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Take a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services
That's... uh... wow, what the heck?
OK, so some of this stuff appears to make sense. Other parts... don't.
(Most especially, "Amazon Mechanical Turk". WTF?) I'm not really seeing
what SQS would be useful for. And I'm also wondering just how much all
this stuff actually *costs*...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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I'm also loving the concept of "elastic clouds" and "computational
clouds". I mean, really, lay off the acid, guys!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> (Most especially, "Amazon Mechanical Turk". WTF?)
The only WTF part of this for me is that people will actually work for a
penny a click or a nickel a result. But without telling us how much you
actually looked into it (like whether you read Amazon's pages, etc) it's
hard to help explain.
> I'm not really seeing what SQS would be useful for.
Think of a renderfarm for POV renders. How do you manage machines vs
renders? (The main problem with SQS in that sense is that you can't easily
set the time-out for retries.)
Lots of this stuff is used by Amazon internally. I suspect order fulfillment
is using SQS internally, and putting products up on the store (like, writing
descriptions or entering metadata) is using something like Turk.
> And I'm also wondering just how much all this stuff actually *costs*...
CPU hours are a bit expensive, but comparable to renting a shared server
somewhere else (except you get a "dedicated" server). The rest is really
cheap. Hit aws.amazon.com for details.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
There aren't any trees on Mars.
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>> (Most especially, "Amazon Mechanical Turk". WTF?)
>
> The only WTF part of this for me is that people will actually work for a
> penny a click or a nickel a result. But without telling us how much you
> actually looked into it (like whether you read Amazon's pages, etc) it's
> hard to help explain.
Why would people do "work" (especially such mundane work) for a nickle?
Why would companies pay for results which are likely to be garbage
anyway? How does Amazon make money out of this? Which numpty thought
this sounded like a good idea? ...the questions continue...
>> I'm not really seeing what SQS would be useful for.
>
> Think of a renderfarm for POV renders. How do you manage machines vs
> renders? (The main problem with SQS in that sense is that you can't
> easily set the time-out for retries.)
>
> Lots of this stuff is used by Amazon internally. I suspect order
> fulfillment is using SQS internally, and putting products up on the
> store (like, writing descriptions or entering metadata) is using
> something like Turk.
OK, so... it's a message delivery system. Where do the messages come
from? Where does it deliver them to? What are they for? Why would you
pay money for this? etc.
>> And I'm also wondering just how much all this stuff actually *costs*...
>
> CPU hours are a bit expensive, but comparable to renting a shared server
> somewhere else (except you get a "dedicated" server). The rest is really
> cheap. Hit aws.amazon.com for details.
Yeah, I'm currently looking at this.
One wonders how a small online shop such as Amazon ends up with such
vast computational resources that it can profitably hire out the spare
capacity, but still...
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Why would people do "work" (especially such mundane work) for a nickle?
> Why would companies pay for results which are likely to be garbage
> anyway? How does Amazon make money out of this? Which numpty thought
> this sounded like a good idea? ...the questions continue...
I think you've hit the nail on the head.
- Ricky
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Invisible wrote:
> Why would people do "work" (especially such mundane work) for a nickle?
I don't know. Most of it seems to not be from people in third-world
a-nickel-is-a-lot-of-money countries either.
> Why would companies pay for results which are likely to be garbage
> anyway?
You don't pay till you check the results. Or you send the same job out three
times and make sure all three answers come back similar. Which isn't hard
when it only costs a nickel to start with.
> How does Amazon make money out of this?
They take a cut.
> OK, so... it's a message delivery system.
Yes.
> Where do the messages come
> from? Where does it deliver them to? What are they for? Why would you
> pay money for this? etc.
Read the APIs.
> One wonders how a small online shop such as Amazon ends up with such
> vast computational resources that it can profitably hire out the spare
> capacity, but still...
Small? I suppose they started small. Winter a year ago, they were
fulfilling 43 orders per second the week before Christmas.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
There aren't any trees on Mars.
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Also... what precisely *is* a "web service" anyway? I can't find any
useful answers online.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Also... what precisely *is* a "web service" anyway? I can't find any
> useful answers online.
It currently means a service provided to you over the internet. I.e., we'll
run the program, you access it remotely.
Alternately, if you're talking about "Web Service", it could also mean using
SOAP over HTTP to remotely invoke services at a remote machine. It's a bit
of an overloaded term.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
There aren't any trees on Mars.
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Darren New wrote:
> It currently means a service provided to you over the internet. I.e.,
> we'll run the program, you access it remotely.
>
> Alternately, if you're talking about "Web Service", it could also mean
> using SOAP over HTTP to remotely invoke services at a remote machine.
> It's a bit of an overloaded term.
Amazon appears to be talking about SOAP. It points to a W3 Schools
tutorial, but it doesn't make any sense. (Neither does Wikipedia. But
then, that's a horrid place to attempt to learn new technologies. It's
reference material.)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Amazon appears to be talking about SOAP.
SOAP, conceptually, is pretty simple. You take the arguments to the
procedure and wrap them up in XML. You put the function you're calling into
the headers. You post the message (with appropriate crypto signatures if
necessary) to the appropriate URL. You get back from the web server your
answer, probably again wrapped up in XML.
WSDL is a way of specifying what arguments go where in the sending and
returning XML.
Generally, you write the server end and have the IDE generate the WSDL file
for it. You give the WSDL file to someone else, who hands it to *their* IDE,
which writes the client stub. So it's basic remote procedure invocation,
lathered up with a bunch of Web 2.0 buzzwords.
If you don't do the automation part, it's an awful technology. If you do the
automation part, it's a convenient way of filling that niche. Most
complaints about it are how hard it is to automate, or that it's the wrong
way to do distributed computing.
In theory, SOAP supposedly runs over things other than HTTP. In practice, it
doesn't, in part because they left out of SOAP some of the vital parts that
HTTP provides (like cookies, for example).
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
There aren't any trees on Mars.
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