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Comment Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted (Score 1) 303

by sash (#37524098) Attached to: The Mythical Tunnel Between CERN and Central Italy

What you say is what she is now claiming to have meant, after the whole of Italy has been laughing at her. Unfortunately for her, and for us all Italians, there is no possible denying, what was written in the press release literally and unequivocally means "tunnel between CERN and Gran Sasso, across which the experiment took place".

Comment Re:sure looks like she was misinterpreted (Score 1) 303

by sash (#37524024) Attached to: The Mythical Tunnel Between CERN and Central Italy

There is no possible misinterpretation, and the phrase literally means "To the construction of the tunnel between CERN and the Gran Sasso laboratories". No cultural context, definition or whatever. "Tunnel" is a commonly used word in Italian, with the exact same meaning - an approximately horizontal hole in the ground.

Comment Re:Building Clusters (Score 1) 264

by sash (#36260966) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Linux Distro For Computational Cluster?

I second the comments of Nite_Hawk. I should add that the other big question you'll face is monitoring and alerting; look at Ganglia and Nagios/Icinga.

Our team manages the Online/DAQ system of the ATLAS experiment at CERN, about 2000 PCs. Central configuration is of course a must; we use Scientific Linux CERN 5 and netbooted, single image for most "worker" nodes, with specialisation done after boot by an in-house scripting system; servers and other special purpose systems are managed via Quattor or Puppet. Quattor is used a lot at CERN, I find that it is less flexible and requires more work than Puppet but its (currently) stronger package management gives better guarantees of uniformity. Netbooting a single image is excellent to guarantee that all systems are the same and you just need to reboot to be like on a new clean install; but it's a lot of work to setup and maintain, so it's only justified over large numbers.

Personally I also manage the grid cluster at University of Johannesburg (~30 nodes) and there I'm using Cobbler and Puppet, they do a nice job and don't take too much effort.

PS shmux is your friend :-)

Comment Re:CERN != LHC (Score 1) 269

by sash (#34270696) Attached to: LHC Scientists Create and Capture Antimatter

To make antihydrogen, the accelerators that feed protons to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN divert some of these to make antiprotons by slamming them into a metal target

On the same vein, all CERN things could also be said to be from EDF scientists, since CERN is powered by electrons coming from EDF (the French electricity company).
Idle

Want a Body Piercing With That Server? 19

Posted by samzenpus from the this-will-only-hurt-for-a-little-while dept.
1sockchuck writes "The web hosting business is known for promotional gimmicks. But here's an unusual one: ServerBeach UK is offering a free body piercing with every new server ordered on April 1st. 'We were tired of the typical boring giveaways that have been done to death' said ServerBeach's Dominic Monkhouse. The stunt revives memories of earlier guerrilla marketing efforts by web hosts, like the 'human billboard' who was paid $7,000 to tattoo a hosting company's logo on the back of his head."
Image

PhD Candidate Talks About the Physics of Space Battles 361

Posted by samzenpus from the load-photon-torpedoes dept.
darthvader100 writes "Gizmodo has run an article with some predictions on what future space battles will be like. The author brings up several theories on propulsion (and orbits), weapons (explosives, kinetic and laser), and design. Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical, like the one in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie."
Linuxcare

Submission + - Linux Programmer's Toolbox

Submitted by
Ravi
Ravi writes: "What does it take to start writing programs for Linux ? Most people will guess a text editor, knowledge of a programming language and the compiler and libraries of that language would suffice. But ask a professional programmer who has been writing code for Linux and he will differ with you and insist that while the three things stated above can very well help kick start ones programs, other things also come into play in writing efficient programs such as a debugger, memory profiler tools and above all a good understanding of the inner working of Linux kernel and its processes.



The book titled "The Linux Programmer's Toolbox" authored by John Fusco is a book which is a store house of knowledge which aims to make the average Linux/Windows programmer aware of the tools at his disposal which can help him write better programs for Linux.

The book is divided into 10 distinct chapters with the first 4 chapters describing various ways of boosting ones productivity while embarking on writing code for Linux as well as getting to know the various tools at ones disposal.

In the very first chapter titled "Downloading and Installing Opensource tools", he talks about the different archive formats commonly used in Linux, various package managers such as Debian's own apt-get, Red Hat's Yum and how to properly authenticate the packages you download to ensure that they are not tampered.

The second chapter deals with building tools from source. Here apart from describing the actual steps involved in compiling the sources, the author also delves into explaining the concept behind the MakeFile, the common variables used in implicit rules and so on. In this chapter one also gets to acquire an understanding of the tools used to create projects as well as examine how these tools work together in the build process.

The book has a chapter exclusively devoted to explaining ways of ambulating through the myriad of documents; tools such as man, info, as well as some of the not so obvious ones. One thing I like about this particular chapter is how the author has provided tables which list a number of recommended manual pages with a short description of each of them.

Linux doesn't have a comprehensive IDE on the lines of Microsoft Visual Studio to develop programs — at least not yet. Most Linux programming gurus are perfectly at home with coding using their favorite text editor. And any book of this stature will be incomplete without a mention of the different editors available for coding in Linux and their pros and cons. The 4th chapter of this book introduces the different editors including Vim and Emacs and discusses their pros and cons. There are numerous tips in this chapter which aims to make writing code much more efficient, productive and a pleasant experience for the average Linux programmer. As a Vi enthusiast, I couldn't help but admire how one can convert Vim editor to work as a code browser with the help of Ctags which is explained in detail.

The fifth chapter titled "What every developer should know about the kernel" is a turning point in the book and gives a comprehensive understanding of the working of the Linux kernel. It is by far the largest chapter — with nearly 100 pages devoted to this topic — in this book. In this chapter the author talks in lucid detail about the different modes in Linux, the process scheduler, device drivers, the I/O scheduler and the memory management in user space, understanding all of which is instrumental in writing better programs for Linux.

The next two chapters deal with Linux processes and the communication between processes. Here one gets to know more about the technical vagaries related to processes such as forking, cloning, process synchronization and the basics of inter process communication. The author has introduced several APIs and basic examples of each.

In the 8th chapter, the author introduces many tools which are installed by default in most Linux distributions which aid in debugging communication between processes. The tools include (but are not limited to) lsof, fuser, stat, hexdump, strace and so on. And each tool is accompanied by its usage and its output with a short discussion of the output.

In the 9th chapter titled "Performance Tuning", one gets to know more about fine tuning ones Linux program. Here the author explains the factors affecting system performance as well as the tools for finding system performance issues.

Finally, the last chapter of this book explores some of the most common debugging tools and techniques for Linux. More specifically, I found the discussion on the use of GNU debugger quite informative.

At the end of each of the 10 chapters in the book, the author has provided a short synopsis of the tools that are used. Also many additional online resources have also been listed where one can acquire more knowledge about the topic being covered. Through out the book, noteworthy sections have been highlighted in dark background which makes it quite eye catching and also easy for quick reference.

The book is written with a slant towards the C language especially when depicting the examples in the latter half of the book. But that is something which can be understood considering that the bulk of the Linux kernel has been written using C language.

Most programmers with Windows background will be forced to make a paradigm shift while embarking to program for Linux. While the Windows programmers are used to taking deceptive comfort within the cozy confines of a Visual IDE, when they make the shift to write Linux programs, they are suddenly faced with the hard facts of programming as it really is. And this book could be an ideal companion for this set of programmers who wish to lessen their learning curve and make programming for Linux a much more pleasurable experience.

Having said that, I found this book to be an excellent resource for any programmer (not necessarily only of Windows background) who wish to develop programs for Linux.

Ravi Kumar is a Linux enthusiast who maintains a blog related to Linux, Open Source and Free Software at linuxhelp.blogspot.com."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Scientists offer new way to read online text

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists at a small startup called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota have determined that the human brain is not wired properly to read block text. They have found that our eyes view text as if they're peering through a straw. Not only does your brain see the text on the line you're reading, but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below. This causes your brain to engage in a tug of war as it fights to filter and ignore the noise. The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension. The company has developed a product that automatically re-formats text in a way that your brain can more easily comprehend. This article in VentureBeat — http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/live-ink-offers- better-way-to-read-text-online/#more-10459 — explains.
Operating Systems

Submission + - GPL Code Found In OpenBSD Wireless Driver

Submitted by NormalVisual
NormalVisual writes: The mailing lists were buzzing recently when Michael Buesch, one of the maintainers for the GPL'd bc43xx Broadcom wireless chip driver project, called the OpenBSD folks to task for apparently including code without permission from his project in the OpenBSD bcw project, which aims to provide functionality with Broadcom wireless chips under that OS. It seems that the problem has been resolved for now with the BSD driver author totally giving up on the project and Theo De Raadt taking the position that Buesch's posts on the subject were "inhuman".
Toys

Japanese Mileage Maniacs 277

Posted by Zonk from the where-did-they-get-those-wonderful-toys dept.
WY writes "Bloomberg reports on the quirky world of Japanese hybrid car hackers: 'Toyota Motor Corp. says its Prius gasoline-electric hybrid car gets about 55 miles to the gallon, making it one of the most fuel-efficient cars on the road. That's not good enough for Takashi Toya.' He managed to reach as high as 115 MPG. He is one of about 100 nenpimania, Japanese for mileage maniacs."

Feed Epson wins ink ruling; ITC recommends banning third-party imports (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Peripherals

While we're still not sure whether refilling those empty ink cartridges is indeed a criminal act (or a waste of money), Epson has taken one more step towards forcing the average consumer to purchase name-brand carts at sky-high prices. Of course, Epson would have you believe that it's simply protecting its patents, but in a recent preliminary ruling that deemed some 24 suppliers that "import and sell Epson-compatible cartridges" as in the wrong, it could spell higher prices and less choices for consumers with Epson printers. Nevertheless, if the final ruling (set for July 30th) follows the same path as this one, a "general exclusion order on the cartridges" would be enforced, barring any future imports of the presumably lower-cost alternatives into the States. It looks we're almost down to two choices when it comes to printing: break the law, or break the bank?

[Via TGDaily]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Mossberg Tells PC Makers To Cut The Craplets (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
Anyone who has bought a new PC in recent years knows all about the rigmarole associated with getting them going once they've been taken out of the box. In addition to all of the preferences, the user is faced with an onslaught of what are basically software ads in the form of trial services. Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, who has certainly seen more than his fair share of computers over the years, was nevertheless struck by how ridiculous things have gotten, after experiencing the joys of setting up a new Sony Vaio laptop. In addition to two dozen pieces of teaser software for services from Napster and AOL, the computer came pre-loaded with four feature-length movies from Sony Pictures. Of course the movies, which were taking up valuable space on the hard drive, couldn't be viewed without first paying Sony. The problem, as Mossberg correctly identifies, is that computer manufacturers act as if the computer doesn't belong to the user, but is instead some platform for them to pitch services. It could be argued that all of these pitches help subsidize the cost of the computer, or at least help defray the growing Windows tax (the fact that as hardware prices continue to drop, the portion of a computer's price that goes to paying for Windows goes up). But it's not surprising, then, that consumers are increasingly interested in alternatives, like desktop Linux, as a way of avoiding the whole mess.

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