[Beowulf] Pah!

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006, Joe Landman wrote:

>
>
> Robert G. Brown wrote:
>> On Thu, 23 Mar 2006, steve_heaton at iinet.net.au wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> the public coffers.  So their rate of waste has just simply plummeted --
>> they're currently wasting money trying to keep all kinds of their
>> employees -- y'know, teachers, janitors, bus drivers -- working, instead
>> of just liberating the bloodsucking parasites back into the workforce.
>
> Today's coffee spray moment...
>
> (now where is my monitor and keyboard cleaner ...)

Sor-reee.

Y'know, you don't HAVE to read things I post.

Besides, I tastefully avoided any ad hominem attacks, kind of, while
agreeing with the post in question.  Not that Jim isn't a tempting
target.  I mean, a NASA engineer -- what do THEY know.  Look at what the
last group of NASA folks did for cluster computing, you know, building
that "beowulf" thing and shamelessly engaging in self-promotion that led
to the beowulf being the kleenex of cluster computing (in a metaphor you
probably don't want to explore too deeply:-).

Besides, I'm a physicist and I TEACH engineering students all the time
-- they're not so smart.  I hardly ever learn anything from Jim on, say,
electrical engineering that I didn't already know, sort of, if I thought
about it for a week or two and did a few pages of algebra, and it's been
DAYS since I last googled up one of his previous posts to recover some
nugget or the other that I don't bother to actually remember myself
because it is too trivial a factoid and my brain is already so full.

Ultimately it comes down to one thing.  Can you possibly bring yourself
to trust somebody that seriously entertains the notion of building
homemade cluster computers using cookie sheets and baker's racks?  Of
course not!  You can be assured that anything that such a person ever
posts on the beowulf list is bound to be a lie, as I hope is obvious to
anybody that has been paying attention to the thread...;-)

    rgb

(Who simply LOVES G\"odel's theorem and the various Russel paradoxes and
cannot resist the joke...:-)

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu