> people's ideas about what's complicated or hard don't change > as quickly as computing power and storage has increased. i > think there's currently a failure of imagination, at least on > my part. there must be problems that aren't considered > because they were hard. > > as an old example, i think that the lab's use of worm storage > for the main file server was incredibly insightful. > > what could we do today, but don't quite dare?
That's a very good question. I'm afraid my imagintion may be failing here as well. When I think about how to use cycles, my mind tends to gravitate toward simulation tasks that need cycles by virtue of scale: things like weather forcasting, protein folding, etc. One other thing that periodically gets my attention are some ideas in the AI realm. But none of those are particularly novel. Maybe that's why I don't find myself longing for more performance than the current crop of machines. Ultimately, I think you're right though. Someone more clever than I will likely identify a use for the cycles that is more original than my thoughts and more intellectually interesting than eye candy. BLS
