4 ms·

I agree for the most part, but the expectation of a Library having a CNC mill or a miniature cluster seems a little strange and specific to your personal intere

I agree for the most part, but the expectation of a Library having a CNC mill or a miniature cluster seems a little strange and specific to your personal interests. Holding reading classes for younger children and poorly literate adults, community events centered on lots of different subjects, art appreciation, reading groups... I think those are all slightly more feasible and in line with what a general public would enjoy in a library. Now, if we're talking about the concept of a Hacker-centre... I think there are a few of those in the larger cities and some college campuses.

hugh3 16y ago
Indeed, and a public miniature cluster is just a tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. Either it gets monopolised by one person, or nobody gets more than a tiny fraction of a CPU-day per day making it less useful than your own laptop.
- blhack 16y ago
  Well wait a second, couldn't the same thing be said about books? Or public basketball courts? Or study rooms or anything that is made publicly available and isn't unlimited? Yes I could build a cluster in my house if I wanted one, but 15 year old me couldn't, and 15 year old me would have spent his entire childhood in the library if the one described here existed.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Not really. A library can easily buy more books than everybody in the surrounding communities could possibly want at any given time, which is why if you go to the library you'll see books on the shelves. Books are cheap and I can't use any more than a few at a time. But any legitimate cluster user can easily use an entire mini-cluster, all the time, on their own. (I know I can!) So the demand for the resources can easily outstrip the supply, for any reasonable value of supply. A decent M-node cluster with a good backbone costs N thousand dollars per node, where N is some surprisingly high number. If you have more than M users it's pretty much useless for everybody since I can't do anything I can't do on my home computer, and if you have fewer than M users it's a damn poor use of library money to buy an expensive cluster that hardly anyone's going to use. PS. This thread reminds me that my library books are a week overdue, I should return them right now. Thanks!
    - blhack 16y ago
      But it doesn't specifically have to be a cluster. The point is to make libraries more than just a warehouse for print, but a place for continued learning.
- derefr 16y ago
  Wouldn't this have also been how old time-sharing mainframes (i.e. in universities) were used? And if not, why not?
ascuttlefish 16y ago
I'm not sure what libraries are like in your town, but all those services you mention are the bread and butter of public libraries here in Ontario. That sort of targetted programming is by far the best way to get people in the door.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  That's what any good library is like. The OP seemed to be indicating that his library was a total ghost town though.
  - ascuttlefish 16y ago
    That's a shame. A lot of municipalities see their libraries (and museums) as low-hanging fruit in times of financial distress. Often they're pared down to a bare minimum of services: circulation. This is troublesome for many reasons, but the most important, in my opinion, is that libraries generally see an upsurge in use statistics during economic downturns. People go to the library to learn new skills (literacy, resume help and proofreading, etc.), to look for work, to escape into a good book and the company of their fellow man, and to just get away from their troubles. Programming should, and often does, provide just the targeted help they could use most.

hugh3 16y ago

Indeed, and a public miniature cluster is just a tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. Either it gets monopolised by one person, or nobody gets more than a tiny fraction of a CPU-day per day making it less useful than your own laptop.

blhack 16y ago
Well wait a second, couldn't the same thing be said about books? Or public basketball courts? Or study rooms or anything that is made publicly available and isn't unlimited? Yes I could build a cluster in my house if I wanted one, but 15 year old me couldn't, and 15 year old me would have spent his entire childhood in the library if the one described here existed.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Not really. A library can easily buy more books than everybody in the surrounding communities could possibly want at any given time, which is why if you go to the library you'll see books on the shelves. Books are cheap and I can't use any more than a few at a time. But any legitimate cluster user can easily use an entire mini-cluster, all the time, on their own. (I know I can!) So the demand for the resources can easily outstrip the supply, for any reasonable value of supply. A decent M-node cluster with a good backbone costs N thousand dollars per node, where N is some surprisingly high number. If you have more than M users it's pretty much useless for everybody since I can't do anything I can't do on my home computer, and if you have fewer than M users it's a damn poor use of library money to buy an expensive cluster that hardly anyone's going to use. PS. This thread reminds me that my library books are a week overdue, I should return them right now. Thanks!
  - blhack 16y ago
    But it doesn't specifically have to be a cluster. The point is to make libraries more than just a warehouse for print, but a place for continued learning.
derefr 16y ago
Wouldn't this have also been how old time-sharing mainframes (i.e. in universities) were used? And if not, why not?

ascuttlefish 16y ago

I'm not sure what libraries are like in your town, but all those services you mention are the bread and butter of public libraries here in Ontario. That sort of targetted programming is by far the best way to get people in the door.

DannoHung 16y ago
That's what any good library is like. The OP seemed to be indicating that his library was a total ghost town though.
- ascuttlefish 16y ago
  That's a shame. A lot of municipalities see their libraries (and museums) as low-hanging fruit in times of financial distress. Often they're pared down to a bare minimum of services: circulation. This is troublesome for many reasons, but the most important, in my opinion, is that libraries generally see an upsurge in use statistics during economic downturns. People go to the library to learn new skills (literacy, resume help and proofreading, etc.), to look for work, to escape into a good book and the company of their fellow man, and to just get away from their troubles. Programming should, and often does, provide just the targeted help they could use most.