You are ignoring many of the costs associated with running your cluster (who pays your electricity bill?) but that's academic. You're probably right, for your particular use case it may be cheaper to buy and feed your own 'grid' but for many cases it doesn't make sense - if you want a large number of CPUs for a short period (ie. less than 100% utilization) then renting CPU time may make more sense.
Also, you should seriously consider competing with Sun if you think you can charge 10c for the same service - competition will create a true commodity market.
Rich (Sun employee)
On the subject of using MySQL with J2EE, Sun recently submitted some SPECjAppServer2004 benchmarks using MySQL and Sun Java system App Server 8.1.
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=35375
Before anyone starts criticizing benchmarks - the submissions demonstrate a couple of things :
1. You can get some great performance with FREE
2. MySQL has past the strict J2EE Compatability Test Suite - demonstrating that it is more than capable of supporting J2EE (wrt. portability)
3. That MySQL has it's place, as does Oracle - in terms of price / performance / features - though I think the feature argument gets less important with every release.
Rich Sharples
Sun Microsystems
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/sharps/
I have been Skyping for a while now, my wife uses it instead of those cheap international dialing numbers; it works (which is pretty incredible if you have any insight into how). I make free and cheap calls from the US to Europe and Australia; I call my home for free from a remote hotel room. The only issue I have is if Skype get to monopoloy status and then start to milk the market but I think the market is still way too immature for that. IMO - rather Skype lead the market than AT&T.
and one of the reasons companies don't make all their best employees millionaires is because once you have financial independence you are less likely to stick around (ie. you're not as dependent) - of course employers can create many other reasons to stick around (and I've heard Google does a good job of this) - so maybe they do have a new and better approach to employee retention.
I have Tungsten | C with built-in 802.11 - syncing without the cradle contraption is great - that's my main use but email is pretty good too and I do sometimes surf the web (mainly reading Y! news on the crapper)
I welcome other palm users to the wireless world - now when are Palm going to release a BT card for my Tungsten C ????
Unless I can get a flash player for $50 that is the size of a AAA battery, flash players are dead to me. Nothing can stop the iPod!
Err, try going snowboarding with you iPod - mine didn't last the day; my replacement iRiver flash player (512Mb) so far seems pretty indistructible - it's even fallen off my mountain bike with me. Also the battery life is a bit better.
I guess for the slashdot crowd - taking your player out into nature isn't really a requirement anyway.
- pixel
Here's what currently works - at the trail head have a notice board that can be used by hikers to noify potential searchers where they are going, when they set of and the latest they will be back.
Walkers, hikers, climbers can opt into this system if they want.
This system has been running for many (many) years in the UK.
If you want to apply some technology to the system install a web cam so you can view the notice boards remotely.
Flown Lufthansa from SFO to Munich a few times and they really do have the worst in-flight entertainment and the worst economy class seats so this will give you something to do for the 11 hrs or so of restless discomfort.
Seems very strange that they are pioneering this when the rest of their service is 4 years behind Virgin and BA.
Java, we din't 'ave Java in my day - we had to code using punchcards and our bare teeth and if you passed the exam - you had to work for 5 years for nowt before you got your own desk; and another 5 for a chair.
+--
too grumpy for a sig.
Imagine having to have lunch with this guy - boy that would be depressing. You hit some bumps in the road (OK 3 years worth of bumps); solution - give it all up, pack it in. Imagine if everyone took that kind of advice - no company could possibly last more than 5-10 years; people would be jumping of bridges / high buildings at an alarming rate to escape the complete pointlesness of everything.
Also was the mispelling of McNealy's name some kind of "in joke" or is the author a complete dick-head ?
amazing how less manacing the soldier looks as a result. Maybe an unanticipated side effect of this kind of body armour is that the opposing forces would be temporarily confused / rolling around in puddles of piss from too much laughter.
Working for a certain agency, no windows, not allowed to use the phone, fax, couldn't move from my desk without permission, couldn't leave the room without an escort (even for a dump) - workstation was encased in a steel case - had the ergonomics of a dump truck. Couldn't talk to anyone except if busting for a crap or cut myself on the steel keyboard case (again). But the icing on the cake was that I had to write stuff in Fortran - that really sucked.
GOD is real (unless declared integer)
Many critical computing tasks have strict requirements on latency not just bandwidth - this solution won't cut it. Now let me get back to Deathmatch...
I recently forked out cash for a regular DVD burner. Do I feel sick to the back teeth for buying (now) deprecated technology ? No I don't. If you make technology purchase decisions with an eye to what's around the corner you would never buy anything, ever. If today's thing does what you want it to do, go ahead and buy it; if it doesn't yet, then wait. You'll have near-infinite opportunity to rectify your purchase decision in the future and contribute to the country's GDP / trade deficit.
I don't think mice are really representative of anyone's Mars colonization plans - we should be sending humans - perhaps we could round up some junk faxers / mailers / miscellaneous low-life - at least biologically they are a better match. Also it makes sense to keep the mice here as they contribute to the Earth's ecosystem.
Slashdot Mirror
You are ignoring many of the costs associated with running your cluster (who pays your electricity bill?) but that's academic. You're probably right, for your particular use case it may be cheaper to buy and feed your own 'grid' but for many cases it doesn't make sense - if you want a large number of CPUs for a short period (ie. less than 100% utilization) then renting CPU time may make more sense. Also, you should seriously consider competing with Sun if you think you can charge 10c for the same service - competition will create a true commodity market. Rich (Sun employee)
On the subject of using MySQL with J2EE, Sun recently submitted some SPECjAppServer2004 benchmarks using MySQL and Sun Java system App Server 8.1. http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?threa d_id=35375
Before anyone starts criticizing benchmarks - the submissions demonstrate a couple of things :
1. You can get some great performance with FREE
2. MySQL has past the strict J2EE Compatability Test Suite - demonstrating that it is more than capable of supporting J2EE (wrt. portability)
3. That MySQL has it's place, as does Oracle - in terms of price / performance / features - though I think the feature argument gets less important with every release.
Rich Sharples
Sun Microsystems
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/sharps/
... or if you're a cop - the best place to score some easy arrests ...
I have been Skyping for a while now, my wife uses it instead of those cheap international dialing numbers; it works (which is pretty incredible if you have any insight into how). I make free and cheap calls from the US to Europe and Australia; I call my home for free from a remote hotel room. The only issue I have is if Skype get to monopoloy status and then start to milk the market but I think the market is still way too immature for that. IMO - rather Skype lead the market than AT&T.
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/sharps
IBM are not fed up with Java - their whole WebSphere business is built on the success of Java.
IBM do not like the fact that they do not *OWN* Java - their competitor does - Sun.
and one of the reasons companies don't make all their best employees millionaires is because once you have financial independence you are less likely to stick around (ie. you're not as dependent) - of course employers can create many other reasons to stick around (and I've heard Google does a good job of this) - so maybe they do have a new and better approach to employee retention.
I have Tungsten | C with built-in 802.11 - syncing without the cradle contraption is great - that's my main use but email is pretty good too and I do sometimes surf the web (mainly reading Y! news on the crapper)
I welcome other palm users to the wireless world - now when are Palm going to release a BT card for my Tungsten C ????
You're asking the /. crowd for advice on how to manage a relationship with another human being ???
Here's what currently works - at the trail head have a notice board that can be used by hikers to noify potential searchers where they are going, when they set of and the latest they will be back.
Walkers, hikers, climbers can opt into this system if they want.
This system has been running for many (many) years in the UK.
If you want to apply some technology to the system install a web cam so you can view the notice boards remotely.
Flown Lufthansa from SFO to Munich a few times and they really do have the worst in-flight entertainment and the worst economy class seats so this will give you something to do for the 11 hrs or so of restless discomfort. Seems very strange that they are pioneering this when the rest of their service is 4 years behind Virgin and BA.
Java, we din't 'ave Java in my day - we had to code using punchcards and our bare teeth and if you passed the exam - you had to work for 5 years for nowt before you got your own desk; and another 5 for a chair. +-- too grumpy for a sig.
Imagine having to have lunch with this guy - boy that would be depressing. You hit some bumps in the road (OK 3 years worth of bumps); solution - give it all up, pack it in. Imagine if everyone took that kind of advice - no company could possibly last more than 5-10 years; people would be jumping of bridges / high buildings at an alarming rate to escape the complete pointlesness of everything. Also was the mispelling of McNealy's name some kind of "in joke" or is the author a complete dick-head ?
amazing how less manacing the soldier looks as a result. Maybe an unanticipated side effect of this kind of body armour is that the opposing forces would be temporarily confused / rolling around in puddles of piss from too much laughter.
Working for a certain agency, no windows, not allowed to use the phone, fax, couldn't move from my desk without permission, couldn't leave the room without an escort (even for a dump) - workstation was encased in a steel case - had the ergonomics of a dump truck. Couldn't talk to anyone except if busting for a crap or cut myself on the steel keyboard case (again). But the icing on the cake was that I had to write stuff in Fortran - that really sucked. GOD is real (unless declared integer)
Many critical computing tasks have strict requirements on latency not just bandwidth - this solution won't cut it. Now let me get back to Deathmatch...
I recently forked out cash for a regular DVD burner. Do I feel sick to the back teeth for buying (now) deprecated technology ? No I don't. If you make technology purchase decisions with an eye to what's around the corner you would never buy anything, ever. If today's thing does what you want it to do, go ahead and buy it; if it doesn't yet, then wait. You'll have near-infinite opportunity to rectify your purchase decision in the future and contribute to the country's GDP / trade deficit.
I don't think mice are really representative of anyone's Mars colonization plans - we should be sending humans - perhaps we could round up some junk faxers / mailers / miscellaneous low-life - at least biologically they are a better match. Also it makes sense to keep the mice here as they contribute to the Earth's ecosystem.
the old 'levitating table trick' gets everyone laughing