"john czarnuszewicz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> had posted:
 > http://www.scientificamerican.com/2001/0801issue/0801hargrove.html

Thank you for the excellent article URL. Although I have yet to set up a 
Beowulf cluster, I have been hearing about them in some of the computer 
forensics seminars and literature. (One use is cracking passwords of 
locked-out systems. Of course the legality of that depends upon whose 
system it is and the context of password cracking.)

In a way, the building of cheap supercomputers is a blast from the past. 
About 12 years ago, a PC users I was with had a special meeting at 
Princeton Univ. where Prof. Dan Nosenchuck of Princeton explained how he 
clustered PCs (286s, I believe they were) to make a supercomputing cluster 
to handle complex fluid  dynamics modeling. Less costly than Crays. <g> 
(Prof. Nosenchuck, by the way, is an Emmy award winner. It was for the 
special effects in the made-for-TV movie "The Day After." Fluid dynamic 
models in a tank were used for doing the post-nuke blast smoke effects in 
the movie. That was pre-Linux. Now, Linux is moving into move computer 
graphics work. The production of Shrek was done extensively on Linux systems.)



J.D. Abolins
(P.S.: I hope to come to the next HamLUG meeting for a visit.)


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