[Beowulf] SGI to offer Windows on clusters

[Jim Lux]

At 04:41 PM 1/18/2007, Robert G. Brown wrote:
>On Thu, 18 Jan 2007, Jim Lux wrote:
>
>>And likewise, WinXP on the desktop.  A company with 20,000 WinXP 
>>desktops cannot tolerate BSODs and mystery hangs on a significant 
>>fraction of those desktops at any frequency.  When your call center 
>>operators are being timed to the second, the sysadmin folks know 
>>INSTANTLY when there are problems.
>>
>>But, just as in the server application, the configurations are 
>>rigorously controlled and tested.  It's certainly not the usual 
>>home computer with umpty-five downloaded widgets, etc.
>
>Even with strong controls and an instantly reinstallable system image,
>WinXX boxes are corrupted once a month or so in our labs.

But you've got those pesky students to deal with.  Not like a 
corporate environment where everyone boots off the same image from 
the server, they run SMS, and if you muck with the configuration, you 
can get fired.

>Too many
>things that can go wrong.  Fortunately, they've dropped the
>reinstallation time to almost nothing.

Precisely..

I should have used a different metaphor, though.  Microsoft so far has
>been to Linux like Fezzik was with Westley in The Princess Bride,
>tolerating its occassional blows.  "I just want you to feel you're doing
>well.  I have for people to die embarrassed..."

In an interesting coincidence of references, my wife and daughter's 
horse is named "The dread pirate Roberts", the reference to which I 
have found is almost as dating as a former competitor of mine(in 
horse shows, not in engineering) who named her horse "E-Ticket", said 
tickets not having existed for decades. We all knew what it meant, 
but the 12 year olds hanging around the barn didn't. (Of course, they 
didn't understand who "The Stones" were, either.  Such is life in codgerdom)



Jim