Slashdot Mirror
Ask Unix Co-Creator Rob Pike
Today we return to our Slashdot interview roots with a "Call for questions" for Rob "Commander" Pike, who has been involved in the development of many modern programming concepts, GUI advances, character sets, and operating systems. We'll email 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated questions to Rob and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.
Post
And you've fixed the nothing to see here bug.
ln -s /mnt/whatever /c\:
Anyone else seeing a new windows virus/exploit going around today shutting machines off after 30 seconds in the oldschool blaster/dcom styles?
Unix and C a Hoax - is it true? ;)
LOOK AT YOUR SOFT, Then disappeared reformatted Feel obligated to was what got me reaper Nor do the architecture. My 40,000 workstations a need to play
Ovious and short-sighted: read up about the corporate history of today's SCO Inc. and you'll discover the history of a poorly managed, but essentially benevolent, pioneering Linux shop called Caldera Inc (which turned sour about the time it split in two around 1999 if memory serves), and also the history of a good Unix shop called SCO (the real SCO, now called Tarentella), that used to own a pretty fine Unix clone back in the days and that's been schlepping along, but essentially was honest.
Today's SCO is a combination of a Linux shop that didn't know how to compete with RedHat and ran out of cash, their financial bakers called the Canopy group, and its chief shitheat, millionaire Ray Noorda )who are hell-bent on (1) getting Microsoft and (2) making money off of lawsuits), and their buying SCO's (the real SCO's) IP assets.
In short, SCO hasn't been evil for a long time, and won't be for very long either, and I pity the poor employees who got stuck in the corporate quagmire...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
And along those lines, what should I list as my favorite color?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
WhyCan'tYouHaveSpacesInWikiKeyWords?
Speak truth to power.
Blue.... NO! Yellooooooooooooowwwwww...
- Mike
Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It's running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It's looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.
and...
My notes contained two of Skrenta's main points: the importance of the supercomputer and the scores of Ph.Ds being Google's main assets. A third key asset for Google is the data that they're storing on those 100,000 computers.
Based upon this, has Google ever considered making extra cash by selling extra CPU cycles?
Also, What's the teraflops rating of Google's 100,000 computers? Does it meet or surpass the 100 teraflop equivalent of the human brain?
Okay, silly questions, but I'd probably never have another opportunity to ask these questions again.