I don't build supercomputers, but I do build systems that look a lot like them in very similar infrastructures. I'm not sure why it took them 120 days (okay, "under" 120 days), but when we build out a datacenter with 70 to 100 machines, it usually takes a bit of time: a) obtain space. Usually, raised floors, rack systems, with adequate HVAC for the huge thermal load you're about to throw into a few racks. For collocation, it'll take some time for your provider to wire together a cage for your installation, especially if you need earthquake bracing. Expect two weeks.
b) obtain power. For our production environment, each redundant power supply needs to be served by a separate circuit. The way most redundant power supplies seem to work is they split the load between the two circuits - so each circuit has to be able to handle the full load. Supercomputers may not have the same production requirements, but probably - lost cycles is lost money. Anyway, this is contracted out in almost all cases - expect two weeks minimum. b is usually dependent on a, some providers may perform buildout concurrently. Not much of an issue if you use Equinix - very cool overhead power systems (imagine a very large power track system, with drops wherever you need them).
c) obtain equipment. delivery time from a week to 5 weeks.
d) it takes some time to unbox 100 machines and rack them. Throw people at it, or throw time at it.
e) network infrastructure. do it yourself, you're using a lot of time to cut cables to length. contract it out, you get very neat work, at expense, and usually only to rack-specific patch panels. Buy lots of different length cables and forego contracting, you save time, but you end up with a cage that looks like hell that's easy to snag.
f) configure 100 machines. This is probably the easiest part - set up your DHCP server and PXE boot server, roll up some kickstart system, and deploy - 100 machines can be done in a few hours. There's obviously some setup and thought that needs to be put into the installation scripts, but that can be done ahead of time.
In my experience, buildout of production datacenters is very difficult to do in less than 6 weeks.
While I'm not thrilled that the browser I use seems to have some egregious problems in its parser, I feel Larry's done us (free software community) a huge service by providing us with the tools that highlight those areas that need improvement.
Start with "man man". Most important man variation is "man -k someconcept" - eg, "man -k kernel". This will show man pages that purportedly have something to do with someconcept (in reality, that have "someconcept" as a substring in their description).
These 5 commands can help bootstrap anyone on a linux or unix system (unless you are so unfortunate to have a box that does not contain man pages).
I am not a video driver development, so I'm almost assuredly being naive here - but I would have thought most of ATI/NVIDIA's intellectual property would be invested within their GPU. As far as device drivers are concerned, aren't these just black boxes - eg, send opcode x, operand y, get output z? What's to protect here? Isn't the details of the engine that need to be protected (corporate-wise), rather than the programming interface?
Q1: I was wondering about this also, but the article seems to address this. If I understand correctly, the water pulled from the lake is filtered, used to cool a separate loop of coolant, then introduced into the city water system, rather than placed right back in the lake.
Other responses seem to answer the question if the intake water was reintroduced into the lake.
Perhaps I'm not being clear. FIRE is at the PPPL - I'm not suggesting that the PPPL is going to be shutdown, just that the FIRE is going to be shutdown (as described in the article).
A few "solutions" crop up here (no panaceas, but I think these steps would help).
1. Require users to pass basic computer security awareness/computer literacy test program before allowing connection to the Internet. I am not at all joking about this one. Seems like the vast majority of Windows problems are social engineering hacks that can only be fixed through some necessary education. Alternately, issue state licenses for operating computers - can't connect to the Internet without valid license.
2. For Windows, Apple, Redhat, etc, the connection should be brought up initially with inbound connections disabled, and outbound connections limited to the vendor's upgrade site (or an IT-specified proxy for corporate machines).
3. Only after all "Critical" upgrades have been put in place should outbound restrictions be lifted.
You need to worry about security, even if you don't care about the value of that particular machine. Your machine will be owned and used as an attack point. By ignoring vulnerabilities in your machine, you bear some responsibility for the grief your owned machine causes others, including spam and malicious attacks.
In Byte Magazine, July 1983, Oracle was mentioned in the updated products section (I think it was version 2 or 3), with multi-user licenses priced between $600 - $2000.
Yup, the Xserve RAID's are excellent. We've been using them all over the place for near-line storage and back-end database storage, attached to 20-port Cisco fibrechannel switches (so's we can present the drive to different production machines if Bad Things Happen). Since they lack controller-controller failover, it's not a solution that'll fit everyone's need, but these do a good job on a lot of different jobs (we get our redundancy for database servers by replicating to another machine/Xserve RAID, so we can withstand a controller failure).
Works great with Linux and Qlogic cards. I love these things.
I'd've argued that such attacks drive reactive industries (McAfee - Viruses = ?) and attempts to legislate the hell out of the internet.
Attacks like this need a strong and swift negative reaction, from the community. If I was an admin at doubleclick, I'd surely love to see someone's left testicle on eBay right now...
Tape will die completely in favor of disk when these conditions are all true: a) one drive stores more info than one tape (true today in most cases - as mentioned, tape capacities are increasing, but at a much slower rate than drive capacities.) b) one drive costs less than equivalent tape storage (just about there, but not quite) c) mechanisms exist for easy and fast off-site storage (answer hazy - ask later) d) physical dimensions of drives shrink to that of same-capacity tapes (not terribly likely to happen in the near future - instead, this one will be satisfied by markedly higher disk capacities).
The reason why tapes have limited long-term viability is primarily one of restore speeds (but also for very large datasets, backup speeds). After all, you're taking backups to avoid loss of business continuity - you're gonna wait how long to restore a few terabytes of data from tape?
Most large shops are combining near-line disk storage with tape for archival purposes. I'd wager that the ratio of disk:tape for backup/restore purposes will only increase in the future.
Once computers were purchasable by mere mortals rather than institutions, many people could noodle around with ideas of creativity (word processing, visualization, music, etc). Before those tasks could become foremost in the user's mind, the mechanisms for interacting with the computer (mouse, audio, visualization) had to become less onerous than the task the user was trying to accomplish.
You could make perfectly acceptable looking documents in WordStar or TeX, for instance - but trying to visualize the final look of the document as you're editing it became a serious problem. Of course, many would argue that that's what TeX was all about - concentrate on content rather than format - but I'd assert that separating content and format is not a "natural" way for humans to think. I guess my argument is that new technologies lowered the barrier to widespread computer use.
Apple is of the opinion that two buttons on a mouse is overwhelming.
Two buttons on a mouse is overwhelming (I would have said confusing), initially: ever watch someone who first handles a mouse? It takes a while for the "right-click/middle-click/left-click" thing to register.
Of course, it's a PITA for the rest of us, but that's easily resolved by $10 at Staples - MacOS X supports multi-button mice very well.
It's not just the U.S. Ran into plenty of snottiness in Vancouver and Waterton, as well as really indifferent service in Ireland (plus those disgusting common urinals, ugh! but I digress...), whom I would overall characterize as a charming and vivacious people.
I agree with the thread of cutting off abusive customers. However, here's what happened to me: a) bought a pair of Merrel Jungle Mocs at a local retailer (Schnee's). b) within a week, the sole began to delaminate at the toe c) I waited THREE MONTHS (not intentionally, just busy with other things) with flapping toes. d) Finally, I went in, asking if they had anything that could attach the soles back to the shoes. I told them upfront that I bought them in March, and the shoes were obviously well worn. e) Manager looked at the shoes, checked my in-store record (we've bought a few shoes there), asked to fit me for new shoes, and got me a brand new pair.
I was stunned that they would replace these shoes (there was obviously something wrong with them, but I sat on my ass for three months). The upshot is that my loyalty to Schnee's shot through the roof.
It's a matter of turning customer unhappiness into opportunities to recapture the customer and keep them coming back.
Now, I'm obviously not an asshole, and I'd paid plenty to Schnee's over the past. I don't think it's wrong for retailers to establish limits. I think in most cases, however, the customer is not happy having to confront the store with their desires (it's conflict, hey?), which probably results in the "demanding" type customer. Addressing their concerns may very well result in future sales (at the cost of some heartburn).
No (at least, there are many situations where this is not true).
For companies that have a sales force, the salesfolken aren't going to be retaining their contact lists in their head, and experience has demonstrated that they will try to take their contacts with them on some device (usually a PDA) and work for The Competition.
Restrictive policies such as those described make sense in many (but not all) situations. In the specific instance described, an outsider was asked to check his drive at the door. That seems reasonable to me.
Unless technology provides any useful upside for the consumer, it's not going to pan out. This technology could be used as a basis for global authentication, making tedium like PGP keys a thing of the past. Instead, the makers concentrate on protecting content providers.
I think Apple has demonstrated that it knows its business better than slashdot pundits. Is there any upside for Apple at all to allow other music players (iPod being the Profit portion of the Apple Music store) access to its music? So, Apple can make, what, $1? $2? on licensing per player unit? I'm sure they make much more than that on their iPods.
I don't believe licensing FairPlay is going to drive a stake into WMA - MS will just use other resources to wheedle and insinuate their formats into primacy.
Apple cannot afford to associate its products with commodity electronics. It'll be interesting to see if they can continue to maintain this separation.
That list is a parrot of the U.S. EPA tests There are many vehicles that are not sold in the U.S. that presumably do not receive EPA testing.
That being said, I don't know if these vehicles receive the significantly higher mileage numbers being touted about. I suspect we're losing something here in metric->imperial conversion...
RedHat's not closed source. They provide source code, though they do add (IMO) unreasonable and possibly not legal restrictions on distribution of the binary packages. The SRPMs are available on-line however, hence, they've provided you the source - hence, they're "open source".
Regardless, it'd be disingenuous to suggest that RedHat merely reaps opportunity off the hard work of others. That's true, of course, but they certainly contribute to many open source packages, not the least of which include kernel development.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't build supercomputers, but I do build systems that look a lot like them in very similar infrastructures. I'm not sure why it took them 120 days (okay, "under" 120 days), but when we build out a datacenter with 70 to 100 machines, it usually takes a bit of time:
a) obtain space. Usually, raised floors, rack systems, with adequate HVAC for the huge thermal load you're about to throw into a few racks. For collocation, it'll take some time for your provider to wire together a cage for your installation, especially if you need earthquake bracing. Expect two weeks.
b) obtain power. For our production environment, each redundant power supply needs to be served by a separate circuit. The way most redundant power supplies seem to work is they split the load between the two circuits - so each circuit has to be able to handle the full load. Supercomputers may not have the same production requirements, but probably - lost cycles is lost money. Anyway, this is contracted out in almost all cases - expect two weeks minimum. b is usually dependent on a, some providers may perform buildout concurrently. Not much of an issue if you use Equinix - very cool overhead power systems (imagine a very large power track system, with drops wherever you need them).
c) obtain equipment. delivery time from a week to 5 weeks.
d) it takes some time to unbox 100 machines and rack them. Throw people at it, or throw time at it.
e) network infrastructure. do it yourself, you're using a lot of time to cut cables to length. contract it out, you get very neat work, at expense, and usually only to rack-specific patch panels. Buy lots of different length cables and forego contracting, you save time, but you end up with a cage that looks like hell that's easy to snag.
f) configure 100 machines. This is probably the easiest part - set up your DHCP server and PXE boot server, roll up some kickstart system, and deploy - 100 machines can be done in a few hours. There's obviously some setup and thought that needs to be put into the installation scripts, but that can be done ahead of time.
In my experience, buildout of production datacenters is very difficult to do in less than 6 weeks.
sloth jr
little piece of electrical tape over infrared receiver will do ya fine. Get off yer ass and change the channel Ye Olde Fashioned Way.
sloth jr
While I'm not thrilled that the browser I use seems to have some egregious problems in its parser, I feel Larry's done us (free software community) a huge service by providing us with the tools that highlight those areas that need improvement.
sloth_jr
ls
cd
mv
cp
man
Start with "man man". Most important man variation is "man -k someconcept" - eg, "man -k kernel". This will show man pages that purportedly have something to do with someconcept (in reality, that have "someconcept" as a substring in their description).
These 5 commands can help bootstrap anyone on a linux or unix system (unless you are so unfortunate to have a box that does not contain man pages).
sloth_jr
I am not a video driver development, so I'm almost assuredly being naive here - but I would have thought most of ATI/NVIDIA's intellectual property would be invested within their GPU. As far as device drivers are concerned, aren't these just black boxes - eg, send opcode x, operand y, get output z? What's to protect here? Isn't the details of the engine that need to be protected (corporate-wise), rather than the programming interface?
sloth jr
"LIMITED EDITION COLLECTORS BOX
A stylish and uniquely designed box is included and can be a temp or permanent home for your player."
Wow. That's gotta be some box...
Q1: I was wondering about this also, but the article seems to address this. If I understand correctly, the water pulled from the lake is filtered, used to cool a separate loop of coolant, then introduced into the city water system, rather than placed right back in the lake.
Other responses seem to answer the question if the intake water was reintroduced into the lake.
sloth jr
Perhaps I'm not being clear. FIRE is at the PPPL - I'm not suggesting that the PPPL is going to be shutdown, just that the FIRE is going to be shutdown (as described in the article).
A few "solutions" crop up here (no panaceas, but I think these steps would help).
1. Require users to pass basic computer security awareness/computer literacy test program before allowing connection to the Internet. I am not at all joking about this one. Seems like the vast majority of Windows problems are social engineering hacks that can only be fixed through some necessary education. Alternately, issue state licenses for operating computers - can't connect to the Internet without valid license.
2. For Windows, Apple, Redhat, etc, the connection should be brought up initially with inbound connections disabled, and outbound connections limited to the vendor's upgrade site (or an IT-specified proxy for corporate machines).
3. Only after all "Critical" upgrades have been put in place should outbound restrictions be lifted.
sloth jr
This is where FIRE is. So yes, it's set to be scrubbed, as the article describes.
You need to worry about security, even if you don't care about the value of that particular machine. Your machine will be owned and used as an attack point. By ignoring vulnerabilities in your machine, you bear some responsibility for the grief your owned machine causes others, including spam and malicious attacks.
In Byte Magazine, July 1983, Oracle was mentioned in the updated products section (I think it was version 2 or 3), with multi-user licenses priced between $600 - $2000.
Yup, the Xserve RAID's are excellent. We've been using them all over the place for near-line storage and back-end database storage, attached to 20-port Cisco fibrechannel switches (so's we can present the drive to different production machines if Bad Things Happen). Since they lack controller-controller failover, it's not a solution that'll fit everyone's need, but these do a good job on a lot of different jobs (we get our redundancy for database servers by replicating to another machine/Xserve RAID, so we can withstand a controller failure).
Works great with Linux and Qlogic cards. I love these things.
sloth jr
That's an optimistic viewpoint.
I'd've argued that such attacks drive reactive industries (McAfee - Viruses = ?) and attempts to legislate the hell out of the internet.
Attacks like this need a strong and swift negative reaction, from the community. If I was an admin at doubleclick, I'd surely love to see someone's left testicle on eBay right now...
sloth_jr
Tape will die completely in favor of disk when these conditions are all true:
a) one drive stores more info than one tape (true today in most cases - as mentioned, tape capacities are increasing, but at a much slower rate than drive capacities.)
b) one drive costs less than equivalent tape storage (just about there, but not quite)
c) mechanisms exist for easy and fast off-site storage (answer hazy - ask later)
d) physical dimensions of drives shrink to that of same-capacity tapes (not terribly likely to happen in the near future - instead, this one will be satisfied by markedly higher disk capacities).
The reason why tapes have limited long-term viability is primarily one of restore speeds (but also for very large datasets, backup speeds). After all, you're taking backups to avoid loss of business continuity - you're gonna wait how long to restore a few terabytes of data from tape?
Most large shops are combining near-line disk storage with tape for archival purposes. I'd wager that the ratio of disk:tape for backup/restore purposes will only increase in the future.
sloth jr
Once computers were purchasable by mere mortals rather than institutions, many people could noodle around with ideas of creativity (word processing, visualization, music, etc). Before those tasks could become foremost in the user's mind, the mechanisms for interacting with the computer (mouse, audio, visualization) had to become less onerous than the task the user was trying to accomplish.
You could make perfectly acceptable looking documents in WordStar or TeX, for instance - but trying to visualize the final look of the document as you're editing it became a serious problem. Of course, many would argue that that's what TeX was all about - concentrate on content rather than format - but I'd assert that separating content and format is not a "natural" way for humans to think. I guess my argument is that new technologies lowered the barrier to widespread computer use.
sloth jr
Two buttons on a mouse is overwhelming (I would have said confusing), initially: ever watch someone who first handles a mouse? It takes a while for the "right-click/middle-click/left-click" thing to register.
Of course, it's a PITA for the rest of us, but that's easily resolved by $10 at Staples - MacOS X supports multi-button mice very well.
sloth jr
It's not just the U.S. Ran into plenty of snottiness in Vancouver and Waterton, as well as really indifferent service in Ireland (plus those disgusting common urinals, ugh! but I digress...), whom I would overall characterize as a charming and vivacious people.
I agree with the thread of cutting off abusive customers. However, here's what happened to me:
a) bought a pair of Merrel Jungle Mocs at a local retailer (Schnee's).
b) within a week, the sole began to delaminate at the toe
c) I waited THREE MONTHS (not intentionally, just busy with other things) with flapping toes.
d) Finally, I went in, asking if they had anything that could attach the soles back to the shoes. I told them upfront that I bought them in March, and the shoes were obviously well worn.
e) Manager looked at the shoes, checked my in-store record (we've bought a few shoes there), asked to fit me for new shoes, and got me a brand new pair.
I was stunned that they would replace these shoes (there was obviously something wrong with them, but I sat on my ass for three months). The upshot is that my loyalty to Schnee's shot through the roof.
It's a matter of turning customer unhappiness into opportunities to recapture the customer and keep them coming back.
Now, I'm obviously not an asshole, and I'd paid plenty to Schnee's over the past. I don't think it's wrong for retailers to establish limits. I think in most cases, however, the customer is not happy having to confront the store with their desires (it's conflict, hey?), which probably results in the "demanding" type customer. Addressing their concerns may very well result in future sales (at the cost of some heartburn).
sloth jr
No (at least, there are many situations where this is not true).
For companies that have a sales force, the salesfolken aren't going to be retaining their contact lists in their head, and experience has demonstrated that they will try to take their contacts with them on some device (usually a PDA) and work for The Competition.
Restrictive policies such as those described make sense in many (but not all) situations. In the specific instance described, an outsider was asked to check his drive at the door. That seems reasonable to me.
sloth jr
Unless technology provides any useful upside for the consumer, it's not going to pan out. This technology could be used as a basis for global authentication, making tedium like PGP keys a thing of the past. Instead, the makers concentrate on protecting content providers.
Think small.
I think Apple has demonstrated that it knows its business better than slashdot pundits. Is there any upside for Apple at all to allow other music players (iPod being the Profit portion of the Apple Music store) access to its music? So, Apple can make, what, $1? $2? on licensing per player unit? I'm sure they make much more than that on their iPods.
I don't believe licensing FairPlay is going to drive a stake into WMA - MS will just use other resources to wheedle and insinuate their formats into primacy.
Apple cannot afford to associate its products with commodity electronics. It'll be interesting to see if they can continue to maintain this separation.
The Lion King most definitely used CGI. It used "swarm" software very effectively with the wildebeast stampede scene.
That list is a parrot of the U.S. EPA tests There are many vehicles that are not sold in the U.S. that presumably do not receive EPA testing.
That being said, I don't know if these vehicles receive the significantly higher mileage numbers being touted about. I suspect we're losing something here in metric->imperial conversion...
RedHat's not closed source. They provide source code, though they do add (IMO) unreasonable and possibly not legal restrictions on distribution of the binary packages. The SRPMs are available on-line however, hence, they've provided you the source - hence, they're "open source".
Regardless, it'd be disingenuous to suggest that RedHat merely reaps opportunity off the hard work of others. That's true, of course, but they certainly contribute to many open source packages, not the least of which include kernel development.
sloth jr