The text on this post sounds like it came straight out of QTopia, and damn if it didn't trigger every sovereign nation libertard on the site. Spend 2 seconds looking before approving next time?

Can we not post links to paywalled content?

You know what I miss? I miss being able to type text input as fast as my hands could go, without an hourglass or hanging pause. And it's not like I type any faster now than I did on a C64.

Admittedly, my experience is a few years out of date, but it used to be that the immediate answer to this question was Scyld, the direct descendant of the original "Beowulf" cluster created at Goddard Space Flight Center by Donald Becker. We used it for 3d rendering and video processing and it was really slick, and being based on RHEL it was easy to get people who knew how to work on it/software updates/support in forums, etc.

I've only seen one comment in support of Scyld here, has it fallen out of favor for some reason?

And, because it's in Java in a browser, it's running choppy on my 4 core i7 with 12gb of ram. Kudos, you've made a pdp game bloated and unplayable.

I'm really thinking that this article is leaving some very important details out... It's really strange that a money-making data center would have physical space as it's primary limiting factor. Things like power, cooling, network, etc are usually far more important than square feet of tile, especially when anyone with an experience in data centers isn't going to put it in a high-value real estate market, it's going to be out in some industrial/commercial zone in the burbs where land/power/water are cheaper. It's not like the developers sending programs/renders to the cluster need to be anywhere near it physically.

I'm guessing these folks are addressing some sort of unique problem that they have to solve this way, and they don't bother to explain that to us in the article.

What are you talking about? Many corporations now use internal webmail systems, and web front ends to things like Outlook, ticketing systems, inventory, etc, plus web-based document storage.

Hell, I bet your bank runs a web front end to the tellers and managers.

Just because something is web based doesn't mean it's sitting outside of your control.

Sure you can, so long as they don't conflict with the previous licenses.

Dude. I tried to mod you funny and I fat-fingered you to overrated. So I'm replying to hopefully un-mod you. My apologies.

This needs to get modded up. If you don't have a degree, you can't get past the filter system that HR puts in front of managers at most corporations. HR doesn't care/know if you can do the job, they just have a list of checkboxes that need to be filled before they pass the resume to anyone hiring, and a degree is almost always on that list of checkboxes.

But if you KNOW the managers, or someone who works with them, you can get your resume past the HR filter. Also, if someone the manager trusts 'vouches' for you, it gives them some comfort that they don't get from someone coming in from outside. In this case, a degree isn't important if you can do the job.

A great way to get known is to work in phone support in smaller companies that do support in-house (a call center won't do), where you'll meet the ops/dev staff in the halls, and usually don't need a degree. If you work hard at improving the processes in place, and do it well, it will get noticed. The NOC is also a good place, since they're often desperate for staff that will work midnight on Saturday, and you'll have access to learn a lot about operations functions that outside hires with degrees can't match.

The bottom line is that a degree is a checkbox on a form to an HR manager, while an operations manager wants someone who can do the work. If you can get past the first, you can get a really well paying job with the second if they know you can do what they need.