> > Uh... I must be wayyyyy behind in my entertainment quota. Will the > entertainment police stop by and force me to watch Oprah?
There was a television show years ago called "Max Headroom" taking place in the "not to distant future", where it was illegal to have an on/off button on a television set (they are always on). Those having such machines were arrested. Maybe not to far off the mark the way things are going, though I find myself constantly turning off lone televisions in my house and I have not been arrested -- yet. >From my perspective, now that Jack Bauer is on vacation after saving the world (again) and Tony Soprano is ... (well who knows), and the Simpson's are in reruns, there is nothing to watch on the hundreds of content channels that get delivered to my house each day. Which is why I'm enjoying reading this thread at 9:56 PM on a Wednesday evening. While I have some time to comment, I have just finished reading a book called "The Wisdom of Crowds" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds). Quite a fascinating premise -- the right kind of groups have been shown to provide better solutions than expert(s). The idea is that experts tend to think narrowly, while groups think globally and the random erroneous stuff cancels out. One of the authors examples was Linux vs. Windows, but really what he was talking about was the open source model (the bazaar) vs. the top down Microsoft model (cathedral). Of course open source has it's gatekeepers (e.g. Torvalds) but, innovation can come from anywhere in the crowd. Linux HPC clusters are a perfect example. What was once considered "not feasible" (HPC with "free" software and commodity hardware) is now a big market segment. Intel states that 20% of the server market is used for HPC, and IDC surveys show that Linux is used on a majority of these HPC cluster systems (in one survey, Linux was 55%, Unix was the next largest OS with 29%). The crowd got it right, the experts did not. Note, this discussion does not mean to diminish the enormous contributions by many of the pioneers in this area, but rather the fact that had the "experts" drafted an 10 year HPC road-map in 1995, Linux clusters would probably have been a non-issue. So to wrap up my little RGB style rant (he is leaving for vacation after all). Microsoft will undoubtedly manage to service a certain sector of the market in the future, but just as the fluidity of digital information has allowed them great riches, so to does it create opportunities for others. I doubt that the next big thing will ever come from Microsoft or any other monolithic organization, but rather as it often does from the chaotic, un-predictable, un-manageable hoards that collectively see the future. To me the the open source development model seems to have harnessed this energy better than anything in the past. This trend is what Microsoft should fear, but then they are the market leading experts. -- Doug _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
