VizWorld.com

Earlier today (2:41AM EDT), the sun kicked up a massive solar flare, and luckily NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the whole thing on film.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft caught high-definition video of the flare in different wavelengths. The event registered as a Class M-2 solar flare, which is a medium-class sun storm that should not pose a danger to satellites or infrastructure on Earth.

The images are beautiful, but tomorrow this could wreak a little havoc when the resulting magnetic wave hits earth.

via Sun Unleashes ‘Spectacular’ & Powerful Eruption | Solar Flares, Sun Eruption & Sun Storms | Space Weather & Solar Cycle 24 | Space.com.

Graphics, Science astronomy, nasa, sun

Lots of murmurs are undermining what little credibility Oracle has at the moment.  We’ve already covered first how the killed the Sun Visualization System, and then how they killed the free Sun GridEngine.  In addition they’ve killed OpenSolaris and multiple hardware lines, and several divisions are currently suffering from uncertainty like MySQL and OpenOffice.  Just take a look at the discussions in the JAVA camp:

Right now lots of people are talking about Java but there is a silent void from you. The conversation is happening and you aren’t participating, so people speculate and hypothesize; not great for building trust.

And if you needed any more ammunition, check out this list of recent departures:

• Mike Shapiro Leaves
• Brendan Gregg Leaves
• Doug Lea Resigns from the JCP
• Charles Schulz leaves OpenOffice.org
• Florian Effenburger leaves OpenOffice.org
• Cor Nouws leaves OpenOffice.org

Apple has dropped their own internal Java builds, a motion that should bolster Sun’s position in the marketplace by eliminating some of the oddities of Apple’s implementation, but rather it’s being treated as a potential death knell for the product because Sun/Oracle is saying nothing, leading everyone to think Java is slowly dying on the vine.

I personally know many former Sun zealots that have slowly begun to switch to other vendors in the last year or so, customers that would have chosen Sun over anything in the marketplace that are now going to vendors like BluArc and Panasys.

What about you?  What do you know of the Sun Underpinnings?

via Dear Oracle, Get a Clue « Ian Skerrett.

Science sun

This bit of news only impacts a tiny portion of the readers here, but bears repeating.  As Oracle slowly works its way through the massive collection of Sun projects, they’ve been killing them off one by one.  First there were questions of how Oracle would treat open-source competitor MySQL, then the death of long-time open source project OpenSolaris, and now Sun GridEngine is on the block.

Oracle has “absorbed” Sun GridEngine internally and renamed it “Oracle GridEngine” (OGE) and placed it under a new license that restricts it to only 90-days of free usage in a “trial” arrangement.  From the 6.2U6 EULA:

As selected in your Entitlement, one or more of the following Permitted Uses will apply to your use of Software. Unless you have an Entitlement that expressly permits it, you may not use Software for any of the other Permitted Uses. If you don’t have an Entitlement, or if your Entitlement doesn’t cover additional software delivered to you, then such software is for your Evaluation Use.

(a) Evaluation Use. You may evaluate Software internally for a period of 90 days from your first use.

So you have to be granted an “Entitlement”, which basically means special exception or paid license, to use it beyond that.  It looks like this was done first back in June, and is just now being noticed by the community at large.  Folks are already talking about forking the project into something like “Open GridEngine”, but there are questions about licenses, patents, and general legal safety of such a project.

So, why do you care?  Well, SGE is used by some VFX shops as a queue controlling system.  It’s a pretty nice project, and (at least it used to be) free.  The open nature of it makes it ideal for use on massive renderfarms without custom software or expensive queue-ing solutions.  If SGE is going away, I doubt they’ll wind up buying it from Oracle and instead switch to other options.  SGE is also popular in several university environments (like TACC) because of budgetary constraints, who will now have to find some other option.

What do you think? Do you use SGE?  Will you buy OGE?

… and SGE goes 90-day trial license … « scalability.org.

Science hpc, oracle, sun

NASA’s newest solar observatory, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), is still only in the commissioning phase, calibrating and testing, but is already creating breathtaking pictures of the sun that have never been seen before.

One particularly interesting observation, Fisher said, shows the evolution of an active region of the sun, also known as a sunspot. The dark spots on the sun's surface are connected to intense magnetic activity. SDO caught this sunspot in decline that didn't look quite how scientists expected it to.

Science is already underway, baffling researchers with the amazing findings that defy expectation and logic.  Surely, more beautiful images will be coming soon.

via SPACE.com — ‘Spectacular’ First Images from New Solar Observatory Released.

Science nasa, SDO, sun

I just got official word from Sun on the state of the Sun Visualization System that we recently  noticed was “missing in action”.

Sun announced in April the End-of-Life (EOL) of the Sun Shared Visualization and Sun Scalable Visualization software products. Customers will be able to order the products through July 31, 2009. Sun intends to provide service and support until Oct. 2, 2014.

Candice van der Laan

Apparently there was a bit of a failure on getting the word out on that one.  It probably got lost or drowned in the flood of information about the Oracle acquisition.

Hardware sun

Update: See Sun’s official response.

The Sun Visualization System from Sun Microsystems has been a great COTS build for remote visualization & large scalability.  With a software foundation of TurboVNC & VirtualGL and a hardware foundation of their world-class servers and high-end NVidia & Quadroplex systems, it’s been the mainstay of several remote visualization systems.  A few weeks ago we told you that Sun was about to be purchased by Oracle, and since then it’s been finalized.

Today, however, a fellow twitterer noticed that the Sun Visualization Webpage is almost entirely gone.  I’m completely unable to find it under their products lists, and going directly to the old page (still available under search), yields just this:

The new SVS Webpage

That’s it.  A Banner, but no text.  That “Get it” button goes to a form to ask for details, but nothing more.

Has Sun silently killed the SVS?

Update: I’ve attempted to contact Sun, so far no response.

Sun Visualization System – Overview.

Hardware sun, svs

In the forums today we want to hear from you about what the Oracle/Sun merger means to you.  Do you have Sun Hardware? Friends in Sun?  Do you use Sun Products, like Solaris or Java?

Hit the forums and give us your opinions, what do you think this means for the future of Sun?

Website forum, sun

News is out that Oracle is buying Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.    The acquisitions is happening through a purchase of Sun common stock for $9.50 a share.

Oracle is mostly interested in Sun’s holdings of JAVA, and probably some of the server hardware business.  How does this impact us?  Well, the future of products like the Sun Visualization System is uncertain, as Oracle probablyhas little to no interest in Visualization.

“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”

Links covering it:

• Oracle to buy Sun in $7.4 billion deal | Business Tech – CNET News.
• Yahoo News – Official press release

Hardware sun