[Beowulf] commercial clusters

[Vincent Diepeveen]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert G. Brown" <rgb at phy.duke.edu>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <diep at xs4all.nl>
Cc: "Geoff Jacobs" <gdjacobs at gmail.com>; "Jim Lux" 
<James.P.Lux at jpl.nasa.gov>; <beowulf at beowulf.org>; "Angel Dimitrov" 
<stormlaboratory at yahoo.com>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 9:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters


> On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>> Actually with respect to chess, it is not overblown,
>> there is 1 billion people on this planet that can play chess and the 
>> average IQ of a chessplayer
>> is significantly better than the world wide IQ (you can ask yourself 
>> whether this is caused by
>> chess, or whether it is the people who choose to play chess that are 
>> clever).
>
> You have to be very careful to differentiate between "can" play chess,
> as in know or at some point in their life knew the rules of chess, "do"
> play chess as in have played at least one game of chess in (say) the
> last three months and "are obsessed" with playing chess (as in their
> last game was less than 24 hours ago no matter when you ask them.
>
>> Nearly everyone who has an university degree or is high in government, 
>> can play chess.
>>
>> Logically that this includes many persons with a lot of money.
>
> At this point, I'm guessing that a desktop computer with an
> over-the-counter or open source chess program (configured to play its
> best game) can beat 99% of that billion handily and consistently.  Maybe

The basic flaw i see in some assumptions taken here is that you as a human 
want
to do a running contest with a car.

In reality that isn't the case.

People just want to see whose car is better, not whether they can outrun the 
car.

Additional they want to analyze their own running (most important feature) 
in the most objective manner possible, or they want to compete with it in a 
300 KM/h contest.

To look like a winner, people are prepared to pay any price.

Vincent