Friday, November 22, 2002

NAVOCEANO uses Open Source software to predict “ocean weather” Enterprise Linux Forum Conference. Hey, cool beans! My friend Chris Maresca is giving a talk at the Enterprise Linux Forum in a couple weeks in Boston. If you're into Linux and in Boston, you should definitely check it out. It looks good and Chris' talk should be really interesting: High-Performance End-to-End Computing Using Linux This presentation addresses the use of Open Source software at the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO), which is charged with the study and forecast of “ocean weather” (e.g. sea surface and below) for the U.S. Navy. NAVOCEANO is an intensive user of high-end computing power, with a one petabyte (1000 terabytes) data warehouse, three world-class supercomputers on-site and a large number of field data collection systems, some of which collect 300Gb of data per run. All of the collected and historical data is processed, often in real-time, to produce summary and forecast data used by the US Navy and other government agencies. Field collection platforms and other data processing systems that have recently been moved to a Linux software platform have seen dramatic cost savings of up to 90%. In this talk, Olliance, a strategic consultancy working with the Navy, describes why Open Source was chosen, how it is used, its benefits and ROI estimates, as well as development and operational advantages. The speaker will present recommendations for the use of Open Source in high-performance environments and generalize the findings for a business audience. Chris is a smart guy who knows what he's talking about. Check it out if you can. -Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook] Too bad I'm not in Boston. 1 Pb ! I love this war stories about huge systems. 11:34:26 AM Google It!      comment []

The Great American Debt Today 2 posts about credit cards: James Duncan Davidson explains how credit cards push him to use more credit in Paranoia and Creditors, and Russell Beattie explains how his credit card company Screwed him after his number was stolen. During the 3 years we spent in the US I discovered the concept of a credit card. What we have in Europe is a single card that's both debit and credit, but acts more like a debit card: the credit is for one month and at the end of the month it is automatically debited from you account. What was strange is that when I went to see my Bank in Mountain View for the first time, to get a credit card, I brough them my European salary receipts, and a letter from my banker indicating that I had never been in debt. but in the same paradox that James describes, this was considered bad for my credit rating: what they like is people who borrow a lot and reimburse a lot regularly. I had never borrowed anything, so I was not a very good candidate. I finally got a Visa Gold card and never left any balance on it. But I did not receive that kind of stupid marketing yet... or maybe I did: I put these letters in the dustbin without reading them :-) 10:58:13 AM Google It!      comment []

Problem in Roller RSS feeds is going to be solved ! Everything old is new again.. No, it's not just you Darren.  I use Aggie and I have noticed that posts from Roller-based blogs often show up as new when they are in fact old.  Others have reported similar problems with FeedReader and now you are seeing this problem with Radio's aggregator.  I'm hoping that by fixing the following two bugs will resolve this problem: ROL-107: RssServlet should obey the if-modified-since header ROL-113: RssServlet should use last-modification time rather than generation time  BTW, Darren, what is up with Radio!?! I tried to use the permalink to your http://radio.weblogs.com/0111784/2002/11/20.html but I got a 404 error. [Blogging Roller] Yes, I have this problem in Radio. I sent a mail to Cedric Beust about this recently. I'm glad that they're going to fix it ! 10:42:55 AM Google It!      comment []

software that impose a server tax limit the web Advertisers Can Be Such Nitwits. This just found in a database symposium advertisement my mailbox: Attendance at this Webcast is FREE! Register today-space is limited! It's a Webcast you morons! How can space be limited? Update: Scott Anguish pointed out that there can be a limited number of web streams available. Guess I was thinking of only physical space when I made this rant. But as much as RealNetworks and others charge for streams I can see the point of limiting availability... But, any webcaster worth their salt should really be looking at something that has no server tax. [James Duncan Davidson] 10:34:01 AM Google It!      comment []