>> How is this any different to me just going out and buying a big computer?
> 
> Or going out and buying a couple hundred big computers?  To do a 
> week-long render? Then what?

The average person can't afford to buy a hundred big computers. But 
then, the average person can't afford to rent a hundred big computers in 
a cloud either. So it seems like a moot comparison to me.

>> (And as we all know, buying is usually cheaper than renting except for 
>> one-offs.)
> 
> It depends on how much you get with your rental. Maintenance? Backups? 
> Rack space? Electricity?  Disaster planning? You still have to pay to 
> run the things, and you still have to have stand-by capacity for overloads.

If things like maintenance, backups and disaster planning are important 
to you, then yes, cloud computing probably makes a lot of sense. But if 
you're just some dude trying to render stuff with POV-Ray, it makes far 
less sense.

> Of course, with something like Amazon, you can rent until your capacity 
> warrants buying processors. And then you can use Amazon to handle the 
> overflow, or the seasonal rush, or the new product announcement, or 
> whatever.

Only makes sense if you're using the system to provide a service to 
somebody else. If you're just running a computation for your own benefit 
then there aren't going to be "rushes" or "overflows".

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> The average person can't afford to buy a hundred big computers. But 
> then, the average person can't afford to rent a hundred big computers in 
> a cloud either. 

Nonsense. Amazon's computers are like $0.09/hour.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing

100 "small" amazon computers are $9/hour.

> If things like maintenance, backups and disaster planning are important 
> to you, then yes, cloud computing probably makes a lot of sense. But if 
> you're just some dude trying to render stuff with POV-Ray, it makes far 
> less sense.

It depends how fast you need things.

> Only makes sense if you're using the system to provide a service to 
> somebody else. If you're just running a computation for your own benefit 
> then there aren't going to be "rushes" or "overflows".

You asked for a good reason; I gave you several.  Some of us actually make 
money with computers.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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>> The average person can't afford to buy a hundred big computers. But 
>> then, the average person can't afford to rent a hundred big computers 
>> in a cloud either. 
> 
> Nonsense. Amazon's computers are like $0.09/hour.
> 
> http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/#pricing
> 
> 100 "small" amazon computers are $9/hour.

...which works out to $216/day or $1,512/month - which is slightly 
outside most people's budget.

By contrast, buy a big computer, put it in your loft, leave it running 
all year. It'll cost maybe £500 to buy in the first place, but at the 
end of a year you'll have a finished result.

> You asked for a good reason; I gave you several.  Some of us actually 
> make money with computers.

Some *companies* make money with computers; it's news to me that 
individual people can do this.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> ...which works out to $216/day or $1,512/month - which is slightly 
> outside most people's budget.

What, $2/day for a 24-hour pov-ray renderer? If you only need 100 compute
rs 
for a day, $216 is really not a whole lot of money.

> By contrast, buy a big computer, put it in your loft, leave it running 

> all year. It'll cost maybe £500 to buy in the first place, but at 
the 
> end of a year you'll have a finished result.

Well, sure. You can buy one computer and take a month to do something, or
 
rent 100 and take a couple hours to do something. Note that if your progr
am 
takes a year, that's 100 computers for about 1.2 days, so you come out 
ahead. Admittedly, you don't have the computer at the end of the year, bu
t 
you saved a year's worth of time and electricity too.

> Some *companies* make money with computers; it's news to me that 
> individual people can do this.

Uh, OK. I'm sorry to hear that.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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