Linux.com

I think with so many schools making an intoduction to computer science a general education requirement, that being able to arrange a small cluster, with memory, data base, back-up, fire wall and the use of office administration software, will be simmilar to learning to type or do simple bookeeping, filing and secretarial skills. This site should have what may become a rather lengthy index of projects that address applications such as classroom software, office addministration, open hardware, cluster building. I'm not going to be remiss about sugjesting projects that are underway or that I haven't reasearched, since this type of inquirey will continue as first time users seek answeres to questions. Therefor, methods should be formed to guide or deal with this type of use. I think a cluster building and benchmarking forum comparible to overclocking sites could be usefull. It should have a competition like the robot wars on TV were different hardware and software configurations are benchmarked. No one should be excluded having a 1-10 cluster catagory and increments larger 10-100, 1000,10000, open competition. The forum should have an index to cluster applications. When a cluster is benchmarked a person should be able to compeat against other clusters with the top contenders going heads up. A magazine mentioned that Europe uses P2P for 75% of web trafic. Perhaps the P2P users mite be willing to set aside 1% of there availability to compeat with the top cluster contenter. The top cluster would under go load tests and a variaty of popular atacks. The top three or so clusters could be alowed maybe with a prize atached to see if anyone can hack the system. By having real world demonstrations, bugs a fixes would be discovered. As people access links to applications a competition mite peak there interest to find out whats under the hood. A teacher using curriculem mite decide that its not to difficult to configure an automated assignment distribution and collection system like cute trail or program development software. The competitions could acumulate documentation for a variety of systems and applications.

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