Slashdot Log In
CERN, the Big Bang and Impact On the IT Industry
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Sep 11, 2008 08:28 AM
from the these-are-a-few-of-my-favorite-things dept.
from the these-are-a-few-of-my-favorite-things dept.
whencanistop writes "ComputerWeekly have put together a nice short guide (with lots of links) of what is going on at CERN. They've got a nice slant though on what this big bang experiment is going to mean for the IT Industry. Interesting slant on the world's largest grid and the database clustering technology that they are using. They have also picked up on the amusing rap video by CERN's scientists that has been wandering around YouTube."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
We need more evil scientists (Score:5, Funny)
Mad scientists are way too nice and sweet-natured these days. We need more evil geniuses [today.com]. Who'll do things like run the Large Hardon Collider on Vista [today.com].
(Okay, that's too evil. They can run it on Google Chrome.)
Best source for evil scientist news (Score:5, Informative)
Botanist sues to stop CERN hurling Earth into parallel universe [theregister.co.uk]
Boffinry bitchslap brouhaha: Higgs and Hawking head to head [theregister.co.uk].
...and they also answer important questions, like So, what's the velocity of a sheep in a vacuum? Plus, the size of Wales in cubic furlongs [theregister.co.uk]
...anyway, getting back on topic, they also tell us, in Today is not Hadron Collider Day [theregister.co.uk],
"Only a year or more from now will the colliding protons be disintegrated with sufficient violence to produce the various treats we have been promised. Strangely perhaps, by then it seems a racing cert that the broadcasters will all have gone home, and the scribblers will mostly have ceased to file copy. Once the insane laughs begin to truly ring out in the LHC's underground caverns, once the mad scientists wipe the foam from their lips, roll up their sleeves, lock and load their outrageous particle guns and really start to show what they can do, the chances are that nobody will be watching.
"But there will be at least one exception. The Reg hereby pledges to stay on the story, bringing you all the humonguous subterranean cavern magno-doughnut beam cannon news hot off the wires - perhaps with a garnish of hysterical rip-in-the-very-fabric-of-spacetime dimension portal angle here and there. As long as there's a universe to report from, we will continue to follow the Quest for the Big Answers (TM)"
Parent
Re:Best source for evil scientist news (Score:4, Funny)
Im curious what its like to have to walk around with balls that huge everyday.
Parent
Re:We need more evil scientists (Score:5, Funny)
Do you want to destroy the world?
-ACCEPT- -DENY-
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Mad scientists are way too nice and sweet-natured these days. We need more evil geniuses [today.com]. Who'll do things like run the Large Hardon Collider on Vista [today.com].
Is that why the world hasn't ended yet? Is the LHC still waiting for someone to click "Unblock"?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to deal with morons trying to run big business critical databases on Windows on almost daily basis and the OS is so badly unsuited for the task that there should be a bounty on those who sold them the solution.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
man, can we ever escape the microsoft bash? it's stale. really stale. i guess it sucks not to have an imagination.
I'm with ya, AC. Most of the MS jokes are lame indeed, but unfortunately that nonsense is here to stay because there are far too many people here who get a huge hadron when they bash MS.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between "great comedy material" and repeating the same damn joke 18,000 times a day. Of course since this site is populated by nerds, the social skills needed to understand that are lacking.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Yes, because stereotyping a whole website's pool of users is 100% accurate. Asshole, I happen to have a sense of humor, cleanse regularly, and hell I even go outside and do things with non-nerds!
Re:We need more evil scientists (Score:5, Funny)
Traitor!
Parent
Re:We need more evil scientists (Score:5, Funny)
My large hardon collider [today.com] pushes large, energised hardons through a ring repeatedly, faster and faster, as smoothly and tightly as possible, until they clash and spray matter in all directions.
... What?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Terrabytes (Score:5, Funny)
a massive Linux-based storage system supplying many terrabytes of disk storage
Clearly the effect of being buried 100m underground.
geek viagra (Score:5, Funny)
10 Gigabit Wan
I'll be in my bunk
Re: (Score:2)
Are we gunna explode? I don't want to explode.
Excellent rap! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"Maybe we should do more science education like this."
No, we should not.
Re:Excellent rap! (Score:5, Funny)
I would almost risk having them hate science, as long as they also can't stand rap music.
Parent
If CERN fails (Score:4, Funny)
Please please! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Apparently it was originally "goddammned particle" but someone edited a manuscript...).
Andy
Parent
Re:If CERN fails (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The Glasgow Subway [wikipedia.org] runs in a big circle, so it's not without precedent.
It would be cool if they could re-use the electromagnets to drive the trains.
Re: (Score:2)
My favorite tidbit about the Glasgow Subway is that they apparently have to occasionally flip the trains around, because the wheels on the "inner" side of the train wear down much faster than the ones on the outside.
Re: (Score:2)
Good way to bring US Election politics completely the fuck out to left field. Go away.
LHC webcam (Score:5, Funny)
Bigger Computing Grid At SETI (Score:2)
Granted, Cern claims that it processing its information at 1Gbps, I wonder how that stacks up against SETI
Re: (Score:2)
What have they ever done (Score:2)
What has CERN ever done for the IT industry? [hitmill.com]
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidently offtopic, the LHC is down at the moment and has been all day. Apparently its something about a lost patrol.
Parent
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Insightful)
And sysadminning for scientists is a goddamn nightmare. I'd just like you to imagine expert Fortran programmers who can't actually work a computer. And are way smarter than you in every way except ones that involve communicating with humans.
Parent
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, when a sysadmin complains about someone else being bad at communicating with humans, that's saying something.
Parent
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Informative)
I concur...where I work our 5 man unix team supports about 400 engineers of various types (mechanical, electrical, computer scientists, aerospace, etc.) and they are a needy little bunch.
never want to follow the processes, always want it now, refuse to let us do any IT analysis of their computing needs, refuse to use the ticketing system.
Frustrating to say the least.
Another place I worked one of the VMS computer operators told me a story where she was fixing a problem for a scientist and paused for a few seconds to review what she was doing in her mind before typing in a command..the scientist looked her in the eye and told her "you just wasted 13 seconds of my time." Her response was she would have wasted his entire day if her command had taken down the cluster...
Parent
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Interesting)
He's right, its almost impossible to get physicists to do what you want and by god if it goes down theres hell to pay, even if it *them* who brought it down doing something the admins told them not to. Admins cant really lock anything down and if they try to its circumvented and/or bitterly complained about. Plus they have to allow the user to run whatever programs they want as they mainly use (very poorly written) custom code. It all boils down to physicists being obsessed about their research to the point that getting it done is the *most important* thing and all else pales into significance.
Again I mention that I'm physicist and I know I'm guilty of this, I've taken down the UK particle physics cluter farm (the tier 1 in grid speak) but these days I usually buy them a beer afterwards to make up for it.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There are approximately 15 admins in the world who actually do their job the way it should be done.
I didn't know we employed the whole world supply of competent admins here!
Here's why admins get stroppy. Explaining to the Vice Chancellor (or CEO) why the main website went down for 2 days is never easy, and when the explanation comes down to some lowly physics grad student wanting things done without heed for consequences, the experience is excruciating. Hence admins tend to prefer very strongly to keep things working that are currently working, and they dislike that most users have absolutely no idea wha
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently its something about a lost patrol.
Maybe the ninjas have infiltrated.
Back on topic, the job of a sysadmin is never easy. There's a very little difference between developers and scientists, the big being that developers tend to know what they're doing so that they don't create small fuck ups, but since they know what they're doing, they end up creating big ones when it does happen. Developers are equally as demanding resource-wise, especially doing database development.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Er, yes there is - goddamn gigafirehoses of data coming out the damn thing and all needing to be saved for later scrutiny.
Re: (Score:2)
But how exactly does this impact the IT industry? My company will need to upgrade its backup systems soon. This does not translate into new technology for IT as a whole. CERN = my company * 10^9, but are new technologies coming out of this?
Re:What it means to IT. (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll certainly result in new technologies for dealing with this stuff becoming cheaper. It's the people who have to do goddamn ridiculous things this year and have billions lying around to do so who push things forward for us cheapskates.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
That is fine. But when I read an article about what CERN will do for IT, I expect there to be some specific improvements. Not simply "well, it has some really big challenges, so I suppose something will come as a result".
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that's pretty much their answer when people ask what the heck's the practical use of spending billions to smash protons together ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Ya know what? I can accept that. We know that this is theoretical physics. Who would have guessed that understanding the atom would have resulted in the type of electronics breakthroughs that we take for granted today? I don't know what will come out of understanding particle physics, but I would bet a lot of money that we will see some serious breakthroughs in 30 or 40 years that will make it worthwhile.
Now, IT isn't theoretical. If there is an article written about how IT will change because of this, then
Re:What it means to IT. (Score:4, Funny)
You'll destroy the world of IT journalism with an attitude like that!
cnet.com: "Nothing happened today." ... no, we don't care either."
zdnet.com: "Nope, nothing here either."
networkweek: "It's Patch Tuesday
theregister.co.uk: "Tits! Beer! Football!"
Parent
Ahem (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
I really don't get the "I'm to cool to RTFA" thing myself, I find willful ignorance kinda undesirable.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The physical properties they will prove, disprove or discover will undoubtedly find practical applications. How about being able to communicate at speeds that don't decrease rapidly with the density of the medium, like light through fiber does? Or perhaps being able to tap vacuum for power? Or the holy grail of being able to reliably create mass from energy? Or things we haven't even thought of?
Whatever they come up with, I'm sure that the repercussions for all industries, and perhaps especially the IT
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It is so that people with too puny a mind to understand the subject can comment on the spelling rather than the subject matter.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The scientific advances from the LHC won't be coming for another few years. The IT impacts are happening now. I'm sure we'll get a new news blitz when the LHC starts to actually collide particles at high energies (when it breaks Fermi Labs records in a year or so) and then yet another when the first import preliminary results come in (preliminary because it will take another year after that to accumulate the statistics for definite results).
The LHC has been in construction for what, 15 years now? It is a
Re:am i the only one angry... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I am a mathematician and not a scientist. So much science is high priced sensationalist bullcrap....
Silly question: If you're NOT a scientist, how can you tell it's high-priced sensationalist bullcrap, especially the more esoteric work?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is a silly question. Except for the extreme amount of indirection taking place, it's akin to a mugger holding a gun to your head and shouting, "give me $200, it's essential!" When you deny the request they respond that, since you're not an [insert random title here], you wouldn't understand - then take it anyway.
If you don't like taxes, move to a country where there aren't any.
1. I think we're all agreed that it's high priced, yes?
Absolutely not. Where do you get your metric from?
2. Sensationalism in the everyday sense - remembering that my OP was motivated by a bloody rap video
No, your OP provided a link to a rap video. It's an amusing and educational video. No-one is suggesting that video is worth billions of dollars.
- comes from the fact that they built the biggest, most expensive structure evar, made no big deal about it until soon before launch, and are now milking the press time.
What a load of crap. The papers picked up a story about the end of the world, which is what sells newspapers, and suddenly the LHC is in the news. The reason it's caught the imagination is nothing to do with CERN's publicity or lack thereof.
In the philosophical sense, the whole thing is sensationalist by putting so much emphasis on experiencing xome aspect of the sub-microscopic world to derive knowledge about it.
You're a ma
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
CERN has nothing to do with the EU, except insofar as it is partially in it, and shares some of the same member states.