Linux Scores An Ace At Wimbledon

JamesD_UK writes "IBM has a short article with some details of their Linux systems at the Wimbledon tennis championships. Aparantly IBM has been using DB2 on a Linux platform to provide statistics and information on the competition since 1999. VIPs will be offered a chance to use O2's XDA to view match details over wi-fi. Time to apt-get install champagne strawberries kismet?" There's also a BBC article about the system.

Comments

XDA with wifi?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked at my XDA II (just a few seconds ago), it did not have wifi built in.

O2's Site

[zerOnIne]

I can't get into O2's website at all. I get bounced saying that my browser is out of date. I'm using Mozilla 1.4.1, and I don't really want to "upgrade" to Netscape 7, as they suggest. Warning users with an odd browser, that's fine. Forcing them out of your webpage is just plain stupid. It's sites like this that make me squicky about browser detection code in general.

Re:O2's Site

[OwlWhacker]

Go get Firefox 0.9:

http://mozilla.org/

You won't be sorry.

Re:O2's Site

[martinthebrit]

Strange. I'm on 1.0.1 and it lets me in fine.

Re:O2's Site

[mixy1plik]

I use Firefox 0.9 and there is an error getting to the site.

Re:Another Fine Example

[ctr2sprt]

We have several where I work. They all get the job done, and usually on older hardware (in the neighborhood of P3-500s). They aren't greased lightning, but they're also horribly overloaded: we typically host about 300 sites per server on that hardware.

So yeah, it happens, it scales, it gets results. I can't speak for the level of fuss since I'm not involved in that part of the process.

Re:Based on past experience...

[Vagrant]

I would also expect IBM to use Linux during the upcoming Olympics.

I doubt it since IBM ended it's sponsorship of the Olympic games after Sydney in 2000. The Olympics are now sponsored by Atos Origin.

SuSE

[sbowles]

I would guess SuSE Linux Enterprise Server V8 (Service Pack 3, RC4, with certification-sles-eal3 package) as this is the distro that IBM sponsored for Common Criteria EAL3+ Certification. This would allow IBM to run a "trusted" (as in "We know what it's vulnerabilities are") OS.

Re:Put on the brakes.

[Coppertone]

Sorry, but ebay use Websphere as well....

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.ns f/ CS/NAVO-5DFURA?OpenDocument&Site=tivoli

Re:You must have an older model.

[Ottoman II]

I beg to differ. Read and learn what wifi means first: http://sbc.webopedia.com/term/w/wi_fi.html NONE of the XDA's sold by O2 has wifi. Of course you can go and splash on an SD card with wifi but they are flaky at best of the times.

In tennis (LOVE == 0) is true!

[SoTuA]

To the ignorant soul who modded the parent poster as "Flamebait":

In tennis, (in Wimlbedon and english-language tournaments, at least), the referee never says "zero". When the score is 30-0 the ref does not say "Player leads thirty zero". He says "Player leads thirty-LOVE".

So, to a tennis player, in the context of a match, LOVE means ZERO. Get it now?

IIRC, it comes from the french language, because the number zero looks like an egg, so in french it's "l'oeuf".

So, the correct mod was "Funny". But no, you had to read the post, not understand a word of it, and mod if "Flamebait" because you don't understand.

And to parent poster, well done. I laughed quite a bit :)

Re:Since 1999 ?

[hearingaid]

Yes, Wimbledon is an open tournament, and has been since the '70s. (For the uninitiated, non-tennis-fan, which I'm guessing is like 99% of /.: An open tournament is one in which players don't need invitations to play. It used to be that Wimbledon and the other three majors, the U.S. Open, the French Open, and the Australian Open, you had to swing an invite from the organizing committee. During the '70s, this policy was generally reversed. Now, players can compete in the qualifying tournament, or qualify for the main draw based on their tour ranking. But that's another story.)

IBM actually uses pretty much the same software for Wimbledon, the French, the U.S. Open, and the Aussie. They're just bragging about Wimbledon because it's the most popular of the four, and consequently has the site that gets the most hits.

Re:I volunteer to ask the stupid questions

[frodo from middle ea]

I volunteer to answer them

Why not mysql?
Call me when mysql supports nested queries. And a bunch of other features like replication etc.

Why not Oracle? It's better and less pain then DB2.
Duh!, because it is IBM. How else are they going to make money ? IBM is probably the smartest example of a company to use free software and propritory s/w together.

Why not one flat file and NDB? That'd do for scoring a couple of matches.
RTFA , they are now serving upto 90 different types of statistics per match. Do you really want to use a flat file for that ?

Did IBM have Playstation 2 systems in 1999?
I am not even going to answer that

Where did the fun go? When Commentators are fed a screen full of statistics !!

The commentators are not just going to read out the stats, they will derive some acute conclusions based on them , which average joes may overlook.

* Will they serve pictures of of Anna Kournikova?

images.google.com is your friend .(with safety off ;) )

The version of Linux is most likely

[BillsPetMonkey]

Suse. I know the someone there, and he told me it's been a Novell Netware on IBM shop for years. I would ask him to confirm but I'm he'd only ridicule me for hanging around /. Here's a bit of mail header from him:

Received: from AELTC-MTA by aeltc_office.aeltc.com with Novell_GroupWise; Tue, 11 Mar 2003 16:38:01 +0000