Liudvikas Bukys

Linux cluster [at University of Buffalo] will help research treatment of cancer, AIDS

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The cluster at the Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics at SUNY Buffalo went online in mid-August and is often running at full capacity even though the set-up team is still doing some minor tweaking, says Jeffrey Skolnick, the soon-to-be director of the bioinformatics center.

Most of the computers in the cluster are 1.26 GHz Dell PowerEdge servers, with a few higher-speed Xeons thrown in. Subcontractor Sistina Software is providing cluster file system technology to manage the data traffic among the nodes.

Skolnick can rattle off all kinds of interesting statistics about the cluster. It will enable researchers to predict protein structure and run large-scale computer simulations, and work that would’ve taken 1,000 years on on processor will be done in three to six months on the cluster. “We’re not just trying to collect computers, which is a nice little hobby,” he says. “It enables us to do science we couldn’t do elsewhere.”

And managing these 2,000 machines will be two sysadmins. That’s right, two of them. That’s the beauty of running a cluster instead of a bunch of individual machines, of course, and Linux will help keep the maintenance costs down, Skolnick says. “I’ve got to get the most bang for my research dollar,” he adds.

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Active Directory: prepare to pay more for Windows 2000 management

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Tony Lock, senior analyst at Bloor Research, said the problems faced by users were no surprise as Microsoft still had not addressed the management problems of Active Directory. He said many users were unaware of the tools bundled with the operating system or the third-party software they could buy to simplify management.

Lock said: “The costs associated with the management of an IT infrastructure form the bulk of expenditure and users do need to realise what they’re getting themselves into.”

Lock has a number of recommendations for any company considering adopting Active Directory. First, decide who will manage what aspects of the installation; then decide how to delegate responsibility. Finally, Lock suggested, users should work out a change management policy. All these steps, he noted, should be completed “before taking the [Windows 2000] CD out of the box”.

In a paper on managing the Active Directory analyst firm Giga Information Group recommends businesses use third-party management tools for large installations. “It is absolutely essential that enterprises of 1,000 users or more bolster the capabilities of the embedded Windows 2000 Server Active Directory Management Toolkit (ADMT) with the appropriate management and monitoring tools.”

Giga has identified a number of suppliers specialising in such management tools. These include NetIQ, FastLane Technology, Bind View, Aelita Software, BMC and Full Armor.

In June, Microsoft admitted that Active Directory was hard to manage. It said the next version of its server operating system, Windows .net, would tackle this issue. Stuart Kwan, group programme manager at Microsoft responsible for the Active Directory, said the new release focuses on making the server easier to administer.

Is This Moon Three? [Slashdot]

Vint Cerf’s page on the
Interplanetary Internet

Todd Brabec and Jeff Brabec (ASCAP):
Music and Money: Where the Money Comes From For Writers and Publishers

Microsoft warns of server attacks. ZDNet Sep 5 2002 6:17AM ET [Moreover – Tech latest]

App Dev Trends:
Comparing servlets and EJBs
The Right Java Tool for the Right Job

Paul Graham:
A Plan for Spam:
“I think we will be able to solve the problem with fairly simple algorithms. In fact, I’ve found that you can filter present-day spam acceptably well using nothing more than a Bayesian combination of the spam probabilities of individual words. Using a slightly tweaked (as described below) Bayesian filter, we now miss only 5 per 1000 spams, with 0 false positives.”

IWT Bans RIAA From Accessing Its Network: “Information Wave Technologies has announced it will actively deny the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from accessing the contents of its network. Earlier this year, the RIAA announced its new plan to access computers without owner’s consent for the sake of protecting its assets. Information Wave believes this policy puts its customers at risk of unintentional damage, corporate espionage, and invasion of privacy to say the least.”

Darwin Magazine: Who Should Own What? Q&A with Lawrence Lessig. The reality now is that every new innovation has got to not only fund a development cycle and fund a marketing cycle, it’s got to fund a legal cycle during which you go into court and demonstrate that your new technology should be allowed in the innovative system. [Tomalak’s Realm]