Comments on: Supercomputer version of Windows nears release

Microsoft releases a near-final version of Windows Computer Cluster Server 2003

[rstinnett]

Would you like a cookie?

I'm always amazed at people who have done all these "great things" and are "masters" of a technology. Why they have climbed every mountain and swam every sea.

You can tell who they are. They are ones who have nothing better to do than hang around and post comments about how superior they are to everyone else.

When more than 1/3rd of the responses to a story are from the same person, I think that tells you something -- at least it tells me something.

[Thomas, David]

Got Milk?

I do believe we will all stick with the facts. Its wonderful that you can make posts of absolutely no substance and still wish for some kind of respect. That's ok. Keep your milk and cookies, I'm sure as heck aint Santa Claus.

It would be worthwhile if you AT LEAST attempted to debate. But, since you seem to not have anything real to add in the first place, all one can surmise is you simply have nothing to add at all.

[rstinnett]

Would you like a cookie?

I'm always amazed at people who have done all these "great things" and are "masters" of a technology. Why they have climbed every mountain and swam every sea.

You can tell who they are. They are ones who have nothing better to do than hang around and post comments about how superior they are to everyone else.

When more than 1/3rd of the responses to a story are from the same person, I think that tells you something -- at least it tells me something.

[Thomas, David]

Got Milk?

I do believe we will all stick with the facts. Its wonderful that you can make posts of absolutely no substance and still wish for some kind of respect. That's ok. Keep your milk and cookies, I'm sure as heck aint Santa Claus.

It would be worthwhile if you AT LEAST attempted to debate. But, since you seem to not have anything real to add in the first place, all one can surmise is you simply have nothing to add at all.

[bluemist9999]

Doesn't make sense

Supercomputers spend most of their time doing complex calculations and need their CPUs focused on their core task. On Windows, the GUI takes a fair amount of CPU usage --- while appropriate for a desktop, I don't think it makes sense for a supercomputer.

And that's ignoring the vast number of security issues Windows has on Intel machines. I wouldn't run it on a multimillion dollar supercomputer. Personally, I'd use the Beowolf cluster for Linux, if I ever were to use such a machine.

[Joe Blow]

And Since When Did Anything Microsloth Do Have to Make Sense? ...

It certainly wasn't in any of the consent decrees or opinions handed down by the feds, or in any of the other marketing hoopla that apologists/shills feel the need to broadcast in support of that company's continued attempts at expansion beyond its already moribund and pathetic desktop products market (desktop OS license sales recently dropped below those for the Media Center version, although they spun it as Media Center sales rising, even though they were almost exclusively already installed on systems sold at retail). There's only one reason that they're attempting to break down the door into the supercomputing market, and that's a vain attempt to find additional incremental sales somewhere, anywhere, outside the portion of the computing marketplace that they had locked up (but, even that has slowly started dribbling away - virtually the only money they will make from Vista will be via licenses on new systems, and sales for them are declining - look at the problems that Dell, HP, etc., have gotten in over the past few years).

This follows on the heels of their largely unsuccessful attempts to dominate the enterprise server markets - i.e., tightly-coupled symmetric multiprocessor systems that the mainframe vendors have had a stranglehold on for decades. They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that their technology does not scale well, and how they thought that anyone was going to port upwards of 60 years' worth of mainframe software over to Microsloth's completely different version of proprietary control just goes to show how naive and/or arrogant they really are in the head shed in Redmond. There might actually be some customers who are dumb enough to think that, if only Windoze ran on every conceivable piece of hardware under the Sun (pun fully intended), the world would be so much of a better place, but the vast majority of the supercomputing market will very likely never even hear about this, much less give a damn, as they happily continue their work with what is absolutely not broken in any way, shape, or form.

Or, maybe it was just done for bragging rights by the eggheads in their pure research labs in Cambridge, etc., who are trying to justify their otherwise completely useless existence. Can anyone point to a single major technological leap forward in computing from any of these labs? Oh, yeah, they're in it for the long haul, and can't be bothered with solving existing problems. They have to dream up new problems no one is having so they can solve them, instead. I've worked in that kind of community before, and yes, they have done some very clever and interesting things, but it's been a long time since anything "paradigm-shifting" has come from within a corporate-sponsored computing research bureaucracy, or an academic/government one, for that matter - many of which have been benefactors of Bill's largesse (which you can bet translates into doing at least some bidding in the research world on Microsloth's behalf - to include sabotage of work that Microsloth doesn't sponsor).

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike everything Microsloth does - I find endless amusement in watching them stumble around, trying to figure out which door number to pick next, only to find that they've won yet-another jackass, box of dog poop, or other consolation prize.

All the Best,
Joe Blow

[bluemist9999]

Doesn't make sense

Supercomputers spend most of their time doing complex calculations and need their CPUs focused on their core task. On Windows, the GUI takes a fair amount of CPU usage --- while appropriate for a desktop, I don't think it makes sense for a supercomputer.

And that's ignoring the vast number of security issues Windows has on Intel machines. I wouldn't run it on a multimillion dollar supercomputer. Personally, I'd use the Beowolf cluster for Linux, if I ever were to use such a machine.

[Joe Blow]

And Since When Did Anything Microsloth Do Have to Make Sense? ...

It certainly wasn't in any of the consent decrees or opinions handed down by the feds, or in any of the other marketing hoopla that apologists/shills feel the need to broadcast in support of that company's continued attempts at expansion beyond its already moribund and pathetic desktop products market (desktop OS license sales recently dropped below those for the Media Center version, although they spun it as Media Center sales rising, even though they were almost exclusively already installed on systems sold at retail). There's only one reason that they're attempting to break down the door into the supercomputing market, and that's a vain attempt to find additional incremental sales somewhere, anywhere, outside the portion of the computing marketplace that they had locked up (but, even that has slowly started dribbling away - virtually the only money they will make from Vista will be via licenses on new systems, and sales for them are declining - look at the problems that Dell, HP, etc., have gotten in over the past few years).

This follows on the heels of their largely unsuccessful attempts to dominate the enterprise server markets - i.e., tightly-coupled symmetric multiprocessor systems that the mainframe vendors have had a stranglehold on for decades. They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that their technology does not scale well, and how they thought that anyone was going to port upwards of 60 years' worth of mainframe software over to Microsloth's completely different version of proprietary control just goes to show how naive and/or arrogant they really are in the head shed in Redmond. There might actually be some customers who are dumb enough to think that, if only Windoze ran on every conceivable piece of hardware under the Sun (pun fully intended), the world would be so much of a better place, but the vast majority of the supercomputing market will very likely never even hear about this, much less give a damn, as they happily continue their work with what is absolutely not broken in any way, shape, or form.

Or, maybe it was just done for bragging rights by the eggheads in their pure research labs in Cambridge, etc., who are trying to justify their otherwise completely useless existence. Can anyone point to a single major technological leap forward in computing from any of these labs? Oh, yeah, they're in it for the long haul, and can't be bothered with solving existing problems. They have to dream up new problems no one is having so they can solve them, instead. I've worked in that kind of community before, and yes, they have done some very clever and interesting things, but it's been a long time since anything "paradigm-shifting" has come from within a corporate-sponsored computing research bureaucracy, or an academic/government one, for that matter - many of which have been benefactors of Bill's largesse (which you can bet translates into doing at least some bidding in the research world on Microsloth's behalf - to include sabotage of work that Microsloth doesn't sponsor).

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike everything Microsloth does - I find endless amusement in watching them stumble around, trying to figure out which door number to pick next, only to find that they've won yet-another jackass, box of dog poop, or other consolation prize.

All the Best,
Joe Blow