Build Date: Tue Dec 16 12:10:07 2025 UTC
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Mencken
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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