The usual distinction between a supercomputer (that may be a cluster) and distributed computing is that in a supercomputer, all the individual computers are under central control. In a distributed computing environment you control your computer and provide resources to someone else's cluster.
The difficulty arises because so many people use similar phrases for slightly different things. You can argue that the second you have more than one processor you are in a 'distributed' computing environment as you are distributing the computation. A cluster is a distributed computer as it distributes the computation over a number of computers (but remains in complete control of them all), however more often distributed computing refers to the case that a number of separately controlled computers provide computing resources to a particular task. Its sort of the reverse of the traditional model of time-sharing computers, where you had a central computer that users shared to do their work, in a distributed computing environment the work time-shares the users computers.
The thing with Linux (or even commercial UNIX to an extent) is that if your vendor is charging huge support prices, you can get a similar/identical product from someone else.
Microsoft is the sole supplier of Windows. Redhat is NOT the sole supplier of Linux.
Of course there will be an incentive to "push the envelope". The US is not the only market, and WinCE and Palm devices compete all over the world.
If Japan has such a huge market for these things, it would be madness for other developers NOT to compete there, and they are not going to have a production line for lower powered dumbed down devices just for US consumption.
Why is it that people always complain that something is too expensive. I'm certain they did do market research as to the price point, but I suspect they also want to make money. Those minature components are not cheap, and this is a very capable device.
As an owner of a desktop, laptop, palm and office laptop, I would seriously consider this kind of thing as a replacement for a lot of my stuff. Not to mention a small powerfull devise to use with a digital camera.
Not a problem really, babelfish is your friend here. I recently worked on some code written by Germans and it went pretty well. Sure the translations come out a bit funny sometimes, and there may be slang which babel does not understand, but hey, geeks like learning new languages right?
We'd better get used to it, more and more software is being written outside the English speaking world (it always was but open source brings it to ya). Just think how anoying writing C is for Germans, all the keywords are English!
While it may be strictly true that Windows may do weird things to the partition table, I'd still call this a bug, and a big one in Fedora. Other Linux distros do not screw up dual booting. It does not matter if they are working around a windows defect or not, they work, redhat used to work, Fedora does not work.
All the more reason to give them a mac development system. You might see that mac client. If they go so far as to use the BSD layer on the mac you might see a unix client for you favourite system.
Virtual PC would most likely run too slowly for gaming applications. The Xbox runs a variant of the Win2K kernel (or so I'm told) and the rumour is that the new chips will be IBM made, so probably some PowerPC type chip. Remember WinNT ran nativly on PPC, so microsoft could make a version for PPC. This would give them a (mostly) source compatible system with the current Xbox with out the need for emulation.
If you are after a Fortran like compiler, there is the F compiler. F is a language that is a subset of Fortran 95. The F compiler is free (check the licence, its been a while since I used it) and can be found here.
From what I remember the F language supports a large and usefull subset of the Fortran 95 language and the compiler is based on the NAG compiler, so should produce pretty reasonable code.
It also means those on Macs can't connect at all. I just downloaded the latest Mac beta and it still tells me to upgrade. Its a pity that they did not make new clients ore widely available before changing the service. This will only make fewer people use it.
I'm not sure if this is correct, but I don't think you can run any OS on these things. They are designed to be given tasks to run from your regular OS. Also Apple don't licence their OS to other vendors anymore, so Its unlikely that anyone would build a MacOS compatible card like the SUNpci cards (you can get something similar for a mac as well).
Slashdot Mirror
The usual distinction between a supercomputer (that may be a cluster) and distributed computing is that in a supercomputer, all the individual computers are under central control. In a distributed computing environment you control your computer and provide resources to someone else's cluster.
The difficulty arises because so many people use similar phrases for slightly different things. You can argue that the second you have more than one processor you are in a 'distributed' computing environment as you are distributing the computation. A cluster is a distributed computer as it distributes the computation over a number of computers (but remains in complete control of them all), however more often distributed computing refers to the case that a number of separately controlled computers provide computing resources to a particular task. Its sort of the reverse of the traditional model of time-sharing computers, where you had a central computer that users shared to do their work, in a distributed computing environment the work time-shares the users computers.
Best post ever!
The thing with Linux (or even commercial UNIX to an extent) is that if your vendor is charging huge support prices, you can get a similar/identical product from someone else.
Microsoft is the sole supplier of Windows. Redhat is NOT the sole supplier of Linux.
Of course there will be an incentive to "push the envelope". The US is not the only market, and WinCE and Palm devices compete all over the world.
If Japan has such a huge market for these things, it would be madness for other developers NOT to compete there, and they are not going to have a production line for lower powered dumbed down devices just for US consumption.
Why is it that people always complain that something is too expensive. I'm certain they did do market research as to the price point, but I suspect they also want to make money. Those minature components are not cheap, and this is a very capable device.
As an owner of a desktop, laptop, palm and office laptop, I would seriously consider this kind of thing as a replacement for a lot of my stuff. Not to mention a small powerfull devise to use with a digital camera.
Not a problem really, babelfish is your friend here. I recently worked on some code written by Germans and it went pretty well. Sure the translations come out a bit funny sometimes, and there may be slang which babel does not understand, but hey, geeks like learning new languages right?
We'd better get used to it, more and more software is being written outside the English speaking world (it always was but open source brings it to ya). Just think how anoying writing C is for Germans, all the keywords are English!
He said large island :-)
While it may be strictly true that Windows may do weird things to the partition table, I'd still call this a bug, and a big one in Fedora. Other Linux distros do not screw up dual booting. It does not matter if they are working around a windows defect or not, they work, redhat used to work, Fedora does not work.
All the more reason to give them a mac development system. You might see that mac client. If they go so far as to use the BSD layer on the mac you might see a unix client for you favourite system.
Virtual PC would most likely run too slowly for gaming applications. The Xbox runs a variant of the Win2K kernel (or so I'm told) and the rumour is that the new chips will be IBM made, so probably some PowerPC type chip. Remember WinNT ran nativly on PPC, so microsoft could make a version for PPC. This would give them a (mostly) source compatible system with the current Xbox with out the need for emulation.
If you are after a Fortran like compiler, there is the F compiler. F is a language that is a subset of Fortran 95. The F compiler is free (check the licence, its been a while since I used it) and can be found here.
From what I remember the F language supports a large and usefull subset of the Fortran 95 language and the compiler is based on the NAG compiler, so should produce pretty reasonable code.
It also means those on Macs can't connect at all. I just downloaded the latest Mac beta and it still tells me to upgrade. Its a pity that they did not make new clients ore widely available before changing the service. This will only make fewer people use it.
I'm not sure if this is correct, but I don't think you can run any OS on these things. They are designed to be given tasks to run from your regular OS. Also Apple don't licence their OS to other vendors anymore, so Its unlikely that anyone would build a MacOS compatible card like the SUNpci cards (you can get something similar for a mac as well).