Slashdot Mirror

People really need to not worry about asking questions regarding the stuff that the marketplace and consumers like slashdot readers will work out for themeselves.

Karin is in a position to answer some really tough questions.

The questions that need to be answered are things like, how can peer review be improved to eliminate the cronyism that goes on? When will the National Science Foundation understand that persistent IT infrastructure for supercomputing is as critical as things like telescopes in hawaii and needs more than a 5 year vision and support structure? When will Congress recognie that cyberinfrastructure is a buzzword that no one knows how to apply? Cyberinfrastructure is a word that had no vision behind it and is headed down the path of just being a pot of money that all the science areas will divide among themselves at the _expense_ of any real infrastructure. Teragrid isn't an example either. That project was once a great concept, but everyone involved is competing with each other to stay alive, which means no one is truely working together. Teragrid has long since been forced off the path because the major centers don't want to let it succeed and most certainly don't want it to be a project through which their "partners" can be viewed as successful.

Sid and the leaders of his generation had a hand in getting the NSF to see reality once and setting the path. Now, NSF is trying to control and set a path itself instead of letting the visionaries and the scientists do it. The content of the Atkins report (http://www.communitytechnology.org/nsf_ci_report/ ) was all but ignored by the people inside of NSF who should have listened to it instead of following their personal agendas. They just lifted the term "Cyberinfrastructure" to create the appearance of following along.

Supercomputing, advanced storage, grid computing and next generation networks all are lagging behind in this country because the NSF doesn't listen to vision and can't create and sustain one of its own. They are into the playing of politics t hat they won't set up the foundation for infrastructure that could last long enough to make a difference without falling into funding battles every 3rd year. Given there isn't a 10 or 20 year vision and foundation, is it any surprise that the supercomputing centers are so busy protecting themselves from each other that serious attempts at visionary projects don't happen?

Fortunately, the Department of Energy appears to be taking up the slack for now. More power to DoE for recognizing and filling the gap, but its a sad state for NSF to be in.

The software works remarkably well and is probably one of the most innovative web applications ever.

I dunno, I remember myWebOS - do you?
myWebOS screenie. This was back in '00 or so.

• Screenshots
• Scopeware - Stream view
• Scopeware - List view.

• Screenshots
• Scopeware - Stream view
• Scopeware - List view.

• Screenshots
• Scopeware - Stream view
• Scopeware - List view.