CERN, the Big Bang and Impact On the IT Industry 169
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."
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)"
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I love The Register. My favorite part...
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Much higher energy collisions are taking place in the upper atmosphere all the time. If they were going to create a black hole we would already be gonners.
This is all the fault of the CERN spinmeisters talking about recreating the Big Bang. But then again I guess you need spin to get the money to do that type of experiment.
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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.
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Re:We need more evil scientists (Score:5, Funny)
Do you want to destroy the world?
-ACCEPT- -DENY-
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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"?
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Nah, a bully on the way down is always great comedy material. Gimme some for Apple and I'll see what I can do.
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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.
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Are you saying Linux w33n0rs smell faintly of cat piss and have a nerdy, braying laugh?
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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!
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Quick! Call the Emergency Response Squad! [xkcd.com]
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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.
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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.
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It's is not a MS joke, it is a Vista-one. There is a difference and there is nothing wrong with bashing Vista.
I could post my own horror-stories about Vista, but I guess most people who touched Vista will have enough of their own. And you will not hear me bash XP. XP wasn't perfect, it still isn't perfect, it wasn't safe, it still isn't safe and never will be really safe, but it is and has been good enough for me not to bash XP or MS.
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Sucka MC. My Zune Hadron weighs a ton!
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?
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I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will surely go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, that will be all fixed with $NEXT_VERSION. And theyâ(TM)ll finally be ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF. Also there will be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. Itâ(TM)ll be awesome!
I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.
Sys Admin at CERN (Score:1)
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.
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.
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.
Re:Sys Admin at CERN (Score:5, Interesting)
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And geologists are worse. Never sysadmin at an oil company.
(Mind you, they do spend money on decent kit.)
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I take the specs from the customer to the programmers! I HAVE PEOPLE SKILLS!
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You poor, poor bastard!
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...
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.
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Worst bit is they're generally really nice and sweet-natured mad scientists so it's not even deliberate. Like toddlers who know calculus.
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The admins at scientific labs like CERN are basically doing a heroic job despite the best efforts of their users to be as awkward as possible.
I'd disagree with that. Many physicists are simply trying to run their code and are generally ignorant of the inner workings of their computers, mainly because they are not interested, not from lack of ability.
I've taken down the UK particle physics cluter farm (the tier 1 in grid speak)
Reminds me of the time as a grad student when I "took over" the old CSF cluster at RAL and blocked out all the LEP experiments for a weekend. They weren't too pleased about that...although I seem to remember that they were more interested in how I'd done it. I can hardly be blamed if their batch que
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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
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In particular, if you think it's significantly harder to admin 100 desktops instead of 10 desktops then you're not competent.
The big problem with large-scale desktop admin is that vendors won't supply you matched hardware, even if you have a contract that says they have to. (Dell, I'm looking at you!) That makes constructing the shared desktop images much harder than it ought to be. (I believe we're in the ten to twenty thousand range for installations there, so don't claim we don't know about scaling up; that stuff works.) But it's not that awful otherwise as you can give everyone the same thing and put the user-level difference
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Disclaimer: I may work for a company who already built some of the clusters at CERN...
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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.
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"and I wouldnt want to be my sys admin ;)"
I'm sure the feeling is mutual.
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Apparently its something about a lost patrol.
They're not lost. They're just superheroes now and you don't recognize them due to their colorful skin-tight outfits.
Terrabytes (Score:5, Funny)
a massive Linux-based storage system supplying many terrabytes of disk storage
Clearly the effect of being buried 100m underground.
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Not that surprising, given that in the long run it's only temporary. Once that data has been distributed, had multiple redundant backups made and cataloged, it will be wiped.
It is very much a way station - just because data will initially get dumped there doesn't mean it's going to live there very long.
Im also sceptical and feel that the use of terabytes is largely to keep the article(s) understandable to non geeks, and that the actual storage capacity is probably in the PB range anyway.
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geek viagra (Score:5, Funny)
10 Gigabit Wan
I'll be in my bunk
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Are we gunna explode? I don't want to explode.
Excellent rap! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Is that like the Funky [youtube.com] Gibbon? [wikipedia.org]
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"Maybe we should do more science education like this."
No, we should not.
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The video is too funny - and very well done. Send a link to your kids and they'll finally understand what CERN and LHC do.
I got a kick out of it myself.
Maybe we should do more science education like this.
My first thought, well one of the first thoughts, was that music videos like the Large Hadron Rap could encourage youngsters to go into science. But the videos would have to come fast and furiously. Otherwise they would get bored.
Falcon
Re:Excellent rap! (Score:5, Funny)
I would almost risk having them hate science, as long as they also can't stand rap music.
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I would almost risk having them hate science, as long as they also can't stand rap music.
Have videos set with country, rock, or other genres of music.
Falcon
What it means to IT. (Score:1, Flamebait)
Here's the short, short version: NOTHING.
Yes, there are lots of computers in use, but is there anything particularly unusual going on here or an brand new way of organizing IT? No? OK, then.
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Er, yes there is - goddamn gigafirehoses of data coming out the damn thing and all needing to be saved for later scrutiny.
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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.
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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".
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Well, that's pretty much their answer when people ask what the heck's the practical use of spending billions to smash protons together ;-)
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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!"
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Sadly, 30 years of string theory hasn't even yeilded any partical physics. Sometimes theoretical physics is a total waste. Still, the LHC is cool - *experimental* physics, unlike theoretical physics, is sure to teach us something. Heck, it might even teach us somethig about IT, though I share your skepticism.
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.
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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
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Just a reminder, the scientists at CERN needed a good way to share information, and the Web was the result.
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/About/Web-en.html [web.cern.ch]
Who knows what spin-offs might come from the LHC?
If CERN fails (Score:4, Funny)
Please please! (Score:5, Interesting)
(Apparently it was originally "goddammned particle" but someone edited a manuscript...).
Andy
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Calling it the "god particle" makes a mockery of religion, and so is completely compatible with atheism.
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And why not?
If this particle is so crucile, why not give it a name that makes it sound as important as it is? Doesn't it, on the flip side, give insight into the begginings of time, making it closer to the term "god" that you only seem to know.
Re:If CERN fails (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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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.
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Good way to bring US Election politics completely the fuck out to left field. Go away.
LHC webcam (Score:5, Funny)
You'd think the Scientific angle... (Score:1)
would be more newsworthy, Especially considering that this experiment will either A. Destroy the world, B. prove the Higgs Boson and other crazy particulate theory, C. prove(disprove) the existence of....GOD D. all of the above
Who cares about the IT angle when I could walk away from this experiment saying "See, I TOLD YOU, God doesn't exist, the Higgs Boson is your new God" ..........and then create a new religion and be rich, RICH I TELLS YA!
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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
The Black Hole and Big Bang (Score:1)
The other day, someone was watching a movie on his iPod Touch and walking on the road. He didn't see the black hole in front of him, and fell down. He got a glimpse of what the Big Bang was about [beewulf.com]!
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
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Impact... (Score:1)
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It means nothing for IT (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:2)
| sed -e 's/data/p0rn/' -e 's/scientists/Slashdotters/'
Fixed it for you. Now it makes more sense.
Hmmmm (Score:1, Interesting)
So they want to recreate "The Big Bang".
I have no doubts that they will learn something from this study (they'd better considering the price of this thing!)
BUT it seems foolish to promote this study around the concept of the Big Bang when that is a HIGHLY contested theory that is statistically and conceptually almost impossible to have occurred and resulted in our current society at total random chance.
Why don't they instead promote the study around many of the other important things they have the potential
Storage Tank (Score:2)
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It is so that people with too puny a mind to understand the subject can comment on the spelling rather than the subject matter.
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A suggestion ... (Score:1, Redundant)
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?
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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
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CERN has nothing to do with the EU, except insofar as it is partially in it, and shares some of the same member states.
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Together they cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race can not afford this, then it doesn't deserve the epithet 'human'.
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And before I hear a "oh oh oh but the web was invented at CERN", what is your point? (1) The invention had nothing to do with CERN itself; (2) the majority of ingredients already existed in not quite the same form
The invention had everything to do with CERN. Nowhere else had a group of people scattered halfway around the world with a need for extremely detailed and precise communications and a small enough travel budget that they could not always just fly out and meet whenever they wanted. Of course now there are lots of such groups now but that is because of the web.
This is why I am a mathematician and not a scientist.
I would certainly agree with the last half of your statement. However mathematics is one of the sciences.