Opinions
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- Written by Douglas Eadline
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Does a real instant password cracking quantum computer exist, or are we just at the beginning of the next revolution in computing?
(Note: The first half of this article was published last year at Linux-mag.com, however the second half was never published. Both parts have been updated and are presented below.)
Recent news by IBM describes very good progress toward the creation of real quantum computer. The work helped solve the stability problem associated with many quantum computer designs. There have been other quantum computer announcements over the last year. In May of 2011 a press release by DWave Systems proclaimed D-Wave Systems sells its first Quantum Computing System to Lockheed Martin Corporation. The press release created a bit of a stir in the quantum computing world and as with any new technology there is often some confusing (some deliberate) around actual milestones and press releases.
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- Written by Douglas Eadline
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From the "secret sauce that tastes bad" department
Many Linux/Unix programmers are not aware that a battle over Bash scripts is currently raging in a Kansas courtroom. A Linux cluster vendor, Atipa Technologies is claiming all the Bash scripts they shipped to customers contain trade secrets and were stolen by former employees. Should this issue be decided in Atipa's favor, the fundamental idea of shared and open software could be blanketed by the simple claim of trade secrets.
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- Written by Erik Troan
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Editors Note: This article is part two in a two-part series, published under Creative Commons License. For those that may not know, Erik Troan is one of the original authors of RPM (Red Hat Package Manager). As Erik describes, it seems the declarative approach may extend beyond programming languages and into better system management.
I've made a couple of posts recently about Why Scripting is Evil. It has generated some conversation about what a script is and what the alternatives are. One commentator must have anticipated this follow-up post when he said:
"So, somewhere in the process, a script is a necessary object, whether it is explicit (written by the user) or inherent (created through abstraction and based on the user's description of desired outcome)".
In short, the only way to do away with scripting is to create an application that abstracts the scripting process. Automated scripting would then be based on user descriptions of the desired outcome/goal rather than having the user describe the steps to reach said goal.
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- Written by Erik Troan
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Editors Note: This article is part one in a two-part series, published under Creative Commons License. For those that may not know, Erik Troan is one of the original authors of RPM (Red Hat Package Manager). As every HPC administrator knows writing scripts is part of the job. Erik offers some insights as to why this can lead to unexpected problems.
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.
Okay, an old joke, but I'm clearly the first kind of person. I try and split everything into two buckets. System automation solutions lend themselves to this two-sizes-fits-all mantra, with the approaches splitting between scripting solutions and model-based approaches.
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- Written by Douglas Eadline
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What you may not know can cost you
The commodity cluster has changed the High Performance Computing (HPC) landscape in a significant way. Indeed, clusters have had a disruptive influence on many sectors of the IT market in addition to HPC. As with most disruptive technologies, clusters hit the market with a the promise of "faster, better, cheaper" computing. Marketing numbers from IDC, seem to support the perception that clusters are delivering on their promise. A deeper look, however, reveals that in reality some of the "cheaper" promise is due to shifting certain costs from the traditional HPC vendor to the customer.
