I did read the article. It mentions that Microsoft is building a batch dispatching program and "other utilities". Reading another article (linked to by the one posted), Microsoft will also have a profiler and an MPI library. Goody. What about my other questions?
I actually don't understand how Apple's offerings make any sense. On a desktop system, paying some extra bucks for ease of use makes sense. All the polish will tend to save you time over the long run, as well as lowering the proficiency bar for your employees. Same thing with a server sitting in a DMZ, where updates are rather more frequent. A cluster is more like an embedded system. You set it up once and forget it for a few years (I should know, I've done it a time or two).
There are a few features which Microsoft would have to implement on any OS targetted at cluster computing. Many are not directly within their control.
First, and most important for users, what would be the APIs provided. Would Microsoft package MPI? PVM? Would they use a proprietary technology? XML based technologies are way too heavy for this application.
Second, what interconnect transports would be provided? VIA, Globus, IB, good old stinky rsh encapsulation? What about independent vendors like Myricom and Dolphin? Would these companies be willing to support a substantially different architecture? Would there be enough customer demand for them to support Compute Cluster Server at the outset (MPICH-GM is old old old for Windows, Dolphonics and Scali are pretty well exclusively LINUX)?
Third, what software will Microsoft be providing for remote batch management? You'd need a secure remote shell, good scripting functionality, non-GUI device management, etc.
Lastly, how suitable is the NT kernel to doing this sort of work? VMS was ahead of basically everyone when it came to clustering technology, yet _nobody_ uses or used it for parallel processing. What are the lessons that can be applied to NT?
There are a few clusters built on NT, but most of the ones mentioned on the Beowulf mailing list (and they are few) are networks of workstations with CONDOR installed which do double duty as computer clusters at night.
By any meaningful definition of the term, it does not belong in Science classes.
This is a dangerous statement to make.
If you try to create a set of discriminating criteria to seperate science from non-science in the creationist debate (there is little or no symantic difference between creationism and intelligent design, intelligent design is diet creationism (tm)), you run into very tricky problems.
For instance, in his judgement on McLean vs. Arkansas Board, Judge Overton states that creationism does not fit the criteria of a scientific theory (criteria such as falsifiability, testability, non-authoritativeness). He is incorrect, for creationism theory is a classic example of a post-hoc scientific theory which has been designed to add factual legitimacy to the creation story, and it generally meets the criteria he sets forth.
Fortunately, because of it's Genesis underpinnings, creationism has a great deal of baggage in terms of anciliary explanations of geological time (to account for that pesky 30 million percent discrepency for the age of the Earth), fossil records, and other credible scientific evidence, and it doesn't deal well with genetics all the way back to Gregor Mendel. This is only a small selection of critical points: I could go on.
If anything, creationism and intelligent design should not be taught in school science classes because they are very poor scientific theories compared to the main line of scientific thought.
Soren Kierkegaard tells us there is a strong divide between objective and subjective experience. We can no more prove the existence of God via scientific means than we can prove that Browning is better than Yeats.
We keep hearing stories about Microsoft or IBM or Amazon trying to patent these ridiculous things that people have been using in various forms for about 100 years, and I have to ask myself what kind of drugs these guys are on if they think they can get away with this sort of behaviour. Are any of these frivolous patents defensible in the context of a courtroom, or do they add effectively to IP warchests when it comes to cross-licensing deals? Are they just a shotgun approach on the off chance that some moron in the USPO gives them a patent on a technology that everyone is already using?
What is available for estimates on the overall cost to the industry of frivolous patenting? If we're talking about a lot of money, why isn't anyone influential taking up the cause of de-porking the patent system?
They can download all the software they want, surf the web and write their email all on the same system they use for their data analysis without worry and I'm not getting calls or visits to my office saying "Ummmmmmm. I think my system is infected"
You could accomplish the same thing with apple//. The hardware is a lot cheaper too.
I realize this can be done with a C64. Can you point me towards the software for an Apple II to do this? As far as I know, Contiki isn't ready yet (on Apple).
Real programmers abuse the EQUIVALENCE statement. Real programmers don't need structured code. Real programmers write self-modifying code. Real programmers use FORTRAN!
What about all the fresh water it takes to grow the grass?
A valid concern, as most domestic grasses are extremely thirsty, and the midwest US is really going to face a crunch when Ogallala runs out. However, it seems unlikely that they'd use Kentucky blue for a biomass fuel. Other strains are much more efficient.
How much grass would one have to grow to actually put a minor dent in the fossil fuel consumption of the world?
A lot. The point is not to replace all fossil fuel usage, but to replace some fossil fuel usage.
After the dust settles, what would it cost relative to gasoline or oil?
Probably somewhat more expensive. However, if an existing byproduct can be consumed to generate electricity (like Hawaii does with sugar cane waste), costs can be reduced to an acceptable level. Flax straw, for instance, is fairly inexpensive, but burns extremely hot (I'm not sure about soot), and might be a candidate for waste-fuel.
Except that many ActiveX control have very poor interfaces.
As an example, one of my profs was once tossing around the idea of using a MediaPlayer ActiveX control in an application (archived Anthropology-type films with seekable indices). It turned out that there was no way to seek using the provided API. The control interface was too limited for the project.
There is a flock of developers, usually from the MAC/Win crowd, who believe that good user interfaces must necessarily be graphical. This is completely untrue. I'm not into cybernetics, but I can tell you that most of the factors which make good programming interfaces - intuitiveness, consistency, and simplicity - are the same factors I appreciate about good GUIs.
These physicists (sp?) have just created the biggest manefestation of a quantom physics illustration ever (namely scrondiggers (sp?) cat).
The Schrodinger's cat scenario requires that you are able to retrieve the item (cat, superstrings, etc.) and check to see if it is alive or dead, intact or destroyed, or whatever.
When we make observation our predispositions on the data influence the observation and change the reality.
How, precisely? Does it read our minds?
In other words YOU CAN'T BE WRONG NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY!
Sure it's a cool stunt, but aside from running the Linpack benchmark, what will this pile 'o' pcs do? It will, of course, do nothing, for it will only exist about a day.
I've seen this sort of thing happen before: people devoting energy and money to what amounts to a technical fetish. The end state is a world where people like Robert G. Brown build themselves home beowulf clusters with no discernible purpose. (RGB: you're a nice guy and all, but I find it hard to believe that you need all that horsepower for personal use).
I'd rather see an article about broadband users organising themselves into a GLOBUS grid. For that matter, I'd like to see a comprehensive system for bug tracking MPICH (I've seen some weird bugs there). There's lots of things I'd like to see written about or developed. Tomorrows 'infinity + 1' Supercluster ain't it.
Bad mojo. As others have noticed, xterms can be forwarded via ssh in a secure manner. On a Windows machine, this was previously accomplished using the commercial ssh client and X-Win32. X-Win32 now includes it's own ssh client derived from Putty. I am not certain how to accomplish this using the Hummingbird X Server, though. Alternatively, for zero dollars, you can install Cygwin and use OpenSSH and XFree86 to do the same thing.
Unfortunately, both rexec and the bare X protocol are vulnerable to intercepts. You should use them only as a last resort.
By the way, anyone who can tell me how to tunnel X via ssh to and/or from an OpenVMS machine using Multinet 4.4 is the smartest person in the world.
You are correct, although the issues are more subtle than your examples (not hard).
A benchmark is useless without interpretation. The people at OSNews have failed to give us any technical background information on the SparcV chip (penalties running in 64-bit as well as benefits), a proper breakdown of the type of math done by the example programs, as well as analyses of bottlenecks in the benchmarks (MySQL, for instance, is possibly I/O limited).
They've given us raw numbers, with no thought behind them. This is what makes a bad article.
A good Christopher Lambert movie is an otherwise unremarkable film which stars Christopher Lambert. It is not impossible to watch such a film. Examples include Highlander, Knight Moves, Subway, etc.
A bad Christopher Lambert is usually completely unwatchable, although sometimes one can manage when campiness is factored in (much the same as with Zardoz). Examples include Fortress, Highlander sequels [1,2], etc.
Does this mean DeCSS is completely, legally, free software. I'm sure this would be good news to the fine folks from Xine, MPlayer, Ogle, and VLC. They could distribute much more fully featured products in mainstream distros.
Slashdot Mirror
I did read the article. It mentions that Microsoft is building a batch dispatching program and "other utilities". Reading another article (linked to by the one posted), Microsoft will also have a profiler and an MPI library. Goody. What about my other questions?
I actually don't understand how Apple's offerings make any sense. On a desktop system, paying some extra bucks for ease of use makes sense. All the polish will tend to save you time over the long run, as well as lowering the proficiency bar for your employees. Same thing with a server sitting in a DMZ, where updates are rather more frequent. A cluster is more like an embedded system. You set it up once and forget it for a few years (I should know, I've done it a time or two).
There are a few features which Microsoft would have to implement on any OS targetted at cluster computing. Many are not directly within their control.
First, and most important for users, what would be the APIs provided. Would Microsoft package MPI? PVM? Would they use a proprietary technology? XML based technologies are way too heavy for this application.
Second, what interconnect transports would be provided? VIA, Globus, IB, good old stinky rsh encapsulation? What about independent vendors like Myricom and Dolphin? Would these companies be willing to support a substantially different architecture? Would there be enough customer demand for them to support Compute Cluster Server at the outset (MPICH-GM is old old old for Windows, Dolphonics and Scali are pretty well exclusively LINUX)?
Third, what software will Microsoft be providing for remote batch management? You'd need a secure remote shell, good scripting functionality, non-GUI device management, etc.
Lastly, how suitable is the NT kernel to doing this sort of work? VMS was ahead of basically everyone when it came to clustering technology, yet _nobody_ uses or used it for parallel processing. What are the lessons that can be applied to NT?
There are a few clusters built on NT, but most of the ones mentioned on the Beowulf mailing list (and they are few) are networks of workstations with CONDOR installed which do double duty as computer clusters at night.
This is a dangerous statement to make.
If you try to create a set of discriminating criteria to seperate science from non-science in the creationist debate (there is little or no symantic difference between creationism and intelligent design, intelligent design is diet creationism (tm)), you run into very tricky problems.
For instance, in his judgement on McLean vs. Arkansas Board, Judge Overton states that creationism does not fit the criteria of a scientific theory (criteria such as falsifiability, testability, non-authoritativeness). He is incorrect, for creationism theory is a classic example of a post-hoc scientific theory which has been designed to add factual legitimacy to the creation story, and it generally meets the criteria he sets forth.
Fortunately, because of it's Genesis underpinnings, creationism has a great deal of baggage in terms of anciliary explanations of geological time (to account for that pesky 30 million percent discrepency for the age of the Earth), fossil records, and other credible scientific evidence, and it doesn't deal well with genetics all the way back to Gregor Mendel. This is only a small selection of critical points: I could go on.
If anything, creationism and intelligent design should not be taught in school science classes because they are very poor scientific theories compared to the main line of scientific thought.
Soren Kierkegaard tells us there is a strong divide between objective and subjective experience. We can no more prove the existence of God via scientific means than we can prove that Browning is better than Yeats.
We keep hearing stories about Microsoft or IBM or Amazon trying to patent these ridiculous things that people have been using in various forms for about 100 years, and I have to ask myself what kind of drugs these guys are on if they think they can get away with this sort of behaviour. Are any of these frivolous patents defensible in the context of a courtroom, or do they add effectively to IP warchests when it comes to cross-licensing deals? Are they just a shotgun approach on the off chance that some moron in the USPO gives them a patent on a technology that everyone is already using?
What is available for estimates on the overall cost to the industry of frivolous patenting? If we're talking about a lot of money, why isn't anyone influential taking up the cause of de-porking the patent system?
I realize this can be done with a C64. Can you point me towards the software for an Apple II to do this? As far as I know, Contiki isn't ready yet (on Apple).
Read about the polar orbit launch pad that the Air Force built, but never used. In fact, the Shuttle was designed to go into polar orbit, but never has.
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/st
The Baseline Reference Missions are, in fact, the functional specifications of the Shuttle. Only BRM One (of a total of six) has been used.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sts_b
If people wanted FORTRAN replaced, it would have been done so. Certainly, it has been tried.
http://titanium.cs.berkeley.edu/
Real programmers abuse the EQUIVALENCE statement.
Real programmers don't need structured code.
Real programmers write self-modifying code.
Real programmers use FORTRAN!
A valid concern, as most domestic grasses are extremely thirsty, and the midwest US is really going to face a crunch when Ogallala runs out. However, it seems unlikely that they'd use Kentucky blue for a biomass fuel. Other strains are much more efficient.
A lot. The point is not to replace all fossil fuel usage, but to replace some fossil fuel usage.
Probably somewhat more expensive. However, if an existing byproduct can be consumed to generate electricity (like Hawaii does with sugar cane waste), costs can be reduced to an acceptable level. Flax straw, for instance, is fairly inexpensive, but burns extremely hot (I'm not sure about soot), and might be a candidate for waste-fuel.
To be more specific, how many variants does it handle?
As far as I'm concerned, CoolWeb is the most notorious and noxious piece of malware today -- way worse than Gator was a few years ago.
Clicky clicky
Except that many ActiveX control have very poor interfaces.
As an example, one of my profs was once tossing around the idea of using a MediaPlayer ActiveX control in an application (archived Anthropology-type films with seekable indices). It turned out that there was no way to seek using the provided API. The control interface was too limited for the project.
There is a flock of developers, usually from the MAC /Win crowd, who believe that good user interfaces must necessarily be graphical. This is completely untrue. I'm not into cybernetics, but I can tell you that most of the factors which make good programming interfaces - intuitiveness, consistency, and simplicity - are the same factors I appreciate about good GUIs.
Don't confuse interfaces and eye candy.
Table layout, dude. Bad mojo.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0086250/quotes
Rule number two: don't get high on your own supply.
-- Franky Lopez, _Scarface_
that supports GOTOs. Of the computed sort.
The Schrodinger's cat scenario requires that you are able to retrieve the item (cat, superstrings, etc.) and check to see if it is alive or dead, intact or destroyed, or whatever.
How, precisely? Does it read our minds?
Perhaps if you're psychotic?
Sure it's a cool stunt, but aside from running the Linpack benchmark, what will this pile 'o' pcs do? It will, of course, do nothing, for it will only exist about a day.
I've seen this sort of thing happen before: people devoting energy and money to what amounts to a technical fetish. The end state is a world where people like Robert G. Brown build themselves home beowulf clusters with no discernible purpose. (RGB: you're a nice guy and all, but I find it hard to believe that you need all that horsepower for personal use).
I'd rather see an article about broadband users organising themselves into a GLOBUS grid. For that matter, I'd like to see a comprehensive system for bug tracking MPICH (I've seen some weird bugs there). There's lots of things I'd like to see written about or developed. Tomorrows 'infinity + 1' Supercluster ain't it.
Can we throw them in jail yet?
Bad mojo. As others have noticed, xterms can be forwarded via ssh in a secure manner. On a Windows machine, this was previously accomplished using the commercial ssh client and X-Win32. X-Win32 now includes it's own ssh client derived from Putty. I am not certain how to accomplish this using the Hummingbird X Server, though. Alternatively, for zero dollars, you can install Cygwin and use OpenSSH and XFree86 to do the same thing.
Unfortunately, both rexec and the bare X protocol are vulnerable to intercepts. You should use them only as a last resort.
By the way, anyone who can tell me how to tunnel X via ssh to and/or from an OpenVMS machine using Multinet 4.4 is the smartest person in the world.
The next round:
Before court is in session, Dave Marriott gives Mark Heise a crib sheet 'just in case'.
- G
http://www.royrogers.com/happy_trails-index.html
Good-bye SCO. Enjoy the fires of Hell.
You are correct, although the issues are more subtle than your examples (not hard).
A benchmark is useless without interpretation. The people at OSNews have failed to give us any technical background information on the SparcV chip (penalties running in 64-bit as well as benefits), a proper breakdown of the type of math done by the example programs, as well as analyses of bottlenecks in the benchmarks (MySQL, for instance, is possibly I/O limited).
They've given us raw numbers, with no thought behind them. This is what makes a bad article.
It's like this:
A good Christopher Lambert movie is an otherwise unremarkable film which stars Christopher Lambert. It is not impossible to watch such a film. Examples include Highlander, Knight Moves, Subway, etc.
A bad Christopher Lambert is usually completely unwatchable, although sometimes one can manage when campiness is factored in (much the same as with Zardoz). Examples include Fortress, Highlander sequels [1,2], etc.
Dan says it works real good.
Does this mean DeCSS is completely, legally, free software. I'm sure this would be good news to the fine folks from Xine, MPlayer, Ogle, and VLC. They could distribute much more fully featured products in mainstream distros.