When I started using Linux in the 90's it was fairly unheard of. Linux was unexplored territory. The beauty of unexplored territory is that you are a hero if you go in there and setup house and survive. So in general, anyone who vaguely knew of Linux was impressed by anyone who was actually able to use it proficiently.
I think that bred a generation of people who built their ego system on just running and maintaining an operating system.
Now after years of these same people saying "Linux is far superior to Windows. Why aren't you running it?" to flex those egos, lots of people ARE now switching to Linux.
The unexplored terrirory is becoming a comfy suburb and the original settlers are desperately looking for something to cling to so they can maintain their superiority over the soccer moms and dads down the street.
What better way to prove it, when pressed into a corner, than by banging your chest and shouting alot. "Go away, remain ignorant, let me stay important!". The symptoms are basically described in the article. Spewing arcanum about the subject at hand (file locking in databases), repeatedly declaring self value ("you could learn alot from me"), and of course the shouting and hand waving.
So usually, this just points to massive insecurity. I won't invoke the phrase "get a life". For one its inflamatory and for two probably most incorrect. What they need to do is realise the do have usefull skills, realize other people can have different opinions, and work on promoting their own opinions without turning it into religous lecture.
Easier said than done.
I remember back in the early 90's there was a version of Tetris for the MAC that would basically berrate you and taunt you and drop the occasional obscenity while you were playing.
I remember because of the constant struggle to get to play it in my high school computer lab without the teacher running it hearing what was going on.
Just wondering if I'm crazy of if anyone else remembers that...
Microsoft is addressing the trend of using COTS (commerical of the shelf) products to build large to terrascale computing systems. One of the most popular COTS systems is the x86 based platform because it is cheap, reliable and readily available. MS says: "Hey, we run on x86. Let's see if we can get into this market." And I say come on in.
Lots of people assume the big decision to running a multi-machine computer is choosing the OS, but I don't care what the OS is, once you have 2000 copies of it, it isn't that easy to manage. The current supercomputer market suffers from a lack of quality software.
Mainly this stems from some of the attitudes I've seen in this article (paraphrasing):
"We'll run UNIX because it is inherently remotely administratable": OK, and next kernel release for your UNIX, how do you upgrade 2000 copies of it?
"Ok, we'll run Linux and control our own kernel updates and make it run exactly how we want.": Ok, then once you've customized it beyond anything that anyone else in the world wants, how do you keep it updated to new releases? It isn't that easy anymore.
And... "We'll hire some software developers to hack together a solution, it shouldn't be that hard. Some Perl or Tcl/Tk and we're all set.": Psh, ya. That's what they all think.
Anyway, these trains of thought have lead to each major vendor (SGI, HP/Compaq, Cray, etc) having their own flavor of installers, managing agents, OSs/Kernels, etc, but nothing that really develops into a unified effort. Each one of their machines is fairly unique.
This is a place where Microsoft excells. Because they will basically say, "we don't care how anyone else is doing it, here is how we are going to do it". And if history says anything, they'll make it work, and (eventually) it will work well.
I've worked on many gigaflop to multi-terraflop machines and I can easily say that if someone could pull together the resources to develop a system where I can run and manage a 2000 node system as seamlessly as my desktop, they will get my money. "evil empire" or no.
Sorry final rant: Supercomputers are *hard*. Yes, you can hack together a cluster of linux machines in your basement or school and it works great but, along with lots of other things, success doesn't scale. Don't knock anyones attempts to help the community until you've spent 48 hours at a terminal trying to get a couple thousand nodes to hang together long enough to get actual work done.
Slashdot Mirror
Pssh... there is development in progress on a 30m telescope:
http://www.tmt.org/
When I started using Linux in the 90's it was fairly unheard of. Linux was unexplored territory. The beauty of unexplored territory is that you are a hero if you go in there and setup house and survive. So in general, anyone who vaguely knew of Linux was impressed by anyone who was actually able to use it proficiently. I think that bred a generation of people who built their ego system on just running and maintaining an operating system. Now after years of these same people saying "Linux is far superior to Windows. Why aren't you running it?" to flex those egos, lots of people ARE now switching to Linux. The unexplored terrirory is becoming a comfy suburb and the original settlers are desperately looking for something to cling to so they can maintain their superiority over the soccer moms and dads down the street. What better way to prove it, when pressed into a corner, than by banging your chest and shouting alot. "Go away, remain ignorant, let me stay important!". The symptoms are basically described in the article. Spewing arcanum about the subject at hand (file locking in databases), repeatedly declaring self value ("you could learn alot from me"), and of course the shouting and hand waving. So usually, this just points to massive insecurity. I won't invoke the phrase "get a life". For one its inflamatory and for two probably most incorrect. What they need to do is realise the do have usefull skills, realize other people can have different opinions, and work on promoting their own opinions without turning it into religous lecture. Easier said than done.
I remember back in the early 90's there was a version of Tetris for the MAC that would basically berrate you and taunt you and drop the occasional obscenity while you were playing. I remember because of the constant struggle to get to play it in my high school computer lab without the teacher running it hearing what was going on. Just wondering if I'm crazy of if anyone else remembers that...
Microsoft is addressing the trend of using COTS (commerical of the shelf) products to build large to terrascale computing systems. One of the most popular COTS systems is the x86 based platform because it is cheap, reliable and readily available. MS says: "Hey, we run on x86. Let's see if we can get into this market." And I say come on in.
Lots of people assume the big decision to running a multi-machine computer is choosing the OS, but I don't care what the OS is, once you have 2000 copies of it, it isn't that easy to manage. The current supercomputer market suffers from a lack of quality software.
Mainly this stems from some of the attitudes I've seen in this article (paraphrasing):
"We'll run UNIX because it is inherently remotely administratable": OK, and next kernel release for your UNIX, how do you upgrade 2000 copies of it?
"Ok, we'll run Linux and control our own kernel updates and make it run exactly how we want.": Ok, then once you've customized it beyond anything that anyone else in the world wants, how do you keep it updated to new releases? It isn't that easy anymore.
And... "We'll hire some software developers to hack together a solution, it shouldn't be that hard. Some Perl or Tcl/Tk and we're all set.": Psh, ya. That's what they all think.
Anyway, these trains of thought have lead to each major vendor (SGI, HP/Compaq, Cray, etc) having their own flavor of installers, managing agents, OSs/Kernels, etc, but nothing that really develops into a unified effort. Each one of their machines is fairly unique.
This is a place where Microsoft excells. Because they will basically say, "we don't care how anyone else is doing it, here is how we are going to do it". And if history says anything, they'll make it work, and (eventually) it will work well.
I've worked on many gigaflop to multi-terraflop machines and I can easily say that if someone could pull together the resources to develop a system where I can run and manage a 2000 node system as seamlessly as my desktop, they will get my money. "evil empire" or no.
Sorry final rant: Supercomputers are *hard*. Yes, you can hack together a cluster of linux machines in your basement or school and it works great but, along with lots of other things, success doesn't scale. Don't knock anyones attempts to help the community until you've spent 48 hours at a terminal trying to get a couple thousand nodes to hang together long enough to get actual work done.