4 ms·

I helped write parallelknoppix when I was an undergrad - our university's 2nd cluster ended up being a bunch of laptops with broken displays running it. Took me

I helped write parallelknoppix when I was an undergrad - our university's 2nd cluster ended up being a bunch of laptops with broken displays running it. Took me a whole summer. Then the next semester I am denied the ability to take a parallel computing class because it was for graduate students only and the prof. would not accept a waiver even though the class was being taught on the cluster me and a buddy built. That I still had root on. So I added a script that would renice the prof.'s jobs to be as slow as possible. BOFH moment :)

lemper 4y ago
i think i've read this kind of reply before. and i was not wrong [1]. nice story to tell. too bad my uni. didn't have that kind of facilities and opportunities. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34197024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34197024
havnagiggle 4y ago
That was nice of you!
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  One might even say that it had a very high nice value;)
throwaway1777 4y ago
Prof might’ve done you a favor. Seems like you didn’t need that class anyway.
- spiritplumber 4y ago
  I wanted the credit hours though :)
sidewndr46 4y ago
The school I went to had similar but more insane policies * I frequently took computer science graduate courses and received only undergrad. credit because they could not offer the undergrad course * Other majors were default prohibited from taking computer science courses under the guise of a shortage of places in classes. Even when those majors required a computer science course to graduate I would like to point out that 300 and 400 level courses in the CS program usually had no more than 8 students. I distinctly remember meeting in a closet for one of my classes, because we had so few students they couldn't justify giving us a classroom. Contrast that with the math department where I wanted to take some courses in parallel rather than serial. After a short conversation with the professor he said "ok sure, seems alright to me".
- bionsystem 4y ago
  Why do you guys think such things happen ?
  - KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
    Academia being inelastic and refusing to adapt in the face of market forces.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    Students aren't the business most universities think they are in.
  - pitterpatter 4y ago
    My guess is they wanted you to pay the higher CS tuition to take the CS classes. Math departments also tend to be a lot more lax in my experience. Case in point: I got sign-off to take a 300-level pure math class without its 300-level prereq. As well as just replace one required course for another to graduate.
- jollyllama 4y ago
  Other majors were default prohibited from taking computer science courses under the guise of a shortage of places in classes. Even when those majors required a computer science course to graduate I went to an institution that did the opposite; seats were reserved for non-cs majors despite a shortage of sections. This resulted in CS undergrads waiting for courses just so they could graduate. It was frustrating because it felt like the department was taking care of outsiders over its own.
  - andrewf 4y ago
    I might be jumping to conclusions, but orgs which value revenue often prioritize new customers over existing (perhaps captive) customers.
- brightball 4y ago
  Part of that is because “average class size” is used in metrics for the university ranking systems and every university out there wants to game those rankings.
anonymousDan 4y ago
Parallel knoppix sounds cool. Did the os's on each machine coordinate in any way at the kernel level? Or was it all user level libs/apps/services?
- mat_epice 4y ago
  Almost certainly user level libraries. Coordinating at the kernel level is either a single system image[1] or a distributed operating system[2], which are very uncommon in scientific computing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_operating_system
- spiritplumber 4y ago
  user level... tbh I'm surprised the whole thing worked at all!
eecc 4y ago
A “Snoop on to them, as they snoop on to us” moment. Good for you
lynx23 4y ago
Abusing admin priviledges like this confirms that it was probably a good idea to deny you access to the course, you were obviously too young.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- archontes 4y ago
  Interesting. It's likely the point of constraining the graduate course to grad students had nothing to do with their maturity. But you see what you think is a sign of immaturity, and turn the constraint into a maturity filter. I'm quite grown, and I wonder about the ownership/control of the cluster and why he didn't simply lock the professor out entirely, contingent on the approval of his waiver. If anything, doing something as small as lowering the priority of his jobs instead of brazenly stonewalling him might be the sign of immaturity.
  - spiritplumber 4y ago
    The computers were mostly the school's, the carpentry was ours (mine and a friend's), the cabling and network switches were ours (scavenged, eventually they bought a nice big switch), the labor was ours. It's not really much of a prank war if you do a small prank and the other guy tries like hell to pretend he didn't notice and also tries like hell to pretend he didn't see you derping around in the building... escalating would have been evil on my part :)
    - archontes 4y ago
      Machiavellian... evil... semantics.

lemper 4y ago

i think i've read this kind of reply before. and i was not wrong [1]. nice story to tell. too bad my uni. didn't have that kind of facilities and opportunities. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34197024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34197024

havnagiggle 4y ago

That was nice of you!

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
One might even say that it had a very high nice value;)

throwaway1777 4y ago

Prof might’ve done you a favor. Seems like you didn’t need that class anyway.

spiritplumber 4y ago
I wanted the credit hours though :)

sidewndr46 4y ago

The school I went to had similar but more insane policies * I frequently took computer science graduate courses and received only undergrad. credit because they could not offer the undergrad course * Other majors were default prohibited from taking computer science courses under the guise of a shortage of places in classes. Even when those majors required a computer science course to graduate I would like to point out that 300 and 400 level courses in the CS program usually had no more than 8 students. I distinctly remember meeting in a closet for one of my classes, because we had so few students they couldn't justify giving us a classroom. Contrast that with the math department where I wanted to take some courses in parallel rather than serial. After a short conversation with the professor he said "ok sure, seems alright to me".

bionsystem 4y ago
Why do you guys think such things happen ?
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
  Academia being inelastic and refusing to adapt in the face of market forces.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Students aren't the business most universities think they are in.
- pitterpatter 4y ago
  My guess is they wanted you to pay the higher CS tuition to take the CS classes. Math departments also tend to be a lot more lax in my experience. Case in point: I got sign-off to take a 300-level pure math class without its 300-level prereq. As well as just replace one required course for another to graduate.
jollyllama 4y ago
Other majors were default prohibited from taking computer science courses under the guise of a shortage of places in classes. Even when those majors required a computer science course to graduate I went to an institution that did the opposite; seats were reserved for non-cs majors despite a shortage of sections. This resulted in CS undergrads waiting for courses just so they could graduate. It was frustrating because it felt like the department was taking care of outsiders over its own.
- andrewf 4y ago
  I might be jumping to conclusions, but orgs which value revenue often prioritize new customers over existing (perhaps captive) customers.
brightball 4y ago
Part of that is because “average class size” is used in metrics for the university ranking systems and every university out there wants to game those rankings.

anonymousDan 4y ago

Parallel knoppix sounds cool. Did the os's on each machine coordinate in any way at the kernel level? Or was it all user level libs/apps/services?

mat_epice 4y ago
Almost certainly user level libraries. Coordinating at the kernel level is either a single system image[1] or a distributed operating system[2], which are very uncommon in scientific computing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_operating_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_operating_system
spiritplumber 4y ago
user level... tbh I'm surprised the whole thing worked at all!

eecc 4y ago

A “Snoop on to them, as they snoop on to us” moment. Good for you

lynx23 4y ago

Abusing admin priviledges like this confirms that it was probably a good idea to deny you access to the course, you were obviously too young.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
archontes 4y ago
Interesting. It's likely the point of constraining the graduate course to grad students had nothing to do with their maturity. But you see what you think is a sign of immaturity, and turn the constraint into a maturity filter. I'm quite grown, and I wonder about the ownership/control of the cluster and why he didn't simply lock the professor out entirely, contingent on the approval of his waiver. If anything, doing something as small as lowering the priority of his jobs instead of brazenly stonewalling him might be the sign of immaturity.
- spiritplumber 4y ago
  The computers were mostly the school's, the carpentry was ours (mine and a friend's), the cabling and network switches were ours (scavenged, eventually they bought a nice big switch), the labor was ours. It's not really much of a prank war if you do a small prank and the other guy tries like hell to pretend he didn't notice and also tries like hell to pretend he didn't see you derping around in the building... escalating would have been evil on my part :)
  - archontes 4y ago
    Machiavellian... evil... semantics.