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Submission + - Harvard/MIT Student Creates GPU Database, Hacker-Style

IamIanB writes: Harvard Middle Eastern Studies student Todd Mostak's first tangle with big data didn't go well; trying to process and map 40 million geolocated tweets from the Arab Spring uprising took days. So while taking a database course across town at MIT, he developed a massively parallel database that uses GeForce Titan GPUs to do the data processing. The system sees 70x performance increases over CPU-based systems, and can out crunch a 1000 node MapReduce cluster, in some cases. All for around $5,000 worth of hardware.

Mostak plans to release the system under an open source license; you can play with a data set of 125 million tweets hosted at Harvard's WorldMap and see the millisecond response time.

Comment Store your backups underground. (Score 1) 386

What medium are your offsite backups stored on? And where? In addition to a colo data center on our campus, my organization contracts with Iron Mountain for full offsite backups, which we dump to tape and send to their facility. Depending on your location in the US (or anywhere in the world really), many of their storage facilities are converted missile silos and bunkers - climate-controlled, and far enough underground to potentially survive nuclear and Carrington events alike. There are many other companies that provide the same services too. Depending on how much you store and how frequently you need to send it/retrieve it, the price of service can vary, but if you're that paranoid, it's worth a look.

Then again, if you're storing on an optical medium, none of this will matter except for the climate-control - optical media can't be degaussed.

Comment It all comes down to experience. (Score 1) 504

As an IT manager, degrees are all well and good, but what the potential employee has accomplished and understands is most important to me when hiring. A prospect with a BA, code examples, and a good understanding of the real world will get the job 9 times out 10 over a green CS grad. Being self-taught goes a long way too, as it demonstrates that they're capable of growth of their own accord. I also tend to favor certifications over (bachelor) degrees, as I've learned from experience that you get way more out of a Red Hat cert than you do from a couple Linux classes at a state university.

Comment My blind friend (Score 4, Interesting) 60

uses an older flip phone with an old-fashioned dialing pad. He texts by sound and feel, and faster than I can on my keyboard-less smartphone. Oh, and he paid $100 less for his phone and $20 less per month thanks to the fact that he doesn't NEED an iPhone or a data plan. While I feel like the research might have its heart in the right place, a much simpler solution appears to already exist.

Comment Re:This is getting out of hand (Score 1) 533

Even if you do this, you're still left with the parent's predicament - putting devices in a DMZ or seperate VLAN doesn't make them any more secure, or any easier to manage. What if these users want to use the company's apps? How will you make sure they're using secure passwords? How can you distribute software to these devices? Of course there are fixes for a lot of these types of problems, but you're left managing solutions separate and independent of your company's central infrastructure which is time consuming and a pain in the balls. Want to push apps with your BES? Sorry, your iPads need the App Store, your Android needs the Marketplace – gonna need corporate accounts for each. How about enforcing policy? Sure, there are apps out there that let you manage Androids, but if you want a BES equivilant, nothing even comes close in functionality, and some utilities require rooting the devices – then you’re left with managing a service independent of your BES while doing your own tech support on the phone because you voided the warranty.

Thankfully I don’t have to manage mobile devices in my current environment (yet), but having Macs in our 2008 AD environment is a headache – running (a now neutered) Open Directory environment in parallel, can't use our imaging solution for system deployment, no app deployment through SMS, no accidental damage warranty for laptops, no unified AV management platform, the inability to use hardware manufacturer’s bootable diagnostic tools – I could keep going, but the horse is already pile of red mush. If we ever start using iPads in the production environment, kill me.

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