Flash Mob SuperComputer!
2004-Mar-29, Monday 14:15In or near San Francisco? FlashMob SuperComputer time! And if you join in, you can participate in the biggest lan party ever... Announcement cribbed from elsewhere:
On Saturday, April 3, you are invited to help create the world's first FlashMob supercomputer. A FlashMob supercomputer is created by connecting hundreds of individual computers via a high-speed LAN, to work together as a single supercomputer in just a matter of hours. ( ... details ... )
Sign Up: To register, or for more information regarding this historic event, please visit: http://www.flashmobcomputing.org
FlashMobs of course use a Linux kernel. A FlashMob Supercomputer would not be possible without Linux because each computer must boot the same operating system from a CD-ROM, a FlashMob organizer would be required to license a commercial OS for each computer participating in the FlashMob. This is obviously financially impractical.
Moreover, because the FlashMob software developed at USF is a highly tuned Linux variant with specific improvements in drivers, communication protocols and system services, we could not have developed the system without access to OS source code. Microsoft Windows does not allow this.
Because the FlashMob software we've developed uses open source and Linux, it too will be open source.