IBM says AMD dead in 5yrs ... -- Microsoft Monopoly vs. IBM monopoly
Bill/Carolyn Pechter
Russell Wallace <r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net> wrote:
>On 12 Feb 2003 09:38:50 -0600, koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org
>(Bob Koehler) wrote:
>
>> What I mind is the decision to sub out the software to Billy boy.
>
>You'd prefer an IBM monopoly?
>
(I crossposted this to alt.folklore.computers -- since this topic's
moving from OpenVMS...)
Yes...
Having worked for DEC, (and among others Concurrent, Alliant,
and IBM and Lucent...) I'd have to say I'd prefer an IBM monopoly to
one ruled by Microsoft.
At least the IBM hardware worked and the software was functional.
Specs were available to interface with IBM comm protocols. Patents
are available for cross license... I see nothing wrong with IBM
since '81 when I got into the business.
IBM may have been a bitch to compete with -- but they never picked out
smaller companies to buy up to eliminate any competition. They were
hard tough competitors, but they seemed to be pretty honest compared to
what I've seen out of Redmond.
I'd prefer OpenVMS was in IBM's hands since I've got more faith in them
continuing it then I do HP. I had first hand experience with Lucent's
management (or is it mis-management) at Bell Labs...
I don't think Carly's really a computer person -- and I think that's one
of the problems with the computer business today -- not "theinformation
technology business."
IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
Bill
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Bill and/or Carolyn Pechter | pec...@shell.monmouth.com |
| Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in |
| a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Bill/Carolyn Pechter
> From: rho...@sco.com
> Subject: List of patches for VMS
> Submit-To: scoa...@xenitec.on.ca
> Organization: The SCO Group
> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 14:00:03 GMT
Following my last post I noticed the above in the comp.unix.sco.announce
newsgroup and damned near freaked on the acronym for Caldera's Volution
Messaging Server.
Geez... if they owned Unix and OpenVMS...
Might actually get something for my SCO stock then... right now it's
worth as much as my Lucent or almost as much as Sun... 8-(
Russell Wallace
(Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
>IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
>won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
>car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
#1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
restricted to IBM-compatible software. Or you bought a VAX running VMS
and then you were restricted to software compatible with that. Or
Apple, Commodore, Data General, Acorn, Wang, etc etc. The industry was
fragmented into a zillion closed, proprietary platforms, all
incompatible with each other, all sold by companies who behaved not as
though they had X% market share, but as though they had a monopoly on
that X%.
Now you can buy an industry standard PC from whatever manufacturer you
please, load Windows on it (for a definitely _non_ monopoly price),
and mostly just not have to worry about compatibility issues. But you
don't like Windows? Fine, take that same standard PC and load Linux,
BSD, OS/2, BeOS etc etc etc, whatever takes your fancy. You told
someone 20 years ago you'd be able to do that in 20 years time and
he'd think that was a miracle that made gigahertz chips look like a
trivial achievement.
People tend not to respect what they have, but I'd really like to take
the people who complain incessantly about "Micro$oft sucks" and make
them spend a year in a parallel universe where _any_ other company had
won the #1 spot. I guarantee you when they came back, 90% of them
would be making pilgrimages to Redmond on their knees.
--
"Mercy to the guilty is treachery to the innocent."
Remove killer rodent from address to reply.
http://www.esatclear.ie/~rwallace
David J Dachtera
> On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
> (Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>
>
>>IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
>>IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
>>won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
>>car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
>>
>
> It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
> vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
> #1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
Wanna bet?
> How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
> IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
> restricted to IBM-compatible software. Or you bought a VAX running VMS
> and then you were restricted to software compatible with that. Or
> Apple, Commodore, Data General, Acorn, Wang, etc etc.
So, now you buy an "IBM-compatible" (how quickly we forgot THAT one, eh?)
running Windows and we are restricted to software that runs under Windows.
What's the difference? What's your point?
> The industry was
> fragmented into a zillion closed, proprietary platforms, all
> incompatible with each other, all sold by companies who behaved not as
> though they had X% market share, but as though they had a monopoly on
> that X%.
>
> Now you can buy an industry standard PC from whatever manufacturer you
> please, load Windows
...but nothing else. After all, then you're no longer "industry standard"...
> on it (for a definitely _non_ monopoly price),
Try again.
> and mostly just not have to worry about compatibility issues.
You've never run WhineBloze or anything that runs under it, have you?
> But you
> don't like Windows? Fine, take that same standard PC and load Linux,
> BSD, OS/2, BeOS etc etc etc, whatever takes your fancy. You told
> someone 20 years ago you'd be able to do that in 20 years time and
> he'd think that was a miracle that made gigahertz chips look like a
> trivial achievement.
>
> People tend not to respect what they have,
..when it constantly crashes, causes them to reboot, re-install (the entire o.s.
for shit sake!), etc. ...
> but I'd really like to take
> the people who complain incessantly about "Micro$oft sucks" and make
> them spend a year in a parallel universe where _any_ other company had
> won the #1 spot. I guarantee
...but *I* doubt very seriously...
> you when they came back, 90%
I'd make that considerably less...
> of them
> would be making pilgrimages to Redmond on their knees.
Keep dreaming...
--
David J Dachtera
dba DJE Systems
http://www.djesys.com/
Morten Reistad
>On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
>(Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>
>>IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
>>IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
>>won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
>>car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
>
>It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
>vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
>#1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
And IBM was probably the best behaved of the lot.
>How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
>IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
>restricted to IBM-compatible software. Or you bought a VAX running VMS
>and then you were restricted to software compatible with that. Or
>Apple, Commodore, Data General, Acorn, Wang, etc etc. The industry was
>fragmented into a zillion closed, proprietary platforms, all
>incompatible with each other, all sold by companies who behaved not as
>though they had X% market share, but as though they had a monopoly on
>that X%.
And, not only that, at their whim they _forced_ you through "upgrades"
that meant total incompatibility of your software and lots of rewrite and
port expenses. As far as I know there are no big (or intentional) problems
with running W95 programs written according to official MS specifications
(i'll be kind and forget W 3) code on XP or any intervening OS.
And if there is a migration there are good reasons, and at least one
intervening platform to do the port slow and controlled.
>Now you can buy an industry standard PC from whatever manufacturer you
>please, load Windows on it (for a definitely _non_ monopoly price),
>and mostly just not have to worry about compatibility issues. But you
>don't like Windows? Fine, take that same standard PC and load Linux,
>BSD, OS/2, BeOS etc etc etc, whatever takes your fancy. You told
>someone 20 years ago you'd be able to do that in 20 years time and
>he'd think that was a miracle that made gigahertz chips look like a
>trivial achievement.
>
>People tend not to respect what they have, but I'd really like to take
>the people who complain incessantly about "Micro$oft sucks" and make
>them spend a year in a parallel universe where _any_ other company had
>won the #1 spot. I guarantee you when they came back, 90% of them
>would be making pilgrimages to Redmond on their knees.
And, remember how Microsoft fronted by Mr Gates WERE the good guys
all through the eighties and some of the nineties. It just tells
you how preceptions change. There is a reason why everyone went to
buy from the software vendor that did NOT sell hardware.
And, from a mid-eighties perspective current Windows would qualify
as "unix-workalike". It certainly implements (or can implement, as
through Cygwin etc) POSIX far better than say Eunice, Primix or NDix.
I don't quite get how management of corporations can make so
much policy of using Windows/Linux/whatever. OK, some of us
may feel a bit strongly about principles and implementations.
But none of this belongs as management policy. Does management have
policy about using Diesel or Petrol cars or what kinds of transmissions
they use? Or if we use DC or AC power? Or the type of lighting used?
All of these have been subject to similar bouts of widespread
flames and policy. All in vain. In college we had a course in
industrial economics, where we had some essays where industry leaders
were hotly discussing the merits of things like alternators versus
generators. Almost all of these were big issues in their time, and
they all got sorted out by the market 10 years later in a very
quiet fashion; the same way that TCP/IP and the Internet is quietly
taking over corporate communication networks these days.
OK, so Microsoft is pushing it with their EULAs; but they are in
the tracks of International Harvester, AT&T, Ford and IBM; and all
of these had similar struggles when they went from an expanding to
a stable company. This phase will pass, and Microsoft will enter
history beside these; possible even as a junior.
Besides, in the grand picture; IT is still smaller than cosmetics.
And both of them combined is smaller than OIL.
-- mrr
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>
>People tend not to respect what they have, but I'd really like to take
>the people who complain incessantly about "Micro$oft sucks" and make
>them spend a year in a parallel universe where _any_ other company had
>won the #1 spot. I guarantee you when they came back, 90% of them
>would be making pilgrimages to Redmond on their knees.
I dunno. I think the world might be nicer if Digital Research had gotten
that slot. They supported plenty of different hardware with CPM, CPM/86,
Concurrent CPM, DR DOS, etc; their APIs weren't insanely difficult, and
they didn't have a pattern of incorporating weak versions of third-party
software into the distributed OS to wreck the income streams of the third
parties, nor did they "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" standards to destroy
interoperability.
And I never heard of them making computers at all. (Microsoft made a CPM card
for the Apple II which was essentially another computer.)
-- Alan
===============================================================================
Alan Winston --- WIN...@SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056
Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025
===============================================================================
David J. Dachtera
> [snip]
> I dunno. I think the world might be nicer if Digital Research had gotten
> that slot. They supported plenty of different hardware with CPM, CPM/86,
> Concurrent CPM, DR DOS, etc; their APIs weren't insanely difficult, and
> they didn't have a pattern of incorporating weak versions of third-party
> software into the distributed OS to wreck the income streams of the third
> parties, nor did they "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" standards to destroy
> interoperability.
In my pre-UN*X days, I had to work in RM/COBOL on some Televideo gear
that ran MP/M. Seemed not that goofy (as 8-bit OSes go), and served a
small office (less than 12 "workstations").
--
David J. Dachtera
dba DJE Systems
http://www.djesys.com/
Unofficial Affordable OpenVMS Home Page:
http://www.djesys.com/vms/soho/
Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr
>In article <3e4ebc62....@news.eircom.net>, r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>>
>>People tend not to respect what they have, but I'd really like to take
>>the people who complain incessantly about "Micro$oft sucks" and make
>>them spend a year in a parallel universe where _any_ other company had
>>won the #1 spot. I guarantee you when they came back, 90% of them
>>would be making pilgrimages to Redmond on their knees.
>
>I dunno. I think the world might be nicer if Digital Research had gotten
>that slot. They supported plenty of different hardware with CPM, CPM/86,
>Concurrent CPM, DR DOS, etc; their APIs weren't insanely difficult, and
>they didn't have a pattern of incorporating weak versions of third-party
>software into the distributed OS to wreck the income streams of the third
>parties, nor did they "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" standards to destroy
>interoperability.
>
>And I never heard of them making computers at all. (Microsoft made a CPM card
>for the Apple II which was essentially another computer.)
Thinking about this more, I realize I was answering the wrong question.
(I do still think that DRI would have been less of a blight on the technical
landscape than MS.)
I realize that I'd much prefer the parallel universe where there was no
company that owned 90% of the desktops. Software monoculture isn't a good
thing, and new MS-based internet worms/viruses every week is the result of
this ownership of the desktop (in combination with MS's cavalier attitude
about security as something you bolt on afterward rather than design in).
If there has to be such a company, I'd prefer it to be one that didn't own
the applications as well as the OS. I'd like the OS not to be completely
trusting of any application - why is there an OS call that lets you get the
contents of the Outlook address book? - and I'd like the OS to notice
buffer overflows. And I'd like it to actually follow standards set by an
external body so that people could write stuff that interoperated with it,
and not have the interface yanked out from under them all the time; that
would allow some competition for the top spot. (And while we're at it, I'd
like it to run on multiple processor architectures, like NT was supposed
to, so there might be room for some competition and innovation.)
I'm not planning any pilgrimages on my knees to Redmond.
Paul Sture
>
> Besides, in the grand picture; IT is still smaller than cosmetics.
> And both of them combined is smaller than OIL.
Nice one, Morten!
--
Paul Sture
r...@rmkhome.com
> Wanna bet?
THey certainly will be. They are working on an x86 box that will only
run Windoze.
> So, now you buy an "IBM-compatible" (how quickly we forgot THAT one, eh?)
> running Windows and we are restricted to software that runs under Windows.
And with the advent of winmodems, winprinters, winscanners, etc, you can't
even use a lot of the hardware with other systems.
> ..when it constantly crashes, causes them to reboot, re-install (the entire o.s.
> for shit sake!), etc. ...
And becomes infected on a regular basis.
Peter Flass
>
> On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
> (Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>
> >IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
> >IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
> >won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
> >car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
>
> It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
> vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
> #1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
>
> How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
> IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
> restricted to IBM-compatible software.
Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
jmfb...@aol.com
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) wrote:
>On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
>(Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>
>>IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
>>IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
>>won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
>>car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
>
>It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
>vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
>#1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
>
>How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
>IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
>restricted to IBM-compatible software. Or you bought a VAX running VMS
>and then you were restricted to software compatible with that.
Nope. The customer was allowed to write his own. Not only that,
but these companies shipped tools so that the customer could write
his own. NOt only that, but the customer could open a manual
and get definitions of bits and data and hardware addresses _in use_
and find the information that was "reserved for customer use".
These companies also considered back doors in the software to be
a bug and set them to be high priority.
> .. Or
>Apple, Commodore, Data General, Acorn, Wang, etc etc. The industry was
>fragmented into a zillion closed, proprietary platforms, all
>incompatible with each other, all sold by companies who behaved not as
>though they had X% market share, but as though they had a monopoly on
>that X%.
>
>Now you can buy an industry standard PC from whatever manufacturer you
>please, load Windows on it (for a definitely _non_ monopoly price),
>and mostly just not have to worry about compatibility issues.
Bullshit. Backwards compatibility is purposely broken. Extensibility
isn't a goal in the design.
<snip>
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
jmfb...@aol.com
ROTFLMAO. Beautifully put. You might add the qualification
that you want to read the documents written in 1990 (forget about
1980).
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
with running Sun's office package.
Russell Wallace
<m...@reistad.priv.no> wrote:
>But none of this belongs as management policy. Does management have
>policy about using Diesel or Petrol cars or what kinds of transmissions
>they use? Or if we use DC or AC power? Or the type of lighting used?
>All of these have been subject to similar bouts of widespread
>flames and policy. All in vain. In college we had a course in
>industrial economics, where we had some essays where industry leaders
>were hotly discussing the merits of things like alternators versus
>generators. Almost all of these were big issues in their time, and
>they all got sorted out by the market 10 years later in a very
>quiet fashion; the same way that TCP/IP and the Internet is quietly
>taking over corporate communication networks these days.
Yep! The current bout of Microsoft versus this, that and the other
reminds me of my school days when I had a Commodore 64 like every
right-thinking person, and we used to insult the accursed Spectrum
owners :)
Russell Wallace
("Alan Winston - SSRL Admin Cmptg Mgr") wrote:
>Thinking about this more, I realize I was answering the wrong question.
>(I do still think that DRI would have been less of a blight on the technical
>landscape than MS.)
Maybe. Though I doubt they'd have stood up to Apple's attempt to get a
legally enforced monopoly on graphic user interfaces the way Microsoft
did. (And compared to Apple, Microsoft are saints.)
>I realize that I'd much prefer the parallel universe where there was no
>company that owned 90% of the desktops. Software monoculture isn't a good
>thing
I disagree, I think it is. Or would you rather go back to the days
when anytime you saw a program you'd like to buy, 80% of the time
you'd have to forget about it because it was for a machine you didn't
own?
Now I think it would be better if there was a standard API such that
companies could produce independent but compatible implementations of
it (the way Intel and AMD compete on implementations of x86). But
unfortunately the computer industry never produced such a thing or
even showed the slightest interest in attempting to do so.
>If there has to be such a company, I'd prefer it to be one that didn't own
>the applications as well as the OS. I'd like the OS not to be completely
>trusting of any application - why is there an OS call that lets you get the
>contents of the Outlook address book? - and I'd like the OS to notice
>buffer overflows.
Now I agree with you about all these things, and I'll add the insane
stupidity of not only letting applications modify the contents of the
operating system directory, but _encouraging_ them to! There's
definitely room for improvement.
Rupert Pigott
news:3e4ebc62....@news.eircom.net...
[SNIP]
> How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
Indeed.
> IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
> restricted to IBM-compatible software. Or you bought a VAX running VMS
And all those OEMs are still paying Microsoft tax on every PC
shipped the last I heard. I was a mite miffed that your DOJ
types didn't actually examine that in more detail... Instead
they focussed on an irrelevance, presented a weak case, took
home lots of tax-payer dollars and Microsoft carried on doing
all those bad things anyways. Well played. :/
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
[SNIP]
> Now I think it would be better if there was a standard API such that
> companies could produce independent but compatible implementations of
> it (the way Intel and AMD compete on implementations of x86). But
> unfortunately the computer industry never produced such a thing or
> even showed the slightest interest in attempting to do so.
Oh, you mean SVR4, BSD & Linux ? All of them "multi-vendor"
all of them present a standard API. Oh yeah, and lets not
forget X11. For x86 UNIXen Intel produced a common ABI, was
that called iBSC ?
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 13:24:51 GMT, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
>
> Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
> with running Sun's office package.
Actually Sun have been particularly nice in this regard
because not only is their SPARC architecture practically
given away to anyone who asks for it... They have also
allowed their OSes to run on other people's hardware such
as Solbourne, Fujitsu etc...
Also Microsoft have a habit of practicing data-lock-in,
AFAIK it's impossible to get a full spec for MS Office
file formats for example. Sun, by contrast, gave the world
NIS and NFS to name but two. I also believe that they were
the first bods to ship vnodes in their UNIX and AFAIK they
have not chased after everyone who introduced them later
with lawyers...
Sun is a long way from the top of my list of computer
biz villains.
Cheers,
Rupert
x
>
> I don't quite get how management of corporations can make so much policy
> of using Windows/Linux/whatever. OK, some of us may feel a bit strongly
> about principles and implementations.
>
> But none of this belongs as management policy. Does management have
> policy about using Diesel or Petrol cars or what kinds of transmissions
The US Armed forces have converted everything to Diesel. That way they
only have to supply one type of fuel. They only have to train mechanics
in one technology.
My father's mechanical contracting company would only buy automatic
transmissions. That way multiple people can use it w/o wrecking the
transmission. It's easy to abuse a standard transmission and wreck the
clutch. He know this from buying a few standard transmission vehicles
for the company in the past.
He also standardized on Ford trucks. The local dealer was good, having a
fleet of 30 trucks got good rates. He only had to go to one repair shop,
not multiple shops.
Standardizing on one platform gives lots of savings. Changing to another
one is alot of work.
J. Clarke
says...
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 13:24:51 GMT, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
>
> Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
> with running Sun's office package.
--
--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(used to be jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
Brooks Moses
You know, my Windows machine seems to get rebooted about twice a month,
almost always because I've turned it off to muck with the hardware, but
sometimes for software installations or power outages. I've not needed
to reinstall the operating system, and it hasn't ever had a virus
infestation for my virus-checker to stop. And I'm fairly sure that the
sky is blue on my planet.
My suspicion is that a large number -- not all, but many -- of the
problems that people seem to have with Windows come from the competence
of the sysadmin, and that if the same sysadmins were running any other
OS en masse, that other OS would have similar problems. All it would
take is a few Kazaa-like apps that "need to be installed as root"....
And a .bashrc-infecting virus shouldn't be that hard to make, either;
who'd notice it?
- Brooks
Glen Herrmannsfeldt
> wrote:
>
> >Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
>
> Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
> with running Sun's office package.
StarOffice, and now the version from OpenOffice.org, run on Solaris-sparc,
Solaris-x86, Linux, and Win32. I think they are working on a Mac version.
-- glen
J. Clarke
g...@ugcs.caltech.edu says...
The OS/X Quartz version is in final beta. I suspect that the BSD
version will compile and run fine on a Mac under X11, but never tried it
so can't say for sure.
> -- glen
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> Now I think it would be better if there was a standard API such that
> companies could produce independent but compatible implementations
> of it (the way Intel and AMD compete on implementations of x86). But
> unfortunately the computer industry never produced such a thing or
> even showed the slightest interest in attempting to do so.
There are international standards for C, Pascal, Ada, Fortran,
C++, and others. Programs written to the standards are portable,
and most programs can be so written if you are willing to forgo
the whiz-bangs.
However it seems to me that once the hardware differs, so must the
capabilities. So there will always be non-portable programs.
--
Chuck F (cbfal...@yahoo.com) (cbfal...@worldnet.att.net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net> USE worldnet address!
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> ROTFLMAO. Beautifully put. You might add the qualification
> that you want to read the documents written in 1990 (forget
> about 1980).
I have no problems with almost anything written in 1980 - they
were saved as text. If I wrote them in 1990 they were also saved
as text. If I write them today they are saved as text. However I
do have problems accessing things saved on 8" SSSD floppy media,
or any flavor of mag tape.
Russell Wallace
<r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Oh, you mean SVR4, BSD & Linux ? All of them "multi-vendor"
>all of them present a standard API.
The various Linux distros aren't independent implementations (most of
the code in them comes from the same original source) - but yes, they
do come closer than anyone except Microsoft has ever come before to
solving this problem, which is exactly why Linux is becoming so
successful.
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>There are international standards for C, Pascal, Ada, Fortran,
>C++, and others. Programs written to the standards are portable,
>and most programs can be so written if you are willing to forgo
>the whiz-bangs.
Only for command line utilities; it's been a long time since there was
a market for those.
>However it seems to me that once the hardware differs, so must the
>capabilities. So there will always be non-portable programs.
Sure, there'll always be occasions when it's worth tossing portability
to squeeze the last few megaflops out of the graphics chipset or
whatever. But the percentage of programs for which that's worthwhile
is very small and getting smaller every year.
Russell Wallace
<r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Actually Sun have been particularly nice in this regard
>because not only is their SPARC architecture practically
>given away to anyone who asks for it... They have also
>allowed their OSes to run on other people's hardware such
>as Solbourne, Fujitsu etc...
Yes, kudos to Sun for that.
>Also Microsoft have a habit of practicing data-lock-in,
>AFAIK it's impossible to get a full spec for MS Office
>file formats for example.
Yes, that's a pain in the arse. (If you're using Microsoft Word,
remember to always save a backup copy of your documents in plain text
format. That way if a cosmic ray flips a bit in a critical part of the
.doc version, you only have to redo the formatting, not rewrite the
whole document.)
>Sun is a long way from the top of my list of computer
>biz villains.
Sure, I wasn't calling them villains. I was simply noting that the
reason their computers are unable to run most software is because
they're nonstandard. That's just the way things are.
Russell Wallace
<r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>And all those OEMs are still paying Microsoft tax on every PC
>shipped the last I heard. I was a mite miffed that your DOJ
>types didn't actually examine that in more detail
Last I heard, a consent decree stopped them doing that as of several
years ago.
But not all OEMs were doing it anyway, and you don't have to do
business with the ones that do. In fact, you don't have to do business
with OEMs at all to get yourself a PC; you can buy the components and
build the machine yourself. A lot of hardcore gamers do that, for
example, so they can tune everything to their liking. That's another
freedom the industry standard gets you.
>... Instead
>they focussed on an irrelevance, presented a weak case, took
>home lots of tax-payer dollars and Microsoft carried on doing
>all those bad things anyways. Well played. :/
Personally I think governments are a far bigger problem for our
industry than any corporation, no matter what it did, could ever be.
Corporations, however big, can't send armed men around to your house
to kick in your door; governments can, and do.
Rupert Pigott
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 20:41:11 -0000, "Rupert Pigott"
> <r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Oh, you mean SVR4, BSD & Linux ? All of them "multi-vendor"
> >all of them present a standard API.
>
> The various Linux distros aren't independent implementations (most of
> the code in them comes from the same original source) - but yes, they
> do come closer than anyone except Microsoft has ever come before to
> solving this problem, which is exactly why Linux is becoming so
> successful.
Sigh, you appear to have glossed over SVR4 and BSD. :/
Oh and Linux distro's very definately do not all use
the exact same source base. Being picky, I know, but
they don't all use the exact same set of dot-revs or
even patches. Hell, in some cases their userland
compilers use a different ABI (remember the RH GCC
issue ?)...
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
[SNIP]
> Personally I think governments are a far bigger problem for our
> industry than any corporation, no matter what it did, could ever be.
> Corporations, however big, can't send armed men around to your house
> to kick in your door; governments can, and do.
Two points which are clearly demonstratable in modern
American politics :
1) Candidates require corporate sponsorship of one kind
or another to attain office.
2) Companies have managed to use their influence to sway
governments into action. There was a strong hint of that
(for example) with tricky Dicky & Kissenger in Chile.
Cheers,
Rupert
Andreas Eder
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:30:35 GMT, CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >There are international standards for C, Pascal, Ada, Fortran,
> >C++, and others. Programs written to the standards are portable,
> >and most programs can be so written if you are willing to forgo
> >the whiz-bangs.
>
> Only for command line utilities; it's been a long time since there was
> a market for those.
>
You do know about X Windows, do you? It has been here for over 10
years. I've been doing graphical apps way before there even was
windows 3.1.
'Andreas
--
Wherever I lay my .emacs, thereæ„€ my $HOME.
Andreas Eder
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 20:41:11 -0000, "Rupert Pigott"
> <r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Oh, you mean SVR4, BSD & Linux ? All of them "multi-vendor"
> >all of them present a standard API.
>
> The various Linux distros aren't independent implementations (most of
> the code in them comes from the same original source) - but yes, they
> do come closer than anyone except Microsoft has ever come before to
> solving this problem, which is exactly why Linux is becoming so
> successful.
The point is not teh various linux distros, but linux, the BSDs and
the SVR4 compliant unix versions from several vendors.
By the way, do you know about posix ?
Andreas Eder
> How quickly people forget. Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
> IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
> restricted to IBM-compatible software. Or you bought a VAX running VMS
> and then you were restricted to software compatible with that.
Well, VMS wasn't that bad (isn't intel using it still for their fab
automation?), but if you wanted you could run BSD on it and maybe a
few other OSs I do not remember.
Andreas Eder
> You know, my Windows machine seems to get rebooted about twice a month,
> almost always because I've turned it off to muck with the hardware, but
> sometimes for software installations or power outages.
Why would you reboot a machine for software installations? I've never
understood that.
> My suspicion is that a large number -- not all, but many -- of the
> problems that people seem to have with Windows come from the competence
> of the sysadmin, and that if the same sysadmins were running any other
> OS en masse, that other OS would have similar problems.
There certainly is truth in that!
> All it would
> take is a few Kazaa-like apps that "need to be installed as
> root"....
But there almost never is reason to install an app as root. Even if a
few need to have root rights, there is always the possibility to
install them in chroot jails.
Andrew Harrison
Russell Wallace wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 13:24:51 GMT, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
>
>
> Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
> with running Sun's office package.
>
Humm. not entirely true, you can run that non-proprietary
Office product from Microsoft on Sun's. Just get the
SunPCi card.
StarOffice is hardly proprietary either, its available
in OpenSource form as OpenOffice and its file specs are
XML and publically available for developers. Radically
different from MS-Office.
Regards
Andrew Harrison
Peter Flass
> >I realize that I'd much prefer the parallel universe where there was no
> >company that owned 90% of the desktops. Software monoculture isn't a good
> >thing
>
> I disagree, I think it is. Or would you rather go back to the days
> when anytime you saw a program you'd like to buy, 80% of the time
> you'd have to forget about it because it was for a machine you didn't
> own?
>
way to "embrace and extend" this too. It's open, universal, and the
developers have no vested interest in selling any particular
applications.
Andrew Harrison SUNUK Consultancy
Russell Wallace wrote:
> Sure, I wasn't calling them villains. I was simply noting that the
> reason their computers are unable to run most software is because
> they're nonstandard. That's just the way things are.
>
How do you define most software.
Solaris has the biggest supported software portfolio
after Win32 and way way ahead of HP-UX, AIX, Tru64,
OS400, zOS, OpenVMS, Linux x86, HP-UX/Itanium, Win64/Itanium
OpenVMS/Itanium(0) in that order. For example even using
double counting Solaris 8 has more apps that AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
combined. By double counting I mean Oracle 9i on AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
counts as 3 apps.
Thats just the way things are !
Regards
Andrew Harrison
Nico de Jong
news:3E50A7DC...@yahoo.com...
> However I
> do have problems accessing things saved on 8" SSSD floppy media,
> or any flavor of mag tape.
>
Nico
jmfb...@aol.com
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) wrote:
>On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 20:26:40 -0000, "Rupert Pigott"
><r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>And all those OEMs are still paying Microsoft tax on every PC
>>shipped the last I heard. I was a mite miffed that your DOJ
>>types didn't actually examine that in more detail
>
>Last I heard, a consent decree stopped them doing that as of several
>years ago.
>
>But not all OEMs were doing it anyway, and you don't have to do
>business with the ones that do. In fact, you don't have to do business
>with OEMs at all to get yourself a PC; you can buy the components and
>build the machine yourself. A lot of hardcore gamers do that, for
>example, so they can tune everything to their liking. That's another
>freedom the industry standard gets you.
There is also a software industry standard which certain software
distributors break on purpose.
>
>>... Instead
>>they focussed on an irrelevance, presented a weak case, took
>>home lots of tax-payer dollars and Microsoft carried on doing
>>all those bad things anyways. Well played. :/
>
>Personally I think governments are a far bigger problem for our
>industry than any corporation, no matter what it did, could ever be.
>Corporations, however big, can't send armed men around to your house
>to kick in your door; governments can, and do.
Software can cut your power or your cable access. There was a
post a couple weeks ago in an rpg games newsgroup that postulated
what Misoft's strategy is. <shudder>^n^m
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>The point is not teh various linux distros, but linux, the BSDs and
>the SVR4 compliant unix versions from several vendors.
Which aren't compatible with each other, last I heard.
>By the way, do you know about posix ?
Yes, it makes porting easier, but Posix-compliant operating systems
are still not compatible with each other.
Russell Wallace
<r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Sigh, you appear to have glossed over SVR4 and BSD. :/
Because they're not compatible with Linux last I heard, so they aren't
solutions to the problem.
>Oh and Linux distro's very definately do not all use
>the exact same source base. Being picky, I know, but
>they don't all use the exact same set of dot-revs or
>even patches. Hell, in some cases their userland
>compilers use a different ABI (remember the RH GCC
>issue ?)...
You're not being picky at all; this is a serious flaw in Linux.
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>You do know about X Windows, do you?
Been a long time since I had the displeasure of trying to use it, but
last I heard X programs can't even interoperate properly on the same
operating system let alone be compatible with different operating
systems.
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>Yhos is why Linux will eventually kill of M$
Perhaps. It's certainly the only candidate for even making a credible
attempt at it.
Russell Wallace
<Andrew_No....@nospamn.sun.com> wrote:
>Russell Wallace wrote:
>
>> Sure, I wasn't calling them villains. I was simply noting that the
>> reason their computers are unable to run most software is because
>> they're nonstandard. That's just the way things are.
>
>How do you define most software.
I mean if you made a list of all the programs available on commercial
sale and for each one asked whether it runs on Solaris, in fewer than
50% of cases would the answer be yes.
>Solaris has the biggest supported software portfolio
>after Win32 and way way ahead of HP-UX, AIX, Tru64,
>OS400, zOS, OpenVMS, Linux x86, HP-UX/Itanium, Win64/Itanium
>OpenVMS/Itanium(0) in that order. For example even using
>double counting Solaris 8 has more apps that AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
>combined. By double counting I mean Oracle 9i on AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
>counts as 3 apps.
(Nitpick - Oracle isn't an application, it's system software.)
But you are entirely correct, Solaris has more software available for
it than most of its competitors, and this is a big advantage.
>Thats just the way things are !
^.^
Russell Wallace
<andrew....@sun.com> wrote:
>Humm. not entirely true, you can run that non-proprietary
>Office product from Microsoft on Sun's. Just get the
>SunPCi card.
I will suggest that if you're going to buy a PC, you might as well buy
one in a mini tower case as on a card :)
>StarOffice is hardly proprietary either, its available
>in OpenSource form as OpenOffice and its file specs are
>XML and publically available for developers. Radically
>different from MS-Office.
That is true, and the file specs part in particular is a significant
advantage, and all due credit to Sun for doing that.
However, I wasn't saying Star Office is more closed and proprietary
than Microsoft Office (indeed it isn't), I was saying Sun boxes are
more closed and proprietary than PCs.
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> My suspicion is that a large number -- not all, but many -- of
> the problems that people seem to have with Windows come from the
> competence of the sysadmin, and that if the same sysadmins were
> running any other OS en masse, that other OS would have similar
> to be installed as root".... And a .bashrc-infecting virus
> shouldn't be that hard to make, either; who'd notice it?
I believe that many problems arise from the use of non-ECC memory,
where soft faults can lay eggs that hatch far far in the future,
make backups useless, etc. etc.
J. Clarke
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net says...
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 20:41:11 -0000, "Rupert Pigott"
> <r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Oh, you mean SVR4, BSD & Linux ? All of them "multi-vendor"
> >all of them present a standard API.
>
> The various Linux distros aren't independent implementations (most of
> the code in them comes from the same original source) - but yes, they
> do come closer than anyone except Microsoft has ever come before to
> solving this problem, which is exactly why Linux is becoming so
> successful.
SVR4 and BSD are not "various Linux distros". In the beginning AT&T
Bell Labs created Unix. System V Release 4, which is what "SVR4" stands
for, was their final version before USL was sold to Novell. BSD is a
descendant of an earlier AT&T Unix release, which has subsequently been
developed independently of the AT&T products, and in its NetBSD,
OpenBSD, and FreeBSD forms has been completely sanitized of AT&T code so
that it may be distributed as open source. Linux is an independent
development which never contained any AT&T code. So you have now three
independent code bases, not one. If you want to add the Hurd (which at
release 0.2 is running but not yet feature-complete) to the mix, then
you have four.
Bob Koehler
> On 17 Feb 2003 13:42:17 +0100, Andreas Eder <Andrea...@t-online.de>
> wrote:
>
>>You do know about X Windows, do you?
>
> Been a long time since I had the displeasure of trying to use it, but
> last I heard X programs can't even interoperate properly on the same
> operating system let alone be compatible with different operating
> systems.
I've been using it for over a decade and have not seen any such
problem.
Rupert Pigott
Whups ! comp.os.vms doesn't need this guff. :)
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:51:53 -0000, "Rupert Pigott"
> <r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >Sigh, you appear to have glossed over SVR4 and BSD. :/
>
> Because they're not compatible with Linux last I heard, so they aren't
> solutions to the problem.
OK, ok ok ok, I'll spell it out for you :
SVR4 comes in multiple flavours from many vendors and
has done for years... Lineage of the source code is of
course debatable, IIRC Solaris is largely a new code
base that looks like SVR4. Just a few examples which
spring to mind :
Digital UNIX/Compaq Tru64
Sun Solaris
HP/UX
SGI Irix
IBM AIX (originally SVR3)
... SNIP about 5 zillion others ...
BSD comes in multiple flavours from many vendors and
has done for years... Lineage of the source code is of
course debatable.
Ultrix (BSD4.2)
SunOS
BSD/386
FreeBSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
BSDI BSD/OS
... SNIP about 5 zillion others ...
> >Oh and Linux distro's very definately do not all use
> >the exact same source base. Being picky, I know, but
> >they don't all use the exact same set of dot-revs or
> >even patches. Hell, in some cases their userland
> >compilers use a different ABI (remember the RH GCC
> >issue ?)...
>
> You're not being picky at all; this is a serious flaw in Linux.
You can't have it both ways matey.
Hmm, depends if you like one choice or many choices
though doesn't it ? Case in point : I'd still rather
run 1.2.13 for some applications as opposed to anything
else. It's nice that distros are able to pick a set of
requirements and tailor their code-bases to fit. This
is how things *should* work, one size does not fit all.
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
news:b2r06...@enews3.newsguy.com...
Don't forget MACH based OSes either...
From the point of view of the user & app programmer I
think that the main protagonists are : BSD/SVR4/POSIX.
I remember making the transitions from BSD -> SVR4 ->
POSIX -> BSD... Userland held different surprises every
time ! :)
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
[SNIP]
> (Nitpick - Oracle isn't an application, it's system software.)
Dude you're burning up ! Yank the eject cord !
> But you are entirely correct, Solaris has more software available for
> it than most of its competitors, and this is a big advantage.
Nice to see Andrew posting again... I think he's given
up on comp.arch after being chewed up lots there for
his aggressive brandname promotion. :)
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 13:01:11 +0000, Andrew Harrison
> <andrew....@sun.com> wrote:
>
> >Humm. not entirely true, you can run that non-proprietary
> >Office product from Microsoft on Sun's. Just get the
> >SunPCi card.
>
> I will suggest that if you're going to buy a PC, you might as well buy
> one in a mini tower case as on a card :)
Why would you do that when you have a gi-friggin
-normous Sun box for example ?
Cheers,
Rupert
Floyd Davidson
I've seen X interoperating on a WAN that included Mac's, VMS, WinNT4,
AIX, and Linux machines. I would challenge Mr. Wallace to suggest what
is going to compete with that?
--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.ptialaska.net/~floyd>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl...@barrow.com
Andrew Harrison SUNUK Consultancy
Russell Wallace wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 13:30:16 +0000, Andrew Harrison SUNUK Consultancy
> <Andrew_No....@nospamn.sun.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Russell Wallace wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Sure, I wasn't calling them villains. I was simply noting that the
>>>reason their computers are unable to run most software is because
>>>they're nonstandard. That's just the way things are.
>>
>>How do you define most software.
>
>
> I mean if you made a list of all the programs available on commercial
> sale and for each one asked whether it runs on Solaris, in fewer than
> 50% of cases would the answer be yes.
>
Again it depends. Desktop applications I am sure
you are correct.
Server side applications and you arn't. The majority
of Sun's business comes from servers and we have a
very very strong ISV portfolio in the server arena.
>
>>Solaris has the biggest supported software portfolio
>>after Win32 and way way ahead of HP-UX, AIX, Tru64,
>>OS400, zOS, OpenVMS, Linux x86, HP-UX/Itanium, Win64/Itanium
>>OpenVMS/Itanium(0) in that order. For example even using
>>double counting Solaris 8 has more apps that AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
>>combined. By double counting I mean Oracle 9i on AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
>>counts as 3 apps.
>
>
> (Nitpick - Oracle isn't an application, it's system software.)
>
Well replace that with Oracle Applications instead then.
Regards
Andrew Harrison
Andrew Harrison SUNUK Consultancy
Russell Wallace wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 13:01:11 +0000, Andrew Harrison
> <andrew....@sun.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Humm. not entirely true, you can run that non-proprietary
>>Office product from Microsoft on Sun's. Just get the
>>SunPCi card.
>
>
> I will suggest that if you're going to buy a PC, you might as well buy
> one in a mini tower case as on a card :)
>
>
>>StarOffice is hardly proprietary either, its available
>>in OpenSource form as OpenOffice and its file specs are
>>XML and publically available for developers. Radically
>>different from MS-Office.
>
>
> That is true, and the file specs part in particular is a significant
> advantage, and all due credit to Sun for doing that.
>
> However, I wasn't saying Star Office is more closed and proprietary
> than Microsoft Office (indeed it isn't), I was saying Sun boxes are
> more closed and proprietary than PCs.
>
Well thats another story.
Software
We publish our API's
We provide API checkers so that people can make
sure that their apps use them correctly.
Anyone can get access to Solaris source to dissect
how the API is implimented if they want to.
Sun also supplies and supports a wide set of GNU
libraries tools and compilers, the API/devt environment
that some people think is Linux.
We also donate lots of usefull stuff in fact we
donate the most usefull stuff. NFS, Grid, Java,
OpenOffice etc.
Microsoft is the dominant supplier of OS software
on PC's.
They don't publish all their API's
They don't to my knowledge provide API checkers, their
Idea of this is the next version of Windows.
You cannot get access to Windows sources unless you
are a Russian Hacker.
Microsoft don't donate anything of note.
Linux/GNU is a dirty word to Microsoft.
Hardware
The spec for SPARC is publically available and for the
cost of the documentation you could go away and produce
a SPARC CPU and a number of organisations and vendors
have.
Intel have gone to great lengths to make Itanium unclonable
ironic because it forced AMD to do Hammer rather than an
Itanium Clone which could end up being Intels great
mistake.
I will leave you to judge the openness of each platform
Regards
Andrew Harrison
Rupert Pigott
[SNIP]
> Intel have gone to great lengths to make Itanium unclonable
> ironic because it forced AMD to do Hammer rather than an
> Itanium Clone which could end up being Intels great
> mistake.
Thankfully we can pretend the Itanic doesn't exist in
this newsgroup... It fails to meet the > 10 year old
absolute bare minimum for inclusion. No, you can't
include the time it was on the drawing board/test
bench. :)
Cheers,
Rupert
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote:
>>In article <3e510275....@news.eircom.net>, r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>>> On 17 Feb 2003 13:42:17 +0100, Andreas Eder <Andrea...@t-online.de>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>You do know about X Windows, do you?
>>>
>>> Been a long time since I had the displeasure of trying to use it, but
>>> last I heard X programs can't even interoperate properly on the same
>>> operating system let alone be compatible with different operating
>>> systems.
>>
>> I've been using it for over a decade and have not seen any such
>> problem.
You should talk to the Linux advocates then, they seem to think it
exists.
>I've seen X interoperating on a WAN that included Mac's, VMS, WinNT4,
>AIX, and Linux machines. I would challenge Mr. Wallace to suggest what
>is going to compete with that?
In practice for most companies the solution that competes with it is
just standardizing on Microsoft Windows on the desktop. (With some
organizations choosing to standardize on all Linux on the desktop
instead.)
Russell Wallace
<Andrew_No....@nospamn.sun.com> wrote:
>Server side applications and you arn't.
Perhaps.
>The majority
>of Sun's business comes from servers and we have a
>very very strong ISV portfolio in the server arena.
That is certainly true.
Russell Wallace
<Andrew_No....@nospamn.sun.com> wrote:
>The spec for SPARC is publically available and for the
>cost of the documentation you could go away and produce
>a SPARC CPU and a number of organisations and vendors
>have.
>
>Intel have gone to great lengths to make Itanium unclonable
>ironic because it forced AMD to do Hammer rather than an
>Itanium Clone which could end up being Intels great
>mistake.
Indeed so, that's a big disadvantage of Itanium, and a major reason
why x86-64 is a much more credible candidate for becoming the industry
standard 64 bit chip.
Bob Koehler
> Server side applications and you arn't. The majority
> of Sun's business comes from servers and we have a
> very very strong ISV portfolio in the server arena.
Defined in: units sold, dollars sold, or dollars profit?
Bob Koehler
>
> You should talk to the Linux advocates then, they seem to think it
> exists.
Maybe if they used professionally developed software, they'd get
better results.
My kid's linux X11 works just fine with my DECdwindows X11 except
where features cross between R5 and R6.
Can't really expect R5 to suport those new R6 features.
Bob Koehler
> just standardizing on Microsoft Windows on the desktop. (With some
> organizations choosing to standardize on all Linux on the desktop
> instead.)
One of the first apps they try to standardize on is the X11 server.
And we had someone really get scared when we tried PC-anywhere, which
is about as close to a Windows GUI server as I've seen.
bfra...@jetnet.ab.ca
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:51:53 -0000, "Rupert Pigott"
> <r...@dark-try-removing-this-boong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Sigh, you appear to have glossed over SVR4 and BSD. :/
>
>
> Because they're not compatible with Linux last I heard, so they aren't
> solutions to the problem.
>
>
>>Oh and Linux distro's very definately do not all use
>>the exact same source base. Being picky, I know, but
>>they don't all use the exact same set of dot-revs or
>>even patches. Hell, in some cases their userland
>>compilers use a different ABI (remember the RH GCC
>>issue ?)...
>
>
> You're not being picky at all; this is a serious flaw in Linux.
And just how many revisions of UNIX are there?
I find the lack of good docs and unfinshed utilities are more
a problem. Things that break when you do a upgrade or use strange
configure or scripting programs are beging fixed but still are a pain.
Ben.
Bill Gunshannon
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
> On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
> (Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>
>>IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
>>IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
>>won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
>>car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
>
> It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
> vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
> #1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
Not sure that's true. I thought MS ventured into the hardware business
but decided there wasn't enough money there to be worth the effort.
>
> How quickly people forget.
So true......
> Before the rise of Microsoft, you bought an
> IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
> restricted to IBM-compatible software.
I seem to remember a company called Loral(?)_ that made IBM compatable
hardware (and yes, I mean IBM Mainframes.) And then, of course, we also
have Amdahl UTS on IBM systems.
> Or you bought a VAX running VMS
> and then you were restricted to software compatible with that. Or
Or you ran Ultrix, BSD or even System V on your VAX and a wealth of packages.
I still have a copy of the sourcebook around here somewhere. Same was
true of the PDP-11.
> Apple, Commodore,
Apple and Commodore were toys. They were very late comers into the
serious computer world. S-100 systems by people/companies like
Dr. Godbout were doing real work on micros when the two wannabes
above were still just competing with Atari.
> Data General, Acorn, Wang, etc etc.
Never worked with DG or Acorn, Wang had a pretty strong office presence
but I never knew anyone who was actually happy using one.
> The industry was
> fragmented into a zillion closed, proprietary platforms, all
> incompatible with each other, all sold by companies who behaved not as
> though they had X% market share, but as though they had a monopoly on
> that X%.
But there were also standards and a large number of companies that
worked with them.
And then there was CP/M. Which ran on a wealth of different machines
(Xerox-820, Kaypro, Osborne, Tandy, etc.) and had quite an impresive
collection of packages including the first really popular word processor.
>
> Now you can buy an industry standard PC from whatever manufacturer you
> please, load Windows on it (for a definitely _non_ monopoly price),
> and mostly just not have to worry about compatibility issues. But you
> don't like Windows? Fine, take that same standard PC and load Linux,
> BSD, OS/2, BeOS etc etc etc, whatever takes your fancy. You told
> someone 20 years ago you'd be able to do that in 20 years time and
> he'd think that was a miracle that made gigahertz chips look like a
> trivial achievement.
>
> People tend not to respect what they have, but I'd really like to take
> the people who complain incessantly about "Micro$oft sucks" and make
> them spend a year in a parallel universe where _any_ other company had
> won the #1 spot.
I would take that. I have worked with literally dozens of alternate
OSes that would have been an improvement i fthey had dominated instead
of MS.
> I guarantee you when they came back, 90% of them
> would be making pilgrimages to Redmond on their knees.
Only if the only food in that parallel universe was laced with
LSD.
bill
--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bi...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
Floyd Davidson
>On 17 Feb 2003 07:37:56 -0900, Floyd Davidson <fl...@ptialaska.net>
>wrote:
>
>>koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote:
>>>In article <3e510275....@news.eircom.net>, r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>>>> On 17 Feb 2003 13:42:17 +0100, Andreas Eder <Andrea...@t-online.de>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>You do know about X Windows, do you?
>>>>
>>>> Been a long time since I had the displeasure of trying to use it, but
>>>> last I heard X programs can't even interoperate properly on the same
>>>> operating system let alone be compatible with different operating
>>>> systems.
>>>
>>> I've been using it for over a decade and have not seen any such
>>> problem.
>
>You should talk to the Linux advocates then, they seem to think it
>exists.
Like Bob Koehler, I've been using X and Linux for a decade, and
I don't think you are even close.
>>I've seen X interoperating on a WAN that included Mac's, VMS, WinNT4,
>>AIX, and Linux machines. I would challenge Mr. Wallace to suggest what
>>is going to compete with that?
>
>In practice for most companies the solution that competes with it is
>just standardizing on Microsoft Windows on the desktop. (With some
>organizations choosing to standardize on all Linux on the desktop
>instead.)
That would be nice... except there is no version of Microsoft
Windows which can run the massive alarm and monitoring system
nor the large trouble ticket system that the dual VMS systems on
that WAN run. Nor will any Unix or VMS run the office software
that had been selected as standard (hence the WinNT4), and no
non-commercial Unix system was able to run the particular data
base and remote testing facility that the AIX boxes have. The
Mac's and the Linux boxes just happened to be comfortable for
the set of users that had them.
Simply put, Microsoft Windows *cannot* compete with the existing
setup. (Well, it might be able to, but only if _many_ millions
of dollars were spent to develop both replacement software and
hardware.)
Bill Gunshannon
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>
> Maybe. Though I doubt they'd have stood up to Apple's attempt to get a
> legally enforced monopoly on graphic user interfaces the way Microsoft
> did. (And compared to Apple, Microsoft are saints.)
Read the history again. If Apple had succeeded Xerox was sitting in
the wings waiting to use the exact same legal argument to squash Apple.
Apple was in a loose-loose situation and settled as the only solution
that didn't have disaster written all over it.
> I disagree, I think it is. Or would you rather go back to the days
> when anytime you saw a program you'd like to buy, 80% of the time
> you'd have to forget about it because it was for a machine you didn't
> own?
You spent too much time with that Commodore 64. You should have
had a real computer instead. There were lot's of them and they
were standards based, shared hardware, ran the OSes and even the
same applications although most users wrote their own.
Bill Gunshannon
>> wrote:
>>
>> >There are international standards for C, Pascal, Ada, Fortran,
>> >C++, and others. Programs written to the standards are portable,
>> >and most programs can be so written if you are willing to forgo
>> >the whiz-bangs.
>>
>> Only for command line utilities; it's been a long time since there was
>> a market for those.
>>
> You do know about X Windows, do you? It has been here for over 10
> years.
Now there's an understatement. The MIT-Athena Project that begat
X-Windows dates to 1984. I make that almost 20 years.
Bill Gunshannon
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>
>>>> On 17 Feb 2003 13:42:17 +0100, Andreas Eder <Andrea...@t-online.de>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>You do know about X Windows, do you?
>>>>
>>>> Been a long time since I had the displeasure of trying to use it, but
>>>> last I heard X programs can't even interoperate properly on the same
>>>> operating system let alone be compatible with different operating
>>>> systems.
>>>
>>> I've been using it for over a decade and have not seen any such
>>> problem.
>
> You should talk to the Linux advocates then, they seem to think it
> exists.
Well, that explains it. Most of us here were talking about professional
computing and not this "brave new world" where any kid with a PC is an
operating systems engineer. Considering the actual level of experience
and knowledge of the average Limux user I'm amazed they ever get the
machines to run at all.
Bill Gunshannon
Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com> writes:
> Russell Wallace wrote:
>>
>> On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
>> (Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
>>
>> >IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer company.
>> >IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel Microsoft
>> >won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including your
>> >car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
>>
>> It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
>> vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
>> #1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
>>
>> IBM machine running an IBM operating system and then you were
>> restricted to IBM-compatible software.
>
No problem at all unless by Office you really meant Microsoft Office.
Naturally one would expect problems running an application that was
deliberately designed to be incompatable. (Anyone here know what the
first thing MS did to Visio was when they bought it? The removed all
compatability with the non-MS versions of the program that the original
company had been selling.)
Now, if you just meant an Office Suite then there are at least three,
one of which comes from Sun and may in fact even ship with Solaris.
Bill Gunshannon
CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> I have no problems with almost anything written in 1980 - they
> were saved as text. If I wrote them in 1990 they were also saved
> as text. If I write them today they are saved as text. However I
> do have problems accessing things saved on 8" SSSD floppy media,
> or any flavor of mag tape.
>
Some of us don't :-)
Bill Gunshannon
r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
> On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 13:24:51 GMT, Peter Flass <peter...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Okay, so now I have this Sun I want to run Office on, no problem, eh?
>
> with running Sun's office package.
>
What's wrong with that? I thought the argument was about predatory
proprietary companies? Actually, at least two of the current non-MS
Office Suites I have used (including the one from Sun) have no problem
dealing with reading and writing MS Office files. Even when MS goes
out of it's way to break compatability with even it's own older versions
of software.
Russell Wallace
>Russell Wallace wrote:
>> You're not being picky at all; this is a serious flaw in Linux.
>
>And just how many revisions of UNIX are there?
Well, last count there were about ten grillion versions of Linux
alone, and counting all the other members of the Unix family and all
the versions of those, I'd say somewhere safely in excess of fifty
grillion :)
Russell Wallace
wrote:
>That would be nice... except there is no version of Microsoft
>Windows which can run the massive alarm and monitoring system
>nor the large trouble ticket system that the dual VMS systems on
>that WAN run. Nor will any Unix or VMS run the office software
>that had been selected as standard (hence the WinNT4), and no
>non-commercial Unix system was able to run the particular data
>base and remote testing facility that the AIX boxes have. The
>Mac's and the Linux boxes just happened to be comfortable for
>the set of users that had them.
>
>Simply put, Microsoft Windows *cannot* compete with the existing
>setup.
*nods* For that setup, I guess you're right, though most companies at
least go as far as to standardize on Unix (or maybe VMS or OS/400) on
the server and Windows on the desktop.
Russell Wallace
>Well, that explains it. Most of us here were talking about professional
>computing and not this "brave new world" where any kid with a PC is an
>operating systems engineer. Considering the actual level of experience
>and knowledge of the average Limux user I'm amazed they ever get the
>machines to run at all.
Heh, okay :)
Russell Wallace
>Read the history again. If Apple had succeeded Xerox was sitting in
>the wings waiting to use the exact same legal argument to squash Apple.
Don't need to; my memory isn't perfect, but the histories I read
definitely didn't mention Xerox planning to do any such thing. That
said, you may well be right; do you recall any details of where you
heard it?
>Apple was in a loose-loose situation and settled as the only solution
>that didn't have disaster written all over it.
*nods* Though if they'd had a bit less arrogance and more sense,
they'd have refrained from filing false lawsuits in the first place.
>> I disagree, I think it is. Or would you rather go back to the days
>> when anytime you saw a program you'd like to buy, 80% of the time
>> you'd have to forget about it because it was for a machine you didn't
>> own?
>
>You spent too much time with that Commodore 64. You should have
>had a real computer instead.
I used real computers in college at the tail end of the 80s; a VAX
6230 running VMS, and various assorted Unix machines. They were all
incompatible with each other. By that point I had an Amiga at home,
which was the best affordable single user machine of its time, but
also incompatible with everything.
Russell Wallace
>In article <3e4fbf26...@news.eircom.net>,
> r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>> Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
>> with running Sun's office package.
>
>What's wrong with that?
Nothing, if you're happy with Star Office.
>I thought the argument was about predatory
>proprietary companies?
Not from my side it isn't. My argument all along has been precisely
that whether you want to say one company or another is "predatory",
"evil", "a monopoly" etc etc (in practice, those labels are earned by
being successful, not by being nasty) isn't what really matters. What
matters is that it's much better to have a standard than a bunch of
incompatible proprietary systems. (If it happens to be a good
standard, so much the better. If it doesn't, it's still a lot better
than none at all.)
Russell Wallace
>And then there was CP/M. Which ran on a wealth of different machines
>(Xerox-820, Kaypro, Osborne, Tandy, etc.) and had quite an impresive
>collection of packages including the first really popular word processor.
Now CP/M I'll grant you. I never used it, but from what I've heard, it
did a good job of being the unifying standard of its day.
Rupert Pigott
news:3e514e48....@news.eircom.net...
> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 12:54:37 -0700, bfra...@jetnet.ab.ca wrote:
>
> >Russell Wallace wrote:
> >> You're not being picky at all; this is a serious flaw in Linux.
> >
> >And just how many revisions of UNIX are there?
>
> Well, last count there were about ten grillion versions of Linux
> alone, and counting all the other members of the Unix family and all
> the versions of those, I'd say somewhere safely in excess of fifty
> grillion :)
Most comtemporary UNIXen present at least 3 common APIs :
BSD, SVR4 and POSIX.
Deal with it dude, there is standardisation.
Cheers,
Rupert
Rupert Pigott
> On 17 Feb 2003 20:50:59 GMT, bi...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>
> >In article <3e4fbf26...@news.eircom.net>,
> > r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
> >> Buy Sun's incompatible proprietary hardware, looks like you're stuck
> >> with running Sun's office package.
> >
> >What's wrong with that?
>
> Nothing, if you're happy with Star Office.
>
> >I thought the argument was about predatory
> >proprietary companies?
>
> Not from my side it isn't. My argument all along has been precisely
> that whether you want to say one company or another is "predatory",
> "evil", "a monopoly" etc etc (in practice, those labels are earned by
> being successful, not by being nasty) isn't what really matters. What
> matters is that it's much better to have a standard than a bunch of
> incompatible proprietary systems. (If it happens to be a good
> standard, so much the better. If it doesn't, it's still a lot better
> than none at all.)
So what's your beef with all those OSes that support
the X11, BSD, SVR4 and POSIX APIs then ? Hell even
IBM have a POSIX API for their mainframes. The only
major OS vendor who didn't ship a fully-featured
POSIX API (and AFAIK still don't as default) is
Microsoft.
You're shooting at the wrong foot tbh.
Cheers,
Rupert
Brooks Moses
> Brooks Moses <bmoses...@cits1.stanford.edu> writes:
> > You know, my Windows machine seems to get rebooted about twice a month,
> > almost always because I've turned it off to muck with the hardware, but
> > sometimes for software installations or power outages.
>
> Why would you reboot a machine for software installations? I've never
> understood that.
In the most recent case, because the installation code puts hooks in
that update some system variables only on reboot rather than
immediately, presumably as a simple way of ensuring that they take
effect globally for all processes. (In Windows, if I've a console
window open, and then change an environment variable on the global
level, it doesn't propogate into the console window.)
> > My suspicion is that a large number -- not all, but many -- of the
> > problems that people seem to have with Windows come from the competence
> > of the sysadmin, and that if the same sysadmins were running any other
> > OS en masse, that other OS would have similar problems.
>
> There certainly is truth in that!
Yup. I suspect it's part of why my university has started a policy of
intensively port-scanning the on-campus networks on a regular basis.
> > All it would
> > take is a few Kazaa-like apps that "need to be installed as
> > root"....
>
> But there almost never is reason to install an app as root. Even if a
> few need to have root rights, there is always the possibility to
> install them in chroot jails.
Certainly true. But would your average untrained desktop user/sysadmin
know that? I suspect, if a program had an install routine claimed to
need to be run as root, and gave error messages if run otherwise, many
of them would simply su to root and run it.
- Brooks
Paul Repacholi
> It doesn't matter who wants what or who feels what. The reason it's
> vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else as
> #1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
So what do you call the X-box? (other than all the other things we
call it!!)
--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.
Christopher C. Stacy
Bill> In article <m3isvjj...@elgin.eder.de>,
Bill> Andreas Eder <Andrea...@t-online.de> writes:
>> r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net (Russell Wallace) writes:
>>
>>> On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 09:30:35 GMT, CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >There are international standards for C, Pascal, Ada, Fortran,
>>> >C++, and others. Programs written to the standards are portable,
>>> >and most programs can be so written if you are willing to forgo
>>> >the whiz-bangs.
>>>
>>> Only for command line utilities; it's been a long time since there was
>>> a market for those.
>>>
>> You do know about X Windows, do you? It has been here for over 10
>> years.
Bill> Now there's an understatement. The MIT-Athena Project that begat
Bill> X-Windows dates to 1984. I make that almost 20 years.
X predates Athena by a few years, I think.
Bill Gunshannon
cst...@dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
>>>>>> On 17 Feb 2003 20:38:29 GMT, Bill Gunshannon ("Bill") writes:
>
> Bill> In article <m3isvjj...@elgin.eder.de>,
>
> Bill> X-Windows dates to 1984. I make that almost 20 years.
>
> X predates Athena by a few years, I think.
http://www.saao.ac.za/unix/node66.html
History of X
In 1984 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed Project
Athena. The goal was to take the existing assortment of incompatible
workstations from different vendors and develop a network of graphical
workstations that could be used as teaching aids. The solution was a
network that could run local applications while being able to call on
remote resources. They thus created the first operating environment
that was truly hardware and vendor independent - the X Window System.
---------
I seldom rely on my own memory for this stuff. I think the history
of our industry is much to important and I despise the way it is
constantly being rewritten.
Don Chiasson
"Bill Gunshannon" <bi...@cs.uofs.edu> wrote in message
news:b2rhfh$1frfug$4...@ID-135708.news.dfncis.de...
[snip Linux ......]
>
> Well, that explains it. Most of us here were talking about
> professional computing and not this "brave new world"
> where any kid with a PC is an operating systems engineer.
> Considering the actual level of experience and knowledge
> of the average Limux user I'm amazed they ever get the
> machines to run at all.
Don't forget that Linus Torvalds was a kid in college, not a
professional, when he started writing Linux. He got something working
and then with help from many people - mostly kids - built on it. The
professionals such as Andrew Tannenbaum and Richard Stallman pointed in
the wrong direction for writing a full operating system, toward a
microkernel. Read "Hackers" and other books, and you will find that many
of the best programmers were kids.
There are two big things about Linux. First it that it is an operating
system that works. Second is that it lets anyone try to be an operating
system engineer. Most fail, but a few succeed gloriously.
---Don
e-mail: it's not not, it's hot.
Steve Burton
Wallace) wrote:
>On Mon, 17 Feb 2003 13:30:16 +0000, Andrew Harrison SUNUK Consultancy
><Andrew_No....@nospamn.sun.com> wrote:
>
>>Russell Wallace wrote:
>>
>>> Sure, I wasn't calling them villains. I was simply noting that the
>>> reason their computers are unable to run most software is because
>>> they're nonstandard. That's just the way things are.
>>
>>How do you define most software.
>
>I mean if you made a list of all the programs available on commercial
>sale and for each one asked whether it runs on Solaris, in fewer than
>50% of cases would the answer be yes.
>
I read (and I don't now where, so trust me) that there is still more
commercial in-house software developed than retail packages. If you
want it to run on windows then do it that way. The same goes for
Solaris.
>>Solaris has the biggest supported software portfolio
>>after Win32 and way way ahead of HP-UX, AIX, Tru64,
>>OS400, zOS, OpenVMS, Linux x86, HP-UX/Itanium, Win64/Itanium
>>OpenVMS/Itanium(0) in that order. For example even using
>>double counting Solaris 8 has more apps that AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
>>combined. By double counting I mean Oracle 9i on AIX 4.3.3/5.1/5.2
>>counts as 3 apps.
>
>(Nitpick - Oracle isn't an application, it's system software.)
No, it's an application.
>
>But you are entirely correct, Solaris has more software available for
>it than most of its competitors, and this is a big advantage.
>
>>Thats just the way things are !
>
>^.^
Bob Koehler
>
> I seem to remember a company called Loral(?)_ that made IBM compatable
> hardware (and yes, I mean IBM Mainframes.) And then, of course, we also
> have Amdahl UTS on IBM systems.
Are you thinking of the NAS series of microcoded 360 and 370 clones?
They were from a Japanee firm which claimed they could replace any
system just be supplying different microcode.
Bob Koehler
>
> In 1984 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed Project
> Athena. The goal was to take the existing assortment of incompatible
> workstations from different vendors and develop a network of graphical
> workstations that could be used as teaching aids. The solution was a
> network that could run local applications while being able to call on
> remote resources. They thus created the first operating environment
> that was truly hardware and vendor independent - the X Window System.
I wonder who writees this stuff, the latest batch of kids? I
recall trying to port around hardware and vendor independent
graphics stuff from the 70s.
And X11 alone isn't an operating environment, its just a begining
of a GUI.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
bi...@gw5.cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
> History of X
>
> In 1984 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed Project
> Athena. The goal was to take the existing assortment of incompatible
> workstations from different vendors and develop a network of graphical
> workstations that could be used as teaching aids. The solution was a
> network that could run local applications while being able to call on
> remote resources. They thus created the first operating environment
> that was truly hardware and vendor independent - the X Window System.
athena news letters from 84 & 85:
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/system/usrdoc/athena/newsletter/
some past athena related posts. dec & ibm jointly/equally funded
athena. there were reps from both companies at project athena:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#30 Drive letters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#35a Drive letters
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/98.html#37 What is MVS/ESA?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000.html#64 distributed locking patents
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2000e.html#20 Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001b.html#33 John Mashey's greatest hits
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002i.html#54 Unisys A11 worth keeping?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#32 I found the Olsen Quote
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#18 cost of crossing kernel/user boundary
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#46 Horror stories: high system call overhead
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2003.html#50 Origin of Kerberos
--
Anne & Lynn Wheeler | http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/
Internet trivia 20th anv http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm
John Smith
"Morten Reistad" <m...@reistad.priv.no> wrote in message
news:cnjm2b...@via.reistad.priv.no...
> According to Russell Wallace <r...@vorpalbunnyeircom.net>:
> >On 15 Feb 2003 12:59:08 -0500, pec...@shell.monmouth.com
> >(Bill/Carolyn Pechter) wrote:
> >
> >>IBM seemed to want to be the biggest and strongest computer
company.
> >>IBM seemed to want to be the leader and the standard. I feel
Microsoft
> >>won't give up until EVERY piece of computing machine (including
your
> >>car and toaster) boots and runs a Windows varient.
> >
> >vastly preferable to have Microsoft instead of IBM or anyone else
as
> >#1 is very simple: *Microsoft don't sell computers*.
>
Only because of the heat the DOJ put on them for many years while the
anti-trust case was proceeding against the,
Since that time IBM has behaved fairly hororably.
And despite the DOJ case against Microsoft, so far the Borg has not
shown the same kind of contrition that IBM did.
Rupert Pigott
news:fA4D7t...@eisner.encompasserve.org...
Has your stuff been as widely ported and used as X11 ?
> And X11 alone isn't an operating environment, its just a begining
> of a GUI.
I don't think anyone was saying otherwise. Nor was X11
designed to be, it is simply a portable client/server
protocol & API, intended to be combined with the OS API
whatever platform it's clients are running on... I still
don't see what the beefing is about, it does exactly
what it says on the tin.
IMHO the single biggest setback in X11's history was
Motif, for which X11 bears very little responsibilty.
Go beat up the vendors who pushed it.
Cheers,
Rupert
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
koe...@eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
> I wonder who writees this stuff, the latest batch of kids? I recall
> trying to port around hardware and vendor independent graphics stuff
> from the 70s.
>
> And X11 alone isn't an operating environment, its just a begining of
> a GUI.
ou still had terminal rooms ... except in project athena case they
eventually became workstation rooms (workstations were still too
expensive for every student to have one) .... sort of half dec
workstations and half (ibm) pc/rt. they were on a lan connected to
various university servers. the concept was that you could walk up to
any machine, sit down ... and with a few magic keystrokes you had your
complete personalized computing environment.
see previous post with:
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/system/usrdoc/athena/newsletter/
as in the 10/1/84 newsletter:
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/system/usrdoc/athena/newsletter/84-10-01
the terminal rooms started out with pc/xt
and as in
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/system/usrdoc/athena/newsletter/85-09
unix service start out with 45 vax 11/750 running unix timesharing.
also in the above. there is an introduction to "The X Window System"
by Win Treeese (getting started on a VS100). There is reference
to more about x in:
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/system/usrdoc/athena/newsletter/85-05
David Froble
> Not from my side it isn't. My argument all along has been precisely
> that whether you want to say one company or another is "predatory",
> "evil", "a monopoly" etc etc (in practice, those labels are earned by
> being successful, not by being nasty) isn't what really matters. What
> matters is that it's much better to have a standard than a bunch of
> incompatible proprietary systems. (If it happens to be a good
> standard, so much the better. If it doesn't, it's still a lot better
> than none at all.)
I've been trying to stay out of this rather useless discussion, but, the
implication above is that MS is not evil and nasty.
1) Legally found to have used monopolistic practices.
2) Wipes out any possible competition.
3) Illegally destroyed Netscape.
4) "Your problem is that you trusted us"
This list could be long, but you should get the idea.
MS Windows is a decent desktop system. Not too secure, but, hey, it's the
desktop. I could live with MS if they stayed with technical accomplishments.
but MS is basically evil and nasty. To them, there are no competitors, there
are just those whom they will attempt to destroy. It's the business practices,
not the products.
MS has dumbed down the world's expectations of computers. This is it's greatest
evil.
MS will attempt to sell it's products into a market for which they are not
suited. For one, the datacenter. Neither secure, not capable. Computers are
more than office automation and storage of files.
Dave
r...@rmkhome.com
> My suspicion is that a large number -- not all, but many -- of the
> problems that people seem to have with Windows come from the competence
> of the sysadmin, and that if the same sysadmins were running any other
> OS en masse, that other OS would have similar problems. All it would
> take is a few Kazaa-like apps that "need to be installed as root"....
> And a .bashrc-infecting virus shouldn't be that hard to make, either;
> who'd notice it?
Take a look at the bugtraq mailing list or www.securityfocus.com.
Worst OS - any version of Windows
2nd Worst OS - Linux
And then everything else after that.
Windows, by the nature of it's GUI interface, even hides problems from
the sysadmin.
Meanwhile, I can still see NIMDA, Code Red, and that latest port 1433
virus still slamming their way around the internet. Windows was designed
for private networks, and then jury-rigged to work with the internet.
--
r...@rmkhome.com http://www.rmkhome.com/~rmk
arargh...@not.at.enteract.com
<snip>
>Meanwhile, I can still see NIMDA, Code Red, and that latest port 1433
>virus still slamming their way around the internet. Windows was designed
>for private networks, and then jury-rigged to work with the internet.
Poorly.
--
Arargh (at arargh dot com) http://www.arargh.com
To reply by email, change the domain name, and remove the garbage.
(Enteract can keep the spam, they are gone anyway)
r...@rmkhome.com
> Certainly true. But would your average untrained desktop user/sysadmin
> know that? I suspect, if a program had an install routine claimed to
> need to be run as root, and gave error messages if run otherwise, many
> of them would simply su to root and run it.
In most secure environments, users cannot be root or admin on their machines
whether they are running Windows, UNIX, or VMS.
--
r...@rmkhome.com http://www.rmkhome.com/~rmk
r...@rmkhome.com
> SVR4 and BSD are not "various Linux distros". In the beginning AT&T
> Bell Labs created Unix. System V Release 4, which is what "SVR4" stands
> for, was their final version before USL was sold to Novell. BSD is a
> descendant of an earlier AT&T Unix release, which has subsequently been
> developed independently of the AT&T products, and in its NetBSD,
> OpenBSD, and FreeBSD forms has been completely sanitized of AT&T code so
> that it may be distributed as open source. Linux is an independent
> development which never contained any AT&T code. So you have now three
> independent code bases, not one. If you want to add the Hurd (which at
> release 0.2 is running but not yet feature-complete) to the mix, then
> you have four.
And SVR4 is the union of AT&T SVR3 with Sun's take on BSD.
Across Linux distributions, the only factor that stays the same is the
kernel itself. The rest of a particular distribution is whatever the
packager felt like.
--
r...@rmkhome.com http://www.rmkhome.com/~rmk
r...@rmkhome.com
> From the point of view of the user & app programmer I
> think that the main protagonists are : BSD/SVR4/POSIX.
> I remember making the transitions from BSD -> SVR4 ->
> POSIX -> BSD... Userland held different surprises every
> time ! :)
Don't forget the "Single UNIX Specification", which sometimes differs
from POSIX. And Solaris tries to give you a little of each depending
on where you point for your bin directory.
--
r...@rmkhome.com http://www.rmkhome.com/~rmk
r...@rmkhome.com
> StarOffice, and now the version from OpenOffice.org, run on Solaris-sparc,
> Solaris-x86, Linux, and Win32. I think they are working on a Mac version.
And you can always buy the x86 PCI card from Sun and run Solaris and Windows
apps simultaneously on a Sun workstation.
--
r...@rmkhome.com http://www.rmkhome.com/~rmk