We present a new twist to the Beowulf cluster — the Bladed Beowulf. In contrast to traditional Beowulfs which typically use Intel or AMD processors, our Bladed Beowulf uses Transmeta processors in order to keep thermal power dissipation low and reliability and density high while still achieving comparable performance to Inteland AMD-based clusters. Given the ever increasing complexity of tradit...

This paper aims to reveal results of a survey run by the tOSSad project. The majority of survey variables devised to capture perception of public administrators around Europe regarding the importance they attach to the factors such as F/OSS product quality, availability of support, expertise and documentation, TCO, vendor lock-in, political influence, administrative attitudes, productivity, and...

Automatic determination of heights from imagery is a difficult problem. BAE Systems has offered the Automatic Terrain Extraction (ATE) and Interactive Terrain Editing (ITE) modules of SOCET SET ® for many years and these represent a best-in-industry solution, though mistakes can occur in certain circumstances. Now BAE Systems has introduced Next-Generation Automatic Terrain Extraction (NGATE), ...

Not all implementations of reliability are equally effective at providing customer and user benefit. Random system failure with no prior warning or failure accommodation will have an immediate, usually adverse impact on operation. Nevertheless, this approach toreliability, implicit in measurements such as ‘failure rate’ and ‘MTBF’, is widely assumed without consideration of potential benefits o...

Iterative auctions can reach an outcome before all bidders have revealed all their preference information. This can decrease costs associated with communication, deliberation, and loss of privacy. We propose an explicit cost model that is inspired by single-item Internet auctions, such as those taking place on auction sites (eBay) or via informal communication (craigslist, mailing lists). A non...

In spite of the widespread adoption of virtualization and consolidation, there exists no consensus with respect to how to benchmark consolidated servers that run multiple guest VMs on the same physical hardware. For example, VMware proposes VMmark which basically computes the geometric mean of normalized throughput values across the VMs; Intel uses vConsolidate which reports a weighted arithmet...

Abdl M. Ku.ow received his Bachelor ofAtts In Sociology from Michigan State University in 1990 anda Master ofUtban Planning from the Uni1111rsity ofMichigan In 1992. His areas ofinterest, as they relate to Africa and the Third World, areln utban and regional development, housing and community development, agricultural de1111Jopment, utban and rural migration, food insecurities and shortages In ...

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) remains a significant factor that influences Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) strategies and decisions. While “total” costs can and should include a wide range of factors, recent Aberdeen research has shown that the cost of software, services, and maintenance are those which are most often measured and considered when evaluating software or measuring the Return o...

This paper examines how foreign ownership affects the investment decisions of subsidiary firms using a new dataset of listed-parent − listed-subsidiary pairs. We find that improvements in the investment opportunities of parent firms have a negative effect on the investment of their subsidiaries, after controlling for the investment opportunities of the subsidiary, which can be independently obs...