Actually if you are going to ask a top 100 list of "want to haves",
of course a new car at #1 in my personal list (though it is questionable
whether that 50k euro that a reasonable car costs here whether i ever
earn that in my life, so probably this will top my list for another 40
years),
then you'll find very high in that list the desire for a new and especially
FASTER
game computer.
Which is exactly my point.
Some are prepared to spend more than others for that.
If you'll realize that Sony sold 100 million units PS2, you start to slowly
understand what i mean. That in a time that pc definitely was faster than
PS2.
The next PS3 will blow out of the water every pc in terms of graphics
performance and
cpu speed of course.
Vincent
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Lux" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Vincent Diepeveen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Robert G. Brown"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Geoff Jacobs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <beowulf@beowulf.org>; "Angel
Dimitrov" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2006 10:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] commercial clusters
At 02:36 PM 9/29/2006, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
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.
The thing here is that "look like a winner"... the evaluation is NOT in
the eye of the buyer of the thing (be it chess computer, fast car, or arm
candy) it's in the eye of the viewer.
Having spent a fair amount of time working in a notoriously shallow
industry where people are more than willing to spend much more than they
have to "look like a winner", I'd be willing to bet a substantial sum of
money that chess playing ability isn't even in the top 100 list of
attributes, much less ownership of a machine with chess playing ability.
In many, many cases, ownership of these things is more a matter of
"conspicuous consumption" and is driven more by the purchase price, rather
than the actual performance. We could go into lots of details why people
conspicuously consume (demonstrating desirability or suitability for
mating/pairing seems to be one plausible scenario).
However, just as with perception of value of a fast chess computer, the
number of people who would evaluate the owner of such a device, vis a vis,
"partnering possibilities" is sufficiently small that it doesn't
constitute a market big enough to justify the development. You do see fast
cars in tabloid journals, but not many fast computers.
However, *marketing* is the whole art of making people desire something
they don't really need, eh? So there is hope. If you're not interested
in world domination, but just making money for yourself, then you can sell
a very small number of very expensive widgets. Who knows, maybe Warren
Buffett, George Soros, Richard Branson, and Bill Gates will all get
together over drinks on Paul Allen's yacht and talk trash: "my chess
computer can whip the pants off your radio telescope or personal
spaceship". I just wouldn't start planning on taking out ads in
Architectural Digest just yet.
By the way, my current job at JPL is hardly the notoriously shallow
industry I refer to above. If you're curious, you can google for the
answers.
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
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