Well, sort of. Its morphed, into something not quite open source, with not enough of a community around it to sustain it from a development sense, as the corporate owner goes their own direction. I understand their decision, and I respect it … its their (Oracle’s) IP. I don’t have to like it though. So we are migrating our internal queueing to Torque for the moment. Thinking about Slurm. Basically all of this will be hidden behind some of our tools, but still … we’ve been using SGE since before it was Sun’s (or Grid Engine).

Quick note: Spammers are attempting to abuse the system, so I am implementing some measures to reduce this.

Google your feelings Luke … [ ](http://scalability.org/images/search_your_feelings_Luke.png) The HPC tie in was the significant use of some computing power for rendering by George Lucas and company to provide some of the special effects. Aside from this, I am sure Vader didn’t mean “google your feelings, Luke” …

There is this. The problem is, fundamentally, any program requesting money from the government becomes a political football. So the NSF or NIH programs are open to scrutiny. That part is fine. Pulling lawyer tricks to selectively (mis)quote? Not so fine. Its bad enough when AGW activists incorrectly opine that the science is settled, and make a mockery of those with the temerity to question the “settled” science. Its just as bad when the partisans in government misuse grant information to attack small programs as being wasteful, without a deeper understanding of the context and value of these programs.

Call this, “shooting the messenger”. Call this, pointing out glaring flaws. Call this … well … for what it is … disgusting. It begs the question whether or not this is the US, or the USSR. Don’t anger the government by pointing out the flaws in one of their systems. There’s a series of ironic humor jokes, ones that aren’t that funny, but more ominous, that start out “In Soviet Union, ….

After the last post on Atrato, I am thinking that VC money might be better invested in proven real businesses. Those that have survived a number of years, though hardship and through growth. There is less risk there. Ok, the VC model is fundamentally built upon taking a risk on a company. As the spate of failures in (many) markets shows, rewards are far and few between, while risks aren’t seemingly ameliorated by what the VCs do.

Who, you might ask, is Atrato? A few years ago, they were pushing some sealed units that did “self healing”. That is, you never had to replace hard disks. They had some nice features, some venture money. What they never really got was traction. The concept was interesting, but as with all sealed and extremely proprietary designs, they weren’t able to convert their supposed advantages into sales. This can happen for many reasons.

Sometimes the sales process delves into the ridiculous. This is when the value proposition has failed, and the customer starts asking for bill of materials. Imagine if you will, apart from the ingredients listed on a package of food, you asked the vendor of said food to describe the exact amounts, the source of each (brand, sku or part number, …), the make and model of your oven, the make and model of everything you will use in the preparation of said food.

itssssss freaking cccccoooolllddddd Open the doors, let the outdoor air in. Our heater is running in the lab (large warehouse-like space). Can’t wait to start running the 5 ton AC unit next year. Right now, we have natural AC. Seriously … nice area for many reasons (low costs all around), and with some cleverness in the cooling/heating work, you could significantly reduce overall yearly heating/cooling costs …

See this article. Yes, this deals with a hosting data center, but notice that some of the companies swept up in the sting’s removal of machines, had “cloud” projects of varying types. This gets to risk of hosting or projecting important aspects into the cloud. I am not saying “don’t do it.” On the contrary, I’d say make sure you have a backup of your data and functions in such a way that you can trivially switch between services.