Build Date: Mon Mar 10 03:50:40 2025 UTC
I never thought Freedom was cheap
-- Ralph "Sonny" Barger
German Linux Users Plan dada Beowulf Insane-a-thon
1998-11-19 00:00:00
Man, I love German Linux users! They are sweaty, lolling-tongued madmen! Here in America, Linux advocates are busy doing boring crap like trying to get The Man to accept Linux. Meanwhile, the Germans are doing shit-crazy things like building the world's largest computer cluster on national TV!
On December 5th and 6th, from 11:30 to 6AM, German Linux users' groups across the country will be trying to assemble the world's largest Beowulf cluster. For non-techies, computer clusters are groups of computers that have been tied together with software to act as one machine. It's kind of like the Borg on Star Trek -- many computers, one Computer Hive Mind.
Anyways, the insane Germans -- all volunteers -- are gonna join more than 500 Linux computers in unholy union. They've got less than 7 hours to do it. And those are 7 of the most insane hours of the night, too!
Who knows what will happen? Maybe they will fail. Maybe they will succeed, play a quick game of Nethack, and call it a night. Or maybe, just maybe, all that distributed computing power will spontaneously bloom into a consciousness that will infest the Internet and take us all to THE NEXT LEVEL!!! OK, probably not, but it _could_ happen.
The completely crazy part is that they're going to be covered live on German national TV! Admittedly, that's not exactly prime time -- they're just competing with the farm report and the late late late late movie. But still! Live coverage of hacking exploits!
I have no idea what happens to German Linux fanatics if they try a hubris-filled dare-devil stunt like this and FAIL. Maybe one of the other LUG officers leaves a loaded Amiga on their desk as a subtle indication that they should do the honorable thing.
Anyhoo, one thing's for certain: the eyes of the world look to German Linux users to provide insane Linux antics at impossible speeds. Check out this link if you speak German, eh?
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