[cap-talk] Capability accounting

[Jed at Webstart]

At 04:12 AM 6/23/2006, Ian G wrote:
>...
>
>Also, bear in mind that the typical charge would not be
>on a "CPU processing" basis, that's a more or less old
>notion that may harken back to the mainframe days when
>CPUs were the bottleneck and that's all there was to
>it.

Ha!   Would it surprise you to know that we still account
on a CPU processing equivalent basis at scientific computer
centers today - e.g. NERSC:

http://www.nersc.gov/

where I work?  Of course there are equivalents for different
processors, for short and long term storage, etc., but
CPU time is still the dominate factor in figuring so-called
"SRU"s (System Resource Units).

In so far as we do "GRID" computing (where people move
around between such scientific computing centers and even
have jobs automatically scheduled to appropriate centers
with suitable resources - for a price) there is a "market"
of some sort in place for such computing resources.

>In proper marketing, you charge what you can, and you
>align it to events rather than "pure consumption", because
>that is more tractable in code.  But you try and simulate
>as much as possible consumption because this gets you
>closer to what the economists call "consumer surplus".

Of course in the scientific computing market (such as it
is), the "money" is almost entirely government "funny"
money.  I don't know of any companies in the timesharing
business any more, but scientific computing users do
"shop around" for the best services among centers.

>So the idea of:
>
>     "a new cap requiring a new coin, but you can
>     keep using the cap forever."
>
>Is efficient, on paper at least.

Sorry, you lost me above.

>Over time, the demand and the supply cross and efficiency
>is achieved as you muck around with different charging
>experiments.  How this is done is arcane, you probably
>recall how Paypal was originally free - but over time
>and dozens of migrations, little fees popped up here
>and there.

Seems to be true of a lot of the dot coms that survived.

>Also, studying the migration of mobile
>phone use from "account" basis to "prepaid" basis is
>enlightening, as it shows how telcos have slowly been
>forced to adopt consumer centric models that deal with
>Nick Szabo's mental transaction cost issues.
>
> > Perhaps you can enlighten me on how digital money
> > more naturally deals with managing such resource uses.
>
>Managing resources *is* what money does - it is only
>what money does - according to some views :)  The
>reason we talk about money rather than accounting
>is that in the old days, you could have an accounting
>program, but you couldn't have a money system.
>
>It wasn't until David Chaum's ideas that this issue
>changed in people's minds.
>
>Now you can have both.  And the money system is much
>much better, albeit somewhat complicated to learn,
>which somewhat inherent in money itself.
>
>( I personally haven't used an accounting system for
>about 3-4 years, ever since my company issued its
>own money.  Not that I have much to account for,
>these days, but I can attest that the difference
>between using an internal money and an accounting
>system is staggering, if you can get it to work. )

Fascinating.  I would certainly like to better understand
what you mean by the above.  Would you suggest that
changing to a "money system" would have a beneficial
effect (e.g. more "efficient" resource use) on scientific
computing?  By that "money system" term, would you
consider it sufficient to have exchange rates between
units like NERSC's "SRU"s and the equivalent at other
centers, or would something more fundamental need to
be done?  If the later, can you sketch the sort of transformation
that you believe is needed?

Can you briefly suggest how old "big iron" things like
processor time (which is still the primary scarce resource
in such scientific computing systems) might be managed
with a money system?  Naturally if there is a serious
improvement possible (especially if there are extant models
to view as examples) then I could see trying to introduce such
a change to centers like ours.

--Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/