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BillR
Born Again Cynic
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2002
- Messages
- 18,535
Ok, here is the deal at the moment. The other day 7im and I exchanged a number of PMs over at the other forum and I did get some answers.
The first is something VJ himself said the other day; they want and really need a cross platform client. That in itself is a major issue I have been bitching about for years now as well as the undying devotion virtually everyone in science has to coding in FORTAN.
You can Google FORTRAN till you are blue in the face and you will after all your hard work find there are only two answers.
A-Its always been done that way.
B-Its a very easy language to teach.
Thats it, no secrets; in the end not one person can get past those two points.
Stanford and folding are not the only ones stuck in this antique endless loop, NASA, anyone having anything to do with Astronomy, Biology and numerous other areas of research all use this common language.
One other big commonality they all share is the use of any number of the ix OSs Linux, Unix, OSX (Jobs gives a lot of hardware to schools, go figure) and any other equivalent OS. There is no good reason not to use these Oss in fact they are perfectly suited to the task.
The big bugaboo in all this is, you guessed it, Windows. There is very little written for science, or the sciences I mentioned, for Windows.
There in lies the big issue, how do you write code that performs equally on multiple operating systems?
Those who remember the Amber work units remembers how well they performed on Intel CPUs but sucked big time on AMD. In that case it was not an OS issue it was an Intel being the assholes they are issue. They would not allow the code to be compiled for both CPUs, only theirs. Prior to that time AMD held an obvious edge over Intel.
Ok, my point. This post is from a neutral position and those who know me know that doesnt come lightly.
Stanford, to get the data they need is forced to write code for everybody involved or face a ton of bad commentary and or people dropping out.
What Stanford wont ask anyone to do, pay attention here, is ask as many users as possible switch to Linux. With one OS to deal with neither science or points would suffer at all, in fact both would gain in a really big way. Running dual clients on a Quad would suddenly cut your points while running a properly written core optimized for one OS would up your points.
Now, this part is just a guess, but, my guess is Stanford wont ask anyone to do this because this is all voluntary. So, by not being honest and upfront about this whole problem they end up pissing off more people then if they would just do it and be done with it.
Instead there is a big fear of upsetting one group of users or another. Thus we end up with the cloak of secrecy we have now which is nothing if non productive.
So, all that said it is my opinion that Stanford simply announce the change and live with the bitching. For the corporate farmers, keep what you have, they produce enormous amounts of work. Windows users can use VM with one client per quad more efficiently and even the MAC guys are covered.
There, somebody said it out loud. Nobody can please all of the people all of the time, so, Stanford, stop trying.
The first is something VJ himself said the other day; they want and really need a cross platform client. That in itself is a major issue I have been bitching about for years now as well as the undying devotion virtually everyone in science has to coding in FORTAN.
You can Google FORTRAN till you are blue in the face and you will after all your hard work find there are only two answers.
A-Its always been done that way.
B-Its a very easy language to teach.
Thats it, no secrets; in the end not one person can get past those two points.
Stanford and folding are not the only ones stuck in this antique endless loop, NASA, anyone having anything to do with Astronomy, Biology and numerous other areas of research all use this common language.
One other big commonality they all share is the use of any number of the ix OSs Linux, Unix, OSX (Jobs gives a lot of hardware to schools, go figure) and any other equivalent OS. There is no good reason not to use these Oss in fact they are perfectly suited to the task.
The big bugaboo in all this is, you guessed it, Windows. There is very little written for science, or the sciences I mentioned, for Windows.
There in lies the big issue, how do you write code that performs equally on multiple operating systems?
Those who remember the Amber work units remembers how well they performed on Intel CPUs but sucked big time on AMD. In that case it was not an OS issue it was an Intel being the assholes they are issue. They would not allow the code to be compiled for both CPUs, only theirs. Prior to that time AMD held an obvious edge over Intel.
Ok, my point. This post is from a neutral position and those who know me know that doesnt come lightly.
Stanford, to get the data they need is forced to write code for everybody involved or face a ton of bad commentary and or people dropping out.
What Stanford wont ask anyone to do, pay attention here, is ask as many users as possible switch to Linux. With one OS to deal with neither science or points would suffer at all, in fact both would gain in a really big way. Running dual clients on a Quad would suddenly cut your points while running a properly written core optimized for one OS would up your points.
Now, this part is just a guess, but, my guess is Stanford wont ask anyone to do this because this is all voluntary. So, by not being honest and upfront about this whole problem they end up pissing off more people then if they would just do it and be done with it.
Instead there is a big fear of upsetting one group of users or another. Thus we end up with the cloak of secrecy we have now which is nothing if non productive.
So, all that said it is my opinion that Stanford simply announce the change and live with the bitching. For the corporate farmers, keep what you have, they produce enormous amounts of work. Windows users can use VM with one client per quad more efficiently and even the MAC guys are covered.
There, somebody said it out loud. Nobody can please all of the people all of the time, so, Stanford, stop trying.
