (SANs) as part of a 35-company commercial Grid computing initiative launched by Big Blue.
IBM also expanded its commercial Grid offerings, including solutions for the petroleum, electronics, higher education and agricultural chemicals industries, and announced that RBC Insurance, Royal Dutch Shell and Kansai Electric Power have become Grid customers.
IBM's initiative to build a "Grid ecosystem" consists of software vendors and Business Partners that will help develop commercial Grid solutions. Cisco joins more than 35 new and existing Business Partners and other vendors to form the foundation of the developing IBM Grid ecosystem, Big Blue said.
IBM and Cisco are working together to enable enhanced Grid services for SANs. Cisco's intelligent multilayer storage networking architecture will help lay the foundation for building globally scalable access to Grid data, IBM said. The integration of intelligent services into the network will help simplify data access across the Grid and improve resource sharing and management. Earlier this year, IBM began reselling Cisco MDS 9000 SAN switches. Cisco has plans to enhance these switches to enable globally scalable access to data through Grids.
"The ability to access storage in a scalable and secure way is a critical component in Grid computing, allowing businesses and their partner companies to manage massive amounts of data and to collaborate worldwide," said Soni Jiandani, vice president of marketing in the Storage Technology Group at Cisco. "The IBM and Cisco solution is an important step in delivering the very real benefits of Grid and on demand computing to businesses of all sizes."
The announcement expands the existing global strategic alliance between Cisco and IBM in Internet infrastructure, e-business systems and services to deliver end-to-end Internet business solutions to enterprise and service provider customers.
Application software vendors joining Cisco in IBM's Grid ecosystem initiative include: life sciences firm Accelrys; financial analytics company Calypso Technology; Cadence; Force10 Networks; energy industry solutions firm Landmark Graphics Corp.; Mercury Interactive; and MSC.Software.
More than twenty IBM Business Partners also are helping to form the IBM Grid ecosystem.
"Grid is an industry-wide effort built and designed around open standards," said Tom Hawk, IBM's general manager of Grid computing. "IBM is working to bring business partners, developers, system integrators, middleware companies, and IT vendors of all shapes and sizes together to form a Grid ecosystem that will accelerate the adoption of Grids in the enterprise."
IBM Announces New Grid Customers, Offerings
RBC Insurance took an existing application and Grid-enabled it based on IBM eServer xSeries and middleware from IBM Business Partner Platform Computing, the leading Grid computing vendor. The integrated solution allowed RBC Insurance to reduce by 75% the time spent on job scheduling, and by 97% the time spent processing an actuarial application. RBC Insurance is now looking to expand the IBM and Platform Computing solution across additional applications and business units to improve efficiencies.
"IBM and Platform Computing Grid-enabled our valuation application and supporting infrastructure for immediate results," said Keith Medley, RBC's head of Insurance Technology. "With the integrated solution, we have been able to reduce a 2 1/2-hour job to 10 minutes, and an 18-hour job to 32 minutes."
IBM worked with Royal Dutch Shell to build a reusable software toolkit that works as a wrapper around existing applications, creating a Grid-enabled infrastructure for the company's seismic interpretation applications. The solution, based on IBM eServer xSeries running the Glo