[Beowulf] Sidebar: Vista Rant

[Jim Lux]

At 01:53 PM 7/18/2007, Gerry Creager wrote:
>>cation is mandated with a force fed diet of DRM protected movies, radio, ...
>
>If I allowed data like this to creep into presentations or theses my 
>grad students put forward, I'd lose my job!  I realize my 
>entertainment often looks like revising weather models, and my wife 
>thinks I should take her to more movies but I couldn't achieve these 
>numbers even if I was what passes for Normal in our home town!

Surely you mean "data like these" since there's more than one of them<grin>

But, consider.. if you DID lose your job:
a) you could get a job doing presentations like these and make more 
money at it (someone's got to do the dirty work)
b) you'd have more leisure time to spend that increased income on 
consuming media entertainment (and according to those end slides, 
that's the growing segment.. ad paid media is flat)


Come now.. you need to refocus your personal goals and objectives.. 
what matters it if the weather is hotter or colder tomorrow?  The 
important thing is to consume, and indoors the climate is always the 
same. The outdoor theater being a dying phenomenon.. much easier to 
have access controls in an indoor space. No more watching the 
drive-in from the parking lot across the street.


Using clusters for mundane useless things like weather forecasting or 
science or space exploration is a poor use of computing resources, is 
it not. Shouldn't we be creating new entertainment, the distribution 
of which can be appropriately monetized to create shareholder value? 
Why not clusters of portable media players to create large screen 
displays (the iPhone video wall?) {Ooohh... a 5x5 array of iPhones, 
each paying for the rights for a one time display content.. excellent...)


But seriously, there's all kinds of weird stuff going on that drives 
companies driven by consumer products. And not all of it makes a heck 
of a lot of sense, except to the guy hearing the elevator pitch.



James Lux, P.E.
Spacecraft Radio Frequency Subsystems Group
Flight Communications Systems Section
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Mail Stop 161-213
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena CA 91109
tel: (818)354-2075
fax: (818)393-6875