VirtualRDC News @ Cornell

We will be doing routine hardware and OS maintenance on the evening of September 8, 2009. All servers will be inaccessible for some (varying) period of time. Please plan your work accordingly.

We have uploaded the corrected version of the Idaho files for R2009Q2. Users who have previously these files prior to 2009-08-27 should re-download their files. This solves the previously identified problem. All other states are unaffected and unchanged.

We’ve updated the QWI cheatsheet to include the (important) flags regarding data quality of the published statistics. We’ve also added some SAS programs into the experimental/ folder that map the information from the cheatsheet into SAS formats. [More »]

We have identified an issue with the downloadable QWI data for Idaho from Census Bureau’s R2009Q2 release. It appears that the data series only covers statistics through 2008:2 rather than 2008:3. We have contacted the Census Bureau, who are investigating the issue. [More »]

After having resolved contractual maintenance issues, the next attempt to migrate the NSF01 storage from the older storage array to the newer (supported) array has been tentatively scheduled. [More »]

The 2009 NSF-Census-IRS Workshop on Synthetic Data and Confidentiality Protection was a great success. 121 registered attendees from 38 different institutions and agencies were present. 17 presentations and keynotes were given over the course of the day. The presentations are available at http://www.vrdc.cornell.edu/news/nsf-census-irs-workshop2009/program/. [More »]

We are working on straightening out the licensing situation for the ia64 nodes. In the meantime, a temporary license has been applied, and will tidy us over until we get the 2009/2010 license fully implemented.

Kate is a editor that is installed on most (KDE-based) Linux desktop environments (including our own login nodes at the VirtualRDC). Ian S. has kindly provided us with a syntax-highlighting file for SAS programs. It can be downloaded and installed from http://www.vrdc.cornell.edu/extras/RPMS/noarch/sas-kate-syntax-1.0-0.noarch.rpm, although we might move it to our openSUSE BuildService at a later stage (to support other architectures). We actively use this file on our SUSE-based systems, including (soon) on NSF01.

SAS licenses have been updated on the x86_64 nodes. As happens almost every year, the ia64 nodes have some problems. We hope to have a new license file by Wednesday.

The 2009 Joint Statistical Meetings will be held August 1 – 6, 2009 in Washington, DC. For more details, see http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2009/index.cfm.