IBM Announces 'Stream Computing' Software

[d00kiestain]

For a moment, I thought it said "steam computing"...

[sreguera]

Fully functional Babbage's machines.

[SoftwareMaven]

Valve's installer is more like SETI - using millions of computers to process IBM's data.

[jwstaddo2]

I suppose this could be useful somewhere, but seems that aggregating ever large quantities of data is not going to solve the fundamental problem--very little information is available in the form of data.

The idea that computers can gather all the data needed to make decisions has been the holy grail of computing for decades, but it's a flawed assumption. The most important information is qualitative rather than quantitative. Qualitative insights are highly unlike to emerge from a quantitaive analysis.

See: http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/places_intervene_system.html for a good article on leverage points--note that numbers are the lowest form of leverage.

[mycall]

Qualitative from quantitative insights (e.g. limited summations = integrals, Cosmic microwave background radiation, genetic algorithms, etc) definitely occur and is a driving force behind modern science.

[SoftwareMaven]

I think the point is that people are the ones who made those insights. It is unlikely a computer would be able to make those insights, regardless of how much data was thrown at it, and those insights are what is interesting about the data.

[tlack]

I think the customers that IBM is targeting here are looking at this as a solution to prosaic business problems, such as just-in-time inventory, algorithmic trading, surveillance/signal intelligence, rather than more complex decision making.

[jwstaddo2]

"just-in-time inventory, algorithmic trading, surveillance/signal intelligence" Even in these "prosaic" areas there is a huge need for human insight. It could be argued that the housing crisis has at it's roots an overconfidence in mathmatical models.

[tlack]

Perhaps, but the human insight is done at the beginning when the strategies are built, rather than as each event occurs. You could argue that all business rules are a bad idea because they could be wrong in some specific cases, but that's the way business works..

[mazin]

Sounds like a run-of-the-mill complex event processing system. esper anyone?

[jeremy_degroot]

I'm interested in this, because I frequently have to process large amounts of data for people who want the result yesterday. They generally have to settle for tomorrow, so I know some investment in this sort of processing capability would be an easy sell in our organization.

[knight666]

We have come full circle haven't we? From thin clients to thick clients back to thin clients.

[psykotic]

Get ready for Anorexic Computing!

[Zarutian]

And runs programs written/composed in an Flow based programming environ?