Cray Co-Founder Joins Microsoft

ergo98 writes "Burton Smith, co-founder and chief scientist at Cray (The Supercomputer Company), has jumped ship. He's joining Microsoft to help them with their clustered computer initiative. Burton joins Microsoft as a technical fellow."

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft also announced Windows Vista will require a Cray supercomputer to run.

Crazy?

[HugePedlar]

I read this as "Crazy co-founder joins MS"

I was thinking "How crazy do you have to be? Crazy enough to throw a chair?"

Re:Irresistable

[RenHoek]

Third, the obligatory comment
A thousand BSODs a thousand times faster!

Looking at the new Xbox BSOD, I think they're now going for quality of quantity. So instead of a 1000 normal ones, you get one really good one.

Oh shit, my progra-- Ooooohh pretty....

Great News

[Essef]

Windows Cluster Edition System Requirements:

    - 128 CPUs
    - 100 GB RAM
    - 30 square metres of floorspace
    - Liquid Nitrogen cooling system ... and they will still claim it has lower TCO then Linux!

--
Don't read between the lines, the real interesting stuff
is below the line you just read.

Gone to the Microsoft Side...

[Red Samurai]

Bill Gates: The Microsoft Side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural... Burton Smith: Is it possible to learn this power? Bill Gates: Not if you stay at Cray...

Under training...

[Skiron]

Burton Smith took a two week training course in several stages for this:

1. The mouse - what is it? 2. How to use the mouse. 3. Learn to click [OK] without thinking. 4. Timing - measure your bogomips with the mouse hourglass icon spinning after you click [Cancel] 5. How to reboot when the mouse hourglass icon is still there after 45 minutes.

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Microsoft Cray supercomputers... Wait!

Re:Irresistable

[FidelCatsro]

"How long did it take NT/2000/XP to become somewhat respectable?"
I will tell you when it happens .

Wodehouse

[IainMH]

"Burton joins Microsoft as a technical fellow."

Was this article submitted by Bertie Wooster?

Non-compete

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to Burton's non-compete agreement with Cray, for his first year as a Microsoft Fellow, he's going to read Cryptonomicon over the company intercom and fix broken chairs in the CEO's office.

No doubt...

[mtec]

...to help develop a supercomputer version of the BSOD.

A golden age of Fellows

[Anonymous Coward]

The new supercomputing fellow position will be a great complement to Microsoft's existing technology fellowships:

• Menu drop shadow fellow
• Tail-recursive Windows-Update/reboot dependency cycle fellow
• Cartoon balloon notification fellow
• CD-ROM executable file autorun fellow
• Animated dog search technology fellow
• Cool full screen color effect fade fellow
• File replacement/deletion semantics fellow
• Marketshare defensive game theory fellow

Truly exciting research and development is in store at Microsoft!.

Re:Wodehouse

[Skiron]

No, it would have been "chappie" in that case.

Re:Grammar nazism...

[fatphil]

Excellent place for a typo, grand-dad.

Re:Gone to the Microsoft Side...

[kesuki]

So now the race is on, who can build skynet first? google? [slashdot.org] microsoft? or linux users? [wikipedia.org]

I think humanities last best hope is that it's microsoft.. humanity is saved by a BSOD (or perhaps by a gaping security hole that allows users to set terminators to target skynet)... of course google will never take skynet out of beta, and linux users would make skynet overly complicated, and abandon the project half way to completion.. when the lead developer gets a real job.

A Windows Cluster....

[Chris Bradshaw]

Did you say, "Windows Cluster"? I've already got several in my data-center. In fact, every dekstop in my network that runs windows can be considered a "Cluster", "Cluster F#%$^" that is.... HA HA HA HA, I SO FUNNY!

Re:Irresistable

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled 'If".

Re:Conspiracy theories

[click2005]

If an infinite number of slashdotters typed on an infinite number of keyboards, would they produce an original article?

Entity Cray has been assimilated

[Bushido Hacks]

Take one Microsoft hellbent on becoming the only game in town even if they are sued by various governments around the world. Add one supercomputer corporation. Add one easily manipulated United Nations to strike out any metioning of Open-Source Software. Mix in a little Big Brother and voila! You've got yourself the worlds largest seriving of "oh crap."