Larry Smarr on research computing and networks

Larry Smarr is one of the people at the center of the use of high speed networks and high performance distributed computing to move scientific research forward.

There's a new video online of the keynote talk he gave in January at the JGN II symposium. Interestingly enough, he gave the talk in Seattle, and it was shown on HD video, streamed live over the Internet to Osaka.

The talk is an illuminating survey of some of the scientific activity that is being enabled by very high speed networks and some of the work that's being done to create the networks that these scientific efforts require.

In order to get the most out of the talk, you need to watch Larry in one window and click along with his presentation slides in another window.

I watched this in my office, viewing the high def 5 megabit per second version of the video, and it was amazingly clear and detailed - by far the best streamed video I've seen yet on a desktop computer. At this kind of resolution video really does become something rich and compelling, instead of just something annoying (which is what I usually find streaming video to be).

Unfortunately, the video only works with Windows Media on Windows - on the Mac I could get the audio but not the video.

It's well worth watching this presentation if you have any interest in how science is actually being done these days.